Time, money, and energy are precious commodities no business owner wants to waste. But this is especially important for small businesses operating with leaner teams and limited budgets.
Every marketing action we take needs to be intentional. Whether we’re creating social media content, writing weekly emails, or building a landing page, we want to ensure those efforts are actually making an impact.
Are viewers engaging? Is our audience converting as expected? Are we increasing our reach?
Having an understanding of these key metrics can help you determine whether you’re hitting your goals – and can inform you on how to adjust your efforts when things aren’t working.
In this blog post, we’re breaking down the terminology around website data and lead generation, so you can analyze your marketing performance and make more strategic decisions moving forward.
For more information on social media and email marketing metrics, check out this blog post instead.
Why Marketing Metrics Matter
Marketing doesn’t just stop after initial content creation – it’s an ongoing process of:
- Creating a variety of content.
- Sharing that content in appropriate ways, on relevant platforms.
- Analyzing the performance and impact of that content.
- Using the data gathered to tweak your strategy and content creation moving forward.
For example, maybe you have visitors to your blog – but no one is buying. Or you’ve built-up your email subscribers, but no one is opening your emails. These are signs that something is off.
In order to get the results you desire, it’s important to understand what’s working and what isn’t, so you can optimize your efforts.
Understanding Website Metric Terminology (Based on Google Analytics):
Your website is your digital storefront – a key hub for prospective clients and customers to learn more about the solutions you provide.
By curating an enjoyable experience for your website visitors through an engaging design, intuitive navigation, and updated content, you can influence customer decisions, build trust, and convert leads.
To ensure that your website layout and content are having the intended impact, analyze their performance with these key website metrics – accessible via Google Analytics.
*Important note: If you’ve built your website using a platform like Squarespace of Wix, or if you have certain plug-ins installed on your WordPress site, you likely have access to some of these analytics within the platform itself. However, it’s still worth installing Google Analytics for more advanced tracking information, detailed reports, and deeper insights.
Visitor:
A website visitor is someone who lands on your site. Google Analytics tracks visitors by placing a tracking code or cookie in their browser. These are small text files with pieces of data used to identify specific users, and how they interacted with the page.
Page Views:
This metric tracks when a page on your site is loaded by a browser. A page view is measured every time your tracking code is loaded – so this number increases each time someone opens or reloads a page.
Session:
A session is the series of activities or interactions a visitor takes on your website, including page views, call-to-actions (CTAs), and events.
Sessions expire after 30 minutes of visitor activity, so one visitor can have multiple sessions if they leave their computer for over 30 minutes and then come back to your site, for example.
Traffic:
The total number of site or page visits in a given time period.
Traffic by Channel:
What’s driving people to your website? This traffic is the total number of site or page visits per referral channel (for example, social media, search engines, or direct links).
Traffic by Device:
The total number of site or page visits per device type (for example, smartphone vs. tablet vs. desktop).
Time on Page:
The average time each visitor spends on your site or page.
Interactions Per Visit:
The actions your visitors took when on your site or page.
Bounce Rate:
The percentage of people who visited your site or page but didn’t take any action or look at any other pages.
Website Analytic Considerations
Website Traffic, Visitors, and Page Views
If your website traffic, visitor numbers, and/ or page views are low, it could be a sign that people aren’t discovering your site — or that they’re not motivated to stick around.
Consider:
- Do you have enough meaningful content on each page to engage or inform?
- Is your website regularly updated with fresh content and information (for example product updates, blog posts, or relevant seasonal information)?
- Have you created a Google Business page to optimize local traffic?
- Are you directing your audience to your website via other marketing efforts like social media posts or emails?
Focus on efforts to improve SEO and you’ll likely see a boost in these metrics!
If you have any unexpected traffic spikes, it could be a sign of a successful post or promotion – or it could be bot traffic.
Investigate any outliers to determine how you can further optimize your efforts.
Visitors by Channel and Device
The analytics you collect regarding how your visitors are accessing your website can inform how you design and optimize your website.
For example,
- If your mobile traffic is low, it could be indicative of an older audience demographic less reliant or comfortable with smartphones.
- If your mobile traffic is high but mobile bounce rates are also high, it could indicate a poor mobile layout. Slow loading graphics, large text that takes too long to scroll through, or buttons that are too small to click, can cause a frustrating user experience, leading to a quick drop-off of users.
By analyzing the channels you’re receiving website traffic through, you can make strategic content and marketing decisions.
Consider:
- Which channels are performing well? Are you maximizing your efforts on those platforms to drive as much traffic as possible?
- Are there low-performing platforms which are worth analyzing and improving? Or does it make more sense to reassess your strategy – focusing your efforts on the channels bringing you traffic, and pausing those that aren’t?
Time on Page
The amount of time a visitor spends on a given page can signal how compelling your content is.
A longer average time generally indicates that your users are engaged with the content on your site, while a short session might mean:
- Your content isn’t connecting – for example, it’s not relevant to the visitor finding it.
- The page is confusing – if visitors can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, they’re likely to leave the page.
- The content is unhelpful for the visitor – they didn’t find what they expected.
Get clear on your ideal audience and their needs so you can create a streamlined user experience with content that resonates with them.
Bounce Rate
Website bounce rates in general can be high, which is not always a bad thing. However, if you have a consistently high bounce rate, you might want to investigate why that is.
- Are your pages not loading? Or too slow to load?
- Are you reaching the wrong audience?
- Is the content aligned with what your visitors expected when they clicked the link?
- Are your CTAs visible, clear, and compelling?
If the goal you’re aiming to achieve is completed just by accessing the one page, then a high bounce rate isn’t an issue. For example, if you’re encouraging someone to visit your site to read a blog, they might do just that and then leave and that’s okay.
However, if that blog was meant to encourage them to make a further purchase or to direct them to another page on your site, you might want to look into why those CTAs were seemingly ineffective.
Evaluating Lead Generation Effectiveness
If your goal is to collect leads — such as email signups, free trial users, or webinar registrations — you likely have pop-ups, forms, or dedicated landing pages in place.
Sometimes these will be built directly into your website and other times you may host them externally using a tool like LeadPages, Get Response, or MailChimp. Regardless of the platform, these efforts should be streamlined – created with a clear goal of collecting specific information in order to convert your audience into leads.
To determine whether these efforts are successful, it’s important to track and analyze key performance metrics that show how effectively your audience is converting into leads.
Call-to-Action (CTA) Click-Through-Rate:
The percentage of total clicks on a call-to-action, as compared to the total number of page or site visits.
Submissions:
The percentage of people who filled out and submitted your web form.
Conversions:
The conversion rate is the total number of actions taken (for example a download or sign-up) on your lead magnet as compared to the total number of page visits.
Free Trial Conversion Rate:
The percentage of free trial users who converted to customers. How many people stay after your free trial?
Pop-up Conversions:
These are the percentage of total pop-up form completions that are converted to customers, if you have pop-ups on your website.
Ratio of Generated Leads to Marketing-Qualified Leads:
The total number of “good fit” leads collected from your lead magnet as compared to the number of leads generated.
Leads to Close Ratio:
The percentage of leads converted to customers as compared to the total number of leads.
Lead Generation Analytic Considerations
Conversions & Submissions
If your conversion or form submission rates are lower than expected, the issue may lie in your messaging, targeting, or technical setup.
Consider:
- Are the people finding your forms within your ideal audience? Review your referral sources to make sure your content aligns with what visitors expect when they click through. Misleading traffic may increase bounce rates and reduce conversions.
- Is your messaging clear and compelling? Confusing copy or too much jargon can lead to hesitation.
- Are there too many opportunities for people to click away? Keep people focused on your offer. For example, if you have your offer embedded on your regular website, remove the navigation links on that particular page to avoid distraction.
- Is your offer valuable and relevant? If there’s little incentive or clarity on the benefits, users may not take action.
- Is the process user-friendly? Long or complex forms may discourage sign-ups.
Is there a technical issue? Occasionally, submissions don’t go through due to back-end glitches. Test your forms regularly to ensure functionality!
Pop-Ups
Pop-ups can be powerful when used strategically, but frustrating when they disrupt the user experience.
Consider:
- Are your pop-ups triggered too early? Delaying them by 10 seconds or until a user scrolls 50% of the page can significantly reduce annoyance.
- Are they appearing too often or on irrelevant pages? Set frequency limits for regular site visitors, and ensure the pop-up is relevant to the content on the page.
- Are they mobile-friendly and easy to close? Poor design can hinder user trust.
- Would you engage with this pop-up if you were visiting your site? Think about your own habits and behaviour, and use that information to curate a positive user experience for your website visitors.
Ratio of Good Fit Leads
How many people signing up are within your target audience? It’s not just about the quantity of leads you collect, but the quality of those leads.
If this number is low, consider:
- Are you pre-qualifying your visitors enough? Consider if more specific copy or targeting methods might help you improve your efforts.
- Are your messages and offers tailored to your ideal customer? Do they make sense based on the audience you’re trying to attract? Hone in on your target audience so that you know the type of messaging and tone of voice to appeal to them – and so you can ensure your offers are relevant.
- Are you clearly communicating who your offer is for – and who it’s not? This can help filter your results.
Leads to Close Ratio
If you have an adequate number of leads, but few are converting into paying customers, it may signal a disconnect between your lead magnet and your offer.
Consider:
- Did your lead magnet give too much value up front, making your paid offer feel unnecessary? While this can build trust, it may require refining your offer’s perceived value.
- Did your lead magnet underdeliver? If it didn’t meet expectations, your audience may hesitate to invest further. Trust is critical to conversion.
- Is the follow-up process strong and intentional? Sometimes the issue isn’t the lead magnet but the lack of a compelling nurture sequence afterward. We talk about this more in our follow-up post to this blog! Check it out here.
Technical Challenges
Tracking performance – on any platform – isn’t always straightforward. Bots can inflate performance metrics, conversion data may not match real sales, and unusual traffic spikes might not be signs of campaign success, but instead could indicate technical issues.
It’s important to regularly check-in with these metrics so you can get a clear understanding of your baseline stats – and investigate when things seem to fall or spike randomly.
Don’t be afraid of this data! Rather, use it to make shifts within your marketing.
Planning for Success
Taking the time to analyze and understand your marketing analytics allows you to make more informed and strategic decisions moving forward:
- Doubling down on what’s working
- Shifting time, energy, budget, and other resources away from tactics that aren’t serving your business
- Fixing technical errors
- Streamlining workflows
- Experimenting and optimizing where relevant
Ultimately, understanding these insights will allow you to better align your marketing efforts to your goals.
Not every piece of content or marketing tactic will be a winner, but they will each offer a learning opportunity.
Remember, engagement is more important than vanity metrics, and clarity is more important than guesswork. Strategic marketing will give you the results you desire.
For more on this topic as it relates specifically to social media and email marketing analytics, check out this accompanying blog post where we break down even more terminology and metrics you should know.
