Track these metrics for website to optimise conversion

In this digital era your website is a vital tool for marketing. It is a direct representation of your offering to potential customers and is the medium that drives sales. A website with a good conversion funnel is a dream for every marketeer. Mostly the challenge comes in identifying what to do, to optimize the website. Tracking metrics for website and funnel analysis can help teams figure out what’s working and what’s not, to a great extent. 

Monitoring and analysing website metrics will assist you in gathering information about your user digital experience and you can improve user experience. In this blog we will go through the most important metrics for websites that you must track. You will also get an idea about how you can track and improve these website metrics.

Metrics for websites you must track

Website metrics help you in planning and designing all sorts of essential marketing strategies. Tracking key website metrics can help you stay on top of your website performance, and have the right data to plan and execute effective marketing campaigns. 

The main function of a website is to encourage visitors to spend more time on your website and drive them towards conversion. Each step in the customer journey map is crucial to achieve this. Which can be achieved via web tracking, behavioral analytics, and website monitoring. 

However in this blog, we will focus on the web metrics you should track to understand the qualitative vs quantitative data of your website visitors. 

1. Website traffic 

Website traffic is the number of individuals who have visited your website. These metrics for websites are a representation of your brand’s popularity and reach on the internet. Your website traffic can have different sources, and digital marketers use this information also with conversion rate to measure the success of their campaigns. 

UTM (Urchin Traffic Monitor) is used to track traffic source, medium, and campaign. Also all CRMs and analytics tools capture this data. For instance using UTM can reveal which social media platform, advertising campaign, or channel is more effective in driving traffic to your website link.

How to measure website traffic?

You can use Google Analytics to measure traffic source, medium, and campaign. You can also use this acquisition data in relation to user sessions, engagement, and conversion. 

How to increase website traffic?

Website traffic can come from different sources. And if your agenda is to boost traffic, you can explore different channels. Here are some to start with:

• SEO optimization: Search engine optimization is needed to help your website to rank on search results. This can include everything from keyword optimization to improving website load time. 
• Social media marketing: You can leverage social media channels for both branding and driving traffic, by sharing high quality content along with backlinks to your site. 
• Email marketing: You can reach out to relevant prospects and share about your offerings with them, encouraging them to visit your website. 
• Performance/paid marketing: You can use online advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn Ads to reach new audiences. You can even explore native and display ads.

2. User acquisition cost

User acquisition cost refers to the amount of the money you spend to acquire a customer for your product or service. Calculating user acquisition cost is crucial for any business as it allows you to gauge how well your marketing and sales strategies are performing. Additionally this metrics for websites aids in assessing the profitability and long term viability of your business model.

The cost of acquiring an user can differ based on factors such as the industry, customer type and marketing channel. As per Userpilot’s study, SaaS businesses have an user acquisition cost of $702 while e-commerce businesses spent around $2741 for the same. However it's important to note that these figures can vary depending on the size and nature of the business as well as the target market and competition.

How to measure user acquisition cost?

It can be determined by dividing the expenses made in marketing and sales efforts by the number of customers obtained during a specific time frame. To illustrate, if you allocate $10,000, towards advertising and attract 100 customers in one month your user acquisition cost would amount to $100, per customer.

How to optimize user acquisition cost?

The smaller this website metrics is, the better it is for the business. However the method to optimize cost varies for every single channel. But here are some guidelines you can follow: 

1. Understand how the targeted channel works
2. Track the conversion funnel and figure out where the drop is happening 
3. Go for website analytics to understand customer experience on your landing pages. 
4. If you have a mobile app, mobile app tracking is a must
5. Once you have done both quantitative and qualitative data analysis you’ll have a way better understanding of what’s working and what’s not. 
6. You can take your analysis a step further and track product adoption as well.

3. Conversion rate

Conversion rate refers to the portion of visitors who complete an action on your website. This action entirely depends on your business needs. For example for an ecommerce business it could be completing purchase, while for a SaaS business it could be free signup. The higher these metrics for websites are, the better your marketing funnel would be. 

How to measure conversion rate?

Measuring conversion rate is super important to measure the success of any marketing campaign, or product adoption. You can measure this metrics for website using this formula: 

Conversion Rate = (Number of converted users/ Total number of users) X 100%

Conversion rate is one of the most important website metrics to track to get an idea of your website engagement and product analytics. You can measure conversion rate of any step in the user journey, depending on what you want to measure. One can use product analytics tools and website monitoring tools to track site metrics and conversion rate. 

How to improve conversion rate?

Conversion rate optimization is one of the most important metrics for websites that one needs to focus to make your digital business more profitable. The better the conversion the  higher the ROI a business gets. Let’s look at some things you can do to improve the conversion rate: 

1. Position right: Understand your audience and design both the messaging and campaign accordingly. 
2. Web app
3. Run A/B tests: With A/B tests you can test what CTA, content, or visuals are working better. 
4. Qualitative data analysis: You can use qualitative data analysis tools to track your user behaviour on your web app to get a better understanding of frustrations they are experiencing. 
5. Performance monitoring: Your web app must perform without any lags to better customer experience. You can use performance monitoring tools to track performance. 

4. Website speed

Website speed refers to how a web page loads in a browser. It's a website metrics that impacts the users experience, and the ranking, on search engines. A slow website can be frustrating for users, making them drop off and even impact search ranking. One needs to ensure that website speed is maintained for both mobile and desktop devices. 

A 2023 Statista Survey shows that website users have an extremely high tendency to leave the website if they have to wait for the page to load. The drop off peaks if the load time is 5 seconds.

How to measure website speed?

To monitor these metrics for websites you have access to tools that can assess and analyse its performance along with providing recommendations for enhancement. Some used tools include, PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, Pingdom Tools. These tools help you measure your website speed and identify areas for improvement.

How to optimize website speed?

These metrics for websites play a crucial role in user experience. Here are some tricks you can use to improve website speed:  

1. Optimize image size: Larger images take more time to load. Lazy loading is a method commonly used by developers to load the images as the user scrolls the page.
2. Load above the fold content first: With this approach you can prioritise loading critical content like text and images and then move to loading elements like ad scripts or any other widgets.
3. Improve API Performance: With api monitoring you can identify latency issues and other performance bottlenecks. Improving them will help your website load faster. You can leverage api monitoring tools for this.

5. Bounce rate 

According to Google Analytics 4, bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit your website for 10 seconds, visit only two pages, or leave without taking any action. Bounce rate is an important metrics for websites, and can range anywhere between 26% to 70%, depending on your industry.

A high bounce rate is a direct indicator of compromised user experience, and engagement. It even affects search engine ranking and obviously leads to poor brand image. All in all a high bounce rate is one of those website metrics that you must be cautious of, and take measures to reduce. 

How to measure bounce rate?

Since bounce rate is a key website metrics, it can be easily tracked in Google Analytics. You can track bounce rate for your entire website, as well as for individual pages, channels, sources, devices, and more. In the new version of Google Analytics you would have to set up custom reports to track bounce rate. You can learn more about bounce rate in GA4 with this video.

How to reduce bounce rate?

We know that by keeping a check on bounce rate, we can improve the overall conversion funnel. Other metrics for websites like conversion funnel and top pages are also related to the bounce rate. Improving bounce rate website metrics, can impact user experience on your site to a great extent. Let’s look at some steps you can take for it: 

1. Improve page load speed: Poor loading speed is also a contributor to the bounce rate, as people simply don’t like waiting. 
2. Improve readability: A neat page, with enough white space, is pretty effective in keeping users engaged.
3. Make pages mobile responsive: Mobile traffic accounts for about 50% of a website's total traffic. Hence if your pages are not mobile friendly, you will end up losing potential users. 
4. Avoid ads and pop-ups: Sometimes ads and annoying pop-ups make the user frustrated, which leads to high bounce rate. If needed, you can show the ads and pop-ups, in a well-formatted and tasteful way.
5. Improve overall user experience: You can use user experience tools to understand what elements on the website are causing the users to bounce. You can also use session replay software to track user behaviour on your web app. 

Error rate

Error rate is the measure of times errors or issues occur on your digital platform. In other words, the error rate is the percentage of requests that result in an error. These metrics for websites highly impact the user experience repetitively. Most users who come across these errors do not even report them and simply bounce off. If not fixed, these errors can continue to generate a decent opportunity loss. 

A high error rate not just impacts customer experience. The damage extends to compromised SEO, user retention, brand, and obviously loss in revenue. However there are tools like Zipy, that track errors and help in error debugging. 

How to measure error rate?

You can easily track the error rate in digital experience and gain actionable insights to improve the digital experience and reduce errors. You can track javascript errors and network errors with website monitoring tools. Zipy is one such website monitoring tool that you can use not just for real user monitoring to identify errors, but also for error debugging, and bring down the error rate. 

To understand how error rate is calculated, you can refer to this formula

Error Rate (%) = (Number of errors / Total number of requests) × 100

How to optimize error rate?

Having an error free website or web app is crucial for any digital business to flourish. If you keep working on getting traffic to your website, but are not able to convert it, the entire investment on the marketing campaign is wasted. Error as metrics for websites, does not get reported by most users, and directly leads to drop off or churn.You can these actions to reduce error rate:

1. Set up a error tracking system, that alerts you about errors
2. Prioritise and resolve errors real quick, before it impacts a larger audience
3. If you have an android or iOS app, you can also set up mobile app tracking to maintain end to end digital experience. 

7. Time on page/ Session duration 

Time on page is a website metrics used to measure average time a user/visitor spends on a page. This metrics for websites can be calculated by dividing the amount of time a user has spent on your site by the total number of page views for that page. Session duration on the other hand is the measurement of the time a user has spent on the site, during a single visit or session. 

A high time on a page is preferred and is what both product and marketing teams aspire for. A high page on time is an indicator of better digital experience. A high quality web app has the potential to engage users better, increasing the chances of repeat visits.

How to measure time on page/session duration?

Time on page or average time on page can be easily accessed via Google Analytics. Studies show that a good average time is said to be between 3 to 5 minutes per session. 

How to improve time on page?

Time on page is one of the metrics for websites that's used to estimate engagement, and at the same time indicates that a page needs to be updated. Here are some ways you can improve the time on page or session duration of your website: 

1. Create engaging content: Make sure the information you are sharing on a page is relevant to the audience, use catchy headlines, and visuals to convey your message.
2. Make mobile responsive pages: Mobile responsive pages are a must to deliver a decent digital experience to your visitors. 
3. Personalize content: Speak to your audience directly. The more relevant they find what you have to say the longer they stay with you. 
4. Identify UX and code issues: You can use a session replay tool to track user behaviour on the web app and then the optimise the pages to address frustration issues. 

8. Top pages 

Top pages are the best performing pages in a website. These pages account for a major traffic share, have decent engagement, and transition into user conversion. Knowing your top pages is one such website metrics that can be a game changer for your marketing strategy. Once you know which page is performing the best, you can use it in your marketing campaigns and even outbound email campaigns. 

How to identify website top pages?

You can rely on website analytics tools for identifying this metrics for websites. For example in Google Analytics you can look for pages with highest pageviews, to know how much traffic is landing on it. And then optimise these pages to convert users better. 

You can also list pages with decent average time on page, and low bounce rate. These pages have good engagement and if more traffic is directed towards them, they can create more value for your business. 

How to optimize website top page?

Top website pages are another important website metrics to track. And the next obvious step is to optimize them to get maximum benefits. 

1. Study user behaviour:  You can use session replay tools or heat map tools to track how your users are interacting with your page. This will help you identify frustration issues and even get ideas about how to improve user experience on these pages. Qualitative data analysis tools can also help with this.
2. Start website monitoring: Website monitoring will help ensure your website is up, and does not have performance or security issues. You can use website monitoring tools for this.
3. Analyse funnel for pages: Funnel analysis to get a better picture of where the drop off is happening. Go for website analysis tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analysis, or Mixpanel.

9. User data 

User data metrics for websites are pointed towards the audience person that's visiting your website. It shows who is interested in your product or services and gives you the opportunity to optimise your messaging, to address them directly. 

User data can include a wide range of information, for example user device, browser, region, keywords, and more. These website metrics can be easily used to optimize campaigns and position better. 

How to check user data?

Google Analytics is a good tool to track your user data, however you can take this a notch up and go for product analytic tools and CRMs. You can include forms on your website to understand more about your visitors, asking about their profession, likings, or needs. 

How to use user data?

Once you know who your user is, how they are reaching out to you, what excites them, and what are their biggest pain points that you can solve, both your marketing and product game will shoot up. You can use these metrics for websites to:

1. Customise your marketing campaigns 
2. Include relevant features in your product
3. Position your product to directly speak to your target audience
4. Segment your target audience and measure the product adoption and impact of campaigns, and 

10. Backlinking

Getting links from other websites to your web pages is known as backlinking. Backlinks contribute towards improving search engine ranking, driving traffic, and improving domain authority. Search engines, like Google consider backlinks as a measure of trustworthiness and relevance. If you have quality backlinks it increases the likelihood of your website ranking higher for your target keywords. 

How to measure backlinks?

For this website metrics, both the count of backlinks and referring domains matter. You can track backlinks for your website using tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or UberSuggest. These tools will not just share your backlink data, but also identify opportunities for you. While also keeping an eye on broken links.

How to optimize backlinks?

While the quantity of backlinks is important, the quality of backlinks also play a major role. These are some actions you can take for improving this metrics for websites:

1. Get backlinks from websites that are relevant to your your business and have decent domain authority 
2. Avoid any link sharing schemes 
3. Keep a tab on broken links and reclaim them 

11. Keyword ranking 

Keywords are one of the most important website metrics. These are words or phrases that when typed in the search engine, will automatically match with the context of your web page, and organically list your page in the search results.

Keywords help search engines understand what your landing page is about, and figure out how relevant is it for the users who are searching for the same or similar keywords. Once the context is established the search engine ranks your web page accordingly. 

How to track keyword performance?

Just like backlinks, keywords can also be traced by website tracking tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or UberSuggest. These tools show what keywords are working and for which page. Plus these tools also highlight the ranking for these keywords. Knowing the volume, keyword difficulty, and other websites that are competing for the same keywords will help you strategize better. You can use the tools we just mentioned to paint the competitive landscape for it. All in all this metrics for websites are super important to make a website rank and drive relevant traffic.

How to optimize keyword performance?

There are several tools recommended by SEO that help you check your keyword rank. Let’s go through some of them:

1. Optimize each web page for different keywords
2. Track keyword ranking and optimize the relevant page by improving keyword density, bracklinks, and page readability. 
3. Keep an eye on user engagement. Some time issues occur because of page design or javascript errors.
4. Track other website metrics like bounce rate and CTR for web pages that are ranking high. 

12. User behaviour tracking 

According to a Zippia 2023 study, 89% of consumers switched to a competitor’s websites as a result of bad customer experience. Now this is where user behaviour tracking comes into picture. It helps you figure out how users are engaging with different elements of your website. You can identify where things are going wrong and take relevant actions. This metrics for websites is difficult to measure, but once you start getting a hang of it you can improve all the other website metrics as well. 

How to track user behaviour?

User behaviour tracking is a qualitative approach to build a customer journey map and figure out where the drops are happening. You can activate heatmap and session replays on your website to track how the users are behaving. These tools will unveil what areas of your web page are being focused on, are users facing any issue while navigating your website. 

You can take your behaviour tracking a notch up with bug tracking software. This will identify any code related issue that your user is facing and alert your team about it. You can then fix it and ensure your users are having a great digital experience and improve metrics for websites.

Behavioral analytics tools like Zipy, can be an answer to all your behavioural tracking needs, be it real user monitoring or bug tracking. 

How to optimize user experience?

While most site metrics are quantitative, user experience is a qualitative metrics for websites that has a direct impact on SEO and conversion. You can a couple of measure to improve user experience: 

1. Personalize website content 
2. Run A/B tests, to pinpoint what works for your users to optimize conversion
3. Start with tracking website analytics.
4. Ensure you are checking your user behaviour. You can do it via session replay tools or heat map tools. This will help you identify areas where the users are dropping and get ideas about how to improve your page. 
5. Set up bug tracking to ensure no code issue is causing users to leave.
6. If you have a mobile app, go for mobile app tracking tools to track user data, and behaviour. You can also use mobile debugging tools to resolve app errors.
   

13. Top exit pages

The top exit pages refer to the web pages on your website where the majority of visitors choose to leave. Let’s say, if 100 visitors arrive at your homepage and 50 of them decide to exit your website from the contact page then the contact page has an exit rate of 50%.

Top exit pages is an important website metrics, as it helps you identify potential problem areas on your website that cause visitors to leave without converting. For example, if you see that your product page has a high exit rate, it may mean that your product description, price, or images are not convincing enough to persuade visitors to explore further. 

How to identify top exit pages?

The trick to improve this metrics for websites is to look for pages with poor CTR (conversion rate). Then identify which of these pages with good traffic. And that’s exactly where the potential lies. You can use any analytics tool you have, like Google Analytics or Mixpanel. 

How to optimize exit pages?

Now once you know what pages you need to work on, you can dig deeper in the potential issues they have. This is the time you go back to your user experience tools, website analytics tools, and even bug tracking tools and figure out” 

1. All the clicks on Call to Action Buttons on that page
2. See the scroll depth
3. Identify areas of page that are working and not working 

You can then metrics for websites to revamp your pages and make the most of them. 

Conclusion 

Nowadays everything is turning into its digital form. Digitalization in every aspect is the future's new trend. From bank transactions to buying clothes, groceries, furniture, and ordering food, every task requires digital output which forces the business to attract its visitor via online sources that can generate regular customers to your website. Making the digital experience of your users the focus.

To maintain a great user experience, you must perform qualitative data analysis of your website. For which you can use heatmap and session replays. And to understand what’s going on at the code level you go for dev tools for  bug tracking, and api monitoring. You can combine your new found understanding with the metrics for websites we have shared above and optimise your landing pages. 

Tracking website metrics can help you understand your user behaviour and conversion funnel. So that you can make the needed changes. After all, every single digit of improvement in the conversion funnel, leads to more profit for your business. So go through these website metrics and use the tricks we have shared to optimise them.

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