13 KPIs of an Effective Website (and How to Measure Them)

The internet has changed the way that people live, work, and do business. Today, having a website is pretty much standard for just about any organization of significant size or scope.

Your website is the heart of your business, but how do you know what’s working and what isn’t?

What does it take to have an effective website? And what KPIs should you be measuring in order to know if your site is successful?

In this post, we’ll break down 13 KPIs of an effective website and how to measure them.

Total visits

This is a metric that mostly applies to e-commerce businesses or businesses where traffic drives revenue through advertising.

However, it could also apply if you have a blog with paid ad space on it, as well as another form of monetization, such as sponsored posts from guest bloggers who pay for the privilege of publishing content on your site.

In these cases, total visits will reflect how many times an article was viewed during its lifespan of activity on your site.

Some people may view an article more than once, but the count will be tallied only once.

Percentage of visitors who are new

This KPIs refers to how many people coming to your website are seeing it for the first time.

If you’re selling widgets, then this number should be high because these people would probably not need any additional information about purchasing widgets; they just want to know where and how to make a purchase.

If you have an e-commerce website with multiple product pages, each product page should score high in percentage of visitors who are new, as most people probably won’t spend much (if any) time reading about products they already know all there is to know about and just want to make a purchase.

Average time spent on the site

This KPI refers to how much time people spend browsing your website.

If you have a high bounce rate, then this metric is especially important because it shows that visitors aren’t spending any time reading your content and are simply coming to look around before leaving forever.

This shouldn’t be happening if you have compelling content, so think about how you can increase the amount of time people spend on your site by either making it more engaging or giving readers less reason to leave.

Number of pages viewed per visit

If someone comes to your website but doesn’t spend any time reading any of your content, how can he know whether he wants to become a regular user of the content? He can’t.

What does this mean for you, as an owner of a website?

You need to make sure your site is easy to navigate and that people can find what they’re looking for quickly (and by extension, they won’t leave after seeing only one page).

Making your site more appealing for potential customers can help reduce bounce rates.

Bounce rate (percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page)

Like the KPIs above, this KPI applies mostly to e-commerce businesses with a large catalog of products but could also apply to smaller businesses with a product page or two, as well as those who have a blog with ad space on it and monetize their blog through affiliate programs.

In your case, the bounce rate might be lower than 3% because you want people to see only one product at a time.

Otherwise, they’ll get distracted by all the other products on the site – but if that’s not what you’re going for, then you should look to reduce bounce rates as much as possible because these are people who could potentially make a purchase or become regular users of your content.

Conversion rate (percentage of visitors who go from visitor to customer)

This KPI refers to how often people do what you want them to do when visiting the website by either purchasing something or signing up for email updates.

If readers are interested in what you have to offer but aren’t quite ready yet, then lead generation forms could be an effective way to engage with them via email so you can nurture this relationship before making a sale.

Click-through rate (percentage of people clicking outbound links in your content)

This KPI shows how many times per visit someone clicks on an outbound link that you’ve embedded into the content of your site.

If most readers aren’t clicking on any of these links, then it might be time to rethink their placement and why they’re not working for you.

On the other hand, if more people are clicking on your content’s outbound links, you should try to work even more of these types of links into your articles, especially if they’re related to what you write about regularly because doing so will help increase overall page views while earning you more inbound links.

Social media shares

This metric shows how many times per visit someone has shared your website content on social media, and it is one of the most important KPIs to pay attention to because content that gets shared a lot will be read by more people.

The best way to earn shares for your website is by writing posts about topics likely to go viral, which you can do using tools like BuzzSumo.

If something’s worth sharing, there’s usually a reason why the factoid or meme spread so rapidly through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, email, YouTube comments sections, or other places on the Internet.

Engagement through comments

A low comment count on your posts indicates that people aren’t engaging with each other on the posts, which could mean they’re not reading or interacting with them.

If you see this number is low, you might want to take some time to respond to every comment on the post and ask others if there are any topics they’d like covered in a future article.

If you interact with commenters more regularly, they’ll feel encouraged to leave their thoughts on your site, which furthers engagement and traffic coming from social media shares.

Email subscriptions

Similar to social media shares, building an email list of subscribers is one of the most effective ways for content publishers to build awareness about their products or services because those who have signed up will be more likely than visitors from other sources to interact with your posts.

Referral traffic

This KPI is exactly what it sounds like: the percentage of visitors who type in a link mentioning your website on their browser and then come straight to your site instead of going to another one first.

If you’re just starting out, this could be how most of your traffic comes from because no one knows about your brand or that you write about specific topics yet.

However, if later on, you start seeing that referrals aren’t part of your overall traffic numbers, something might be preventing potential new customers from finding out about you when search engines return results for keywords used by people trying to find information similar to yours.

You can fix this by engaging more with people through social media, email, and other digital channels.

Revenue

Not surprisingly, the revenue metric shows how much money you’re making from each visit based on what content people are reading.

This is one of the most important metrics because it shows whether or not all of your hard work is paying off with an actual monetary return that can help you pay bills, invest in new products/services, hire more workers for your company, etc.

The best way to increase revenue generation is by publishing content related to topics advertisers are willing to pay top-dollar for when they want their ads shown alongside them so visitors will be exposed to their brands when coming across something online they’d be interested in learning about.

Also, note that there’s a difference between organic search engine traffic (free visitors) and paid search engine traffic (visitors who pay per click or view).

Return on investment

The final KPI to consider is your return on investment, which shows how much money you’re making for every dollar of time invested into your business.

For example, if it costs $1,000 in one month to maintain all aspects of running a website but then that same site generates $10,000 during the same period, your ROI is 10X ($10,000 / $1,000 = 10), meaning you earned 100 percent return on investment because you got ten times as much money out of what was put in.

The only way to increase this metric is by improving upon the content published so visitors are more likely to engage with it, click outbound links within content that send them to landing pages where they’re asked to give their contact information in exchange for an ebook or other freebie.

Then convert into customers who will go on to spend money on additional products/services offered by the author.

Conclusion

The only way you can know if your website is effective is by measuring these 13 KPIs so you have clear data showing whether or not there are changes you need to make.

As an example of how this works, we’d recommend checking back at least every two weeks after implementing any new ideas, features, or strategies so you have concrete numbers to compare against previous results obtained through different means (e.g., search engine optimization vs. social media promotion, etc.) to see if your actions have been effective or not.

Keep doing that until you’ve reached a point where no further changes are needed to keep the same high level of performance because people keep coming back for more without anything holding them back from sticking around and reading what you publish.

We hope this article provided some insight on how to figure out which metrics matter most when it comes to evaluating website effectiveness so you can use them as a reference going forward.

Acodez is a leading digital marketing agency in India. Our services include SEO, SMM, SMO, PPC, and content marketing services to ensure that your website ranks among the top results on the search engine. We are also a leading player in the website design company India arena, offering all kinds of web design and web development services at affordable prices. For further information, please contact us today.