It can be strange to think that it has been just over 30 years since the first ever website launched, on 6 August 1991. By 1994 there were around 3,000 sites, and today that number hovers just under a staggering two billion.
Those websites cover every subject known to man, and of all those sites, ecommerce sites number anything up to 24 million. That may not seem a lot compared to the total number, but when you think about the amount of business carried out by those sites, you quickly realize that it is a big market.
If you run any sort of ecommerce or even B2B site, you know how important it is to monitor performance. However, it can sometimes be confusing as to which KPIs (key performance indicators) it would be most beneficial for you to track. We look at 10 website KPIs you should monitor to determine whether your website is running as smoothly as it can.
10 Key performance indicators you should be tracking
It should be noted that, for some businesses, the website KPIs they monitor vary in importance. A site selling home VoIP systems, for instance, will prioritize different metrics than an affiliate site promoting a homeware brand.
You need to consider your own business model and decide the order of importance of any website KPIs you track. You should, generally, divide the KPIs you track into three categories:
- SEO KPIs: Evaluates the visibility of your site and how easy it is to find.
- User experience (UX) KPIs: Lets you track how satisfied customers are and how smooth their journey is.
- Sales KPIs: The ultimate objective of your site is to sell more products, so this is perhaps the most important of the website KPIs to track.
- Session lengths
How long does each user spend on your site? Of course, logic dictates that the longer a person spends looking at your various landing pages, the likelier they are to make a purchase or take another positive action (such as completing a lead form or subscribing to your email list). Google Analytics considers a visitor session over either once the clock reaches midnight or 30 continuous minutes of inactivity have elapsed, whichever comes first.
One of the reasons session length is important is that it helps you understand the customer journey. If average session lengths are very low, there are likely issues within your site. However, the same could be true if session lengths are inordinately high; it could be a sign that customers are experiencing pain points getting from A to B.
- Unique and new visitors
While you want to retain customers over time, you also want to attract new customers. This is one of the website KPIs that measure how well you are doing this. You want two snapshots from this KPI: the total number of visitors in a given time period (usually monthly) and how many of those visitors came to your site for the first time.
Good numbers of visitors are closely related to your overall marketing strategy and also the effectiveness of your SEO. Linking numbers of visitors to session times will also help identify pain points. You also want to differentiate between the page views and page visits made by these visitors as well as collecting demographic data where possible.
- Source
While it is nice to see consistently good numbers of visitors, it is more helpful to know where that traffic is originating from. It can help you understand what marketing is working as well as how good any affiliate marketing partners are performing. This is especially true when you are spending money for advertising and marketing across multiple channels.
Segmenting your marketing ROI can give you actionable data as you move forward. If a particular channel is not driving much traffic to your site, why continue spending on it? Similarly, if affiliate partners are underperforming and not sending much traffic, is there any value in keeping them in your affiliate network?
- Bounce rate
This is one of your website KPIs that relates closely to SEO and content. SEO brings visitors to your site but it is the content that will generally cause them to engage and, hopefully, make a purchase. If you have a high bounce rate, it means that while your SEO may be optimized the content is not engaging visitors and they are leaving the site quickly.
Conversely, a low bounce rate can illustrate that both your SEO and content tactics are working well and that your site is providing information (and products) your customers need and want. Monitoring your bounce rate goes a long way to informing that content strategy, allowing you to decide whether your content is currently of sufficient quality and value or whether it needs to be tweaked to make it more relevant to users.
- Organic vs paid
While closely linked to ‘source’, this is one of the website KPIs that can affect budgeting decisions about where you spend money. If you are getting good results from organic (and thus unpaid) searches, it shows that your SEO strategy is a good one and that customers are finding you through simple results on search engines.
If, however, you are getting a large number of clicks from paid searches, including banner ads on other sites or blogs as well as paid for search engine rankings, it shows that your paid strategy is working. It can, though, help you determine the paid results work best and allow you to focus on them, or, conversely, to identify and eliminate the results that do not work well.
- Page loading time
This is another of the most important website KPIs. Slow loading times can negatively affect your bounce rates and it is worth noting that even a two-second delay in a page’s load will result in abandonment rates of as much as 87%. Any page on your site should be loading within one to two seconds when accessed from a mobile device.
If your site’s pages are slow to load, it can also have an adverse effect on your search engine rankings. You should be testing loading speeds from a range of different devices and browsers to ensure the results are healthy and consistent. If pages are slow to load, look to overly large files or images as possible culprits.
- Conversion rates
Of course, the ultimate aim of your site is to generate revenue, so your conversion rate is one of the most important website KPIs when it comes to measuring success. Your conversion rate is calculated by dividing your total number of transactions by the total number of sessions, giving you an idea of how many visits on average it takes before a sale is generated.
A low conversion rate can show that something is flawed in your model. It could be an issue with your pricing, your shipping costs, your content, or simply the appeal of your products or services. Drilling into the data can give you actionable data so you can make changes that improve your conversion rate.
- Average order value
You may have a great conversion rate, but it is of little benefit if all those sales are of low value. Average order value (AOV) is a metric that reflects the quality of your sales and can be a major indicator of how well your site is performing. It helps you understand the buying behavior of your customers and can also help calculate customer lifetime value (CLV).
Most businesses will calculate this on a monthly basis by dividing total revenue by the total number of orders placed, but some online retailers will look at it on a weekly or even daily basis.
Another advantage of knowing this metric is that it can contribute towards decisions you make on both marketing and pricing strategies related to your website and products.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS can be one of the key UX (user experience) metrics. It can be collected easily at the end of a transaction or session or even in a follow-up email. It gauges the willingness of a customer to recommend you to other people. By stating their willingness in a range of 0-10, you can then divide those customers into three categories:
- Detractors (0-6): Customers who are unlikely to ever recommend you and who may even leave a negative review.
- Passives (7 & 8): While less likely to recommend you at this time, they may be more open to change and are also unlikely to say anything negative about you.
- Promoters (9 & 10): These are your “star” customers. Not only are they likely to recommend you, they will also actively promote you and can become brand ambassadors.
You can calculate your total NPS by subtracting the total percentage of detractors from the total percentage of promoters. Keeping an eye on this metric gives a good indication of overall customer satisfaction.
- Quantity and revenue
These are two metrics that can be combined and reflect the overall performance of your website. Of course, quantity may be something that varies greatly; if you only sell high-value products, you may have low total quantity but high overall revenue and vice versa. But whether you sell low or high value products, knowing you sell “enough” of them is crucial.
Revenue is always going to be of utmost importance to any website. After all, you have overheads, costs, and ultimately want to make a profit. Being able to look at a single revenue figure over any given time period is going to be the bottom-line indicator of the level of success you are achieving with your business.
The right measures
Website KPIs are a way not only of monitoring performance of your website but also a way of identifying areas that need improvement. Just as a contact center may identify call center dialer systems as a way of improving the way they serve customers, you may see the need for changes in the way you operate your website.
While some website KPIs may be common to all organizations, some may be of more importance than others. Improving the way your website operates can necessitate everything from employing a specialist SEO agency through to changing to a better web hosting company. Website KPIs can be your starting point for making evidence-based decisions.
