No one wants a dud of a website. It’s a waste of money and a waste of time.
If you have a website of your own, you likely want to rank well on search engines and do well to provide value to your website visitors.
Whether you’re managing your website for the first time or you’ve tried a million different strategies to improve your website metrics, this guide will point you in the right direction.
Here are three important website performance metrics to track to measure your website efficiency.
1. Bounce Rate
One of the most important website performance metrics to track is your website’s bounce rate. This is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after having seen one page of your website.
Do you know the first thing visitors look at to decide whether or not they want to stay on your page? It’s website design.
94% of a visitor’s first impression of your site has to do with how well you have designed your website. Based on your website design, your visitor will decide whether they deem you a credible source or not.
While there are other factors that contribute to your website’s bounce rate, good visual appeal and well-executed UI design are the largest contributing factors.
You can address these factors and improve your bounce rate by having your website professionally designed. Learn more on web design agencies and the services they offer.
2. Conversion Rate
When visitors come to your site, what goal would you like them to complete?
You may want your website visitors to sign up for your email list or newsletter so that you can improve communications with your target audience. Or, you may want your website visitors to fill out an interest or inquiry form so that you can follow up on these leads at a later time.
Whatever your goals are, that is how you measure your conversion rate.
A conversion rate measures the percentage of your website visitors who complete the desired goal you’ve set out for them. A compelling website results in more website conversions and thus, greater website engagement.
Keep track of your conversion rates to measure how effective your efforts are in your website design and marketing.
3. Channel Sources
The last key website performance metric to track is the sources of your website traffic. What does that mean?
You want to know how your website visitors are finding your page. There are a few different sources for website traffic.
They include:
- organic search
- paid traffic
- direct traffic
- referral traffic
- social traffic
- email traffic
Website traffic from organic search comes from visitors finding your page on a search engine such as Google. Paid traffic comes from visitors clicking on a paid advertisement you put out. Monitor paid search when running paid search advertising campaigns.
Direct traffic is by far, the coolest. Visitors typed your website address directly into the web browser. This means that your visitors remember your site, or someone referred you through word of mouth.
Visitors who reach your page through another website counts as referral traffic.
As for email and social traffic, both require visitors to click on a link (from your email or social media account) and land on your page.
You want to know where your website visitors are coming from so that you can focus your efforts on what’s working. Don’t work harder, work smarter.
Track These Website Performance Metrics
You don’t have to be an expert to have a well-performing website. However, you should track these three website performance metrics to help gauge and pivot your efforts.
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