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In business, we have things that are used to measure success, likewise the same applies to when you have a website for your brand. Discussing metrics for measuring success might not be interesting, but these are the things you will need to know if you want to be sure that your website is serving its purpose. For someone that is tracking just a mere number of visit for a website is better than someone that is not even doing any at all. The best way to be sure if your website is effective at converting your visitors to customers is by analyzing some website metrics. Data analytics is now becoming really popular, with many businesses using it. When you do not observe metrics for your website, your website marketing technique is not more than ordinary guesswork, which might end up being a waste of money and time. But with the right metrics, you can pick out what exactly is working and what is not. And for those that do not know what to measure, worry not! We are here for you. We will be discussing 5 major important metrics that can be used to measure the success of your website. Included are also tips that will help improve the rate at which your website convert visitors to customers.
1. Website Traffic
This is the number one metric that most people are always worried about; the total number of visits to the website. This is undeniably important and very easy to track. The amount of traffic you have will indicate if your website is growing, reducing, or being stagnant. The traffic can also be used to track the progress of any promotional materials. Let us assume you featured a guest blog and witnessed a rise in traffic, this is an indication that you should do this more often.
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If you are however getting , reduced traffic it means that something is not right. Visits to a website can also be further divided into unique (new) and repeat visits. Unique visits signify that you are getting new visits, while repeats indicate that you can retain customers. If however the total visit you get is dominated by repeats visits, you clearly are building your customer base, but are not getting new visitors. You should invest in new strategies that will attract visitors
2. Bounce Rate
This indicates the percentage of people that leave your website after visiting it. The page that has a high bounce rate indicates that it is performing badly. You should compare the visit you have on the landing page to the percentage of bounce each other pages are generating. Those pages that have a high bounce rate are not effective, and they are chasing away traffic from your website.
3. Source of Traffic
This will tell you where the traffic to the site is coming from. This metric is the best way to check where exactly people get to know about your website. If you are building your SEO campaign, you should then try and check out how effective your organic effort is. For social media promotions, then most of your referrals will be from your social media account and blogs. It is normal for every business to have a combination of organic, direct, and referral traffic, which is why there is a need to keep a check on the numerous channels that are bringing in traffic to the website.
4. Keywords
The keywords on your website will help you identify the phrases or keywords used by people when they come across your site on search engine result pages. This metric can help you identify what people are looking for exactly before they arrive on your site. Normally, the first 3 – 4 keywords will have the company's’ name in them, but results below that will give you a better knowledge of what people are searching for when they stumble on your site. The idea is that you have your site optimized around that particular keyword, and the result shows how effective they are. But if you are getting traffic for a keyword not optimized for, it shows the keyword is relevant to your business, you should create content around that keyword.
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5. Conversion Rate
This refers to the percentage of visitors that completed successfully a Call to Action (CTA) on the page, like signing up for newsletters with their emails and filling out a form. The simple term behind this is that a site with a high conversion rate is doing well. The success of this can be compared to the effectiveness of the landing page. A landing page on a website is that page that users see when they arrive on the site, is it then important that your landing page is getting visitors and converting them to lead. If that is not happening, then all the traffic you are generating is not of value to your marketing strategies.