How To Identify Your Site’s Most Important Traffic Metric

Dec 10,2011 - by Guest Contributor 1

Visits, pageviews, bounce rates, conversion rates, pages per visit…which is the primary metric you should be using to evaluate your website’s performance? The answer to that question depends in part on the type of website you are dealing with. These tips should help you better understand which metrics are most useful in measuring your site’s performance.

Tip 1: Don’t Over-Emphasize Bounce Rates
One of the most common analytics mistakes I see is placing too much emphasis on a website’s bounce rates. Monitoring bounce rates can be helpful, but there are a few reasons you shouldn’t place too much emphasis on them:

Lower bounce rates do not necessarily equal or cause higher conversion rates. For example, I have run tests comparing a one-page sales letter (with a high bounce rate) vs a 5-page mini-site (with a lower bounce rate), and the one-page site with the higher bounce rate converted better. This is just one example of how a page with a higher bounce rate might actually be better than a page with a lower bounce rate.
Bounces are not always bad. Example: Bob searches for “fix Yamaha 25hp outboard lower unit” and lands on your blog post that provides detailed repair instructions. Bob reads the blog post, learns everything he needs to know, then leaves your site. In this case, a bounce was a success, because you were able to provide everything Bob needed on one page.
Bounce rates can be easily and dramatically manipulated (even unintentionally). A lower bounce rate is often achieved by making the user click an extra time to get the info they want, which is not generally a good thing. Example: Your “30 Christmas Gift Ideas” page has a high bounce rate, so you split it into 3 pages – an intro, the first 15 ideas, and the second 15 ideas. This might dramatically lower your bounce rate, but that doesn’t mean the change is a good thing.
Bounce rates will be higher on sites/pages you are aggressively promoting, since first time visitors typically have a higher bounce rate than returning visitors.

Tip 2: Follow The Money
The best rule of thumb is to pay the most attention to the metric that is closest to the point where you make money. For example, let’s assume your website sells an ebook:

Visits tells you how many people visited your website.
Metrics like pages per visit and bounce rate tell you how visitors interacted with your website.
Clicks on the add to cart button show you how many people were interested in making a purchase.
A goal (or ecommerce tracking) set to track completed purchases tells you how many people bought your ebook, which is how you make money. This metric is the one closest to the point where you make money, so it is your “money metric”.

Tip 3: Determine The True “Money Metric”
What your “money metric” is will vary based on how your website makes money. Here are recommendations for several common types of websites:

Ecomerce. For any website that sells a product or service directly, the money metric is almost always ecommerce tracking or a goal set to track completed purchases.
CPM advertising. If you make money by selling ads on a CPM basis, your money metric is usually pageviews, and by extension, bounce rates and pages per visit.
Lead generation. Setup a goal to track each time a lead form is successfully submitted.
Adsense. Integrate your Adsense account to view earnings in your Analytics reports.
Affiliate. In most cases, you won’t be able to track actual conversions in Analytics when you are promoting affiliate programs. The best metrics to track are usually a) clicks on affiliate links and b) email list opt-ins.

Tip 4: Always Use Your “Money Metric”
Once you have determined your “money metric”, use it as the primary metric to evaluate your site’s performance from every perspective. Use it to gauge which keywords are most effective, to evaluate traffic sources, to determine which landing pages are most important, and to determine which content is most effective.

Tip 5: Measuring Content Quality
If your website focuses on content (vs ecommerce) you may want a way to measure the quality of your content. As previously noted, metrics such as bounce rate and pages per visits do not always accurately measure the quality or effectiveness of content. There are two basic ways to measure the quality or effectiveness of content:
Does the content get visitors to do what you want them to do? Usually your “money metric” will help you determine this.
How much do readers like the content? The best way to measure user satisfaction with content is typically via social metrics – Facebook likes, Google +1s, Tweets, etc.

Take home lesson: identify your “money metric” and use to measure all of your marketing strategies and website initiatives.

Adam Thompson is a Google-qualified Google Analytics expert and the founder of RYP Marketing.