Effective Website Metrics

Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly what your site needs to convert more visitors to customers? While this may seem like an impossible task, much of this information is readily available through detailed website metrics. While measurability is a difficult task in traditional media it is one of the most powerful advantages of online marketing. Surprisingly website analytics are often given a low priority. Why squander your opportunity to gain insights into the effectiveness of your marketing?

To achieve the greatest results in your business you must constantly evaluate your success and adjust your approach. Improving your online marketing requires a similar method. Getting started with website analytics does not need to be costly or difficult. There are numerous free tools such as Google Analytics which can provide detailed metrics in a wide range of reports and graphs.

Here are some of the metrics you should observe:

Conversion Rate
Not only can you see how many visitors become customers, but by combining this metric with your total cost of marketing, you can calculate your cost per acquisition. By monitoring this metric you will have an overall sense of how effective your efforts are.

Regional Popularity
If you know where to find your greatest concentration of customers, you can plan special regional promotions.  This is also helpful for planning the launch of a new print campaign.

Average Sale
More than likely, you are already aiming to increase your average sale through upsell techniques. By monitoring the average sale you can determine which strategy is most effective at accomplishing this goal.

Shopping Cart Abandonment
A high rate of shopping cart abandonment can indicate a problem in your checkout process which could include a difficult or confusing process, unexpected additional fees, high shipping charges, or security concerns. Lowering your abandonment rate will generally increase your conversion rate.

Inbound Traffic
When you know where your visitors came from you will know well particular marketing avenues work. For example, if you invest in search engine optimisation and see a corresponding rise in visitors coming from search engines, you will know your investment has paid off.

General Visitor Analytics
Many traditional metrics such as time spent on the site, click through to critical links, page views, and pervious visits still hold immense value. These will help you understand that wide range of factors that ultimately lead to a conversion.