Google Analytics KPIs - Our Top 5 Picks To Grow Your Business
In this week's blog we're thrilled to be able to share our top 5 favorite web KPIs to monitor for any business. These metrics will help you determine the health of your website and where there could be improvements made to grow your sales and improve customer satisfaction. But before we get into the details, let's review what KPIs are and why they're important to define, monitor and optimize for.
KPIs - What Are They?
KPI stands for "Key Performance Indicator" which is simply a quantifiable metric that helps you understand if a certain aspect of your business is performing well or not. For example, a key performance indicator for your business may be sales leads for your team. In this case you will define a benchmark, say 50 leads per week that you want your team to achieve. You can now monitor this KPI on a weekly basis to make sure your team is on track for the goals you're setting. If your team is under-performing with this KPI you may need to make changes in order to improve the results.
KPIs - Why Are They Important to Define?
Without having a solid set of KPIs and the knowledge of what benchmarks you should be looking for, you are unable to identify where growth opportunities are for your business. Today's consumers expect your site to load quickly, have an exceptional design and include easy to find links to lead them to their desired outcome. If you don't deliver on any of these aspects you could be losing an enormous amount of opportunity. In fact, Google released an article last year that showed that the average time it takes to fully load a mobile landing page is 22 seconds and worse yet, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes more than 3 seconds to load. You wouldn't want to lose 53% of your leads, would you?
Now that we know what KPIs are and why they're important, let's jump into the metrics. We'll also help define some benchmarks you should shoot for to start to know where the best area of opportunity is for quickly getting results.
1. Bounce Rate
The first metric we recommend that you monitor is your bounce rate. The bounce rate of your website is the percentage of people who land on your website and then leave without taking any further action (i.e. clicking another link and/or visiting another page). This is an extremely important metric to monitor because people who bounce from your website may not have found the information they were looking for.
When you provide a very clear call to action and have strong content, consumers will typically continue to engage, ideally until they've taken an action that you desire (Make a purchase, book an appointment, etc). By optimizing for this KPI you will not only improve the customer experience but you will also be creating many more sales opportunities.
Benchmark
You should aim to make sure your bounce rate is no more than 50% and ideally under 40%.
2. Time on Site / Pages per Session
This is going to be a two-for-one special because time on site and pages per session are similar metrics in many ways related to the engagement of consumers on your website. Time on site represents the amount of time your customers are spending on the website on average. Pages per session is the average number of pages consumers view before they leave. With both of these metrics, you have an opportunity to understand if the content you're providing is valuable to your customers.
One way to improve both of these metrics is to ensure you have very clear calls to action on each page and that your content naturally leads consumers through your sales funnel. If your website is purely informational, try linking consumers to other articles that they may be interested in to drive further engagement.
Benchmark
Things can vary drastically depending on how many pages are on your website and what industry you're in but we recommend shooting for a minimum of 2.5 minutes on the website and at least 2-3 pages per session. Note: eCommerce sites may want to shoot for slightly higher time on site and pages per session as the checkout process tends to be at least 3-5 steps.
3. Page Load Time
As previously mentioned during our KPI explanation, page load time is critical for your business. The slower your website loads the more opportunities you're losing, especially for those customers who are on their mobile devices in places with less than ideal reception. The page load time metric is simply an average of how long it takes your website to load. Certain areas of your website that are graphic heavy without utilizing properly compressed images can contribute to this problem as can having too many web tracking tags installed or having them installed improperly. The quicker you can get your website to load the more opportunity there will be.
Benchmark
For page load times, the faster the better! Consumers are impatient and expect your site to load quickly. Aim for no more than 2-3 seconds and for this metric, be sure to sort by page to identify any culprits that are hurting your average.
4. Conversion Rate
You can be running the most effective marketing campaigns the world has ever seen but if you don't have an optimized user flow you are going to lose the majority of your leads. The conversion rate KPI simply measures the percentage of users who transact with you during their visit on your website. The transaction could be anything from the purchase of a product, filling out a lead capture form or submitting an appointment booking. Optimizing for this KPI can have a profound impact on the success of your business.
Benchmark
For eCommerce stores you should shoot for a conversion rate between 3-4%. For all other businesses including those with lead capture forms, phone call prompts or appointment bookings, we recommend optimizing for at least an 8% conversion rate.
5. Average Order Value
While this metric is specific to eCommerce stores it's absolutely an important top 5 KPI to monitor. Average order value is the average amount spent per transaction that takes place on your website. One of the best ways of improving this metric is through intelligent up-selling and cross selling of merchandise on your website. Think of ways that you can package your products together for customers to provide a better experience.
In the live events space a great example of this is packaging parking and/or concessions together for your fans to make game day more convenient. Not only will you increase your average order value and bring more revenue in for the business, you will be providing a convenience for the fan. The one caveat to this is to be sure you are not overwhelming your customers with prompt after prompt during their buying process as doing so can cause frustration and encourage them to abandon their orders.
Conclusion
By monitoring and optimizing on each of our 5 recommended KPIs you can quickly and efficiently grow your sales and provide an exceptional user experience for your customers. However, understanding exactly where to start can be confusing. Join us each Friday for the next 5 weeks as we review each KPI in detail and show where you can find the reports in Google Analytics and what to look for in order to make improvements.
Next Monday, January 29, we're excited to share about how to read your digital marketing reports and exactly what to look for to ensure your campaigns are running as efficiently as possible. Whether you currently work with an agency, are running things in-house or are looking at finding a partner, this information will provide valuable insights for your business.
Interested in learning more about how Trustworthy Digital can help your business achieve success in digital marketing & analytics? We would love to chat with you. Simply fill out our contact form by clicking the link below and we will get back to you as soon as possible.