The data collected from the website is how many people build strong strategies for future improvements. Through a variety of metrics, you can determine how to engage those visitors and turn curiosity clicks into lead generation.
However, not all metrics are as useful as other forms of data. What one person may deem as a necessary point of information, someone else may find useless.
When it comes to pulling data to create reports, there are some metrics that are ideal regardless of your focus. These specific tidbits of information are useful for any organization to solidify strategies of boosting sales and consumer interaction.
The following are seven key points of data that virtually anyone can use to improve their website. When it comes to marketing metrics, these are the ones that everyone should include when developing future strategies.
1. Average Time on Page
The amount of time people spend on a page informs you whether or not the content is engaging to keep someone’s attention. An average time per visit could be instrumental to help determine whether there is something missing from the page or not.
If you see that a page is receiving many visits but a poor average of time spent, then the content of the page may be at fault.
One thing you should keep in mind when looking at the average time spent on a page is the bounce rate. If the bounce rate is high and the time is low, this could signify a problem.
However, there may be something else going on if the bounce rate and time spent are equally low.
2. Unique vs Return Visitors
Having a running tally of unique visitors is nice because it shows if your marketing tactics are working. However, a tally of returning visitors demonstrates that people are more engaged with your content.
This means that some visitors are coming back to your site on a regular basis.
While driving unique traffic to the website is one of the primary goals of any marketing strategy, you don’t want to discredit the need to build a fan-base. Loyal consumers can drive just as much income as new ones.
Examining the content that people come back to most often can tell you what the target audience is finding the most valuable on the website.
This can show whether or not marketing campaigns targeting previous visitors are working, such as that of using email marketing services or newsletter lists.
3. Bounce Rate
An extremely valuable metric for websites is that of the bounce rate. This data shows when a visitor enters the site and then leaves without exploring the rest of the content.
You want to do what you can to keep visitors on the site longer. Sometimes this means adding internal links or making other content easier to spot.
A lot of people who surf the web are usually looking for a single piece of information. It’s relatively common for some successful websites to have an exceptionally high bounce rate on certain pages.
Sometimes people find the information they need and simply leave the page.
It’s content that has 100 percent bounce rates that report many visitors you may want to concern yourself with.
In many cases, a high bounce rate and high visitation signifies false-positive reports. These are usually from third-party vendors who are trying to pique your interest in their services, such as that conducted by “traffic-cash.xyz.”
At which point, you should simply add those sites to your metric report filters to get a more accurate reading for data.
4. Social Acquisition
Social engagement plays an important role for success of any given website. Using the marketing metrics for social acquisition denotes whether your campaigns are successful or not.
If you find that fewer visitors are coming in from one site as opposed to another, then you’ll need to take a closer look at those social marketing campaigns.
Social media plays a role in driving sales for online companies. And keeping an eye on sales from certain social sites denotes what strategies are working the best.
5. Most Accessed Pages
Pageviews and unique pageviews can be helpful when determining which content on the site is the most valuable. When certain areas of your site are being ignored, you need to analyze the content and figure out why.
While it may be as simple as the target audience not finding value in the materials, there may also be a problem in the actual coding of the site.
For example, search engines follow sitemaps and links to crawl for content. If a page has nothing pointing to it, the search engines don’t know it’s there.
You should always make sure that proper optimization practices are put into every page created for the site.
6. Inbound Links
Although search engines don’t hold backlinks as high on a pedestal as they once did, inbound links are sill important when it comes to page and site authority.
These links demonstrate how other site owners value the content. The more relevant the links are to the content of your pages, the better the site will perform in search engines.
Building these links can be a bit tricky. Engines such as Google have made recent changes that discredit websites that have inbound links from irrelevant sites.
This means that you can’t simply add links back to your pages from some other place. Links that have a shared niche or industry focus are the ones that perform the best.
7. Exit Percentage
Similar to a bounce rate, the exit percentage displays the pages where people are leaving the website most often. If there is an exceptionally high percentage on pages in comparison to the other content, there may be a problem with that particular page.
Unfortunately, the false-positives mentioned earlier can also affect this metric. Bots and negative SEO practices can affect this rate.
A high exit percentage could be easily fixed by giving the visitor a logical path to follow. This means you could add links to other pages that have similar topics.
For example, some plugins in WordPress will show suggestions based on the page’s tags or keywords.
It’s also possible that there may be something wrong with the layout of that certain page which is driving visitors away.
The goal is to try to keep the exit percentage as low as possible.
Never Underestimate the Data
The data collected by various analytic programs can be invaluable when building anything from product advertisements to website content. Correlating marketing metrics has potential to boost income and build a brand’s reputation.
Don’t underestimate the data you have available. Understanding the key points could alter many aspects of your online business.