Never Do Anything You Can't Measure

Accurate and timely measurements are a key to sustainability, awareness, and, hence, to effectiveness. Business cannot function without a transparent, up-to-date, maximally objective and itemized picture of current and previous activity. It is especially true in the context of websites when the efficiency of business performance is directly dependent on activity on the website.  

The ultimate significance of measurements is not about the importance of data, but about the awareness. Being aware of any changes or their absence gives you a justified direction for further activity. Thus, marketing outcomes, downloads, contact forms and their effectiveness, social media feedback, and purchases rooted in social networking experiences – everything should be put into statistics regularly.

What can and should be measured on your website: 

• Number of visitors (exclude your team)
• Bounce rate (do people stay on your website for any meaningful amount of time?)
• External links (how often are you sending people away and to where?)
• Files being opened (e.g., PDFs, Excel & Word files, etc.)
• Scroll events (are people caring enough about your content to scroll down?)
• Average period of time visitors tend to spend on a page
• CTAs (calls-to-action)
  • Hover events on CTA forms/banners (submit buttons, fields, etc.)
  • Click events on CTA forms/banners
• Conversion rate as an ultimate index of durable sustainability of business productivity
• Quality of leads (quantity is usually a poor way to determine your websites’ effectiveness)
• Awareness level which becomes especially relevant when there are some changes on the website (not only website design, but also altered offers, change of a product, or other similar developments)
• Number of purchases (and pertinent data)
• Product performance (if measurable)
• Meeting deadlines (if a company sells services or task completion is crucial in the delivery of products)
• Average order amount
• Sales conversion rate

ROI is a crucial measurement to be taken regularly. It features the efficiency of the investment and is a vivid illustration of the financial effectiveness of the website. Linked PDF files, scrolling, form submissions, external website links, etc. are expected to be measured and analyzed. 

Having all the measurements completed timely and analyzed properly, you will make data-informed decisions, develop solutions that rely on customers’ priorities and needs, and update irrelevant functions and aspects. In such a way, your business will become more competitive, revenue – higher, and the company – more attractive for high-end experts and partners. 

I get it, but how?

Well, that's a loaded question, isn't it? Honestly, there are a lot of ways to do everything mentioned here. Lots of analytic-based services exist to help with this. Most of the time, we can get this entire list of analytics and related reports through Google Analytics with relative ease - once your goals are identified.