These are the key metrics you should be tracking for your business website
For any businessman, veteran or newbie, understanding numbers is critical.Similar to operations and processes, a business website generates a lot of numbers, understanding which is essential to gauge the effectiveness of the portal. This article focuses on the key metrics that you should closely evaluate to track the performance of your website.
1. Hits received
The number of hits gives you an idea about visitors browsing your website. The number of visitors is directly proportional to the hits your website receives. There are two things you need to keep in mind while tracking hits:
- Hits received from new visitors
- Hits received from repeat visitors
While high number of hits from new visitors indicate effective marketing strategies deployed to make your site popular, hits from repeat visitors indicate the content’s effectiveness and relevance.
2. Time spent on page
This is another essential metric you should keep a close eye on. Time spent on page measures the amount of time visitors typically spend on the webpage. If the time spent on the page is less, it can indicate two things:
- The page isn’t captivating enough
- Visitors didn’t get what they were looking for
According to industrystandards, the average time spent on the page should be 2-3 minutes. Though this time may seem short, experts believe it’s enough to gauge the content’s relevance and enable interaction.
3. Bounce rate
A popular term in internet marketing, bounce rate indicates the percentage of visitors visiting the site and then leaving it without navigating to other pages. In terms of website traffic, bounce rate tells you about visitors, who after landing on your website, leave without initiating any action, which can be as simple as navigating another page.
A high bounce rate doesn’t augur well for your website. A high bounce rate can also lower rankings on major search engines, thereby leading to less traffic.
4. Conversion rate
Conversation rate is perhaps the most important of all the metrics as it directlyimpacts revenues. It is the percentage of people out of total visitors who perform an action you desire.
A low conversion rate indicates that either wrong traffic is being attracted or the website has failed to convince visitors to take the intended action.
5. Top pages
This metric tells you about the pages on which visitors stayed for the longest period. You can use it to analyse the factors that promoted visitors to stay for a longer duration on a particular page.
This can be used to make strategic changes in the website content or design to make it more appealing to the target audience.
6. Load time
This refers to the time taken by the website to load. A high load time can put off visitors, thereby increasing bounce rate. Your website should ideally loadwithin 3-5 seconds. Avoid incorporating large images as they take longer to load, which consequently increases the load time.
You can also minify, combine files, defer JavaScript loading and reduce server response time to boost the speed of your business website.
Evaluating these key metrics can go a long way in ensuring superior performance of your website, delivering the intended results in the process. Take the assistance of an experienced digital marketing agency to help you optimize your website.
