With so many different metrics, it can sometimes be overwhelming and confusing to understand how a website is performing. While there are over a hundred different metrics you can analyze, we have a few KPIs that tell the real story behind a website’s performance.
The first metric is web traffic. Traffic can be understood by a few different metrics, our favorite are the number of sessions, traffic source, and the demographics of the traffic. The number of sessions can show how many people are coming to the site, while traffic sources can help show you where traffic is coming from such as social media, paid ads, or search engines. Then, looking at the demographics of your traffic can show you what kind of people are coming to the site and if you are attracting your target audience.
Next up is session duration or how long users are staying on your website. Session duration can give you insight into whether your website is keeping people’s attention. This metric will be most helpful when used in conjunction with time on page, which tells you how long users stayed on one page before browsing elsewhere.
Once knowing how long people are on your site, checking the bounce rate is helpful to see just how many people are staying and interacting with your website. Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page sessions for a given timeframe. A low bounce rate doesn’t necessarily mean that something went wrong with your site, it could just mean that visitors did what they needed to do and left without exploring or aren’t interesting in what the site is offering or the website is attracting people outside of your target audience.
Lastly, the conversion rate can tell you if your site is accomplishing your business goals. In platforms such as Google Analytics, conversion goals such as add to cart, purchase, or clicking on a new page can be set as goals. The conversion rate is then determined by the number of visitors that accomplished that goal. This metric is helpful in observing whether or not visitors are doing what you want them to or if the website is fulfilling its purpose. The average conversion rate for eCommerce sites is around 2%, so don’t worry if your percentage is lower than 5%.
To summarize there are four main KPIs you should focus on when it comes to measuring website performance: website traffic, session duration, bounce rate, and conversion rate. There are hundreds of different metrics you can view, but these core four metrics do the best job at proving an insight into a website’s overall performance.
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