It’s the question that every website owner and marketing manager is dying to know. How well is your website performing? Any good business should measure their performance. Setting targets and striving to reach them is a core part of business. It’s no different online. Today, we’ll show you how to monitor your site and measure how well it’s doing.
Of course, before you can do that, you need to set goals. Numbers and figures mean nothing without a yardstick to measure it against. For example, if you if your blog got 100,000 views this month, it might be a triumph! But, if Facebook got 100,000 this month, it would be a disaster. Start by setting yourself realistic targets and goals. Then you can measure how well you perform.
Google Analytics
This fantastic tool is the best way to measure your web traffic. Google Analytics tracks every single visitor to your website and measures their behaviour. The first, and obvious, metric to measure is the overall traffic, your ‘pageviews’. That’s how many pages were loaded in total on your website. Another important statistic is ‘unique visits’. That’s how many unique people came to your site this month. A good target that most blogs set in the early days is 200 pageviews a day. At this level, you can begin to monetise your site.
SEO Audit
One of the most important aspects of your web presence is where you rank on Google. Naturally, you want your site to appear on the first page. One way to measure your performance is to track where you rank for certain keywords. If you’re a web designer, for example, search “web designer [your town]” and see where you rank. SEO audits are a more detailed way of measuring your search performance. A team of experts will test and analyse your site for SEO optimisation. It’s a good measure of where you can improve.
Social media stats
Your online presence involves more than just your website. It’s also vital that you measure the performance of your social media channels. The first, and obvious, statistic is your number of likes and followers. A strong, stable following suggests you’re reaching lots of people and providing a good service. However, a more influential statistic is your engagement figures. How many people are actually engaging with you on social media? How many people are sharing your posts and retweeting your tweets? How many people are clicking through to your website from social media? This shows you how well your marketing is working.
Ask your users
Of course, the most useful information comes from your users themselves. Why not ask them how you’re doing? Use anonymous questionnaires and surveys on your site to measure performance. Ask users what you could improve and how they rate your site.
Conversions
These numbers all mean nothing unless you’re turning a profit. The only true metric of website performance is conversions. How many people are buying your product? Or clicking your affiliate links? Or downloading your software? Are you hitting your main goal? That’s the true measure of performance.
As a website owner, you should always be analysing and measuring your performance. Keep looking for ways to improve!
