The phrase “content is king” has been one of the main tenets of digital marketing for the last decade. While the landscape of digital marketing has changed, the importance of great content has not.
In a global survey about the most effective online marketing tactics, 20% of digital marketers acknowledged that content marketing has the biggest impact on the success of their business.
Content marketing is just one part of creating a successful website, though. Once you’ve brought customers to your site, what’s next? It needs to look great and run smoothly as well.
Designing a website takes many hours and resources. From the user interface to content planning, you have to design everything from your landing pages to check out process with your customer in mind at every step.
Even when the website is live, that doesn’t mean you leave it in the hands of your editorial team with occasional input from the developer. Your marketing team needs to be experts in analytics software so they can monitor your website metrics.
Read on to learn about some of the key metrics your marketing team should be monitoring.
Repeat Customers Are More Likely to Purchase From You Again
It’s much easier to convince an existing customer to make a purchase than a new one. In fact, you have 60-70 percent chance of selling to an existing customer. Compare that to a measly 5-20% with a new customer, and you can see the importance of tracking existing customers.
When you keep track of your customers, you can also see what they have in common. Create segments so you can target different groups with unique marketing campaigns or email blasts.
If your business is still small and you only have a few clients, check in with them on a weekly or biweekly basis. Assess their satisfaction and how you can improve your services.
A Repeat Visitor Is Closer To Making a Purchase Than a First-Time Visitor
Dr Jeffrey Lant, a marketing expert, famously came up with the Rule of Seven. It states that a lead needs to see a new product seven times within an 18-month period for it to stay in their mind.
Especially if you sell big ticket items or services, it’s understandable that potential customers who want to research and read reviews before making a purchase. However, the fact that they are returning to your website means that your product is still in their consideration.
When you track repeat visitors, try to think about what is stopping them from becoming customers. Google Analytics will help you track how far visitors get towards making a purchase.
Categorize Your Leads to Increase Sales
A lead is anyone who has shown interest in your products but not yet made a purchase. This is a crucial website metric when you’re first starting a business. Tracking and developing leads will help you find your first customers. But remember, not all leads are equal.
A common strategy when it comes to leads is to view their journey as a funnel. If you think about a funnel, the top is wide so you can easily pour in a liquid. However, the bottom is narrow in order to restrict the flow.
A sales funnel works in a similar manner. At the top of the funnel you’ll find the highest number of leads, however, these leads are of a low quality and not ready to make a purchase.
In the middle of the funnel, you’ll find a smaller number of leads who are closer to making a purchase. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel you will have the fewest number of leads — quality leads who are ready to make a purchase.
Your marketing team should be measuring leads on a monthly basis at the very least. This way, it’s easy to determine if your marketing strategies are effective.
Besides using Google Analytics for studying on-site behaviour, use apps like MailChimp to track your email blasts and see if they are helping push your leads through the funnel.
Use Bounce Rates and Time on Page Data to Help You Improve Your Website
These two metrics are often disparaged as vanity metrics, often because they don’t contribute to sales the way the metrics described above do. However, monitoring these metrics is still an important component of your marketing strategy.
Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website without interacting with it. The benchmark for bounce rates varies by industry but generally speaking, it’s a way to measure engagement with your website.
If you’re running paid advertising, it is crucial that you monitor the bounce rates of the landing pages those ads are pointing to. If people are quickly leaving your landing pages, then you need to think about rewriting the copy of your advertisement, landing page or both.
You should use your bounce rate and time on page metrics together. Knowing how long people are viewing your site and whether or not they are interacting with it will get you insight into your prospective customers’ behaviour.
A high bounce rate and a low time on page means visitors are probably not finding what they’re looking for when they get to your site. However, if you see that your visitors are spending over 30 seconds on your website (a lifetime when it comes to staying on one website these days), start thinking about ways to direct their attention to your sales pages!
Again, Google Analytics can track both of these metrics and you can easily compare them by plotting them on the same table over a set period of time.
Understanding Website Metrics Will Help You Grow Your Business
A marketing team cannot properly do its job without a strong understanding of website metrics and analytics. This data is essential for developing an effective marketing strategy and growing your online business.
If you don’t have an in-house marketing team or need help crunching key website metrics, get in touch with us.
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