Your website is often the first point of contact with potential clients, but how do you know if it's performing well? The answer lies in tracking the right metrics.
Let’s explore 13 crucial website metrics that can help you understand your site's performance, engage your audience more effectively, and ultimately drive growth for your software business.
Understanding where your visitors come from is crucial for any company. By analyzing your traffic sources, you can optimize your marketing efforts and focus on channels that bring the most valuable leads.
Key traffic sources to monitor include:
Pro tip: Pay special attention to your organic search traffic. A strong SEO strategy can provide a steady stream of high-quality leads over time, reducing your reliance on paid advertising.
Where to track:
New visitor sessions show how many first-time users are discovering your solution. This metric is crucial for measuring the effectiveness of your brand awareness campaigns and the reach of your marketing efforts.
A steady increase in new visitors suggests that your outreach strategies are working. However, if this number stagnates, it might be time to reassess your marketing approach or explore new channels to attract potential clients.
Where to track:
While new visitors are important, returning visitors often indicate a deeper interest in your product. They may be in the consideration phase of the buying journey or could be existing customers coming back to use your product or access support resources.
Aim for a healthy balance between new and returning visitors. A good benchmark is to have 15-25% of your total traffic coming from returning visitors. If this percentage is too low, you might need to focus on creating more engaging content or improving your overall user experience to encourage repeat visits.
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Page views give you a broad overview of your website's traffic. While it's a simple metric, it can provide valuable insights when analyzed alongside other data points.
For product websites, pay attention to:
Where to track:
This metric helps you understand how engaging your content is. For software companies, a higher average time on page often indicates that visitors are finding your content valuable and relevant to their needs.
Different types of pages will have different benchmarks:
If you notice pages with unexpectedly low average times, consider revisiting the content to make it more engaging or relevant to your target audience.
Where to track:
Average session duration gives you an overall picture of how long visitors are spending on your website. For technology companies, longer sessions often indicate higher engagement and interest in your product.
To improve average session duration:
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This metric shows how many pages a user visits during a single session. For product websites, a higher number of pages per session often indicates that visitors are actively researching your offering or exploring your content.
To increase pages per session:
Where to track:
Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate could indicate that your content isn't meeting visitor expectations or that your value proposition isn't clear enough.
Industry averages for business websites typically range from 25-55%. If your bounce rate is higher, consider:
Where to track:
For technology companies, social media can be a powerful tool for brand awareness and lead generation. Tracking social referrals helps you understand which platforms are driving the most traffic to your site.
Focus on platforms where your target audience is most active. For business-oriented products, this often includes:
Remember, the quality of traffic is as important as the quantity. Analyze how social referrals perform in terms of engagement metrics and conversions.
Where to track:
See our blog: Social media tagging: Does it matter for businesses?
Exit rate shows the percentage of visitors who leave your site from a specific page. While every page will have some exits, pages with unusually high exit rates may need attention.
For product websites, pay special attention to exit rates on:
High exit rates on these pages could indicate issues with messaging, user experience, or pricing strategy.
Where to track:
Knowing your top-performing pages helps you understand what content resonates most with your audience. For software companies, top pages often include:
Use insights from your top pages to inform your content strategy and optimize underperforming pages.
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Analyzing your top exit pages can reveal where you're losing potential customers in their journey. While some pages (like "Thank You" pages) naturally have high exit rates, others might indicate problems.
If product pages, pricing pages, or sign-up forms are top exit pages, consider:
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For technology businesses, understanding which marketing efforts and website pages contribute most to revenue is crucial. Revenue attribution helps you connect your website performance directly to your bottom line.
Implement a multi-touch attribution model to understand how different touch points contribute to conversions. This can help you:
Where to track:
Tracking these 13 metrics will give you a comprehensive view of your website's performance. Remember, these metrics are most valuable when analyzed together and over time. Regular monitoring and analysis will help you identify trends, spot issues early, and make data-driven decisions to continuously improve your website's performance.
By focusing on these key metrics, you can create a more engaging website experience, attract and retain more potential clients, and ultimately drive growth for your business. Keep experimenting, testing, and optimizing – the digital landscape is always evolving, and your website should too! Need help with tracking, set up or improvements? Reach out to us!
Check out our blog: 7 recommended software tools to track your website metrics.