Are you struggling to measure your website performance metrics? With today’s ever-changing digital marketing landscape, websites are only focusing on engaging content. This change has seen website performance metrics take the lead in the last decade.
The online market has grown quite competitive, with everyone trying to improve their conversion rates. With increased customer expectations comes high pressure for online brands and e-commerce stores to improve their user experience. Simple things like a slow loading site can have a ripple effect on the overall performance of the whole website.
With increased competition and impatient online users, companies are now looking for ways to measure their website performance rates. There are numerous performance metrics that all website owners must track. However, below are the five most essential ones:
1. Your Website’s Speed
Do you remember the last time you went online and spent over 15 seconds waiting for a website to load? Do you remember the frustration? That’s exactly how your users feel when your website is slow.
Your website’s speed is among the most important aspects of user experience. Slow speed can lead to numerous negative effects on your business and the conversion rate. Below are the disadvantages of slow site speed:
- High bounce rate
- Lower conversion rates
- A low number of visited pages on your website
- Negative impact on your Search Engine Optimization
- Reduced ranking by search engines
- Loss of potential clients to competitor sites
- Negative user experience
A website’s speed has a major impact on paid search and SEO. Most search engines such as Google aim to display relevant websites with a high user engagement. They will often pinpoint websites with a poor user experience and remove them from the display.
Sites with poor user experience are ranked lower on Google. Therefore, if your site takes too long to load, your search ranking will also be affected. The same case applies to paid searches.
The faster your site loads, the higher Google ranks its relevance to certain keywords. This results in an increased quality score of your landing page. A higher landing page quality score reduces your cost per click and places your website in a higher position on the search display page.
To improve user experience, your maximum loading time should be 3 seconds. Over 40% of online users leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
2. Average User Session Duration
This refers to the average time a user spends on your site. It can tell you a lot about your overall user experience. If a user spends a lot of time on your site, it could mean they had a good experience with your content.
A higher user session duration could lead to higher conversion rates. Contrariwise, it can also show that some users are having some trouble with your site.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to determine the difference. Study your user’s behavior depending on what they are doing on your site.
If users are spending less time on your site, but the conversion rate is high, you have successfully optimized your conversion. On the other hand, a longer session with little conversion could mean that users are experiencing difficulties on your website. Ensure you look at client needs and repair any technical issues experienced on your website.
3. Your Site’s Click-Through Rate
This refers to the total number of visitors who click on an image, a link, or an advert on your site. Click-through rates are different depending on your campaign type, keywords, and industry. However, there are a few benchmarks that will help you maximize your advertisement and marketing campaign potential.
To calculate the Click-through rate, you should divide the total clicks on an ad by the total number of impressions.
4. Return on Investment and Cost of Sale
Looking at your ROI is the best way to analyze your campaign’s success. This is because it allows you to map your spending against the profits. If you analyze the cost of sale and the ROI, you will better understand the profit metric.
Your website should be treated as a business asset. This means it should sustain your existing customer base while helping you get new customers. A website is one of the biggest business expenses you will make.
To calculate the ROI, you should subtract the initial investment value from the total returns. The resulting number is then divided by the cost of advertising and multiplied by 100 to turn it into a percentage.
For example, if an airline used $3,000 in marketing campaigns and the resulting profits are $90,000. The ROI will be [(12,000-3,000)/3,000*100 = 100%)]. Therefore, the ROI rate is 100%.
As an investment, you should always measure the ROI of your campaigns. You can do this by measuring the success of your marketing efforts and your SEO returns.
The cost of sale is the percentage of money spent on marketing in comparison to the resulting profits. For example, an airline earns a profit of $20,000 in tickets from advertisements that cost you $2,000, the cost of sale will be 10%. This calculation will help you understand if the investment was worthy.
The lower the cost of sale, the higher the profits. However, if your cost of sale is above 12%, it’s essential to contemplate if the investment is worthwhile.
5. The Client Conversion Rate
This is one of the most undervalued website performance metrics of digital marketing success. Conversion rate is the percentage of the total visitors to your site who purchase or take a desired action. Whether it’s paid ads, improved user experience, or SEO, a higher conversion rate is a sign of marketing campaign success.
When researching, it’s important to visualize how users view the content on your website and what they’re engaging with. To do this, you can use website analytics tools to help you better understand your conversion rate.
Are You Ready To Employ the Above Website Performance Metrics?
Now that you have a clear understanding of how to map your website engagement and ROI, it’s essential to keep an eye on your website performance metrics. Understanding how your users interact with your content and online products helps you serve them better by providing what they want and need.
For more insightful tips, check out other blog posts on our website.
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