How To Measure A Website’s Success: 6 Website Metrics That Matter

The total amount of traffic

The first important metric for your website you should keep an eye on is the total amount of traffic coming to your website daily.

How many page views does your site receive on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis?

Is the number going up the longer your site is live?

Are more people visiting during seasonal months like Christmas, Black Friday, or around Valentine’s day?

You can also check to see where the traffic is coming from. You can hone in on the geographic location to see if your website is getting local, national, or international traffic.

With this data, you should be able to distinguish the people visiting your site, and then figure out how best to convert them into sales. This will provide you with valuable information to help improve your website going forward.

The source of the traffic

Checking the original source of your website traffic is the second metric we’re going to look at.

What are the sources that are driving your traffic?

Is it organic Google sources, inbound links from other sites, paid traffic from your adverts, or are people coming to your website from social media?

All this is extremely valuable information as it can tell you exactly where to focus your marketing efforts and where you can improve.

Average session duration

How much time people spend on your site is definitely an important metric to keep track of. By monitoring how long your visitors are spending on your site you’ll know how engaged they are with your content.

If you’re noticing that people aren’t staying on your website very long then your content might not be grabbing and retaining their attention.

Every business owner should track the average session time. The average session time holds a lot of value to marketers as it shows you how effectively your site is meeting the intent of the user.

If you have a higher average session time, then your user intent is being met, and they’re staying engaged with your content.

It’s a great way to see what content is resonating with your target audience and what isn’t working.

If your average session duration is high but your users aren’t converting or moving through your site then there could be something wrong with your calls-to-action. If the average duration is low and your bounce rate is high then your user interface might need a bit of work.

Your bounce rate

How many people are leaving your website before converting? How many visitors are staying on your website for only a couple of seconds before leaving?

The bounce rate tells you how many website visitors opened your page and clicked off right away. Most websites have a bounce rate somewhere between 26% and 70%. A high bounce rate would be anywhere in the 70s or higher.

If your bounce rate is high then this shows us that your content either isn’t grabbing your user’s attention, it’s not answering their questions, or it might be confusing to read.

Bounce rate is an important part of seeing whether something is working or not on your website. It’s a good indicator that your visitors aren’t connecting with what your website is offering.

First impressions make a big difference on the web. If you see a high bounce rate on your website then your visitors could have either been underwhelmed by the design or overwhelmed by the amount of content and calls-to-action there were.

94% of first impressions relate to your site’s web design so if you want to keep your visitors engaged you should make sure your website is user-friendly, easy to read, and that it looks nice.

Pages viewed per session

The pages per session metric are the next thing you should check out after your bounce rate. If the visitor didn’t leave right away where did they go next? How many other pages did they interact with during their visit before they left your site?

All this can be figured out with the pages per session and audience flow metrics.

You can use this metric to figure out what pages your audience is viewing and what they’re looking for.

You can find out:

• What they’re looking for
• What content appealed to them
• What kept them engaged
• What made them disengage and exit the site

When you figure out all of this you can tailor your content specifically for them.

This is a brilliant way to understand which of your pages are guiding users deeper into your website and which ones are causing them to lose interest.

Click-through rate (CTR)

Engagement all comes down to the click-through rate on your search results.

If your website is getting a lot of impressions in the search results but has a low CTR then this could be a sign that your website CTAs could need work, your contact forms aren’t working correctly, or you’re not delivering what people expect.