Website engagement is a tricky business. The entirety of the success of the online venture depends on it. Be it conversions or feedback, reviews or new potential customers, it is necessary for a website owner to keep a precise track of website engagement- who all visited the site, who all interacted in fruitful ways, if there was an attempt to buy or contact the service providers- all this information is crucial to make things better for the business. Only knowing the traffic numbers is not enough.
There are few measuring tools, or metrics you can employ to gather this important data. It helps to chart out the future growth plans, review the current statistics and strategies as well as measure improvements. When we utilize these measure in SEO by Kinex Media, we get many interesting insights that help us build stronger SEO structures.
Let us take a look at some of them.
- Click Through Rate
Click Through Rate (CTR) happens to be a sound instrument that can tell a lot about the strength of your metatags. If the user manages to get to your website through search, but fails to click to reach your website, the CTR tends to be low. This generally means weak metatags. It helps to take a closer look at them and revise wherever the need requires.
Stronger metatags are precise, contain long tailed organic keywords and make your website stand out from the rest of the pack.
- Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the number of visitors who, after clicking through to your website, returned almost immediately and without taking any notable action. Bounce rates are a tell-tale sign that your website needs fixing. It could be the CTAs, the web design, slow loading speed, insecure connection, lack of trust indicators, or any or all of them.
Bounce rate can be fixed by fixing these elements of SEO and web design by roong in the professionals who can handle all of them and keep them running smoothly for as long as possible.
- Average Duration Of Sessions
A session is the time a user spends on your website or webpage. This time may or may not include a meaningful action. Regardless, if a user is spending more than 30 seconds on your webpage, it is generally a good indicator and means that your website is engaging for the visitors, making them stay to explore more.
That being said, in some odd cases, the visitor leaves the site open and goes on to attend to some other work- something which you only need video cameras to see. A good practice would be to check in if there have been any clicks in that particular engagement at all. You can also keep a time-window of 120 seconds to determine if the webpage was used or merely opened and shut.
- Exit Ratio
A crucial part of the entire process is when and how the user has exited your website. If the website has been explored until the exit page, using the closing CTA- the indicators are that the user has been happy with his/her experience. On the other hand, if the website has been abandoned before reaching the exit page, it means you will first have to diagnose the weakest link first. Take note of the page on which most exits happen and inspect each aspect of it to make it better and more favourable to conversion.
- Number Of Leads
Lead generation is not only important from an SEO point-of-view, but it can also act as a tell-tale sign of the health of your optimization. You might have a million visitors on your webpage, but how many of these are converted into leads? This is the question that answers itself. If the number of leads you have a dwindling with time, it is essential to re-work your web design, make slight changes in content , metatags, descriptions and aesthetics.
Lead generation is an integral nature of proper SEO strategies and can tell you a lot about the users’ behaviour and their feedback, without even asking them first-hand.
Tracking Metrics And Improvement
Only tracking these metrics isn’t enough. What you need next is an array of tools to fix the small bits that can change the entire picture altogether. Google Analytics, various WordPress plugins and apps available in the market can help you track your numbers, compile meaningful statistics and get the bigger picture of day-to-day workings. This helps you in revising your immediate goals in a way that you are redirected towards your long-term goals automatically.
User experience matters more than anything else. If your visitors have a pleasant experience on your website, a smooth transition and an emotional connection that makes them stay and engage, consider yourself an achiever!