Metrics and Analytics are markers that are used by online marketers to improve the ratings and search results of different websites on Google. While both Metrics and Analytics are used to improve reach and achieve marketing goals, they aren’t the same thing.
What are Metrics?
Metrics are a standard of measurement. They measure how well a website is performing in objective terms. These include activity measures (number of blog posts and events), output measures (website traffic), operation metrics (cost per lead generated), outcome metrics (share of preference and share of wallet), etc.
What are Analytics?
Analytics are used to answer specific questions related to the business itself. They reveal what niche markets the business caters to, which products require the most development and which ones are the most popular. They also provide insights into customer acquisition.
Types of Metrics and Analytics
Unique Visitor Conversion/ Return Visitor Conversion
The way a new visitor interacts with the website is different from how a return visitor does. Websites that pay attention to what first time visitors see when they gain access tend to convert more. This entails making the website more user-friendly.
To convert return visitors into actual customers, you need to answer two questions:
Why didn’t this person convert the first time?
Since they did return, what can you do to convert them this time?
Some brands offer exclusive deals and coupons to return customers to seal the deal.
Sources for Incoming Traffic
To make things easier to understand, incoming traffic can be divided into 3 different types;
1) Direct visitors
2) Search visitors
3) Referrals
Direct visitors are rare and mostly visit your website if they’re repeat visitors. Search visitors stumble on your website through a search engine, and referrals are visitors that have clicked on a link from another blog or website.
All three sources are important and have different levels of conversion.
Interactions per Visit
How a visitor interacts with the website per visit can give you insight into the most interesting and unique parts of your website. You can improve upon the things they spent the most time on or engaged with the most to improve conversion rates.
Value per Visit
Website value has several definitions. On E-commerce websites, value is created when customers buy something and even leave a review. On blogs, value can be measured by page views, likes, and comments.
Creating more value during a visit entails improving the user interface and the navigation of a website as well as offering special discounts for loyal buyers, etc.
Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate is a measure of the users that immediately leave your website upon arrival. This can be because of several factors like a non-user-friendly interface, bad deals, a long and complicated checkout process, etc. E-commerce websites refer to this as abandonment as well.
Lead Generation Costs
Also known as Conversion cost, this is a metric that always needs to be low on a website. If you’re always handing out coupons and discounts to customers or enticing them with emails to stay on, then you’re failing no matter how many conversions you get.
It’s better to evaluate exactly why conversions are taking so much and what you can do to change that. Perhaps changing the look of your website, or improving the controls and response time will help.
Page Views
This is a simple metric that shows how often visitors successfully access your website. Numerous page views can be indicative of quality content and presentation.
However, if you dig deeper, this may also be indicative of visitors not being able to find what they’re
looking for, which results in multiple clicks on different pages.
Compare traffic sources with page views as well to find out what source is driving traffic to that particular page.
Average Session Duration
This is probably the best indicator of your website’s value. If the majority of users are logging on and staying longer per session, then you’ve engaged them successfully.
If you’re aware of the metrics that are most important to your business, you can tweak and change your website to improve them. This way, you’ll be getting more traffic than before and improving the value of your customer’s visit as well.
