So, you’ve got a great website and what you believe to be useful content for visitors to interact with. You’ve noticed website traffic is up, but you’re not sure exactly why. Certainly, it has something to do with all that great content you’ve made available, but why, specifically, is it working, and how can you take advantage of that to continue to develop content and drive website traffic?
The key to understanding what’s working is looking at your website analytics. Here, you discover the specifics behind what content development is working and what content development is not. Keep in mind that while website analytics are essential for understanding your success, digging deep into website analytics can be an extremely overwhelming and time-consuming process.
You’re likely to run into questions like:
Sometimes, looking at website analytics feels like interpreting another language! Clearly, all this information means something, but what does it mean and how is it indicative that your website content is working?
All of these technical terms that pop up when you look at your website analytics are geared to help you establish and measure what the industry calls benchmarks and baselines. These are helpful metrics for determining content performance and to tell you how consumers find your content, how they value your content, and how they’re responding to your content. Your baseline, then, is how you’re currently performing in these categories. Your benchmark is how you’re performing compared to the rest of your industry. So, what does this mean for your company’s marketing and sales efforts?
In marketing, your benchmark performance can be separated into different factors. One factor is studying what impacts consumer website visits. Another is looking at what impacts your lead generation.
To do this, look at how many website visitors convert to leads, then research how many of these have turned into marketing-qualified leads. How many leads become interested in getting a demonstration, quote, or price? How many leads are requesting a sample? Pay attention to any activity that indicates a website visitor has been through the initial education process and wants to take the process to the next step.
Related Content: The Buyer’s Journey: How B2B Customers Find Your Business Naturally
On the sales side, it’s beneficial to track open and expiring quotes. With customer relationship management (CRM) software, such as Hubspot, you can set up sales sequences that automatically go out to the client if a quote hasn’t been signed or returned. This effort is using analytics to inform automated marketing and enables you to move the process along while also tracking the data that can be analyzed.
Without website analytics, you’re most likely taking action that isn’t based on an informed marketing decision. Before making any kind of business decision, you want to know what’s working and what isn’t. Why advertise in a trade magazine if you have the data to prove that tactic doesn’t work for your company?
Analytics help you know where and how to spend your money and produce a good return on your investment.
The clearest and best way to begin digesting website analytics is to establish a baseline of where you are in these three areas: conversion, lead generation, and website traffic.
These three are crucial in understanding how marketing-qualified leads are being generated and how well you’re closing on them. After these baselines are measured, you can then see how they perform in relation to the established industry benchmarks. This information will also provide you with insight into what steps you need to take next.
Secondly, you’ll want to separate these metrics and study them carefully. For example, within website traffic, you’ll want to look at search engine optimization (SEO) and see if there’s any technical issue with your website appearing on search results.
Is your website too loaded with data and not responding properly? Is it not optimized for search engine results? All of these are factors that you’ll need to explore as they impact your website analytics. You’ll also want to study your click-through rate (CTR) since it’s an important indicator of how successful your online campaigns are.
Related Content: Why Website Analytics Will Save Your B2B Company in 2021
Now that you’ve discovered your baseline metrics and have compared them to the industry benchmarks, you can use analytics to determine what is working and what isn’t. Usually, companies digging into their analytics for the first time find two issues where they are underperforming: website traffic and lead generation. That is, not as many people are finding their website as they would have hoped, and not enough people are interacting with the content on the site’s pages.
There are many factors to consider when trying to get visitors to your website. Here are a few to consider:
Related Content: How to Use Google Trends to Analyze Your Company’s Digital Presence
Now that you know what you’re looking at, try these methods out on your own website. How is performance when you compare your baselines with the industry benchmarks? Or, maybe all of this is just a little too overwhelming to even begin to interpret. That’s okay! You’re not alone.
At Open Path Digital Solutions, we talk with clients every day and help them dissect their company’s website analytics. Maybe taking a look at your website analytics has revealed issues with your website that you simply don’t know how to fix internally. At Open Path, we specialize in sifting through the data, explaining it to our clients, and empowering clients to make decisions about their marketing.
If you feel overwhelmed when it comes to data-driven business growth, we can help! We work with B2B companies to help them both interpret their analytics and improve baseline performance. If you need help with either interpretation or execution, we’ve got the resources and personnel to turn your website into a lead generation Growth Engine. Put our experience and expertise at your disposal.
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