If you want to ensure the success of your website, then you need to focus on certain key performance indicators – measurable metrics that help you determine whether the actions you’re taking to meet your goals are actually working.
Now, let’s be clear. Different sites will have different core metrics based on their objectives. But here are some we think are worth keeping an eye on for most websites.
Sessions
If a user visits your site three times but on different days, this is counted as three sessions. The session begins when a user visits your site and ends when they exit. This KPI allows you to determine which content, or product is the most popular with your users. Take the Temple Tumble Megaways slot for example.
Fans of the game may visit the site multiple times to replay the game, or to access free spins and bonus promotions. By measuring sessions, you have a solid way of determining who is returning to your site, not to mention that you can also identify user habits and behaviour. Documenting the user journey is also possible while being given the chance to identify bugs and errors that could result in someone leaving a page quickly, but then retrying it again later.
Unique Website Visitors
A unique visitor is someone who engages with one, or multiple pages within a specific time period. If someone lands on your page and then engages with your features page, pricing page and finally, your blog, then they will count as one, unique visitor. You can use Google Analytics to get this data if you want. So why does data like this matter? Marketing agencies usually take this metric into account as it gives them an insight as to how well their content is doing, and how well the website as a whole is performing. It allows you to find out how popular your site is if there is anything hindering performance and how big of an audience you have.
Unique users are sometimes considered more important than sessions depending on your business goals. If your product or service is something bought quickly and once, for example, perhaps unique users is more important to you than simply session. But with the slots example above, repeat users and people coming back is a key business goal and as such that is an important metric to measure.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rates indicate whether or not someone completed the action you wanted them to. Normally this is measured in the form of a percentage, with higher percentages indicating that there has been a successful campaign. Measuring KPIs such as this shows how well you are driving user actions, and it also helps you to predict the flow of revenue through your site.
You may also find that it helps you to gain a greater insight into your campaign message, which is critical if you are using marketing as a way to drive conversions. After all, you could be getting a lot of traffic, but if you aren’t getting conversions then this could result in you not getting the result you want out of your site. With the right data, however, it should become easy to measure what you need, so you can make appropriate changes moving forward.
More In Depth User Video Playbacks
Not a “metric” per se, but if something’s not quite going right on your site or you have a ton of traffic but conversion is low and you can’t figure out why, heatmapping and video playback of user sessions can be a really useful thing to look at too!
