Website Metrics

What are website metrics?

Metrics are the numbers behind certain variables related to a website. Tracking these numbers is vital, and can often give insight that would otherwise be overlooked.

Examples of website metrics

Website metrics may sound complicated, but they are actually very straightforward. Here are a few examples of website metrics that you can track and measure, just to make things a little more clear:

• Visitor traffic

Visitor traffic is probably the most common website metric. Anyone with a website, no matter what its context will benefit from knowing how many people are visiting the site.

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Traffic numbers are a good indication of success. If you notice a large spike in website traffic after a blog article is uploaded, odds are that you can benefit from more content like that.

But, you’ll never know unless you track and measure your visitor traffic.

• Traffic sources

Just like you want to track how many visitors you’re getting, you’ll also want to track where they’re coming from.

Tracking traffic sources will allow you to see exactly how visitors are getting to your website, whether it be search engine results, a link from another website, or anything else.

• Top viewed pages

If you’re operating a blog or have multiple landing pages, knowing which piece of content brings in the most pageviews is important.

Everything on a page can affect the traffic either positively or negatively. By knowing what pages pull in the most traffic, you can essentially optimize all the other, lower-performing pages.

• Bounce rate

Bounce rate refers to how many people click your website and click away or close their browser shortly after.

The reason this is a problem is that it means people aren’t finding what they’re looking for. As the bounce rate goes down, the amount of people that are finding your website helpful goes up.

• Conversion rate

If your website aims to sell something, knowing how many people click on it and continue with a sale is important. Conversion rate refers to the people following through with a sale once they land on your website.

These are just a few of the more important examples of website metrics you can track and measure. There are many more to consider.

Advantages of website metrics

Tracking and measuring metrics does more for your website than just give you reassurance. If tracked and acted upon correctly, website metrics will:

• Help determine direction

• Establish a focal point

• Help make decisions, big or small

• Drive performance

• Provide real-time data 

Again, these are just a few advantages in tracking website metrics. Depending on your website’s purpose, and your desired direction, these are subject to change.

As long as the metric is well defined, easy to measure, and aimed towards the improvement of the website, then it will be of great benefit to you.