Top 4 Online Marketing Metrics to Consider

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Jeremy


graphs and chartsLet’s face it – marketing is a necessity; a necessity that, due to their lower budgets, many small business owners are being forced to neglect. However, there are a few things that, if carefully observed, can increase the efficiency of the marketing that these businesses can afford and achieve. By making sure that they have these four main metrics in place, businesses can rest assured that their marketing is not only targeting the right audience, but that it is as effectual as possible.

1. Visitors. The number of visits your site incurs is a great way to measure the effectiveness of your current marketing efforts. Take a look at the total number of visits on the vital locations of your website – which areas are generating the greatest traffic? Which areas lack visitation and thus require extreme work? The goal is to see steady – though it may be slight – growth in site visitor numbers.

2. Conversions. Conversions are what morph site browsers into site buyers. These little victories are an extremely important way to analyze the profitability of your marketing efforts, and they are a number that you should continually strive to increase. If you are unable to determine the number and avenues of conversions through your own site, you can use a tool like Google Analytics to help.

3. Bounce Rates. Bounce rates are the rates you should aim to avoid – or at least decrease. These rates include all the instances when a prospect visits your site, such as when locating your homepage after performing a search, but then leaves your page before clicking on any other links. The shorter amount of time an individual spends on your site, the less likely the person is to convert and purchase from your site. Assessing your bounce rates should give you an indication of what actions need to be taken to improve or change your homepage – do you need more interesting links for customers to be drawn into clicking? Is the appearance too much or too bland to keep their interest?

4. New Sessions. Similar to the total number of visitors, new sessions are the brand new visitors to your site. These numbers can also be found through the use of Google Analytics, and they help to determine the effectiveness of your outreach efforts, as well as if you are gaining return visitors and customers. A good way to measure this is to make a change to the content or appearance of your site and then watch the ratio of your returning customers. The answer will prove whether the new content was successful or served as a detriment to your site.

Monitoring the foregoing key metrics will serve as a great way to assess the health of your marketing efforts. Not only will it help you to perfect your strategies by discerning the effective tactics from the unproductive ones, but it will ultimately increase the productivity and profitability of your company.