The Two Most Important Marketing Metrics Online

When it comes to marketing online, there are plenty of “gurus” and “experts” willing to tell you what metrics to pay attention to. Usually, you get the same old suggestions. They’re either all SEO related or social media related, but those aren’t the most important metrics. Important, maybe. Most important, not.

So what are the most important metrics that determine your online ROI?

Every business owner should pay close attention to two website metrics and listen to what they are saying: Conversion Rate and Visitor Engagement.

Conversion Rate

To measure your conversion rate you must first have a desired goal. Is it newsletter sign ups? Sales? Downloads?

Know what you want your visitor to do, then measure how many positive actions you get versus website visitors. You are looking for a ratio, something like 1 download for every 5 website visitors, expressed as 1:5. Another way of stating it is 20% of site visitors sign up for the company newsletter.

Your conversion rate says a lot about how effective you are in marketing yourself through your various channels.

Visitor Engagement

Visitor engagement is a little bit more challenging. There are several variables that should be taken into consideration when judging engagement:

• Bounce rate
• Average pages per visit
• Average time on site
• Social media shares and likes
• And eye tracking studies too

These statistics tell you how your visitors are interacting with your site, if at all. Do they leave your site after a few seconds or stick around and view more pages? Do they like your landing pages or share them with their friends on social media? These are important metrics for telling how successful you are in presenting your brand to your visitors.

Metrics are an important part of marketing online. If you measure the right data, then you can make the right decisions about it can be used to affect your bottom line.

Published on: May 3, 2013