4 Top Web Analytics Marketing Metrics You Need To Know

Using analytics platforms can be a bit overwhelming at first. Numbers and metrics jump out at you from every corner of the page, each one begging for your attention and slyly letting you know that it could provide the important insight you’ve been searching for.

So which metrics should you hone in on? Truthfully, it depends on your company goals. In different industries, different metrics are viewed as more or less important. However, there are four we find important across most industries.

Engagement Rate

A bit of a buzzword these days, the term ‘engagement’ is used frequently…but what does it mean and how do you track engagement level?

We’ve found two engagement metrics to be particularly helpful:

• Average Session Duration: The average amount of time one spends during a session.
• Scroll Depth: The percentage of page scroll.

How many pages are visited, how much content is consumed and how many ads are viewed can all be tied back to Average Session Duration, with a longer Average Session Duration potentially indicating more engaged users.

If you’re in the eCommerce industry, for example, your end goal is for a customer to make a purchase. Before they get to that point, most customers first click into categories, perform searches and read product reviews. All of these pre-purchase steps take time, leading to a higher session duration. If you have a very short Average Session Duration, this may be indicative of an engagement issue.

Our other engagement metric, Scroll Depth, indicates the amount of content that is consumed on a page. If you have an article with 100% Scroll Depth, for example, people are scrolling all the way through the content and (presumably) reading along the way. This assists you two-fold: 1) You can analyze the type of content that your users find most engaging and create more content on a related topic or in a similar style and 2) You can promote your most engaging content to improve overall website engagement.

A good example of scroll tracking, as it relates to eCommerce, is setting up scroll tracking for product impressions. Shameless (but useful!) Plug: We wrote an in-depth article on How To Setup Enhanced Ecommerce Impressions Using Scroll Tracking that you can check out on the InfoTrust blog.

Interested in diving into more engagement metrics? Medium has a great article on the engagement metric that is most important to them and how they track it.

Bounce Rate %

Do you ever get to a website, realize it isn’t what you were looking for after all, and go back to your search results? That, my friend, is a bounce. And Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits your website receives, during which the user leaves from the entrance page.

It’s pretty straightforward that you’d like users to dive deeper into the website, reading about features or signing up for a free trial. So what’s a guy or gal to do if their website has an increasing Bounce Rate?

Consider adding a stronger Call-To-Action, sprucing up the content a bit (make sure your organization’s vibe is represented in the copy) or reworking navigation to make it easier for visitors to get around.

New vs Returning Users

In many industries, your goal is to have a funnel of website visitors. You want a core group of returning users and a steady flow of new users, allowing for a consistent stream of conversions.

Here are some great questions to ask about your users:

• Which group has a higher conversion rate?
• Which group has a higher Average Order Value (if applicable)?
• Which group has a higher Average Session Duration?
• What are the primary channels taken to get to your website for each group?

For example, you may find that returning users have a higher conversion rate while new users have a higher Average Session Duration. Looking at this data, we could account for it by reasoning that the returning users are closer in the funnel to becoming customers while new users are further up in the funnel and are performing research before taking the plunge.

Regardless of the data you find, understanding the behavior of the two groups will help you better craft marketing campaigns and goals.

Conversion Rate

From visitor to lead to sale — oh my! This is what we like to call a conversion funnel and it is oh-so-important in both B2B and B2C marketing. So let’s go through it together, shall we?

Top of the Funnel

The earliest stage, the top of the funnel is the “foot in the door”, so to speak. At this level, we use the Sessions metric, which tracks a group of interactions that take place on your website in a given time frame. More sessions is, ultimately, more opportunity for conversion.

Middle of the Funnel

Once we have someone on our website, we’d like them to take an action that turns them into a lead. Essentially, we want to know who they are so we can take steps to move them into the bottom of the funnel.

It could be signing up for a newsletter, registering for a webinar or any other number of micro-conversions. Note that it’s important to track these various micro-conversions as Events or Goals, so you can analyze the conversion rate of each and how they play into the success of sales.

Bottom of the Funnel

It’s time to focus in on what, for many industries, is the most important metric of all: Ecommerce Conversion Rate, which is the percentage of visits resulting in a transaction.

In the middle of the funnel, we discussed micro-conversions. Ecommerce Conversion Rate is all about macro-conversions: Purchases, account creations, new subscriptions and contact forms. These macro-conversions are critical to understanding conversion success and the macro-conversion(s) that is important to you will vary based on the industry you are in.

Here are some examples of macro-conversions as it relates to an industry:

• eCommerce: Purchases
• Magazines or Content: New Subscriptions
• SaaS: New Accounts
• Services: Contact Form Submits

It’s important to really think through, and discuss with stakeholders, the metrics you track and what they mean to your organization. As we’ve mentioned several times, each organization is different and your unique goals will inform the metrics that are most important to you. That said, we hope this gives you a solid start on understanding marketing metrics!

About the Author

Kaylie Kipe is the marketing manager at InfoTrust, a passionate group of analytics consultants. When the team is not writing about analytics on their blog, running webinars or carefully mapping out infrastructure, they enjoy Slack chatting animated gifs to one another and the occasional ping-pong tournament.

Connect with them on Twitter @InfoTrustLLC or on Facebook.