Boost Website Success: Key Metrics to Elevate SEO & Engagement

Having an effective website isn’t just about glossy good looks, engaging writing, and on-point brand messaging. If you really want to maximize your website’s potential, then you can’t afford to ignore key metrics.

When asked what makes an effective website, many of us will instantly think of looks and interface. Who doesn’t appreciate a website that’s gorgeous to look at and easy to navigate? 

From a business point of view, however, a website’s effectiveness is better judged by crunching the numbers. After all, you didn’t build a pretty website without expecting it to deliver some ROI! 

In this article, we’ll discuss what key metrics are and which ones your business should be using to optimize your website so that it is delivering on its full potential for a better ROI. 

What Are Key Metrics and Why Do They Matter?

When it comes to website effectiveness, key metrics are recorded actions from traffic and the resulting numbers that come from that action. Key metrics are like KPIs in that they provide data that offer insights into website performance. 

By analyzing these key metrics, businesses can get a good idea of the health of their website, gauge its effectiveness, and switch strategies where the data indicates that their website is underperforming. 

Where do you find these key metrics? On Google Analytics, which your web developer should already have set up to measure your website’s performance. 

Key Metrics for Traffic: Keep Things Flowing

Traffic is the first and most important determiner of whether your website is effective. Your Overall Traffic measures how many people visit your site over a given time period. What’s a healthy number? You shouldn’t expect to have the same level of traffic as the New York Times, but you should have some idea of what a healthy number of visitors is based on your business size, location, and audience interactions elsewhere. 

Looking at your Organic Traffic is a good way to see whether your SEO is truly optimized or needs a little work; this metric simply refers to traffic that comes from unpaid search results, rather than from ads. 

Both these key metrics clue you into whether your website is doing a good job of attracting your target market or not. With these metrics, you always want to see higher numbers, but also be aware of what a good range is.

What is a good range? This can be a “how long is a piece of string?” question, but having a good idea of average traffic for a normal business of your size in your industry is a good place to start. There are other things that can affect traffic too, such as seasonality (for example, if you sell ice creams) as well as the population size of your target area: a business website targeting a large metro area is likely to have more traffic than a website targeting a rural area. 

On-Site Metrics: Or, Why Bouncing Isn’t Always Fun

Have you ever visited a site then left almost immediately? If you did, you added to that website’s Bounce Rate, a key metric which measures how quickly a visitor leaves. When someone bounces, your website’s effectiveness for you and the visitor is nil.

Bounce rates should be kept as low as possible. The better looking a site, the more engaging the content, the less likely it is to have a high bounce rate. However, even with this, sites can still underperform, in which case you might want to check that your content matches what the visitor is expecting – if traffic is looking to buy Christian Louboutin heels but finds used car parts instead, it isn’t going to stick around! Do you understand?

You’ll also want to keep tabs on the Average Time on Site and Average Page Views Per Visit metrics. Put together, these give you a great idea of how engaging your site is. The longer your traffic stays on site and the more pages they visit, the better your chances of building a relationship with them and turning them from a cold lead into a happy, paying customer.

To keep your on-site metrics healthy and effective, your website should be an attractive place for people to visit that offers real value to them with engaging, relevant content that keeps them reading – and away from your competitors’ websites!

Key Metrics for Growth: It’s All About the Conversions, Baby

Now that you have a good idea of what your traffic looks like and what it’s doing, it’s time to see if it is doing the most important thing of all – boosting your Conversions. These can also be measured with Google Analytics by checking completed actions, such as signing up to your newsletter. 

Unlike with sales conversions, not all conversions here result in revenue. However, those that don’t do give you a good idea of where your traffic is in their buying journey – and whether your site is performing when it comes to nudging them along that path. 

It’s also a good idea to keep a close eye on your Calls to Action (CTAs) and their Click-Through Rates, which show you how many people click on the all-important buttons instructing them to “order now” or “download now” or “find out more”. If your Click-Through Rates are low, then it might be time to take another look at your sales copy – or even at whether your offer was completely misjudged. We wrote an article about this very topic that you will find helpful: 6 Keys to Increasing Your Website Conversion Rate.

Get Professional Help to Boost Your Website’s Effectiveness

Hopefully, your key metrics show that your website is in great health and performing effectively. But what if it isn’t? Depending on how poor your business website’s performance is according to the key metric data, getting professional help might be your best next step. 

At 71Three, we work with Google Analytics & Google Console every day – and our team knows how to build websites that perform. One reason for this is our focus on data analysis; by keeping a close eye on key metrics and responding to changes in performance, we make data-driven decisions rather than putting faith into unreliable guesswork when it comes to tweaking websites. 

Find out how we can help to transform your website’s effectiveness and deliver serious ROI by making your website a powerhouse when it comes to meeting your business goals – contact us today!