IT Marketing: Measuring the Response
Sometimes in the world of online marketing, things aren’t always as they seem. You might be an expert in your field, driving tons of traffic to your website, but if you can’t measure the response rate to that traffic, it is impossible to know whether or not your efforts are truly paying off. The truth is that there are several metrics out there that could be helpful when determining what is going on with your website's performance and ensuring its ongoing growth. In this blog post we teach you nine most important metrics for interpreting the performance of any website or app.
Pageviews: You’ve probably heard this term before—a pageview is the number of individual pages that have been shown on your website. Pageviews are a good indicator of general interest in your content, but they aren’t necessarily very specific. What you really want to know is how many people are clicking on your links and what they are doing once they get there; pageviews alone can’t provide that information. Clickthrough Rate (CTR): CTR refers to how often an advertisement or link leads to an actual click of the link by the end user. For example, if a visitor clicks on an advertisement or link on your website only 10% of the time, that ad/link has a CTR of 10%. There are some who argue that CTR is not a very good indication of the success of a campaign. Whether or not this is true depends on the content being viewed. For example, if someone is looking for information about breast augmentation in both men and women, then you might be more likely to see a higher CTR than with another topic where there are only people interested in it. [Citation needed] But, back to those of you who are interested in women’s issues—depending on what the audience is there for, you might see a lower CTR than with another topic.
Visitors: The first time someone visits your website, that person is considered a “visitor.” Later visits are recorded as “clicks.” The number of visits to your site can indicate the amount of traffic you are receiving and your overall success as well as the content being viewed. This metric helps you know if future marketing strategies should be focused on attracting more traffic or leveraging current visitors to remain loyal.
Sessions: A session is defined as the period of time a user spends on your website. It does not include the amount of time a user spends on other websites that are linked from your site. This metric helps you determine how well your current advertisements and content are holding up to attracting new visitors as well as keeping current ones. It also helps you see what topics tend to be “stickier” than others and thus you can improve that type of content while eliminating those topics that are not effective in keeping those sticky visitors there longer. Average Time Spent On Site (ATSS): ATSS basically translates into how long someone will spend on your website before they click out to another website or leave altogether. The longer someone stays on your site, the more they are likely to be interested in your content and the more likely it is that they will make a purchase from you. [Citation needed] Engagement Time: This metric measures how long the average person spends on your website in a single session. It helps determine whether or not people are spending a lot of time reading your content or if they are leaving immediately after visiting a few pages. Performance is determined by total visits divided by total sessions = 1/.
Transactions: This metric measures how often users make purchases from you; it’s important because this can tell you how profitable each individual campaign is since sales on average correlate to revenue generation. In addition, it can help you determine if your site is being used to distribute different types of content—such as products and media—and whether they are working together or not. For example, if you are distributing content that appeals to women but don’t currently have a product you can promote with that content, then that strategy is already at a disadvantage before it even starts. [Citation needed]
Conversions: This metric measures how many people actually make purchases from you; whether it be products or services. It’s important because this gives you an idea of how profitable each individual campaign is since sales on average correlate to revenue generation. In addition, it can help you determine if your site is being used to distribute different types of content—such as products and media—and whether they are working together or not. [Citation needed]
Listing: The average number of pages that are on a website, broken down by category. This metric allows you to see what category your site resonates most with and which pages tend to be visited most often. It also gives you an idea of what information readers are looking for when they land on your site—allowing you to create new content based on their search patterns and preferences.
You can find a more detailed list of metrics on Amalia’s Blog.
When it comes to metrics, the most important thing to remember is that multiple metrics will give you more information about your website's performance and thus can help you make attractive and informed marketing decisions. But, with so many metrics out there—and most of them focusing on the same types of information—you risk getting lost in the technical jargon. At AdvertiseMint we focus on creating customized solutions for each one of our clients.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are a number of ways to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Each metric has its purpose and value, but no one method is the best for all businesses. So, one of the most important things you can do when starting out with marketing and measuring your campaigns is to decide what will be your focus. Are you more interested in branding or sales? If sales is what you are interested in, then you might choose to focus on making sure each campaign that goes out leads to a conversion (or sale) versus creating a new follower on Facebook—even though adding followers brings in more consumers who can potentially make a purchase at some point in time.