It’s a numbers game in marketing campaigns, and website metrics are critical ways to guide a campaign towards success through the right adjustments.
Website metrics are more than just numbers thrown around by analysts and specialists. A website’s key metrics can make or break a marketing campaign. Digital marketers and SEO specialists take a close look at absolute numbers in a website’s traffic to track performance and goals and gain valuable insight into what the visitors may be looking for.
It’s one thing to plan a campaign with specific goals in mind; it’s another thing to determine whether it worked. And choosing that relies heavily on the traffic coming into the website. Let’s take an e-commerce website, for example. When running a marketing campaign, the team needs to know where the visitors are coming from and where they’re going around the website. IP intelligence helps massively in this regard.
Through IP geolocation technology, the team can determine the physical location and internet connection details of one of the site’s visitors. This produces valuable data that leads to better customer understanding. What areas are most of the site’s visitors coming from? Are they browsing it through the web or mobile? These are just some critical questions that need to be answered by the site’s metrics so the campaign can be adjusted accordingly.
Knowledge is Power: The Most Important Website Metrics to Know About
For a company seeking to fine-tune its targets, measure its scale, and build a better campaign, there are specific key metrics that they should keep a close eye on.
1. Total Visits
As far as basics go, this metric is the most basic. After all, the ultimate goal is to draw people into the website and urge them to purchase. The number of people coming into the website determines whether the campaign effectively drives the traffic in.
Protip: This should be rising month after month; otherwise, there may be an issue.
2. Traffic Sources
This is where the geolocation comes back into play. Businesses can now determine where the traffic is coming from. Companies looking to grow their market in specific locations can check whether their campaigns targeted to that area is working. These areas could be a city or a country, or traffic from social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook.
3. Time on Site
So the traffic has come in, but are they staying? Businesses need to make sure that the bounce rate remains low (these are the people who come in and leave right away). The goal should be keeping customers on the site, increasing interest and engagement. How long do customers stay on the site? Do they click on the menu, the pages, or interact with the features?
4. Top Pages
Where is all this traffic going once it’s on the site? Are individual pages more frequently visited or has more engagement than others? Knowing what the site visitors are most interested in helps a company to respond better. It gives them an idea of what the customers want from them. Then they can shift the attention towards the products or services on those pages.
5. Mobile Traffic
Mobile customers represent a significant chunk of the digital market these days. As everyone has a smartphone now, many users are also browsing and making purchases off their mobile phones. If mobile traffic seems to have more bounces or exits, it may indicate that the site’s mobile version isn’t user-friendly or is too cumbersome to put up with.
6. New vs. Returning Visitors
Being able to track visitors’ IPs lets a company know if customers are making return visits to the site. Regardless of how long it takes for a customer to decide if they want to make a purchase, this website metric is vital. It gives a glimpse into the buying cycle, brand awareness among the customer base, and its usability.
7. Conversion Rate
How many people are actually buying the product or opting for the service? The conversion rate provides an exact look into the ROI of the marketing campaign. It can also indicate if the CTA is working if people follow through or not.
8. Click Through Rate
How many people are clicking on the links distributed through the marketing campaign? These could be links from social media posts and photos, clicks on ads, clicks on affiliate links in blogs, and other areas where the campaign is in effect. This website metric lets the company know if people are clicking through one area more than the other. It means the campaign is working better in this place.
9. Cost Per Lead
This metric indicates how much is being spent to convert someone on the site. A lead isn’t someone who will definitely make a purchase, but they might make a purchase later on. Marketers need this metric to see if their campaign successfully generates leads for less cost than the average amount a customer spends.
10. Cost Per Click
Similarly, CPC is a critical metric that determines how much a company pays for every click of the ads being used in the campaign. This needs to be monitored over time and then optimized to be the ideal CPC.
Overall, the careful monitoring and analysis of website metrics give an essential look into any marketing campaign’s success. It shows where the company’s leads are coming from, how much it costs to get them, and, most importantly, where the campaign’s strengths and weaknesses lie. Appropriately used, these are weapons that will refine a campaign into its best form, giving the company the best return on investment possible.
Does your company keep track of website metrics? Are there specific metrics that matter more than the others? Let us know how you do it in the comments below.