Some business owners barely ever look at their website stats. Others obsess over every tiny dip in traffic. As a rule of thumb, though, both groups miss out on the performance indicators that actually matter most when it comes to making money.
Today, we want to remind you about three specific website statistics. These stats can help you gauge whether your online marketing plan is a success. We’ll start with the one you’re probably familiar with already…
#1 Unique Visitors
How many people are coming to your website each day, week, or month? How many of them are returning after a prior visit?
These are the kinds of figures you have to understand if you want to know whether your internet marketing efforts are effective and how to improve your results in the future.
Unfortunately, many business owners just look at generic “traffic” or “hit” statistics, which can be misleading. That’s because less precise indicators can count the same visitors multiple times or register automated bots as real-life prospects.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to set up Google Analytics (or a similar package) to filter for the traffic you need to measure. Plus, it’s an important step if you’re going to get meaningful data.
#2 Time and Pages Per Visit
Technically, these are two different website stats, but we’re lumping them together because they help you measure engagement.
It’s good to know how many people you have coming to your website. However, it’s even better to know whether they’re hanging around to read your content, click links, and visit related pages. That tells you how interested they are in your products and ideas.
Ideally, changes you make to your website or content structure should increase engagement. If they aren’t, then what are you getting from the bump in traffic to your website?
#3 Successful Conversions
It’s amazing, but many business owners can’t measure successful conversions on their websites because they haven’t set up the relevant processes. That’s like opening an investment account and never looking at the balance.
You’re ultimately looking at things like incoming leads and sales to determine the success of your online marketing plan.
However, there could be several other related conversions (like newsletter sign-ups, online video views, etc.) that typically take place before a transaction is completed. By watching those, you can see how well your pages and content are creating interest and persuading prospects to take the next step.
Figure out what a “good” website visit looks like in your business and then measure results based on those metrics. When you do, you can get better at encouraging online prospects to follow through with the right activities.
Are You Watching the Right Website Stats?
These aren’t the only three website statistics you should ever look at, of course, but they do give you a sense of where your business is headed. When you aren’t looking at them often enough, you could easily find yourself ignoring profit opportunities or throwing time and money at the wrong ideas and campaigns.
If you’re not sure you’ll have the time to invest in tracking stats on your website, sometimes it takes the help of an online marketing agency to help you get started.
If you’re looking to set your business on a new course in 2019, why not let our team of lead generation experts help? Get a free 10 minute marketing assessment to see what we can do to make this your most profitable year ever.
