We are often asked THE question by our clients/partners/colleagues/bosses: What are the main performance indicators to check in the management of my website? However, their selection is greatly influenced by the vocation of the website, because each has a unique strategy and objectives of its own. In order to answer this fundamental question as humbly as possible, I will publish a series of posts that will identify the 5 main performance indicators for 3 types of business model on the Internet.
I will deal with these models:
Websites with this type of model are attributable to professional service companies or industrial product sales.
A lead generation site's main strategy is to add as many qualified contacts as possible to their CRM database. To do so, they must meet three objectives:
Here are, first of all, the first 2 indicators that will be discussed.
**ATTENTION REQUIRED TECHNICAL** You must ensure that your performance measurement tool can segment new leads from those already generated.
I've ordered the metrics chronologically based on each stage a lead must go through before committing to your business.
Measuring the traffic contribution of each source allows you to identify where most of your visits come from and, therefore, where to devote most of your marketing efforts. For its part, the bounce rate makes it possible to identify if the source generates quality traffic or if the landing page is well articulated. It is necessary to compare the contribution of each of them and to check each major variation between two periods. Also, don't forget to:
For those who use Google Analytics: visitors > new VS. returning > choose New > choose the medium segment.
The majority of new visits generated are concentrated on a minimum of landing pages. This reference to Pareto encourages you to target the 5, 10, 20 main pages and to measure their relevance with their respective bounce rates. This indicator may cause changes to your promotional campaigns, including the content of your CPC ads or your banner ads. If your ads are adequate, start an on-page optimization strategy by performing A/B testing with Google Website Optimizer.
For those who use Google Analytics : visitors > new VS. returning > choose New > choose the landing page segment.
The 3rd, 4th and 5th Key Performance Indicators will follow shortly.
*** Update ***
Here is the second part on the main performance indicators for a lead generation site