When you run a business, you want to generate revenues and drive conversion. In digital marketing, you can’t successfully implement a blog post or advertising campaign without evaluating the metrics. There are numerous metrics available in the market that you can measure, but conversion metrics are by far the best and most significant among all of them. One needs to explore the precise conversion metrics to move in the right direction in the future.
In this article, we’ll present a brief insight into conversion metrics and the most important metrics that you need to track for your business.
Conversions in Digital Marketing
In digital marketing, Conversions can be defined as the measurement of the total number of users taking the desired action on a website. The percentage of visitors who take those desired actions is known as the conversion rate. The more the conversion rate of your campaign, the more revenue you’ll generate from your visitors by converting them into paying customers.
The conversion rate varies from organization to organization depending on the objectives and motives of that organization. Conversions can be of any type – any action you want your visitors to perform.
Here are some examples of conversions in digital marketing:
- Taking a survey
- Engaging in a social media post
- Making a purchase
- Filling a form
- Signing up for a page
- Reaching a specific spot in the blog post
- Watching a video
- Attending a webinar
- Downloading a file
- Visiting a definite webpage
16 Most Important Conversion Metrics to Track
Here are the 16 most important conversion metrics that you should be assessing.
1. Users
The first data point that you should be focusing on – is the people who’re visiting your site. The number of users visiting your site is reckoned here. Only one user is counted if they visit your site multiple times. This is actually very significant as it specifies the number of people who return to your site i.e., your most intrigued clients or loyal customers.
2. Website Sessions
This metric is quite similar to the previous data point, but the only difference is – here you count the total visitors and not users visiting your site. In fact, website sessions are one of the most eminent and significant metrics which specify the total number of visits to your website.
Tools like Google Analytics can be employed to observe the trends of your traffic. Ideally, they collect data from each recommended source and present a graph that depicts a steady growth in the count of visitors and sessions. If at any point you see the number of sessions dropping, you can revisit those recommended sources to discover any issues.
Web sessions, being a fraction of the principle that gauges conversion rate, can help you to determine what percentage of visitors gets converted into customers.
3. Views on Page
The Views on Page metric tells you the number of distinct pages a person has visited during their website sessions. Remember that one visitor can produce multiple views on your page, so high views don’t essentially indicate many individual people have visited your site. This metric is also referred to as the average page depth.
4. Click-through Rate (CTR)
It determines what percentage of people have visited your site through a post-click landing page or by clicking on your advertisement. The click-through rate of a website is estimated by dividing the total number of link clicks through impressions and is an excellent method to assess how well your viewers react to your ads. A low click-through rate signifies that viewers are not getting attracted by your ads and you need to conduct an A/B test on your ads to make sure that they do not overlook your ads anymore.
5. Mobile vs. Desktop Visitors
There was a time when we only valued desktop visitors. But this trend has totally changed. The number of mobile visitors is increasing rapidly; you must shift your focus to them. If most people visit your site through mobile devices, then your website must have faster loading time and mobile-friendly features. Pay extra attention to them, try to keep them engaged on your site, and make sure they don’t bounce back.
6. Traffic Sources
Besides having information about the devices from which people are visiting your site, identifying which sources have recommended them to your site is equally significant.
With the help of Google Analytics, the traffic sources can be classified into several classes:
- Direct Search – Through any bookmark extension or by simply entering the URL into the address bar.
- Social Media Platforms – Through a reference link put on the social media platforms.
- Referral Code – Through a reference link from another website.
- Email Reference – Through an email reference link.
- Organic Search – Through a link in the SERPs.
- Paid Search – Through any paid search advertisements.
- Any Other Recommendation – Through any other source that is not mentioned above.
Your plan should be to widen your sources for arriving traffic and then examine each one of them individually to make a significant process and focus on your practices more suitably. For instance, if you receive a high bounce rate from your Facebook traffic, then it indicates that your traffic is immaterial to your brand or your proposed plan. On the contrary, if any visitors through paid searches make more sign-ups and generate more paid upgrades, then quickly shift your focus to that medium.
7. Page Loading Time
An excellent user experience is all that a user expects from any website. Page loading time plays a pivotal role to provide a satisfactory experience to visitors. The faster the loading time, the better will be the conversion. Google has also incorporated this metric to measure organic rankings.
In digital marketing, developers can employ the AMP framework to provide a faster loading time on mobile devices. Furthermore, they can utilize popular tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to gauge the speed of the page.
Page loading time not only plays a vital role in Google’s search algorithm but also affects the bounce rate. If your page takes too much time to get loaded, people will bounce off your site, out of frustration. Having a lightning-fast loading time along with AMP is very essential to improve the rankings of your site and to ensure that people stay engaged with your page. You also need to utilize page speed tools to supervise the entire process.
8. Time on Site (TOS)
Also regarded as the ‘Average session duration’, it indicates the total time a visitor spends on a website in one go. The Time on Site for any website is measured by dividing the total time period of all sessions (in seconds) by the total number of sessions. The higher the time on site, the better will be the conversion rates.
Time on Site = Total time period of all sessions (in seconds)/Total number of sessions
The equation can be implemented in the following ways: Time spent by a visitor on an entire website or individual pages. There may be situations where you’ll see visitors spending more time on your pricing page than on the signup page. In this circumstance, you need to revise your signup page to boost your conversion rates.
9. Bounce Rate
The bounce rate determines what percentage of users visit your website but take no action and walk away immediately. It can be calculated by dividing the total number of single-page sessions (in seconds) by the total number of sessions.
Bounce Rate = Total number of single-page sessions (in seconds)/Total number of sessions
A high bounce rate suggests that your website has failed to attract visitors to stick around, spend time, and take valuable actions. There can be reasons for a high bounce rate. There is a huge possibility that your page isn’t highly optimized (i.e., poor layout, higher loading times, inadequate usability, etc.) to boost conversions. Traffic coming to the site from broken links/sources can be another reason. Whatever the reason, make sure to revisit those channels and make the required changes to decrease the bounce rate.
10. Interactions per Visit
Monitor the activity of the visitors when they visit your site. See if they are willing to move on a predefined path. If not, pay full attention to the actions they are undertaking on your site. Every interaction they make on the site can aid you in better comprehending the behavior of the visitor as well as their pathway to purchase. The more visitor insights you gather, the easier it gets to make out ways to enhance conversions.
11. Value per Visit
The primary aim of the value per visit metric is to recognize the value you’re receiving from your organic traffic. The value per visit data is directly proportional to interactions per visit and is measured as the total number of visitors on the site by the total value produced.
Value per visit = Total number of visitors on the site/Total value produced
Measuring value per visit can get trickier sometimes as it involves the goodwill of several entities. For instance, visitors on corporate or eCommerce sites produce value by executing a CTA or a transaction, but they also produce some fairly immeasurable value by leaving a customer review.
12. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Cost per acquisition determines how much money it costs to get hold of one customer. It is calculated by dividing the total amount of marketing expenses generated during the time of customer acquisition by the total number of conversions generated during that period.
CPA = Total marketing expenses to acquire a customer/number of conversions generated during that period.
After calculating the CPA, try to figure out if the customer is fetching more money than the actual CPA. Also, find out if you’re generating a healthy margin after bearing all the business expenses. By assessing all these, you can determine whether your business is on the right track to profitability or loss.
13. Frequency
Frequency lets us know the total amount of time a specific advertisement has been shown to a target audience. It is measured by dividing the total number of impressions by the total reach.
Frequency = Total number of impressions/Total reach
This metric needs to be monitored frequently because you can’t show the same ad set to someone repeatedly. If you do so, they’ll get frustrated and probably ignore your post completely.
Studies suggest that an improved ad frequency can result in more negative reviews and feedback, reduced click-through rates, and improved cost per click. The highest frequency for any Facebook ad varies depending on the margins and the industry you’re working in.
14. Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
You will always want your ads to generate more revenue than you put in. Return on ad spending or ROAS tells how much money you’ve generated from a specific ad campaign, instead of the total marketing campaigns. It is calculated by dividing the total campaign revenue by the total cost of the campaign.
ROAS = Total campaign revenue/Total cost of the campaign
By knowing the financial capability of your ad campaigns, you can alter your financial plan for different campaigns correspondingly.
15. Cost Per Action (CPA)
The Cost per action metric determines whether or not a visitor is satisfying your principal conversion goals, you are still hopeful that they will take any action soon. The action of the visitor depends on your business type and it can be any one of the following:
- Like, comment, or share on social media posts
- Reading a blog
- Watching a video
- Downloading any files (images, documents, etc.)
- Taking a subscription to your site
- Adding any products to buying cart
The action of the visitors may not be enough to offer valuable insight, but the expense of these actions will definitely help you to see a precise outline of your ad campaigns. If you manage to keep your cost per action low, you’ll likely see an improved conversion ratio as well as revenue for the same expense.
16. Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
Cost per thousand impressions is defined as the average expense to display your advertisement 1000 times. It is an ideal conversion metric to get a clear vision of the performance of the ad set. The value of the cost per thousand impressions fluctuates depending on the requirement of your targeted audience.
It is a perfect scale to evaluate the performance of different ad campaigns and ad sets. Moreover, it can also assist you to choose where to spend your money to earn maximum impressions and reach.
Conclusion
Irrespective of the ad campaigns, having a list of proactive conversion metrics is compulsory. It is the only mode to constantly scrutinize, twist, and develop your campaigns for the best possible outcomes. To convert your ad clicks into conversions, you need to create resolute post-click pages with faster loading times.
All these conversion metrics will definitely help you achieve more insight into your campaigns. If you’re employing the Google Analytics tool, keep in mind that platforms aren’t capable of retroactively tracking conversions once you’ve defined them. When you’re done recognizing the most important aspects of your business, get started with assessing the conversion metric that matters to you the most.
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Simran works as a technical writer. The graduate in MS Computer Science from the well known CS hub, aka Silicon Valley, is also an editor of the website. She enjoys writing about any tech topic, including programming, algorithms, cloud, data science, and AI. Traveling, sketching, and gardening are the hobbies that interest her.
