Hi! I’m Maddie, your sunshiney analytic assistant.
Business analytics has taught me a lot, not just about how to use data to a business’s advantage but how to operate and market a business strategically.
Sure, people can run a business without monitoring their analytics but that puts a lot of guesswork into your business plan and operations. Tracking analytics is the key to your business’s success! Tracking analytics takes the guesswork out of marketing plans, supply chain operations, consumer trends, and market fluctuations. Focusing on one part of analytics in a business is better than none and can improve a business’s success without sweat!
There are numerous different types of analytics to track, here are the 10 key analytics you should be tracking (or begin to track).
- Website Traffic
- Conversion Rates
- Bounceback and Time on Site
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Churn Rate
- Net Promoter Score
- Social Media Engagement
- Email Marketing Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
We will address my favorite 4 below
First Website Traffic!
Website traffic is a crucial metric to track which is why we will begin here. Website tracking, in the simplest terms, has the most available data in one location. Website tracking provides insight into consumer trends, business reach, traffic patterns (inbound and outbound), and so much more! One of the biggest helps that a business receives from website traffic tracking is the insight into your traffic sources: organic, direct, referral, and social.
Organic typically means that someone accesses the sight by free means, from Google or other search engines.
Direct traffic comes from individuals that reach your site by “directly” typing in the site URL, there’s no beating around the bush with these clicks, they want to get straight to the source.
Referral traffic comes from any other sites that you may have affiliations with, a guest blog post, podcast, or a featured news article may lead viewers to your site.
Social traffic brings viewers to reach your site via your social media platforms, Instagram, FaceBook, Twitter, etc.
Another key part of website traffic tracking is monitoring bounce rate and TOS (time on site). This gives us valuable information on how Google may rank the site based on viewers’ TOS and bounce back to SERP (search engine results page). This is our best agent to understand how engaging viewers find your site. You are able to track these metrics using analytic site plugins and Google Analytics, they do the calculations for you!
Second Conversion Rates!
Conversion rates are super insightful! A conversion rate is a rate at which a viewer becomes a different level of customer, typically we see this conversion from a subscriber or follower to an active customer making purchases of your good or service.
To track conversion rates we take the number of conversions and divide it by the number of total ad interactions that can be tracked during a certain period. There are a couple of ways of doing this, one of my most recommended ways is to set up conversion goals in Google Analytics.
Conversions can range from a completed purchase, a submitted form, and even a button or link click. A goal could be that you would like to see five completed purchases in a month with 20 people submitting a form. No matter your goals, we can track the progress through Google Analytics conversion rate tracking.
Third Social Media Engagement!
Social media engagement is such an important aspect of analytic analysis. As we all know, social media is the “it thing”, if we’re not on social media we “don’t exist”. Our social media engagement tells a lot about who is seeing our business, it helps us know who our audience is and what works or doesn’t work for them.
By tracking key social media metrics including your likes, comments, shares, and sales, we can see what’s working and what’s not. We can tweak your marketing strategy from these metrics to improve your customer satisfaction, engagement, and churn. And to be honest, who doesn’t want to improve their business through one of the most used avenues for marketing? I sure do and I think you do too!
All of the previously mentioned media metrics can be tracked through Meta, Google Analytics, and simple data exports into Excel or Sheets from the analysis tools in every back end of social media platforms. If you are looking to calculate the actual engagement rate we take the total number of engagements (number of likes comments etc.) on a post and divide it by the total number of views (impressions) and then we multiply that by 100.
Fourth Email Marketing Metrics!
Email marketing is one of our key ways of contacting and communicating with our consumers, clients, and subscribers (possible leads included). Email marketing is used to generate sales, keep our current audiences engaged in our business, and generate possible new clientele. The metrics that we can pull from our email marketing campaigns provide a lot of insight as to what our audience responds well to or poorly to. These metrics help us better understand how your subscribers are engaging with your content. Without the tracking of these metrics, you will lack a clear picture of how your content resonates with subscribers and you won’t know whether your efforts and money are paying off.
Some of the most common email marketing metrics to keep an eye on are your open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. While we will be discussing these in more depth in a future blog post, these metrics are all accessible in the back end of your email marketing platform, whether you use ConvertKit, MailerLite, etc, all email marketing services have data analytic tracking that allows the user (you or I) to be able to look at what’s going on with your audience’s engagement.
Let’s Wrap It Up!
Now, I know this is a load of information you just received but not to worry! If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the thought of tracking all of these analytics on your own – I am here to help! As a special offer for my blog readers, I am offering a free analytic audit to help you identify which metrics you should be tracking and how to get started. During this audit, we’ll take a look at your website traffic, conversion rates, email metrics, and more to provide you with personalized insights and recommendations. Plus, if you’re interested in taking your analytics game to the next level, I also offer an Analytic Dashboard VIP Day where I will work with you one-on-one to build a custom dashboard that provides all the key metrics you need to make informed business decisions. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for your free analytic audit today and take the first step toward data-driven success!
