Metric monitoring
Key performance indicator is simply a tool used in measuring the progress or effectiveness of an organization. Web-users mostly use it in many ways. For instance, monitoring web traffic should be a website manager top priority. This is because it enables an individual to determine incoming traffics and determine how to increase the market after they have understood their user habits. Conducting web analytics on the hand will help to understand key factors that may help to drive one’s business. This may be done through monitoring of traffic sources such as frequently used words and the search engine used. Some of the commonly used key Factor Indicators (KPIs), their definitions, and explanations on why they should be monitored are discussed below.
Bounce rate can be defined as the number of people or users that exit your website (McEwen, 2017). It commonly happens after an individual views a page on the website without navigating to other sites. Monitoring bounce rate helps to know how effective the design and content of your website is by calculating a single page visit on the site. It also assists in understanding how often the site is visited and for how long. Monitoring bounce rate will also help one to detect when there is a large number of people leaving the site or are not interested in the content displayed on the site (Databox, 2020). A situation where the pages in the site load slowly or have tricky navigation may also result in a high bounce rate.
Unique Website Visitor refers to a first time visitor on a website for a specific period. The visitors are usually counted as a one-time visitor, even if they had visited the site previously. These visitors are often determined by users’ IP addresses with a combination of cookie on the browser, making an individual to be counted as a one-time visit even if they visit the site a hundred times (McEwen, 2017) Monitoring the unique website visitors assists in determining and understanding web traffic over time by analyzing spikes as well as lags in the unique visitor number and what may have caused them.
Pages viewed per session can be defined as the number of pages viewed on a site at one specific period visit by a user (McEwen, 2017). It is more helpful when it is used together with the bounce rate. Monitoring pages viewed per session helps to gauge the number of pages users view per session to understand how compelling the content in your site is. It is also important in the measurement of interest and curiosity relating to your website content. However, in a situation where access to a great number of pages per session may not exactly be a good call. It may mean that users are struggling to access a certain page containing specific information (Search Engine Journal, 2019). Thus it is important to consider the bounce rate and the average time your audience use in the site to improve service delivery.
Onsite search query is a query that is based on a specific term which has been entered in the web search engine (McEwen, 2017). Installing a search engine and linking it to an analytical platform should be considered in any site. This will help users to have ease in accessing the information they need by simply entering their search query in the web search engine. Connecting it with the analytical program assists you to track search queries, and the resulting pages visited. Monitoring onsite search query will not only help to identify user experience issues such as poor website structure but will also help in content creation. It will also help you to know what content users want or prefer, what is lacking on the website, and the products and services interest your web visitors. Marketers who would like to better their content strategy should consider using an onsite search query.
Average page load time is the amount of time taken by a page to load in seconds into the desired web page or site. The key responsibility of any digital product manager is to prioritize business metrics based on engineering projects. In most cases, the key performance indicators are conversions or are related to engagement like activation rate, active user rate, or new paying customers (Section, 2016). Load page speed should be one of the key factors to be monitored. This is because as the page load time is decreasing, so is the conversion rate increasing. In an e-commerce situation, for example, where one is either testing for a mobile browsing gallery, if the page fails to load in 4 seconds or fewer seconds, a great number of users will surely leave the site. Therefore, monitoring the average page load time can help to improve the page load speed to avoid such problems.
In conclusion, with the key performance indicators and metrics listed above, website owners will surely be able to monitor most of the activities running on their website. They will also be able to know the causes of their users increasing or decreasing and ways to improve their service delivery.
References
Databox. (2020, May 26). The 17 essential website performance KPIs | Databox blog. Retrieved
from https://databox.com/website-kpis-and-measuring-performance
Search Engine Journal. (2019, February 3). Top 10 user engagement KPIs to measure. Retrieved from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-marketing-kpis/user-engagement-metrics/#close
Section. (2016, June 6). Should a product manager have page load time as a KPI? Retrieved from https://www.section.io/blog/product-manager-kpi-page-load/
McEwen, M. (2017, March 3). Top 8 key performance indicators to track on your website. Retrieved from https://smallbusinessforum.co/top-8-key-performance-indicators-to-track-on-your-website-d574b147c41
Kiera, A. (2020) 17 Essential Website KPLs for Measuring Your Website Performance. Retrieved from; https://databox.com/website-kpis-and-measuring-performance
Mandy, m. (2017). Top Eight Key Performance Indicators to Track on Your Website. Retrieved From: https://smallbusinessforum.co/top-8-key-performance-indicators-to-track-on-your-website-d574b147c41
Stewart, C., J. (2016) Should a Product Manager Have a Page Load Time. Retrieved from: https://www.section.io/blog/product-manager-kpi-page-load/