The average page load time for 46% of websites is six to ten seconds, more than twice the time that Google recommends.
However, over 50% of internet users will blame their internet connection’s strength or lack thereof before they blame the website itself.
Not all website performance metrics have that advantage though!
The ocean of website metrics is vast and deep. Unlike Earth’s oceans, it’s been extensively explored and we know what you need to know! Guess what? We’re about to share it with you!
Keep reading intrepid website performance explorer, we’ve got a lot to show you!
About Website Performance Metrics
If you don’t track your data, it’s impossible to optimize and produce real results. Marketers have to monitor their website performance and conversion rate in order to map out their potential downfalls or their successes.
Your website is the most important part of your marketing strategy because it:
- Boost your search engine visibility and increase your website traffic
- Should convert visitors to customers
- Establish a distinct brand identity for your company
In order to keep your website as effective and high-functioning as possible, you need to keep an eye on the metrics. Using the information you gather, record, and then interpret, you and your team can lay out a plan for an entirely new website or just some minor tweaks on your current one.
What experience is your customer getting? What metrics do you need to measure this?
Which Metrics Are Important To Measure?
The performance metrics that you measure on your website are very similar to the ones that you would use to see how well your car is running.
A quick example? If your mileage has gone down for each tank of gas you use, then there’s a problem somewhere, right? Perhaps you need to see which parts are not working properly in order to figure out how to get your car running at its optimum levels and give you the performance you want. The same goes for your website!
1. The Source Of Your Traffic
You can see which campaigns bring qualified traffic to your business by tracking your traffic by source. It helps you figure out which marketing campaigns produce the best results so you can devote more time and resources to them. This website KPI can also be used to determine which campaigns need to be improved.
2. The Duration Of An Average Session
The average session duration is the amount of time people spend interacting with your company during a single session.
Any pages a person visits and interacts with during their time on your website are considered a session. You want to see a longer average session duration because it means your website is providing your audience with helpful, valuable, and useful information.
3. Loading Speed Of Pages
To provide users with the useful information they seek, your website must load quickly.
Google Analytics can be used to monitor how quickly your website loads. Individual page load times can be viewed to gain insight into how these pages perform. It allows you to pinpoint individual pages that take a long time to load in order to optimize them.
As the page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, the likelihood of a bounce increases by 32%.
4. Bounce Rates
Bounce rate refers to the number of people who visit one page on your website and then leave without visiting any other pages.
This metric is one of the most important KPIs for your website because it indicates whether you’re giving your visitors a good time. If your bounce rate is high across the board, it usually means your page isn’t relevant to the searchers.
5. Conversion Rates
The conversion rate compares the percentage of people who convert after seeing an advertisement or marketing piece to the total number of people who saw the materials. This particular website KPI is crucial for determining how well your website generates revenue.
Google Analytics makes it simple to see which channels are responsible for conversions.
6. Your Top Pages
The top pages metric identifies the most popular pages of your website. It’s possible to learn a lot about your site’s visitors by looking at your highest-performing page.
Consider posting similar blog posts if your top page is dominated by a specific type of blog post.
7. Returning Or Unique Visitors
The number of repeat visitors can help you determine how well your site attracts and retains visitors. Divide the number of return visits by the total number of visits to your website to calculate your returning visitors.
Unique visitors, on the other hand, can help you determine the number of new leads that you’re attracting.
So, in fact, you want a high number of both types of visitors!
Strategies To Drive Better Website Performance
We know that your website performance is absolutely key to providing your visitors with a positive user experience and ultimately, creating online success for your website.
If you don’t prioritize your website performance, you’re likely to start seeing some of these things happen:
- Shoppers abandoning their shopping carts
- Leads and conversions lost
- The creation of dissatisfied customers who can potentially harm your brand’s reputation
- A lower ranking in search engine ranking
So without further ado, let’s have a look at the strategies you can implement to improve your website performance metrics!
1. Use UI/UX Web Design
User experience design (UI/UX) techniques improve the usability, accessibility, and performance of a website. When implementing UI/UX practices, it’s critical to keep your company’s goals in mind. Your website’s design should facilitate a customer journey that is in line with its purpose.
The design of an online store, for example, should make it simple and convenient for any visitor to make a purchase. An online store should not have a complicated store that is difficult to navigate or complex checkout systems that drive users away.
2. Create Worthy Content
Content marketing is a website optimization strategy that aids in increasing site traffic. It’s a method of planning, producing, and disseminating content that informs visitors about your products, services, and industry.
This website optimization strategy boosts brand awareness, loyalty, and authority. As a result, your website’s performance and search engine ranking may improve. Creating content tailored specifically to your target audience is how you achieve positive results.
3. Focus On On-Page SEO
The practice of optimizing web page content for search engines is on-page SEO. It will tell search engines that your website answers visitors’ questions if you improve it. On-page SEO is a component of search engine optimization that helps your website appear higher on search engine results pages.
So, as a foundation for this, focus on things like strong, well-researched keyword strategies. Also, on-page SEO means you need to work on header tags, meta titles, and descriptions, and also follow best practices with your blog posts and other content.
4. Tactful And Technical SEO
Technical SEO can be a burden for most people who aren’t completely tech-savvy. The jargon and terminology alone can send even those of us who are in digital marketing, reeling.
Technical SEO needs to be done though! So, add it to your tactics list!
Optimizing your crawling and indexing should be prioritized. Also, you’ll want to improve your website’s design and structure and fix any broken links and pages. The fewer technical errors your website has, the better your user experience will be and the higher search engines will rank your site.
5. Responsiveness And Different Devices
Take a brief moment to think about how many different smartphones, tablets, handheld devices, desktop devices, laptops, iPads, and other internet-connected devices there are out there.
Now, each of them has a different size screen and a different user driving them.
Your website should be built to anticipate this. Responsive websites are built with this in mind, they adapt and change to the device that they are being viewed or used.
And guess what? Mobile optimization not only helps you reach a larger audience, but it also works with Google’s mobile-first indexing.
6. Link-Building Strategies Still Work
Link-building is almost like the online version of word-of-mouth marketing. Think of it this way:
Someone is talking about a new type of cheese they tried, in this case, they are writing an article about this cheese, and they insert a link to where they bought it. In conversation, they might say, “I got the cheese at Joe’s!” And, off you head to check out Joe’s and buy some cheese!
That’s how link building works! Except, you could have 20 people saying that your service or product is the cheese they recommend! And all those links point to your business.
Prioritize getting authoritative sites to point to your website, either by guest posting or simply by putting up link-worthy content. It will pay off.
Venture Forth Explorer, And Measure Those Metrics!
You’ve got it down! You know which website performance metrics you should be measuring, you know which strategies you are most likely missing, all that’s left is for you to venture forth and implement the changes.
As you navigate the seas of website metrics, remember that the journey is not an overnight one, you will not arrive at the golden treasure tomorrow but over time and with the dedication to your strategy, you’ll start to see results and your performance will start to give you the rewards that you’re looking for!
Not ready to go alone? Take us with you, we can help you create a website even the most seaworthy brands would be envious of, contact us now.