5 Website Metrics Every Marketer Should Be Tracking

1. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate of a page is the percentage of people who left your website after viewing that page. A page with a high bounce rate is performing poorly. You should always be comparing your landing pages to look out for ones that are bouncing a high percentage of visitors. These pages are ineffective and are literally driving people away from your website.  Comparing your high bounce pages to your low bounce pages is a great way to find out what’s working for your visitors and what isn’t.

2. Conversion Rate

The conversion rate of a page is the percentage of people who completed a desired action on that page, such as filling out a form. Pages with a high conversion rate are performing well. This is another great statistic to compare between your website’s landing pages. A landing page is usually the first page that your visitors will see when they arrive on your site, so it is crucial that your landing pages are getting visitors to convert into leads. If they’re not, then all of the traffic you are getting isn’t really valuable for your marketing efforts.

3. Traffic Sources

Your traffic sources will tell you where all of your site’s traffic is coming from when they first arrive. This is a great place to check your top of the funnel efforts and see where people heard about your site. If you’ve been working on your SEO efforts, then you should see your organic search volume increasing. If you’ve been doing good social media promotion, then you should see a lot of referral traffic from social media sites and blogs. Every business will have their own mix of organic, referral and direct traffic, so it’s important to watch over time so that you can track how your various marketing channels are driving traffic to your website.

4. Keywords

Your site keywords will show you which terms people are searching for when they find your site in a search engine. This is a great way to find out what people were actually looking for when they stumbled on your site. Usually, the top three or four keywords will be variations of your company name, but the results below those will give you a lot of insight into what people are trying to find when they come to your site. Chances are, you’ve already been optimizing around these words as part of your keyword strategy, and this data offers a chance to see how well you’re doing. If you notice you’re getting traffic around a keyword you haven’t optimized for, you might have found a keyword that isn’t very competitive, but is still relevant to your business. You should build some content around that keyword to really leave your competitors in the dust.

5. Visitors

The number of visitors is the number of unique individuals who have spent time on your website. This is the number that gives all of the other percentages their meaning. A word of caution though: do not focus on the number of visitors as your most important website metric. It is important to see how many people are ending up on your website, but this statistic is more of a reflection of your off-site marketing campaigns, and not of your website itself.

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