As websites continue to become more important in the consumer journey, so does the need to measure the efficiency of digital marketing. It’s a burden shared between those selling digital media and business owners and marketers looking to maximize their Return on Investment (ROI). Kimberly Rosales, an entrepreneur and cryptocurrency expert with considerable knowledge of the digital era, shares some virtual metrics that could be considered great allies in measuring the success achieved by a business.
We know that “clicks” provide an incomplete picture of the impact of digital advertising since most users don’t click on ads, but still find their way to a company’s website after being exposed to ads. Rosales has found some metrics that will help you get a deeper insight into the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts.
The first is based on overall traffic. This metric will show you how many people visited or interacted with your site in total. It can be divided into source/medium, which describes where your traffic is coming from.
“Overall traffic will give you a view of where you stand,” Rosales explains. It’s a good idea to compare or monitor your overall traffic over time. You can start to see if similar patterns emerge, such as seasonality, that can put you ahead in the future. This rule of thumb is that your overall traffic should increase steadily if you are doing a good job.
There’s also channel-specific traffic. These metrics are dependent on where people were before they arrived at your site. Channel is the method they used to access your site. For large-scale digital marketing campaigns, it is important to measure the primary media. This allows you to determine what’s causing a drop of visits, if any, and what areas your campaign is excelling in.
There are a few channels you can analyze. The direct one is when people directly type in your URL to visit your site or when they started searching in the multifunction box but visited your site before. The multifunction box is automatically populated because they have been there before.
When it is by referral, we are talking about people who came to your site from another website. This is external traffic. Consumers followed a link on a different domain to get to you.
Organic is people who performed a search on a search engine like Google and clicked on your website in the organic (unpaid) search results. And social is people who came to your site from a social media platform. It is also a great indicator to measure the overall effectiveness of your SEO, social engagement, content, and integrated campaigns.
Total conversions is another useful metric. A “conversion” is a person who converts from a user to paying customer. To drive customers deeper into our funnels, we need to monitor engagement on our websites.
More generally, this is when users complete any desired action, such as completing a form, clicking a download button, signing up for a trial, downloading an eBook, creating an account, etc.
“Low conversions can speak to poor design, unattractive offers, or a disinterested audience, Rosales explains. “Conversion tracking helps you pinpoint exactly which components people interact with on your site and which components they simply don’t.”
It’s also very informative about the quality of your UX and other less tangible creative areas. Low conversion rates can prompt you to update your sales funnel or indicate that it’s time to invest in revamping your website.
And finally, there’s the site’s bounce rate. This refers to the average number of visitors who left your website after visiting only one page: the page they entered.
It’s possible that each page can have its own bounce rate, as well. You will find that different pages tend to have different bounce rates, and not all bounce rates are the same.
Rosales points out, “The bounce rate is a way to determine if your content is useful or if you have the right landing page for a paid promotion. The number is not necessarily 100% accurate.”
One, the bounce rate of a page might be high. This is because visitors leave after they have seen the page and found the information they need. Maybe they called to become paying customers after clicking on a contact page. Users who have problems with site design or usability may abandon the site at the first page.
