Most business owners love having more information about their companies but are reluctant to dig into their web analytics. Why the contradiction? In our experience, it’s because they tend to think of website statistics as being complicated or technical.
To be fair, they can be. However, most important statistics you need to follow for your website aren’t hard to find or understand. And, once you know what they are telling you, each of them can be used to improve your online marketing from one month or quarter to the next.
To give you a sense of the kinds of numbers we are referring to, let’s look at the seven online marketing stats you can follow to profitability.
#1 Unique Website Visitors
In a very general sense you want to have an idea about how many people are coming to your website each day, week, and month. You also want to know whether that number is increasing or decreasing over time (just be sure to filter out visits from you, your team, and your web design partner).
Knowing how popular your website is won’t tell you everything, but it is an important figure. Think about it this way: if you owned a retail shop you would be paying very close attention to the number of walk-in visitors who were arriving off the street. It’s no different online.
#2 Website Traffic Sources
Once you understand how many people are coming to your website, it’s important to figure out where they are coming from. Are they arriving via search engines, social media profiles, your email campaigns, or online ads? Are they finding you from a different channel altogether?
By figuring out your top sources of web traffic you can decide which campaigns to invest your time and money in. You can also identify opportunities for future growth. For example, you could find that you’re getting very few visits from Google. Maybe that’s an area where you and your web designer should be focusing more attention and resources.
#3 Time on Site
This statistic tells you how long the visitor is spending on your website. As a rule of thumb more time is better than less. You certainly want someone who is thinking about working with you to check out lots of content and see what makes you different than the competition.
Usually, having low time on site statistics would tell you that prospects can’t find what they’re looking for, or that your campaigns are targeting the wrong types of buyers since they are leaving quickly. However, conversions are the ultimate goal so fast visits aren’t a problem if you’re still generating new business. It could be that buyers are simply finding the information and resources they need very easily.
#4 Conversion Rates
When a new visitor comes to your website for the first time you’re hoping they’ll do something. You might want them to fill out a form, make a purchase, or do something else, but you should have a goal in mind.
Simple as it might seem, it can get easy to overlook that fact when you’re busy looking at search engine rankings and other figures. Never lose sight of the reality that conversions are what ultimately lead you to sales. Knowing that, keep a close eye on this set of statistics when reviewing the numbers. You might have many different types of conversions to track. All of them matter.
#5 Email Open Rates
In some ways a healthy email subscriber list can be your most valuable online marketing asset. It costs virtually nothing to reach your email contacts, and while bypassing your competitors. On Google or Facebook another service provider is one click or search result away. But you get a chance to talk to your customers directly, and without interference, in their inbox.
None of this works, though, unless subscribers are actually opening the emails you send. That’s why it’s important to keep a close eye on open and click-through rates. You want to ensure that your messages aren’t just getting through, but are also having a real online marketing impact. Otherwise you could be wasting your time, and even losing subscribers, on an exercise that is essentially pointless.
#6 PPC Click-Through Rates
If email open rates are a big deal, then PPC click-through rates are an even bigger one. That’s because your website can’t sell unless potential customers can find you online. You need them to respond to your ads. What’s more, low ad click-through rates lead to lower quality scores and higher advertising costs.
For these reasons you should be watching the response rates to your digital ads very closely, particularly in the first few weeks and months of your campaigns. That’s when you have the least amount of information, and when the tone will be set for future account performance.
#7 Bounce Rates
A “bounce” on your website is recorded when someone arrives to one of your pages and leaves without doing anything (like clicking a link). In most cases a bounce is a bad thing since it represents a missed opportunity to generate a sale or conversion.
By studying bounces you can figure out if there are parts of your website that represent dead ends. You can use that information to change your offers, add more content, and otherwise keep visitors engaged with your site.
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Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and see what we can do to help your business grow. You might be amazed at how easy and affordable it is to get the assistance you need.