It used to be that the number of ‘hits’ on your website determined whether your digital marketing program was successful. Yes, we all need traffic and lots of it. That being said, it’s the quality of traffic that results in sales, not just the quantity. There are hosts of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) which will help you determine if your marketing strategy is successful. Your Google Analytics should be able to provide you with these KPIs. With these metrics in place, follow the warning signs which serve to indicate if something is wrong with your site, brand, message, or reputation. The health of your website is fragile, and you don’t want a problem to get out of control and turn fatal.
You’re getting less than 50% of your traffic from organic search
Let’s take a look at the simple KPI marketing warning signs for any website.
If you are not on the first page of Google for your industry or long tail keywords, you are losing out. According to the MOZ CTR study, click-through rates fall off rapidly after the first couple of positions. The following graph from that study says it all:
You’re getting less than 10% of your traffic from Social Media
Everyone is into social media and content generation. A lot of companies, however, are just going through the motions. They are doing all the right things, but the results are not there. If you are doing inbound marketing, you should be getting at least 10% of your traffic from social media.
Your Repeat Visitor Ratio (RVR) is below 70%
Unique Visitors are first time prospects and Repeat Visitors are coming back to learn more and to engage. Monitor your Repeat Visitor Ratio (RVR), which is the number of repeat visitors over total visitors. The goal is to convert new visitors to repeat visitors, who spend twice as much time on your site and buy more. If your ratio is below 70%, then your website message is not resonating with prospects.
Your bounce rate is above 50%
The bounce rate is the number of people who visit a web page and go no further. Sometimes, a high bounce rate means that they came to a particular page to find an answer, and you provided it, so they left. Mostly, a high bounce rate means that your website isn’t enticing visitors to stick around. For most sites bounce rate of 50% or below means you are doing an excellent job. The average ecommerce site is around 35%. In the 60% to 70% range is pretty typical, and who wants to be typical? Above 70% you need help and above 80% is real trouble. For every 100 visitors who come to your site, the difference between 50% and 80% is 50 entering your site verses 20. That’s 250% more visitors that you can sell to.
Time spent on your site is below 3 minutes
Once you get a visitor to your site, the more time they spend, the more they engage and buy. The industry average is around 2 minutes for most sites and 3 minutes for ecommerce. Return visitors tend to spend twice as much time on your site as first timers.
Website Conversation Rate is below 10%
You can have all of the traffic in the world, but if you cannot convert visitors to customers, your website is not performing. Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors that either purchase something, or simply sign up depending on your business. The average conversion for companies doing digital marketing is around 10%. Without digital marketing it is about half, or 5%.
If you cannot meet these benchmarks, you may need help from a digital agency. They have the knowledge of website design and development, marketing strategy, and SEO optimization to guide you through the maze of how to read the numbers, what they mean, and how to make improvements.
