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6 web-metrics-even-the-experts-forget-to-measure
1. The 6 Web Metrics
Even the Experts
Forget to Measure
2. 1
From Complex to Comfortable
The web analytics world today is very complex. There is a range of tools on the market, from
free and easy-to-use solutions to analytics suites costing hundreds of thousands of dollars a
year. The abundance of different metrics and measurements makes it difficult for the
average web analytics user to know where to start.
However, there are still a few key metrics that are common to all. A small number of these
should be measured daily by every website manager, online marketer and internet business
owner. After incorporating these quick checks into your regular work routines, they will soon
become second nature.
In descending order of importance, these are the metrics you want and need to be following.
Website Traffic: How much of it is real?
One of the most important things to understand before starting any serious analysis
is what percentage of your website traffic is actually “real.” The majority of visits on
any given website last less than 10 seconds. The reason for this could be robots,
spiders, or people who have landed on your site, accidentally clicking on a link or an
ad to your page.
These fake visitors skew your data tremendously, often making a good page
look like it is underperforming while hiding problems affecting first-time
visitors that genuinely bounced. More importantly, you could be paying money for
this fake traffic if it comes through a PPC or banner campaign. Therefore, always
remember to check the traffic sources if you see a sudden spike in these fake visits.
You will want to set a strategy to increase the percentage of “real” visits based on
what you’re learning. It’s the “real” people that convert and buy your product at the
end of the day.
Search Keywords: What were your visitors searching for
before they found you?
If you check your traffic sources report, you will be able to see what people typed into
the search engine before they arrived at your site. Try to look at the top 100 results
instead of the top 10 or 20 which are shown by default.
Question to ask yourself: What percentage of these results are terms that
reflect your company or product name, and what percentage are more generic?
If visitors are searching for your “brand” (your company or product name), then they
have already come about 60% through the consideration phase of buying from you.
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What you want to do is get more “unbranded” searches to your site. This is how you
attract new customers.
For example, if 90 out of the 100 results are a variation on your company name and
only 10 of them are from searches for exactly what you sell, then you need to do
some work. Start by putting more content on your website in order to:
a) Help people, who do not know your brand, to understand that you are right for
them, and b) Get your site indexed by the search engine for more of those
unbranded searches.
Traffic Sources: What is your mix?
This is probably the simplest report to look at, and the least utilized. Look at the
report in your web analytics tool that shows you the overview of your traffic sources.
What you will see is a pie chart that will tell you how many people:
came to your site from search
came from other sites
typed your website URL directly into their browser (or had it bookmarked)
The ideal distribution should look like equal slices, so if your pie chart looks like
anything other than the Mercedes logo, you have a problem. You want your
sources to be evenly balanced so you will not be dependent on any one “type”
of traffic to merit your overall success. For example, the pie chart below
represents a website with really awful SEO.
The site is getting almost no traffic from search, therefore if a month goes by with no
online campaigns, or referral traffic dries up, there is no online “footfall” to keep the
site growing naturally.
For companies that rely heavily on social media, referral traffic from Facebook might
dominate the pie. When Facebook changes their Edgerank algorithm, less people
82,653 people visited this site
0.59% Search Traffic
35.66% Referral Traffic
57.39% Direct Traffic
6.36% Campaigns
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see your wall posts, traffic would dive and sales would plummet. Given the buzz
surrounding social media, this is the most volatile of all traffic types.
The last type, direct traffic, generally tells you how hard your marketing department is
working to drive people directly to your site through brand recognition, URL
recognition, or other direct response campaigns. It's also a great indication of the
spillover effect from email marketing, direct mail or banner ads.
Entry Pages: Are they doing their job?
Whether it is your homepage, a landing page, or a product page direct from a search
result, the first page a customer sees when he enters your site is his point of entry.
To say these pages are critical to a website’s success would be an understatement,
as first impressions stand for everything on the Internet. Therefore, you will want
to see conversion rates going up and bounce rates going down on these pages
specifically.
What to check: The first thing to do when analyzing point of entry pages is to
focus on your failures. If the page converts 3% of traffic, start by looking at the other
97%. Focus on what they did on the page, what images they looked at or clicked on,
what text they read, and how far down they scrolled. You are ideally trying to find
behaviors that indicate a customer was interested in what the page had to offer, but
left for an obvious reason.
For example, if a customer repeatedly clicked on an image or special offer badge
trying to get information on a specific product or offer, and then leaves in frustration
when they realize the image is not a link. By then checking how many other visitors
had the same problem, you can easily find which problems to fix first, and which will
have the biggest impact on site performance. Mouse click and mouse move
heatmaps are the obvious first tool for this, and should never be overlooked
when trying to analyze a single page in a sales process or conversion funnel.
Initially, look for those parts of the page that have the highest concentration of
activity, and those with the lowest. You then need to ensure any relevant call to
action buttons and converting links sit squarely in areas of high activity, and let the
low activity areas be used for large images and blank space.
On a positive note, this is where you'll see the biggest ROI from your activities. When
you consider raising a page’s conversion rate from 15% to 20%, this only requires
finding an additional five customers who wanted to convert out of a possible 85
visitors. You are raising your total online revenue by a third!
Web Form Stats: Are they performing?
Love them or hate them, web forms play the most important role for any e-commerce
website. They are your online cashier. Any customer that gets to a lead generation
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form, shopping cart, or payment page essentially has to overcome one final hurdle
for you to achieve your business goals. They have to successfully fill out an online
form.
That is why it can be so frustrating to discover after several weeks or even months
that you have had a small bug or confusing question all along that has been turning
away thousands of potential customers. Checking the performance of your online
forms is quick and easy to do, and should be a daily ritual for any e-commerce
manager. If you notice the performance dropping by anything greater than 10% on a
given day, spend a couple of minutes seeing if you can find a reason for this. It might
just be an anomaly, or a natural dip in performance, but it's always worth the check.
Sales Goals: Are you meeting them?
Any analytics tool worth its salt will be able to tell you whether or not you are meeting
your ecommerce goals. That said, you will be amazed how many times this essential
metric is not even measured. Take half a day out of your schedule to make sure this
feature is turned on, implemented properly, and tracking correctly. You will never
regret it, and it saves endless time and heartache in understanding what on your
website is working the hardest to achieve success and which strategies either need
to be shut down or overhauled.
If you can’t integrate this directly with your ecommerce platform, then set an event or
goal in your web analytics tool of choice to measure every time someone clicks on
the final confirmation button of your payment page. There are more elegant solutions
to tracking conversions, but if you do not have the time or budget to set them up, this
will do nicely. You absolutely have to be tracking this metric, and reviewing it
regularly.
Many platforms will even allow you to set an e-mail alert with information such as the
number of sales in the last 24 hours. Having these arrive to your inbox every morning
for a cursory glance is the best way to keep your finger on the pulse of your website,
so to speak.
Make It a Habit
Getting into the habit of checking these six metrics on a daily basis will not take any time at
all. Within a week or two you'll be able to recall your website’s key success metrics off the
top of your head, and evaluate the performance of anything from email marketing campaigns
to site redesigns at a moment’s notice.
These business specific benchmarks will tell you what direction your company is going in,
how fast your online business is growing, and exactly what you need to improve to help get
there.
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