Mastering Website KPIs: Your Guide to Better Conversions

Successful website marketing depends on a variety of factors. The target audience, the site’s design, the offer, and the brand’s authority are examples.

Companies often struggle to track a website’s performance. ROI is one of the most common. But while tracking the revenue generated by a website is imperative, ROI as a metric, doesn’t help us improve conversion performance.

Our brand audit clients often ask if redesigning their website will solve their conversion problems. But a website's design is not always the issue.

Tracking KPIs and optimizing for conversions can resolve roughly half of these cases.

So, in this quick post, I’ll share some essential website KPIs your company can use to measure and improve your website’s conversion performance.

Conversion Rate

You can use Google Analytics to track conversion rates:

1. Define Your Conversions: The first step is to define what counts as a conversion on your website. This could be any user action, such as filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading content.
2. Set Up Conversion Tracking: Depending on the platform your website is built on, you may have built-in tools for tracking conversions. For example, Google Analytics is a popular tool that can help track conversions. You’ll need to set up ‘Goals’ in Google Analytics to track specific actions users take on your site.
3. Tag Your Pages: By adding a snippet of code (i.e., tag) to your website pages, you can track specific visitor actions. This tag logs actions taken, allowing you to track the conversion rate of each.
4. Analyze and Optimize: Once you’ve begun tracking conversions, you can analyze this data to understand user behavior better. You can identify which marketing strategies are most effective and where improvements can be made to increase conversion rates.

To improve your website marketing strategy, it's crucial to test and optimize based on insights, not just track conversions.

Cost Per Conversion

To determine the net cost of each conversion:

1. Identify Your Costs: First, you need to determine all the costs associated with your marketing efforts. This could include pay-per-click advertising, content creation, SEO, social media marketing, and any other website expenses.
2. Calculate Cost Per Conversion: To calculate the cost of each conversion, divide the total website marketing cost by total conversions. For example, if you spent $1,000 on marketing and got 50 conversions, your cost per conversion would be $20.

You can use this metric to allocate your marketing budget and understand ROI.

Returning Users

You can use website analytics tools like Google Analytics to track the number of returning users to a website. Here’s a basic step-by-step process:

1. Set Up Google Analytics: If you haven’t already, set up Google Analytics for your website. This involves creating an account, adding your website as a property, and installing the tracking code on your website. You’ll probably need a web developer to help you with this step.
2. Navigate to Audience Overview: Once Google Analytics is set up and collecting data, log in to your account. Then, select the website you want to analyze. From the dashboard, click on Reports.
3. Check Returning vs New Users: Now, click on the Reports > Retention tab. This screen shows you the breakdown of new versus returning visitors and engagement. The overview provides a quick visual representation of the proportion of your audience that has visited your site before.

Remember, while it’s great to attract new users to your website, retaining existing users can significantly contribute to your website’s success. Regularly reviewing your returning user data can provide valuable insights to help optimize your content and marketing strategies.

Website Engagement

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Engagement reports help you identify high-performing content and user behaviors. This data enhances website layout, navigation, and content.

Users can be segmented based on engagement levels to tailor marketing strategies. You can also use engagement data to test content and find out what drives conversions. ‘Events’ can be tracked as conversions to understand what actions lead to conversions.

Here are some website engagement KPIs to watch:

1. User Engagement: Measures how frequently users interact with your site.
2. Engagement Time: Shows the total time users spend on your site.
3. Sessions per User: Counts the number of sessions per user.
4. Page Views: Tracks the total number of page views.
5. Events: Records specific interactions users have with your content.
6. Conversions: Tracks completed actions or goals, like form submissions or purchases. These metrics provide insights into user behavior and website performance.

Leads Generated

To measure lead generation using Google Analytics 4 (GA4), follow these steps:

1. Define Conversions: Identify important interactions on your website (like form submissions) and define them as ‘conversions’ in GA4.
2. Track Submission Action: Monitor the submission action, which could vary depending on how the confirmation appears.
3. Use Traffic Acquisition Report: Navigate to Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition to view data organized by channel, aiding in determining effective lead sources.
4. Monitor Events: Check the Events report under Reports > Engagement > Events to measure form views and other user interactions.
5. Analyze Organic Search Traffic: Review organic search traffic data to assess the effectiveness of your SEO and content marketing strategies.

GA4 Analytics offers a comprehensive view of user behavior across different channels. This makes it an essential tool for tracking and optimizing your website’s lead generation efforts.

Conclusion

Marketers should always consider which website KPIs are relevant to their marketing campaigns and strategy. Then, they can prioritize which ones to use. Knowing which KPIs to track plays a key role in achieving the desired outcomes.

If managing several metrics seems daunting at first, don’t worry—mastering KPIs requires a little practice and a lot of patience. Need help? Click on the links provided or message me directly with your questions. 

Until next time,

Chris