Building the ideal website can be a time-consuming and tedious process. Especially if you have just started out on your business venture and are stressed out about creating brand awareness. Was it a restaurant business in the late memory of your grandma who made the best chili or an e-commerce venture to sell your paintings?
Whichever one you may have set up after putting in your blood sweat and tears, the next step is to bring it into the spotlight. How so? By building a website of course! Bringing together a competent team to design the website layout, the infographics and create appropriate content needed for it can be extremely costly. You may even outsource it to website development agency skilled enough and equipped with the right website-building tools to transpire your vision into a reality.
However, the anxiety doesn’t end once the website is complete. Assessing its performance is next on the list. From how well it’s directing traffic to your sales to how often it’s visited and contributes towards maximizing customer engagement, all need to be monitored and evaluated. These are known as Key Performance Indicators and most commonly referred to as KPIs in the digital world.
Why so? Well, because getting a website up and running is a huge investment, and as a business owner, you want to view the return on investment i.e. the ROI. By doing so, it becomes easier to track your goals and execute your business plans proficiently. It plays an important role in determining how successful your business venture will be – an ill-performing website is a harsh indicator of how you might not make it far, giving you an idea of which areas to improve upon.
So, if you want to learn all the complicated lingo when it comes to a website assessment and track its performance effectively, then you have come to the right place. Read ahead to learn how you can assess the performance of your website and become a pro at it in no time.
Why Website Performance Matters
This is a question asked by many business owners struggling with the upkeep of their website. For many, the website is forgotten and overlooked once made. By doing so they are hurting their brand without even realizing it. If you are one of them, then you should take a step back and reexamine your decision.
So, why exactly should web performance matter? The answer to which can be broken down as follows.
Reflects User Experience
At first, website performance reflects on the so-called “user experience”. This is the perception of the utility the user gains from viewing your website. The ease of use, the efficiency, and overall interaction a user experiences and feels when visiting your website. You definitely want it to be worth it for them! This is what keeps them coming back to avail your services or purchase your product frequently.
Reflects On Your Brands Popularity
Not only this, but your website reflects your brands’ perception and awareness. No matter how creative your service may be or how high the quality of your product may be, inept website performance can throw your brand off track and give your competitors an edge over you. It’ll drive potential customers away to other websites instead. If anything, you want your website to be user-friendly and easy to navigate by any age group.
What Exactly Are Key Performance Indicators?
The name speaks for itself – a Key Performance Indicator is a metric used to monitor any business prospect or venture. There is a large selection of KPIs out there and they all vary according to the nature of your organization and the industry. These aspects help in identifying any inactivity, opportunity, or factor which be impacting your business directly or indirectly.
From a vast pool of resources and KPI tools, finding the one best suited for website performance assessment can be a daunting task. However, you need not worry. Read ahead to find out the foremost KPIs you can learn about and use to monitor the performance of your website.
The KPIs to Keep Any Eye On
Using the right KPIs can help you understand the dynamics of your website better and improve upon them when needed. It is a vital aspect you should focus upon to achieve your business goals.
Here are the top 5 KPIs that can help in website performance assessment.
1. The Audience Reach and Impact
Measuring your audience is the first KPI to check upon. How is this done? By tracking the number of visits on your website. There are various tools you can use to do this, such as Google Analytics which tracks website traffic. Traffic here is the number of visits your website receives. It helps monitor how many new visitors reach your website as well as how recurring the visits are from returning visitors. Impact on the other hand shows how many of those visitors convert to customers and purchase your product or service.
The benefit of this shows how large or small your audience is. You can collect and analyze this data set in intervals – be it weekly, monthly or quarterly, to view the growth trajectory. If visits are low and not able to pick up the pace, this is a signal for you to bring in more ideas to direct traffic to your website – for instance, a promotional offer may help boost engagement.
Not only this, but returning visitors are an important factor to consider as well. It is a positive sign showing people are thinking of your product or service and might be interested in purchasing your product again. Thus, highlighting customer retention!
2. The Traffic Source
More than monitoring traffic to your website, it is important to know where it is being directed from. How exactly are they reaching your website is an important variable in determining how effective your brand awareness is. Is it via Google search? A marketing campaign you launched last month? Any specific keyword you used in your website content, or via an email campaign? This helps in getting to know your potential customers better and deploy specific marketing techniques to direct sales.
Google Analytics, for instance, collates this data into different categories based on geographic location, age, gender, and interests. If visits are concentrated in another city, this may help provide you with the prospect of expanding your business or offering delivery service to those potential customers.
Some of the popular traffic routes originate from the following sources.
- Social media – via links and announcements on your social media platforms
- Direct – via typing your direct URL onto the browser
- Paid – via PPC (Pay Per Click) ads
- Referrals – via any other website or social media platform that may have linked your website in their content
- Organic – via Search Engine Optimization and use of keyword
- Emails – via email campaigns sent to previous/existing customers
3. Average Time and Bounce Rate
The main goal here is to convert your visits into potential customers. The higher the conversion rate, the better the prospects are for you and your business. Why is this important? Well, the more time they spent navigating through your website, the higher the chances are for them to buy a product. It will not only increase brand awareness but reap you profits. This is what you’re aiming for!
For instance, if they have reached your website via a targeted ad on your social media regarding a sale on household items, they may spend time scrolling through your website. They may access other web pages for different products as well. This will up your probability of conversions occurring and lead to more orders placed online.
Not only this but the bounce rate is a negative indicator here. This is when the visitor leaves your website immediately due to multiple reasons – your website may be difficult to navigate; it may be lacking in aesthetically pleasing infographics or may not be able to provide the ideal user experience. Thus, indicating a signal for you to invest in these aspects and rework which areas to reinvent.
4. The Return On Investment and Profits
The return you get in your website investment is vital as well. If you’re spending and investing more than what’s coming in from customers, then you are probably doing something wrong. You need to reassess your plan right away. Rethink which areas you can improve upon and adjust to the changing trends and consumer behaviors. Measuring your conversion rates, traffic flow and bounce rates will help readjust your marketing strategies in a manner where the right audience is reached and the impact is created.
You don’t want to just break even for a long time, that is not sustainable for your business growth. So, by aligning these KPIs along with your business plans, budget and, sales, you can draft long-term projections and think ahead about the future of your business venture.
5. The Speed – The Bulls Eye!
The money is all in the speed. The quicker your website loads, the higher the conversion rate and the better the traffic flows in. If not, the bounce rate will probably be high as the visitor will not want to spend time on a website that takes ages to load. An average visitor expects web pages to load within a few seconds – ideally, 3 seconds is the mark. You might want to check up on this via analyzing your website speed optimization.
You can run tests to check which content and infographics you can use to run your website in an optimal manner. Do your research and pick the fastest web host to get you the results you’re looking for. Web hosts can be either shared or virtual private servers, the latter being costlier but faster at getting you the speed you desire.
Reducing plug-ins is also another way to optimize website speed. Remove any unnecessary plug-ins which may be hampering the user experience. Only keep those which are needed and remember to maintain them on a regular basis.
And, consider using a Content Delivery Network, also known as a CDN, to serve up your website content with faster load times. We offer free use of our CDN for clients who are on certain WordPress Maintenance Plans with us.
A Few Tips to Up Your Marketing Game
With these KPIs, you can up your marketing strategy. Here are some tips on how to increase conversion rates and lower bounce rates – the key to website performance assessment.
- Come up with catchy invitations and phrases – most commonly known as a Call to Action
- Place CTAs strategically around your website – add them to multiple webpages to direct the user to place an order easily
- Make sure the CTAs are clear to comprehend and communicate your message effectively
- Use Search Engine Optimization tools to pick up the right keywords – this will direct traffic to your website efficiently
The Bottom Line – Get Started Right Away!
There you have it! Now that you have become well versed in Website Assessment 101, you can start improving on your website today! Discuss with your colleagues the way forward and brainstorm new ideas.
Coordinate with the most tech-savvy and skilled person on your team to execute your ideas effectively and promptly. If need be, you can even hire an expert or professional to assist you or you can get in touch with a digital marketing agency such as Nora Kramer Designs to guide you further. Try it out and see the difference it makes in your website performance assessment strategy.
Remember, your website is technically the face of your brand. You want to make sure it’s welcoming and friendly. This is what influences the ideal performance and boosts engagement to drives sales to the top! Don’t miss out on this important aspect of online marketing and get down to it today! You will be glad you did it without any further delay.
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