May 23, 2022
We are living in a data-driven era. Corporations, organizations and eCommerce sites base most of their decisions on the data collected by different software, surveys, customer reviews and Google analytics. However, too much data can also be a problem. Why? Because businesses do not know which data is the most important, what it represents and what actions to take based on the gathered data.
This is why I compiled this article. To give web agencies and web designers some tips on the most vital KPIs that should be on their radar in 2022.
KPIs are crucial because they provide valuable insight on sales and revenue and inform decisions on customer experience, customer satisfaction, employee appraisals, and marketing.
For web agencies, there is a long list of website engagement metrics that they can use to understand how much traffic is being brought to their site, what kind of users are visiting their page and what actions they are taking on it. Understanding these metrics aims to convert visitors into leads, leads into first-time customers and first-time customers into loyal ones.
Let us get into the most accurate KPIS every web agency should be tracking in 2022.
The amount of times a visitor accesses a page on your website is measured by page views. A page view is the amount of times a page on your website is loaded into a browser. The higher the number of page views, the more successful the page or the marketing campaign and SEO efforts. It is an indicator that there is significant traffic to your site.
However, it could be harmful as well. For example, if a user loads a page and subsequently reloads it, this registers as two page views, so if it happens to hundreds of people loading your page, it could be seen as traffic, yet there might be a speed problem or broken pages.
The average time spent on a web page is a measurement of how much time visitors stay on a page. The length of time visitors spend on a page can be a good indicator of how compelling and helpful your content is.
This is why web agencies usually embed videos, images, and even memes on a page. The more time visitors spend on your page, the higher it will rank on search engines like google. However, beware that it can also mean they are confused by the structure of your page and take longer to find the information they are looking for.
It calculates the average amount of time users spend on your whole website, not just the separate web pages. It’s obtained by dividing the total number of sessions within a fixed period by the amount of time all guests spent on your site within that period.
The higher the average session duration, the more successful the website is. So, instead of optimizing pages individually, look at strategies that improve the overall desire to stay on your site, such as designs, colors, and more streamlined navigation.
This indicator goes hand in hand with the ‘average session duration.’ You want to know how many pages on a singular site were visited by a user in one session and how much time they spent on each page. In addition, you can also find out the path of the guest. What page did they visit after your homepage? What page did they visit last, and what actions were taken from that page.
A higher number of pages may indicate that your content is helpful, and the website structure is clear and direct.
Bounce rate is the fraction of guests that come to your website, load a single page, and then abandon it without spending a significant amount of time or loading any other pages. A high bounce rate negatively affects the performance and visibility of your site because it increases your chances of ranking low on search engines.
A high bounce rate can be caused by several issues such as long loading times, poor structure and navigation, confusing content or poorly placed CTA.
Striving for large traffic volumes is not the only metric worth focusing on. Web agencies also need to identify where the traffic is being generated from. Is it from social networking platforms? Emails? Direct links? Paid searches referrals/ external links?
Once you know where the bulk of your traffic is coming from, you can either focus your energy on further boosting traffic from these sources or designing strategies for strengthening the poorly performing sources.
In addition, you need to monitor how these sources respond to marketing campaigns and other initiatives.
A conversion rate is the percentage of guests who take the desired action on a site. Of course, when you build your website, you want it to achieve the desired goal, for instance, to fill out a contact form, purchase a product, and book a demo.
The conversion rate is the percentage of site visitors who complete the action you hoped they would. The conversion rate can be measured in various ways, depending on the landing page and call to action.
Conversion involves turning visitors into leads, leads into first-time buyers and first-time buyers into repeat customers.
If your conversion rate is lower than expected, you have to sit with your team and figure out if the problem is with the placement of CTAs. Maybe they are well-placed but not compelling enough or plain confusing.
Exit rate represents how frequently users leave the site after visiting any number of pages, while an exit page is the last page a user loads or visits before leaving the site. Of course, some exit pages are expected and normal, such as a thank you page or a download page.
However, if people leave your product page or blog page, you need to look into it. Perhaps you are unknowingly dealing with a broken page, a dead-end page or a poorly placed and uncompelling CTA.
There are many other KPIs that web agencies can use to understand the performance of the websites; however, this is a good starting point.
