The 6 Most Important Web Metrics to Track for Your Business Website

Posted by noahparsons under Online Marketing
From http://upandrunning.bplans.com 4051 days ago
Made Hot by: PMVirtual on October 22, 2013 9:22 pm

Web analytics and metrics can be overwhelming. The key to avoid drowning in the sea of numbers is to start with six key metrics for measuring how your website is doing. In this article, I dive into those metrics to help small businesses get a jump on their online metrics.

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Comments

Written by lyceum
4048 days ago

Noah: Thanks for the examples! It sounds like that I can be a part of your micro-conversions as I have visited your site in different ways! ;) Please say hi to Tim B. & Co.! :)

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Written by lyceum
4049 days ago

Noah: Thanks for your explanation on how you work at Palo Alto! Would one micro-conversion be to download different business plan templates and the go to your blog, or vice-versa?

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Written by noahparsons
4048 days ago

Exactly. We track micro conversions like:

- Signed up for newsletter

- Downloaded a template

- Viewed a sample business plan

- Viewed our pricing page

etc.

You can then build a conversion funnel if you want to track a user's progress through a series of goals.

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Written by lyceum
4050 days ago

How do you measure the conversion from visitor to new customer? Does the author of Palo Alto Software have a case to present regarding their own products and visitors?

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Written by noahparsons
4049 days ago

Thanks for the comment. We use Google Analytics here at Palo Alto Software so tracking conversions from visitor to customer is really easy. Google Analytics lets you define goals on your site and one of the most important goals is completing a purchase. Once you have that configured, Google Analytics does the rest.

As a next step, you can think about adding "micro conversions" to better understand the user flow towards the ultimate conversion - a purchase. Micro conversions might be things like: Viewed the feature page, viewed the pricing page, added an item to the shopping cart, etc. Using micro conversions in addition to a primary conversion goal, you can get a deep understanding about what it takes to increase your online sales.

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Written by HeatherStone
4051 days ago

Hi Noah,

So much to keep up with. So little time.:) Actually, I do think people focus too much on visitors to the exclusion of other important metrics. If your website is being used for business, there are a lot of things to keep track of. But, since this is likely to be overwhelming to many small businesses, I wonder if there are a handful of these metrics you consider more important than all the rest. Could you share your thoughts in the comment section at BizSugar for the benefit of the entire community?

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Written by noahparsons
4049 days ago

Thanks for the comment, Heather. Monitoring conversion rate is the most important thing to look at, in my opinion. Every site has some sort of user goal - whether it's reaching a specific page, filling out a form, or making a purchase. If you use Google Analytics, it's easy to define these goals and then see how successful your design is at helping users reach these goals.

To get slightly more advanced, you can then track your conversion rate by traffic source so you can see if visitors from Facebook are more likely to complete a goal on your site compared to Twitter visitors.

At the end of the day, if your site isn't helping your users achieve their goals, then it doesn't matter how many visitors you have.

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