2nd
AUG
2018
5 Reliable Digital Marketing Metrics You Have to Measure Now
Posted By:
Lifeline Design
With this internet-inclined generation, digital marketing has become more important than ever for businesses.
After all, a recent Pew study shows that 26% of United States adults claim they are "almost constantly” online. Adding to that, nearly 77% of Americans surf the web daily.
And don’t forget, the number of digital buyers worldwide continues to rise and is expected to top 1.79 billion just this year.
Your online presence and the way you promote your business has the potential to make a huge difference in how successful you are because there are just so many people online.
But the problem with digital marketing is, it can become very overwhelming very quickly.
In fact, with the sheer amount of data readily available at your fingertips, you can easily find yourself drowning in numbers that have zero impact on the success of your business.
That’s why we’ve rounded up the most important digital marketing metrics to measure so you can gauge your success and make better data-driven decisions that will actually help your business grow.
So, let’s get started.
1. Your Site’s Traffic
One of the most basic metrics you can track to see if your business is growing is web traffic.
No matter what kind of website you run – a WordPress blog, business site, or online shop – getting more people to visit your site is one way to become more successful.
Luckily, measuring your site’s traffic (and other digital marketing metrics) is easy to do using Google Analytics, a free analytics platform designed to help you make smarter marketing decisions.
To see your website’s traffic in Google Analytics, all you have to do is go to Audience > Overview.
Here you can see important traffic metrics such as:
- Overall users- New users
- Sessions
- Sessions per user
- Pageviews
- Pages/session
- Average session duration
- Bounce rate
Knowing how much traffic your website sees on a daily basis over a long period of time will tell you whether your site is becoming more successful or not.
However, there is more to it than just knowing these numbers. So, let’s keep going.
2. Bounce Rate
Your site’s bounce rate lets you know how many people land on your website with the intention of engaging with your content, but immediately leave to either view other web pages or leave your site altogether.
You can find your bounce rate in many places in Google Analytics. But the place to start is Audience > Overview. Here, you'll see an overview of your site’s bounce rate.
However, to find the bounce rate of each web page on your site, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. Then check out the column labeled "Bounce Rate.”
If your site’s bounce rate is high, you can gather that people are coming to your website thinking you have something to offer them, and instead find out that the content they’re looking for is not there.
While you may be disappointed to see a high bounce rate at first, it’s actually a helpful metric for finding places on your website that need improvement.
For example, your landing pages may not be strong enough to convince people to convert. Or, it may be hard to navigate your website.
Even worse, your website may be loading too slow for people once they land on your site’s homepage, causing them to abandon your site before seeing anything you have to offer.
If you suspect your site’s loading time is too high, consider using a CDN to decrease latency and boost your site’s speed and performance.
And be sure to check out this chart to see how you compare in your industry when it comes to bounce rate:
Keep in mind that a bounce rate between 50-70% is average and is something to be proud of.
However, if you really want to excel, aim for a bounce rate between 30-50% (anything below 20% is likely a tracking error).
3. Landing Pages
Sometimes the best way to bring in traffic from search results, PPC ads, social media, and email campaigns is to create landing pages for your website.
For instance, Basecamp has a great landing page that catches your attention right away, has a clear call to action, and even uses strong copy, mentioning words like "Free.”
Landing pages have value propositions that grab people’s attention, clear call to actions, and lead your visitors down a specific sales funnel or encourage them to subscribe to your email list.
At least that’s what your landing pages are supposed to do.
To check your site’s landing pages and make sure they are giving you the results you want, go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages in your Google Analytics account.
Check out metrics like the number of sessions, bounce rate, and session duration to see how engaged people are when they click on your site’s landing pages.
And, if you run an online shop, check out metrics like how many transactions happen because of each landing page, the revenue that’s generated, and even eCommerce conversion rates.
This way you can capitalize on landing pages that are working well, and make improvements on ones that aren’t seeing enough traffic or conversions.
4. Pages Per Session/Average Duration
Creating engaging content for site visitors helps you build your business in a few ways:
- Establish yourself as an authority in your industry
- Convince site visitors to subscribe or buy
- Improve your site’s SEO (and search rankings) with better interlinking and longer sessions
But just remember, it’s not enough to have great content on your website.
After all, if people have a hard time navigating your site and skip from page to page, without spending a lot of time on each, they are either not finding what they’re looking for or are lost.
That’s why you should regularly check to make sure that site visitors not only explore many pages on your site, but that they engage with each piece of content they come across.
To check the number of pages per session, go to Audience > Users Flow:
Here you’ll see how people are navigating through your website, which web pages they are clicking on, and where they are dropping off.
Also, if you go to Audience > Behavior > Engagement, you can get an overview of how engaged people are once they land on your website:
And if you want to dig deeper and see how much time people spend on each specific web page, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages:
Here you’ll see the average time spent on each web page so you’ll know what your site’s most popular content is so you can continue to give people more of what they want.
In the end, the longer you keep people on your website, the more valuable your content becomes and the better your search rankings are.
And with better rankings come more traffic and more conversions, both of which help you build your following and generate more revenue.
5. Cost Per Lead
It’s a good idea to invest some time and money into your digital marketing campaigns to generate more leads for your business.
But only if it works.
If you don’t want your business to go under, you need to calculate what it’s costing you to generate more leads to ensure it makes financial sense to continue spending.
These numbers also help you determine whether your efforts are sustainable and scalable so that as your business begins to grow, again, you don’t go under financially.
Calculating your cost per lead is pretty simple:
Total Marketing Expenses/Total Number of Leads Generated = Cost Per Lead
For instance, if you spent $5,000 on marketing expenses and generated 10,000 leads, your cost per lead is $0.50.
Knowing this will help you decide whether you are over or under budget and whether the cost is worth it.
And, if you decide your results aren’t worth the cost, you can fine-tune your strategies by doing the following:
- Lower your bids on keywords for PPC ads
- Automate repetitive tasks so team members can focus on marketing
- Change up the keywords you’re using
- Split test landing page copy, CTA buttons, colors, layouts, and more
You don’t want to spend more on promoting your site than you make.
So, take the time to do the math (and make sure you keep good records), so you can see exactly where your money is going and how it’s helping you succeed.
If you need some ideas on how to market your business on a shoestring budget, be sure to check out this guide.
Final Thoughts
In the end, digital marketing is mostly a numbers game.
And the key to winning is to stay on top of the data that matters most and forget about the vanity metrics that make you look good but have no effect on your success.
Sign up for a free Google Analytics account.
Track your site’s metrics from time to time to make your marketing efforts are on track. And always make improvements when you find something that’s just not working.
If you do that, you’ll be ahead of your competition and on your way to building a highly successful website that has a large following and converts well.
