Okay listen up, I know, I know, it’s great to have a pretty website but just because something is pretty doesn’t mean it’s actually working for you. You have put hours and hours of work into your website and work regularly to bring in traffic. So, how do you know if what you are doing is working? Well, you need to be checking in on your data and analytics.
We need to find out what elements are currently shining and what could use some extra TLC.
Tracking your data is a great way to know what’s working and what’s not. But there is A LOT of data at your disposal, and not all of it is really worth your time tracking.
So now you’re wondering what is actually worth your time to track.
So let’s dive in!
Here are a few KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that ARE worth your time to track.
The first thing you’ll want to focus on when tracking your data is ensuring that your website is actually being seen. You have to have traffic on your website in order to get people to engage or to buy from you.
Traffic > Engage > Purchase
Is your traffic consistently and steadily increasing?
Comparing Q1 of this year to Q1 of last year, you’ll see that I’ve had a 507% increase in website traffic. That’s really great!
A great thing about reviewing data is that there are many ways to view information. For example, here’s a more linear view of my overall traffic growth over the last year.
You can also compare what happened when there was a big spike in your traffic! It could be something that you planned, like a launch or maybe you were featured on a podcast and that drove extra traffic. Or it could be that you posted some content that did particularly well.
Of course, before posting any content the last step is always to ensure that it is SEO-ready! Read our blog post here about making sure your blog is optimized for search engines.
This can be harder to calculate but I love using the chrome plugin “Keywords Everywhere” to help with these metrics.
Here’s the results for a keyword that I put in. My average position is 25th, which isn’t great and I’m only getting 7 clicks from this a month so I know that there is a lot of room for improvement if I want to rank higher for this keyword.
High bounce rates get a bad rap. But a short time spent on your site might not always be necessarily bad, it could mean that people are able to easily find the information that they are looking for. But on the flip side, a high bounce rate could mean that people aren’t engaged with the content so they are leaving.
You can check this metric in Google Analytics. The industry standard is for someone to be engaging with your website for 2-3 minutes.
You of course want new traffic always coming to your website but having a one-and-done strategy isn’t going to be sustainable. The content that you are putting out on your website should also be attracting people that have already visited your website to come back for more.
You can see how many people are returning to your website via Google Analytics under the “acquisition report” (this tells you how people are getting to your site).
Direct traffic will almost always be repeat visitors. Social may be a mix of new visitors and repeat visitors.
Overall your website is your space to be used how you intend. So base your data off of you! If something isn’t super important in your eyes then don’t worry too much about it. But there is always room for improvement. So check in every once in a while, or frequently depending on how much these numbers mean to you. Just be sure that your website is performing how you intended, and if it’s not, use this data to track different elements to find what works best for you!