Your website is the digital face of your business. It’s the first impression most of your online customers will have of your brand. And tracking your website’s performance is a great way to understand what your audience thinks about your brand.
But how do you track website performance? There are some key metrics for website performance offered by various reliable platforms. From organic traffic to bounce rates, keeping track of these metrics can navigate you through your growth journey in 2024 and beyond.
A top web designing company in Melbourne reveals eight web page performance metrics for a successful site in 2024.
Continue to read to know more.
Why is it Important to Track Website Performance?
With over 200 million active websites on the internet, it’s important to know where your website stands in the competition. Various website engagement metrics provide an understanding of how many users visit and their behaviour on your different web pages.
By analysing action plans and their results, you can determine if your strategies are working as planned. If they are not, you can take the required actions and optimise your web pages to drive visitors and achieve the conversion you’re aiming for.
Further, website metrics can also help you with:
- Analysing the effectiveness of your content
- Troubleshooting your customer experience
- Target and address pain points.
- Compare your site with that of your competitors.
- Improving sales and finding more growth opportunities online.
In short, tracking website performance helps you know if your online marketing efforts are paying off. But to achieve all the above, it’s important to track the right website performance metrics.
So, how can you determine the right performance metrics for your website?
It’s quite simple!
List all the questions you want to answer about your question before you start looking at the metrics you plan to measure. For example, you might want to know:
- Do you aim to improve traffic or conversions?
- Do you want to focus on existing customers or drive new customers?
- Are you interested in making improvements to your site or business growth?
Answering such questions can help you decide which metrics to focus on and the ones to ignore.
Key Website Performance Metrics to Watch Out For in 2024
Here’s a list of the top 8 site performance metrics that can help you improve your site and achieve your online marketing goals:
(1) Website Traffic:
There are different types of website traffic, including organic, direct, referral, paid and social. By understanding traffic types and website metrics associated with them, you can analyse and optimise all sources for improved conversions.
- Organic Traffic
- Sourced from search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing
- Considered high-quality, as it includes no paid advertisements or promotions.
- Means search engines recommend your content to visitors actively searching for information related to your businessdustry.
- Direct Traffic
- Comes from typing a URL in the browser or clicking a bookmark
- Considered high-quality, as users intentionally perform the search
- Results of offline marketing efforts, such as radio or print, and social media campaigns for online brand awareness.
- Provides insights into customer loyalty and brand awareness.
- Referral Traffic
- Visitors coming to a site from another website are considered referrals.
- Results of off-site marketing, like guest posts and participating in social media community discussions.
- Provides insights on new customers who might have just discovered your website.
- Paid Traffic
- Visitors visit your website as a result of paid ad campaigns on social media and other platforms.
- Works well only if you have a comprehensive understanding of your target audience and the best ways to reach them.
- Provides insights on new customers and keyword intent.
- Social Traffic
- Visitors come to your website from social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
- Helps you enhance brand awareness and reach new customers.
While organic traffic is the most important traffic metric, this also depends on your website’s goals and objectives. For example, for an e-commerce website, the most important traffic metrics would be direct and organic search traffic.
Best website performance metrics tool to track traffic: Google Analytics, Ahrefs Traffic Checker.
(2) Website Speed
This metric tells how quickly pages on your website load and render their content. This important metric determines your user experience and website performance. But if your website takes over 2 seconds to load, it can lead to low user engagement, higher bounce rates, and reduced conversions.
Just like users, search engines also like faster websites and consider them for higher ranking in search results.
Best tools to track page speed: Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom.
(3) Page Views
It measures the number of times a webpage is seen by a visitor. When a page on your website is loaded in the browser, it is recorded as a one page view. The count increases as many times a visitor loads and reloads the same page.
The page views metrics tell how popular your website is among users and how much traffic it is receiving. However, higher page views could also mean issues with your site, like low performance or poor navigation, which makes users reload it repeatedly.
So, when page views metric to assess your website performance, you should be clear in your context.
Best tools to track page views: Google Analytics, Kissmetrics
(4) Average Pages Per Visitor
This metric indicates user engagement and tells how users engage with your content. It depends on the purpose and content of your website and the audience. A higher average pages per visitor suggests they are finding your content engaging and interesting. So, this metric helps you measure the effectiveness of your content.
Also, a higher number of average page views can positively affect your revenue, as the more the visitors engage with your website, the more likely they will take any desired actions - buy or subscribe.
Best tools to track average pages per visitor: Google Analytics
(5) Bounce Rate
Refers to the number of users who are leaving your site soon after arriving. A high bounce rate can negatively affect conversions and overall performance. Further, it can serve as an indicator that your website isn’t delivering quality.
Best tools to track bounce rate: Google Analytics and Pingdom.
(6) Device Type
This metric measures the type of devices on which users access your website during a set period of time. It can help you improve user experience across various devices. This metric includes:
- Number of visitors
- Device type (mobile, tablet, desktop computer, Mac or PC)
- Percentage of visitors per device.
Best tools to track device type: Google Analytics, Host-Tracker
(7) Conversion Rates
Tracking this metric helps you gain viability into your lead quality and how effective your website is as a whole. It is the number of visitors who convert on your website through filling out web forms, trial sign-ups, content downloads, or completed purchases.
Best tools to track conversion rates: Google Analytics, Hotjar, Hubspot
(8) Top Pages
It refers to web pages with the most page views or conversions. Such pages are the highest-value web pages on your site and can tell you what attracts your users the most. This information can be used to improve your website strategy.
Best tools to track top pages: Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom.
Conclusion
Having a well-performing website can do wonders for your business, getting you more customers and sales in the long run. Besides having the right strategy to develop your site, it is important to track website performance to ensure it is fulfilling what it is intended for. Use the above-listed metrics to track how your website performs and rework your strategy accordingly for continuous business success.
