Common Website KPIs
Pages/Session, Pages/User, Scroll Depth, Avg. Time on Page, Bounce Rate, Video Metrics.
In this article, without getting into detail on creating measurement plans for the business, we are going to look at some common key performance indicators. The configuration that we set up in Google Analytics, defines the data we want to collect and how Google Analytics transforms that data for reporting.
In order to get the report we would like to see, we need to articulate the business objectives and determine our metrics. For example, if our main goal is to generate ad revenue, we need to determine the value that we are looking for from the ads and define what metrics we need to look at.
Let’s assume, we have a content website, where we are looking to acquire and engage users with our content in order to educate them. (Maybe further direct them to a purchase site for the same company). Below are some of the common KPI metrics that we can look at.
1- Pages Per Session
2- Pages Per User
3- Repeated Users
4- Scroll Depth
5- Avg Time on Page
6- Bounce Rate
7- Video Metrics
Pages Per Session: The number of pages users review in each session can determine how much they content they consume. If they consume more content, they are more likely to see more ads. This will also increase the probability of them clicking on an ad.
For example; when we look at the Channels Report under the acquisition, we see that pages per session for users that are coming from Paid Search Channel has the highest number pages for each session. This is followed by Referral Channel. This means that sessions coming from a referral channel are engaging more than most of the other channels such as organic or social.
Pages Per User: This is an interesting KPI. By looking at the pages per user, we can figure out how much it costs to an advertising team to acquire valuable user. Pages Per User is not a standard metric and needs to be created as a calculated metric. We can do this by;
1- Go to Admin
2- Under View Select Calculated Metrics
3- Create Calculated Metric
4- Add Name, Formatting Type (Float or Integer) and Formula for the metric.
Depending on the business type, the pages per user might be a positive or a negative thing. As the marketing tactics change depending on trends, this approach changes as well. For example; most of the web strategy teams want users to find what they are looking for without going through multiple pages.
If that is one of the website objectives, we would want Pages Per User to be low. On the other hand, if we have a content site such as https://www.webmd.com/ we may want our users to browse through the site for content addition to what they were originally looking for.
Repeated Users: We can look to see if users are coming back to the site and define if our content is engaging. Similar to Pages Per User, even though users and new users are standard metrics, the repeated users are not. We can create this metric as a calculated metric as well. Setting up Repeat Users is an easy one, as it is essentially Users — New Users.
Scroll Depth: This metric, measures how far down the page user scrolls. Addition to providing insights on how much the user consumes the content, this metric also can provide insights for the user experience team on where to place certain content types within the page.
Scroll tracking can be set up as an event via Google Tag Manager, with the same process of creating any other event, by defining Event Category, Action and Label. We define a threshold trigger, where event fires 25,50,75 and 100% of the page scroll. Once the Scroll Depth Event is set up, we further need to define it in our Goal Settings.
1- Go to Admin
2- Select Goals
3- Goal Setup
4- Select Goal Description Event
5- Select Goal Details as Category: Scroll Tracking, Action Regular Expression (75/100), Label Equal to Label and Value Equal to Value.
This gives us the report on users that scroll 25,50,75 and 100% of the page.
Let’s say we have a site that we are driving users to, via paid with the objective of purchase conversion. If our click to purchase content on the bottom of the page and our users are not scrolling more than 50% of the page, we might consider making some changes to our paid or web content strategy.
Average Time on Page: This KPI is another good indicator if the user is consuming the content.
We can see that users spend most of their time viewing the Men’s Vintage Heather Shirt page followed by Nest — USA Page.
The success value of every metric depends on the business and website objective. For example, if we have a sign up or newsletter page , we would want users to spend as little time as possible and complete sign up. In this case, we would be looking for low Average Time on Page metric value. However, if we are expecting users to read our educational content for product purchase down the line or brand awareness, we are looking for high Average Time on Page metric value.
Bounce Rate: This metric gives us the percentage of single-page sessions, which means that user comes to a page within the site and without going through other pages, leaves the site completely.
There are many different possible positive or negative reasons why bounce rate might be high. For example, we might have an ad campaign where our goal is to drive users to a coupon page where they redeem the coupon on another retailer property. In this case, the high bounce rate would be expected. On the other hand, the high bounce rate might also indicate high page load speed time, where users come to the page and due to high page load time, they leave the site.
Video Metrics: With certain customizations and Event Tracking, we can look at users’ video content interactions. Some of the video content engagement metrics we can capture are;
- Video Watch Time / Video View
- Video Watch Time / Session
- Video Watch Time / User
- Video Watch Time / Session Duration
These metrics, can give us users engagement with the videos within the site. For example; we can see if the user pauses the video or watches the whole video fully. If our video has a CTA option at the end or in the middle of the content, we can also determine if users are clicking through for conversion.
The common KPI metrics, can be a good start in terms of getting insights from Google Analytics to further take certain actions towards the business goals. It is important to note that the acceptance criteria of each metric depend on the business objective. Based on our website objectives, we might want high or low bounce rates for a particular page, we might want high or low average time spent on page. KPI assessment should always map back to the measurement plan for the business.