Websites can represent a significant investment of a business’ marketing budget, so how do website owners know if their implementation is robust or not?
Data.
It’s almost impossible for a marketer to draw meaningful conclusions on the success (or lack thereof) of a website without capturing the appropriate data. To that end, this article covers the key metrics and facts regarding website performance that every marketer should know.
Website Performance Metrics
There is a delicate balance when it comes to capturing too much or too little data. With too little data, people cannot draw meaningful conclusions. Too much information, on the other hand, can cause people can lose the signal for the noise.
While the specific data needed can vary based on the needs of the organization, several metrics are helpful for most. The following sections list these metrics, as well as provide details on why that data is necessary and useful.
Number of Visitors
The first thing to measure is the number of visitors. This number is easy to gather (all analytics suites should be able to capture this information), and it can act as a quick health check on the website. The overall number of visits to a site will tell marketers if a website is growing, stagnating, or declining.
Visitor numbers can be further divided into two categories: repeat and unique. Repeat visitors are an indicator of interest and that the website is useful. Unique visitors are an indicator that knowledge about a site is growing. Both are important for the continued growth of a website.
Time is also of the essence. Website traffic numbers will provide information about general trends, but short-term spikes (or the lack thereof) can indicate whether a given campaign was successful or not. For example, marketers might expect traffic spikes during sales and other special programs — if not, that is a sign the program needs to be re-evaluated.
Source of Traffic
Knowing where traffic comes from can help marketers tailor their strategies. Furthermore, knowing that traffic originates from a variety of sources can mean that the website isn’t overly reliant on one source that, if lost, would be detrimental to the success of the site.
Websites seeing lots of traffic via organic search can rest assured that their search engine optimization (SEO) practices are on point, while referrals indicate solid relationships with others. Direct traffic is a good indicator of loyalty, while social traffic means success in an area where word-of-mouth practices, so to speak, reign supreme.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is a percentage of how many people leave a website immediately after arriving (sometimes, this is referred to as a single-page session). There are lots of reasons why this might be the case: the page might not be what the viewer is looking for, the viewer doesn’t want to see anymore given what’s on the home page, the page loads too slowly due to the site needing better web hosting, and so on.
Better hosting = better speeds = decrease in bounce rates (Source: WhoIsHostingThis)
Regardless of why a user bounces off a website, the bounce rate is essential for measuring how well the website is received. High bounce rates are an indicator of poor reception, and those responsible for the site should spend time figuring out why this is and fixing the problem.
Session Length and Dwell Time
Session length and dwell time are related, but there are subtle differences that marketers should be aware of.
Session length refers to the total amount of time a visitor spends on a website — it’s reasonable to assume that the longer a visitor spends on a website, the more valuable they find it. In this way, session length can be considered the opposite of bounce rate.
Related to session length is the dwell time. Dwell time is how long viewers take to view, read, and digest the website’s content. Session lengths can increase with visits to a lot of the website’s subpages, but dwell time is an indicator of how valuable individual pages are. Changes in this value, especially decline, over time signal to content creators that there are issues to be fixed.
Page Load Speeds
Speed matters, so marketers should check and make sure that their websites are loading as quickly as possible. Monitoring speed is important as time goes on — websites may start fast and optimized, but as pages are changed and features are added, there may be problematic changes in a site’s loading times. Furthermore, as your site grows, your host might not be up to the challenge of serving your website.
Webmasters need to be proactive in monitoring response times and fixing web hosting-related issues.
Slow-loading sites lose users, and without eyes on the website, the marketing campaigns are fruitless.
Conversion Rates
Conversion rates measure how successful a website is at encouraging the user to do something — it could be to make a purchase or provide their email address and join a subscriber list. If the website isn’t converting, the marketing team needs to take a closer look (starting with the metrics covered above) at what needs to change. But, to identify that conversions aren’t happening, marketers need to measure whether people make purchases, sign up, and so on.
Conclusion
Metrics on website traffic (and its source), bounce rates, session lengths/dwell time, and conversion rates are key metrics that every marketer should be familiar with since these are basic measurements that can help measure the efficacy of a marketing campaign.
About the Author: General Manager at WhoIsHostingThis.com. Toni Allen is the General Manager of Quality Nonsense LTD and editor for WhoIsHostingThis.com, a leading publisher of web hosting reviews and buyer’s guides. When she isn’t working on websites for people who makes websites she likes to escape to the forest and study mushrooms.
Twitter @tallen42