Data is the heart of what makes modern scientific marketing scientific.
Every visit to your website produces a rich trove of information allowing you to reconstruct the experience of each user. By making inferences based on this data, you can deliver better service.
Let’s look at five valuable website metrics B2B marketers should track.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who reached your website and then immediately clicked away without any interaction. It tells you users did not find what they were expecting on the given page and lacked incentive to look for it.
To optimize:
- Strategically target keywords with optimized content to draw traffic to relevant pages.
- Use optimized landing pages for each offer – never direct traffic to the home page.
Time on Site
Also known as session length, this refers to the total amount of time a user spent on your site. In general, the more time someone is on your site, the better. A related metric, dwell time, refers to the time users spent on individual pages within a browsing session.
To optimize:
- Cross-link your posts and pages to other relevant pages throughout your site.
- Use eye-catching callout windows and lightboxes to highlight related content.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of site visitors who took a conversion action. Buying a product is the ultimate conversion, but most first-time visitors are not ready. Instead, your goal will be to get them to subscribe to your mailing list.
To optimize:
- Ensure each piece of content is associated with a persona-specific call to action.
- Pair each offer, like e-books or products, with its own optimized landing page.
Pages Per Session
Pages per session is the number of unique pages a user looked at in a session. A higher number may mean a person had trouble finding information. As a user gets closer to the sought-after content, dwell time on each page should increase.
To optimize:
- Ensure users can readily find content with a search function and knowledgebase.
- Keep content pieces short and digestible so users can consume them quickly.
Loading Speed
Loading speed is a measurement, typically in milliseconds, of how long it took a given page to load for a given user. Speed has become even more important in recent years as Google has made it a more influential ranking factor.
To optimize:
- Use asynchronous loading to load items on the page only as users reach them.
- Implement lossless compression to reduce image file size without losing quality.
There are hundreds of digital marketing metrics, but it’s most productive to focus on a few core metrics first. These five points give you clear and meaningful places to begin making your website even better.