5 Website Metrics Manufacturing Marketers Should Track

A few weeks ago, we published an article regarding how your website can be your perfect salesman. Typically, your website is the first interaction that your prospects and leads have with your manufacturing organization, so it is important that the site is functioning at the level you need. But how do you measure this success? By looking at these 5 website metrics, you will be able to track the success of your ‘salesman’ and identify what is or is not working.

1. Traffic & Source

One of the key indicators regarding how your website is fairing is the overall amount of visits it is receiving. While this metric has its limitations, it is a good way to determine whether your website is growing or declining. It can also show you how promotions are affecting traffic, say you promote a new case study on a popular social media avenue and suddenly see a huge spike in traffic, for example.

Knowing the sources for which people are using to find your website is also an important aspect to consider. Organic search, direct traffic, social traffic, and referral traffic are the four ways that Google Analytics categorizes website visitors. The organic search aspect will allow you to see how your site is ranking on search engines - the effectiveness of your SEO strategy comes into play here. Direct traffic visits are visits made by those who are typing your website directly into their browser. The social traffic category tells you how many visits are coming from social media avenues. Referral traffic is the amount of visits your website is getting from other websites. Remember when we said that you should utilize / promote others’ content? Well this is why! If you promote other thought leaders, they will be more likely to promote you as well.

2. Bounce Rate

Bounce rates can provide you with needed insights into whether or not your website is performing up to par. High bounce rates are a bad sign, they mean that people are regularly leaving your website after viewing a page. Because they can be broken down by landing page, this allows you to really see what is working and what is not. Do a side by side comparison of high and low bounce rate pages; is there a certain content subject that your prospects really go for or a type of product they tend to gravitate towards over the others? If so, it might be wise to follow in those pages’ footsteps.

3. Conversion Rate & Source

While overall conversions are important, your conversion rate is what tells you how well your website encourages conversions. By taking the number of unique visitors and dividing by conversions, you will get the conversion rate. A high conversion rate signals that you are pulling in the right traffic with your website. An increase in conversion rates by 1% can double your profits, so optimizing your website for conversions should not be overlooked. Much like overall traffic, you can break conversions down by source as well. This allows you to see not only where the traffic is coming in from, but also from where the most conversions are pulled.

4. Average Time on Page

This metric allows you to see if your visitors are spending the necessary time on your pages to go through the content in the way you want them to. Do you have a 5 minute video on your site, but the average time on the page is 1 minute? This can signal that your video isn’t capturing the attention of your visitors the way you had thought it would. Similar to bounce rate, by comparing pages with high and low average times, you’ll be able to identify what your prospects find interesting.

5. CTA Click Through Rate

Part of ensuring a high conversion rate is making sure that your CTAs are enticing to your prospects. The CTA click through rate signifies whether or not visitors are intrigued enough by your offer to click on it. CTAs are designed to move the visitor through the different funnel offers. The next step they are taking should be clearly identifiable just from looking at the CTA image. By making CTAs look valuable rather than ad like, you can pull in those important form submissions that can transition your visitors to leads and hopefully clients.

While this article focuses on 5 metrics, there are many more indicators that manufacturing marketers could choose to look at to determine the success of their website. Do you have a key set of metrics that you typically look at to measure performance? Tell us about it in the comments!