10 Key Metrics for Businesses to track!
In a world of digital advertising and marketing, it’s important to measure your statistics in order to know how your business is doing. Therefore, there are numerous metrics and numbers you could track, but to give you a solid starting guide I’ve listed 10 metrics you definitely should track as a brand :
1. Overall and specific traffic
2. Conversions
3. Bounce Rate
4. Customer Demographics
5. Link Clicks
6. Page Likes and follows
7. Engagement Rate
8. Reach
9. Impressions
10. Click through rate
Now let’s dig into more details!
As you know, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world. Because they’re a search engine, they have tons of data about your brands. So, if you don’t have a Google Analytics account yet, it’s time to create one — it’s totally free! Google allows you to even do an online course about it so you can learn the Google Analytics Skills. You will notice it can have a huge impact on your business strategy. Let’s see what you can do with this tool:
1. Overall and Specific Traffic
First of all, you definitely want to know how many people visited or engaged with your website. Google analytics allows you to track how much traffic you have and especially where it comes from. You must know what your total and specific traffic is. How to do it?
Before you start, make sure you are at your Google Analytics dashboard.
Step 1: Click at “Acquisition”
Step 2: Click at “Overview”
Step 3: Check your statistics in the “Sessions” table.
Let’s explain what everything means
a) Organic Search: These are people who searched for you in a search engine like Google or Bing and clicked on your website’s listing in the organic (non-paid) search results.
b) Direct: This is when people directly type in your URL or when the omnibox automatically fills in because they have been there.
c) Referral: Actually, this is your external traffic. People who came to your website via another website. This means that people followed a link on a different domain to get to you.
d) Social: You already can guess this one. These are all the visits you have from a social media platform like Facebook and Instagram.
It’s really important to analyze your best performing mediums so you can adjust your strategy. For example, if you notice that only 5% of your visits come from social media, you know that you need to give your social media a boost somehow!
2. Conversions
Initially, a “conversion” is when a visitor of your website becomes an actual paying customer. But in this world of digital marketing, it got a broader perspective. So, whenever a visitor completes any action, such as clicking a download button, signing up for the newsletter, creating an account, etc. All these are conversions.
Kapost (a marketing platform) describes it as followed: “The number of anonymous visitors who become known records in your marketing database.
But now you’re thinking, how to track conversions?
Step 1: Google Analytics Dashboard
Step 2: Go to conversions
Step 3: Click on Goals
Step 4: Go to overview
Step 5: Click at view full reports
3. Bounce rate
Your bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who enter your website and then leave (bounce) instead of continuing to view other pages within the same site.
Be aware that this number is very relative. It could be that people leave your website because they immediately found the information they need. On the other hand, people may leave your website because of a bad design or user experience. So, try to track down why they leave!
How to track it?
Overall Website:
Step 1 — Go to Acquisition > All traffic > Channels
Step 2 — Choose a specific channel to see just that channel’s performance
Step 3 — Check the Bounce Rate column
Individual Page:
Step 1: Go to Behavior > Site Content
Step 2: Select All either Pages or Landing Pages
Step 3: Check the Bounce Rate column
4. User demographics
Google Analytics also gives you a little insight on the demography of your users or customers. What’s important here is that you find out who your users are. This way you can find out if you reach the right people and if they’re relevant to your goal.
It will give you insights about the age, gender, location and even their interest. If you analyze this data properly, you can (if needed) adjust your strategy and conquer your market! How to find it?
Step 1: Go the audience
Step 2: Select locations
Step 3: Scroll down to get actual number values for location by country, city or continent.
PS. Facebook and Instagram also give insights about the demographics of your audience. You can find this within your statistics if you have a business account on Instagram, or a page on facebook.
5. Link Clicks
Which specific updates, stories or any other link got clicked and which one actually bought something? Using UTM links [Urchin Tracking Module], you helps you receive more detailed information about it from Google Analytics. UTM links are linked to Google Analytics and they analyze the user data on another level! You can use the URL-Builder of Google for this.
Besides Google Analytics,Facebook’s and Instagram’s business tool are also very useful! You should use and analyze it quite often, it will give you a ton of relevant data! Which leads us to the number 6 of our key metrics:
6. Page Likes and Follows
This is the easiest number to track, just go to your profile and you can see it immediately. But you can also take a look into the audience section of your metrics to check if your audience is increasing or decreasing through time. If you want to grow your audience on Instagram, check out these tips on our previous post on Medium.
7. Engagement Rate
Normally you’ll think this metric is only important for Facebook and Instagram. But actually, all other social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc track Engagement as well. The engagement rate allows you to know if people engage with your posts. This rate gives you an indication of how much people interact with your posts, such as likes, comments, shares, or even clicks on a link or whatever people can do.
We will show you how you can find the engagement rate on Facebook and Instagram. Remember, the higher this rate is, the better.
To track it on Facebook:
Step 1: Go to your Facebook page of your brand
Step 2: Click on Insights
Step 3: Click on Post Engagement
To track it on Instagram:
You can calculate this yourself, per post and/or your average. It’s very simple: Pick a post, add all the likes and comments and then divide it by your total followers. Multiple again with 100 for a percentage.
For example: you have 170 likes and 8 comments on your latest post. 170 + 8 = 178.
178/1549 [total followers] * 100 = 11.49%. Make an average of all your post and you know your total engagement rate. If you are too lazy to calculate it yourself, you can use a tool like Phlanx and it will give you an average Engagement Rate.
8. Reach
How many people do you reach with your posts? In other words, how many people see your posts?
You can find this easily on the Insights of your Facebook page, per post you can have all details you need. It is also possible for Instagram, if you have a business account, to spot you reach very easily within your Instagram Insights. If you have trouble with these features, check out the Instagram Help section.
9. Impressions
When someone sees your post 3 times, i.e. when people share your post, this counts for 3 impressions. While reach only counts one, because it’s the same person. Anyway, impressions are as important as your reach. The higher this rate is, the better it is!
10. Click Through Rate
This is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to a number of total users who view, post, or advertisement. This rate can vary a lot, depending on the content and the interests of your audience.
How to track it:
Number of clicks divided by the impressions and then multiply it with 100 for your eventual CTR. For example, you had 5 clicks on your latest ad, but it had 245 impressions then: 5/245*100 = 2.04%.
With these 10 metrics you can analyze your brand and adjust your strategy, however, needed. And remember, if you’re strategy needs some extra influencers, don’t hesitate to contact us!
