How Your Website Statistics Determine the Value of Your Site
Lately, I’ve been talking to quite a few different B2B marketing professionals about the different internet marketing programs and services that they offer.
One of the biggest questions I keep asking is “What are the most important statistics you’re tracking on your client’s websites?”
The answers vary wildly.
Around 40% of the time I get something along the lines of “we don’t really track stats. We just know that sometimes people will look at their website and call the client.”
Another 40% of the time the responses are along the lines of “we get a load of statistics from (insert stat tracking service here), but we really don’t focus on monitoring them. We look at a lot of different things”.
Around 20% of the time, I get answers that I considered to be the right answer. Something like “we track a few key statistics on a daily basis…”.
You may be asking, why do I consider that to be the right answer?
When running a successful business, the devil is in the details and statistics. Monitoring those details can give you huge insights into the performance of your marketing campaigns and strategies.
It’s easy to get lost in the sea of numbers and then convince yourself that certain metrics are important. You will tell yourself the business is moving forward when it’s actually stagnating or even going backwards.
That’s why I’ve put together a list of the most important statistics to monitor when you’re running a business.
#1 – Visitors, Past and Present
Monitor the number of visitors coming into your website. Whether they’re finding you for the first time or they’re coming back for their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or more times is important.
It’s important because this is the pool of people you’re trying to convert into leads for your business.
The more visitors you have coming to the website, the more chances you have to convert them into new customers.
#2 – Leads Generated
The number of people that choose to take action on your website and contact you in some form become a new sales lead for your business.
They could be signing up for a demonstration, requesting a free report or whitepaper or maybe watching a video. They might submit their information into a form where you’re collecting at least an email address. When a visitor has chosen to give you more information they become a lead.
It’s critical to monitor your leads to learn where they’re coming from and how you’re generating sales through the website.
#3 – Conversion Ratio
Your conversion ratio refers to the number of visitors that you are converting into leads.
Let’s assume you have 200 visitors to your website every day and you convert 3 of them into leads. You would be operating at a 1.5% conversion ratio.
Many marketers will vouch that a 1% to 2% conversion ratio is the average for most B2B websites and businesses.
Monitoring your conversion ratio is important. It tells you how effective your website is at converting visitors into leads that move through your sales process.
There are two ways to double your leads, by doubling your traffic or doubling your conversion rate. Doubling your conversion rate is one of the easiest ways to extract more leads from the business.
#4 – Search Rankings
For many businesses, one of the most efficient traffic sources for generating leads and sales are going to be the major search engines like Google and Bing.
The visitors coming from major search engines are looking specifically for what your business offers which makes it substantially easier to convert them into a lead.
Your organic traffic is not free. Think of the time, energy, and marketing strategies that go into maintaining top rankings in search results. Organic search traffic is, however, often more profitable and cost effective than many other traffic sources.
Closely monitor what keywords you’re currently ranking for. Also have an idea of the keywords that you want to rank for in the future and then pay attention to how those rankings are changing on a weekly and monthly basis.
This will help you determine how many new potential leads you can be generating as you move your website up the search results. You will also know how many leads you stand to lose if your website begins slipping in the rankings.
#5 – Close Rate
It’s unfortunate that many of today’s businesses simply do not monitor how many of the leads they’re generating are being converted into sales and paying customers.
This isn’t always a website metric that is easily monitored. Many businesses handle their leads and sales processes offline or by phone. However, knowing your effective close rate is critical to the success of your business and all of your digital marketing strategies.
Your close rate is determined by how many leads you’re converting into a sale — or how many sales you’re closing on a regular basis.
Once you have an idea of your conversion ratio and your close rate, you can put a dollar value on the traffic that is coming into your website and determine how much money you’re earning per visitor. This helps you figure out how much you can afford to pay to drive more visitors to your website.
For instance, let’s assume that each new customer you bring into your business is worth $5,000.
If you are closing 10% of the leads you generate and converting them into paying customers, each lead that you generate is worth around $500 to your business. If your website is converting around 1% of your traffic into new leads, then you can effectively say that each visitor to your website is worth around $5.
Knowing this information is powerful. You now know that you can spend up to $5 to bring a new visitor into your website without fearing your business running into the red.
Before you start throwing money at your marketing campaigns, you’ll want to verify that the traffic sources you are trying to tap into will provide high quality traffic. Low quality traffic could skew your metrics and lead to you wasting money.
Why these website statistics are important…
Monitoring the performance of your business is hugely important so you can continue improving it from year to year. Knowing the metrics and what drives revenue is critical if you ever decide you want to make an exit.
Making a profitable exit can become more difficult if you’re not actively tracking your metrics and working to improve them.
Without tracking the performance of your business, investors may still be interested in buying it simply based off the profits. This route often leaves a large amount of money on the table.
After selling a business that you haven’t been monitoring, an investor will come in and improve the metrics. They will increase each one as much as they can and sell the business again for far more than what they paid you to buy it.
Both business buyers and sellers will utilize brokers to make these sales happen quicker. It is a fairly common occurrence for them to buy underutilized businesses with the sole intention of working on the metrics and then flipping them again after a few months.
If you’re thinking about selling your business, you need to have proper monitoring and tracking in place. Do this well before you reach out to a broker. It not only helps you increase your asking price but also helps you justify that higher asking price when you begin negotiations with your investor.
If you aren’t closely monitoring your site, implement software such as Analytics to start keeping tabs on what’s happening. You can then use the information you’ve gathered to increase your monthly and yearly revenues.
