A website is an incredibly valuable resource for any business. It is the backbone of your business and supports all of your online marketing efforts. For this reason, most businesses spend a lot of time and money building their website. However, website development is not a one-time task. You need to continually ensure that the website is performing at its best, regardless of the changes that are always taking place. You must monitor your website’s performance metrics to gain an insight into how it is doing and whether it needs any updates. Here are some of the most important metrics every website owner must track:
Page Speed
It is among the most important website performance metrics to monitor. When someone visits a website, they don’t want to wait so you must ensure that your website loads is as fast as possible. Slow page speeds could make people leave your site. They will likely end up on your competitor’s website. From a technical viewpoint, there are three metrics that measure page speed:
- Time To First Byte (TTFB) or the server response time
- Transfer time or the time it takes to download an HTML page
- Time it takes to render the webpage in a browser
FP/FCP
These metrics refer to the first pixels that get rendered after a user accesses your site and the time it takes for the user to see them. First Paint (FP) is the point when the browsers draw something on the page while First Contentful Paint (FCP) is the point when the browser starts displaying the pieces of content such as images or text. The most important parts of the site should load first and fast.
Time to title
This refers to the amount of time from the user’s website request to the time your website title manifests on the browser tab. When the title appears fast, it gives confidence to the users that the site is legitimate.
Bounce rate
It measures the number of people who visit a page on your website and leave immediately without visiting any other page. Bounce rate is a good indication of whether or not you are delivering a positive user experience to the visitors. In case all or most of your pages have a high bounce rate, it means searchers don’t find your pages relevant. You can optimize your pages better to keep visitors engaged longer.
Page views
It measures the number of times a page on your site is seen by a visitor. Every time a page on your site is loaded in a browser, it counts as one page view. In case the same visitor loads the same page twice, it would count as two views. High and increasing page views indicate successful brand awareness and SEO efforts.
Traffic source
It is important to determine where your website traffic is coming from. You must know whether the visitors are coming from referrals, social media, or organic search. Depending on the results, you may have to tweak your content strategy to ensure that all traffic sources are working for you.
Conversion and conversion rate
The most practical way to determine the success of your website is to track the conversion metrics. It is not uncommon for low-traffic websites to make more money than many high-traffic websites. You must track metrics like conversions to contacts, conversion to customers, and blog and landing page performance. With these metrics, you are trying to figure out how much your website is helping you in driving actual business. Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who perform the desired action on your website. It could be signing up for a trial or newsletter. Filling out a form, or making a purchase. The higher the conversion rate, the better it is.
Remember, the goal of the website is to turn visitors into leads and leads into paying customers. You need to constantly monitor your website performance metrics to ensure that the website is effectively doing what it is meant to do. If you find any gaps, you can update the site and make content changes to boost its performance. Google Analytics, HubSpot, SEMrush, and other analytical tools to track key website performance metrics.
If your website is being managed by a professional, your website manager should already be doing the performance monitoring for you and making necessary upgrades and tweaks where necessary.
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