Analytic data such as metrics help you accurately know what the return on investment of your marketing strategy. Analytic data is may seem complicated, but if you know what to monitor, you’ll boost your chances of success.
Conversion Rates
This is the most important metric to consider is conversion rate because it’s the clearest way to gauge how good you are at marketing. A high amount of traffic with a small conversion means you can attract people, but they don’t like what the see after they take a closer look at what you offer them. Low traffic that converts well is a great start and means you just need to scale your efforts to accurately gauge your customer lifetime value. Conversions doesn’t just refer to sales. You can also monitor how many people complete an opt-in form, download your lead magnet, or register for a free or premium membership and other calls to action. There are many additional types of conversion rates you should monitor. These include single ad conversion rates, campaign conversion rates, keyword conversion, and marketing channel conversion rates.
Visitors
Total traffic is very important because without it you won’t know your conversion rates. But there are different types of visitors. A returning visitor is anyone who returns to your site within 2 years. You should check out how long the average session is of your new and returning visitors on certain webpages. New visitors spend on average about half the time on a website as returning visitors. This means you will need a different approach to both people. If someone returns but isn’t converting into a sale, that’s not exactly a bad thing. It can be a good thing because they might share your content, but you need to work to keep them coming back. New visitors are great and regardless of them converting, you want them to return to your website and hopefully convinces other people to do so.
Traffic Sources
Let’s say s video led someone to your site, they’ll be more willing to see another related video on your website, instead of text content. However, research shows landing pages containing videos will increase conversions by 86%. Monitoring your incoming traffic sources also allows you to take advantage of new traffic sources from social media platform, and put more effort to attract more people from that platform. Tracking your incoming traffic is like taking off blinders. Knowing where your traffic originates allows for more efficient marketing because certain sources will have high or low conversion rates.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate shows the percentage of people who only view one page then leave your website. If you only monitor traffic, traffic sources, and conversion rate, but don’t pay attention to the bounce rate, you are leaving money on the table. Instead of wondering why your conversion rate is low, figure out why your bounce rate is high.
A high bounce rate usually indicates your website is not engaging or solving a problem. While Google doesn’t penalize high bounce rates, they do take into account what site people visit after leaving your page. If they continue to click on other search results, it signals Google to lower your ranking. But if someone bounces and doesn’t check other search results, Google will assume you solved their problem.
Conclusion
This just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a great place to start. You can filter your analytic data in dozens of different ways just the metrics listed here. As time goes on, you will want to dive deep into more metrics in various ways. Start with the basics and break each one down to best suit your business and you’ll be fine.
