Measure twice, cut once – Monitor and React

Let’s regroup here. This is the third – and final – installment on our blog series about website measurement. In our first blog post, we spoke about developing your business goals which help level set what you’re trying to accomplish from a business perspective. We then outlined how you should be thinking about your digital goals, which is how your digital property helps meet your business objectives.

In this blog post, we’ll touch on how to monitor and react to what the data is telling you.

Assuming you’re using an analytics tool like Google Analytics, there are a plethora of reports that can provide insight into how your digital property is being used and what type of audience is converting most. You’ll want to first start off by viewing your business goals and trying to determine who is converting (i.e., buying your product or meeting your digital key performance indicators):

  • What referrers are driving the most conversions (social, search, direct, etc.)? Within those sub-sections, drill into specific social channels, websites, or keywords that are converting the best. You’ll want to start making decisions on: (1) reinvesting in channels that are converting the best, (2) focusing less on channels that are not delivering conversion, (3) evaluating on missing opportunities such as search keywords you’d want to associate with your site.
  • What type of visitor is converting? Are they coming from a specific location? Are they in a particular age range? Again, you’ll want to start making decisions on how to focus your digital efforts. For example, a client of ours that is a Real Estate professional in the New Jersey area had a relatively decent conversion rate; however, when we began to drill down into the audience that was converting they were all within her target area as a Real Estate professional, which was great news. For her, people not in the New Jersey area were not in the target audience. It was fine that people outside of New Jersey were visiting her site, but there was no expectation that those people required her services,
  • Evaluate your traffic/metrics month over month to determine if there are any trends that emerge or to detect any potential issues with your site.

We’re going to keep this short and sweet. That doesn’t mean that the conversation has to stop here. Always feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions on how your should be measuring your website or social media channels.

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