A guest post by Nisha Joseph.
Are you looking to track how users are engaging with your brand?
We all want super-engaged customers. They tell your brand story to their friends, share your content on social media, act as your brand advocates, and buy from you repeatedly. But to enjoy this kind of loyalty, you'll need to understand how customers interact with your brand.
And this is where user engagement metrics come in! Website engagement metrics are critical to the success of any business. These metrics enable businesses to grow and achieve a higher customer success rate.
But what metrics should you track? This guide will explain website engagement metrics and outline the seven key metrics every brand should track. Let's dive in!
Website engagement metrics: the basics
Website engagement metrics track how your website visitors interact with your site and online brand. These metrics can tell you what your website visitors browse on your site, how long they stay on it, and how often they use your website.
To track and measure user engagement metrics, you'll need to use a website analytics tool like SEMrush, Google Analytics, or HubSpot Marketing Hub.
KPI vs OKR: which goal-setting framework is better?
KPIs and OKRs are both performance management techniques, but they help you reach your goals in different ways. OKR stands for 'objectives and key results', while KPI is an acronym for key performance indicators.
From the definition, it's clear that OKRs are a goal-setting framework while KPIs are a way to track performance as measurements within a framework. The purpose is to determine what needs to be improved in your business and, based on that, how you'll spend your time and resources making the relevant changes.
As such, the OKR methodology is goal-oriented and helps businesses improve performance and drive change. In contrast, KPIs are business metrics designed to reflect performance.
7 key website engagement metrics to track
Without further ado, here are the key website engagement metrics to track in 2023.
1. Page views
Google defines page views as 'an instant of a page being loaded' in a browser.
In layman's language, page views measure the number of times a website is visited. This metric shows the number of users who visited your website on a particular day. Every time a user opens a page on your website, that's a one-page view.
Page views can help you determine visitor trends over time. They can give you insights into the pages/products driving traffic to your site and help you refine your marketing around those pages.
2. Average time on page
As the name implies, the average time on page measures how long site users spend on a web page. This metric can be an excellent indicator of how effective your content is. The longer users stay on a page, the more engaging the content is.
Longer time on a page can also indicate you are attracting quality visitors who value your content and spend quality time interacting with it. In contrast, shorter times may indicate a lack of interest or poor content on your site.
3. Average session duration
If a site owner analyses just the page views and average time on page, they would only get one part of the story. That's because thousands of people could land on your website, browse a few pages, and click the back button, uninterested in consuming the content.
Compared to page views and average time on page, average session duration gives you a better picture of how people are interacting with your website. This metric measures the average time spent on a single page by all website users.
If you have an e-commerce site, you'll want people to look at your product pages more than any other page. This metric will let you know which pages your site visitors spend more time on.
4. Bounce rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of users who navigate away from a site after viewing only one page. It's simply the number of people who land on a page and leave without taking any action.
If the bounce rate is high, it means the website didn't deliver on its promise. It could be that your products/content doesn't meet the user's needs or your website is difficult to navigate.
Bounce rate is an important metric as it can help determine whether your marketing campaign is effective. A high bounce rate on a campaign's landing page could mean the visitors aren't the right ones to target.
5. Conversion rate
The conversion rate measures the effectiveness of your marketing and sales campaign. This performance metric tells you how many website visitors converted to customers. It shows the number of online conversions within a given timeframe.
The conversion rate is a crucial marketing KPI not only for your campaigns but also for your website and landing page performance.
By tracking conversion metrics over time, you can deduce which tactics work best and focus more attention and resources on them. Conversion rates vary by industry, but a 2% to 5% conversion rate is acceptable in all industries.
6. Traffic sources
Where do your site visitors come from? Is it from email, search engines, social media, or paid search? This can be answered by looking at your traffic sources in your analytics dashboard.
Traffic sources are a crucial metric that tells where your site visitors are coming from.
This metric is critical for marketers as it helps them determine the source of their leads. With such data, marketers can focus their resources on the medium driving the most traffic, saving on costs and time which would otherwise have been spent on unprofitable sources.
7. Exit rate
The exit rate indicates the number of users who leave a page after visiting several other web pages on a website. So, how does it differ from the bounce rate?
The bounce rate shows the first page a visitor enters, while the exit rate shows the last page they visit before they leave. Exit rates show the percentage of exits from a page, regardless of whether the user viewed any other pages.
Are you tracking any of these website engagement metrics?
Tracking website engagement metrics will give you valuable insights into your customers' or prospects' behaviour, allowing you to serve them better and make data-driven decisions. If you are interested in knowing how your website visitors respond to your site, this is definitely something you could start considering for 2023.
About the author
Nisha Joseph, Content Manager of Profit.co, leads the content marketing team with experience in various fields, such as science, education, law, and management. She is a well-rounded individual with diverse interests and skills.
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