Success Metrics for Your Online Business: Are You Measuring Up?

The four-decade old internet is now omnipresent and increasingly becoming omnipotent. Naturally, potential customers are spending more time on the web rather than previously conventional modes like the television or radio. Thus, online presence is essential for businesses of all sizes and industries.

However, simply having a website or social media account will not suffice. To succeed in the online space, businesses need to track and analyze key metrics to measure growth and effectiveness. This helps in gaining valuable insights into performance and areas of improvement.

Numerous online growth metrics exist depending on the type of business and relevance. Let’s explore some common ones.

Website Traffic: The number of people visiting a website is critical any online business. Improving website traffic may lead to better brand awareness, and hence, increased sales. Few strategies to improve website traffic include:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Optimize your website content and structure by using relevant keywords to boost its rank in search engine results.
2. Content Marketing – Create high-quality, engaging content (blog posts, infographics, videos, etc.) to attract visitors and keep them coming back.
3. Social Media Marketing – Promote website and content on social media platforms to drive user traffic to your products or services.
4. Paid Advertising – Run paid advertising campaigns, such as pay-per-click (PPC) ads, on Google or social media platforms to attract targeted traffic.
5. Email Marketing – Build an email list of prospects, and regularly send promotional content, for instance, newsletters to engage your audience.
6. Referral Traffic Generation – Encouraging other websites to link to your content via outreach or guest posting to drive referral traffic to your website

Conversion Rate: Only a fraction of internet users visiting your website may take a desired action, for instance, purchase your product or service or filling a contact form. Improving the conversion rate can help maximize the value of your website traffic in terms of generating leads and closing sales. Here are some steps you can take to monitor your conversion rate.

1. Define Your Conversion Goals – Identify the actions you wish your visitors should take on your website. These may include making a purchase, filling out a contact form, or subscribing to your newsletter.
2. Set Up Tracking – Monitor your conversion rate by setting up tracking tools, such as Google Analytics on your website.
3. Calculate Your Conversion Rate – This is essentially a ratio of conversions to visitor traffic on your website and multiplying by 100. For example, if your website received 1,000 visitors in a month and had 50 conversions, your conversion rate would be 5%.
4. Analyze Your Results – This is key for understanding what’s working well on your website and what needs to improve. Look for patterns in your data, for instance, pages driving the most conversions or those where traffic is lower than you would like.
5. Experiment with Changes – Update your website to address based on your analysis. This could involve testing different page layouts, improving your website copy, or adding more prominent calls to action.
6. Monitor and Refine – Keep tracking your website traffic over time and refine your website and marketing strategies to boost your conversion rate.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Marketing spend is essential. But you should not break the bank for it! Optimizing CAC can make you profitable quickly. Here’s how you can achieve this.

1. Define Your Target Audience – Identify your ideal customer and create a profile that includes demographics, interests, and behaviors. This will help you tailor your marketing efforts to attract the right customers.
2. Focus on High-converting Channels – Mark your presence on channels (e.g., e-commerce, social media) that drive the most conversions for your business. This will help you maximize the return on investment (ROI).
3. Optimize Your Website for Conversions – Boost conversions on your website by ensuring it is fast and easy to navigate, and includes clear calls to action.
4. Leverage Social Proof – Use customer reviews, testimonials, and social media engagement to build trust and credibility with potential buyers.
5. Test and Iterate – Explore different marketing strategies (e.g., offers, discounts, moment marketing) and stick to those resulting in higher conversions.
6. Retarget Existing Customers –Stay connected with your existing customers by using their contact information, such as emails, to share your marketing efforts (e.g., newsletters, loyalty offers). This is a cost-effective way to drive repeat purchases and increase customer lifetime value.

Social Media Engagement: Social media is now an ocean of over a billion prospects. Thus, it can be a powerful tool to engage with your customers and build brand awareness. Measuring social media engagement, such as likes, shares, and comments, can help you gauge the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. Following tips can help.

1. Post Consistently – Top-of-mind brand awareness can be achieved via consistent posting. To achieve this, it’s ideal to develop and stick to a content calendar.
2. Use Visual Content – Visual content, such as images and videos, are more engaging than plain text. Use high-quality visuals to wow your audience.
3. Add Hashtags – Hashtags help increase the discoverability of your content, which can lead to more engagement. Relevant hashtags make it easier for people to find your content.
4. Run Contests and Giveaways – These initiatives have likelihood to draw audience to your brand. Make sure the prizes are relevant to your brand and the rules are clear.
5. Collaborate with influencers – Collaborating with influencers can help increase your reach and credibility on social media. Scout for influencers with strong following and creativity to promote your brand.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): This metric is measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Typically, businesses send a survey form to customers, asking how likely they are to recommend their business to others. Improving NPS can help increase customer retention and drive word-of-mouth referrals.

NPS is determined based on a score of 0–10, asked to users who have availed a product or service. Customers providing a 9 or 10 are highly likely to recommend your brand or service to their colleagues. On the other hand, a low NPS points to significant issues that should be addressed to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The simplicity and effectiveness of the NPS metric make it a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes and industries to measure and improve customer loyalty. By monitoring and improving your NPS, you can identify areas for improvement, make data-driven decisions, and ultimately drive growth and profitability for your business.

The internet is home to nearly five billion users, engaged via smartphones, PCs, and social media apps. Thus, understanding and regularly tracking online growth metrics would help you make data-driven decisions and optimize your online presence to attract more customers, increase engagement, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

Many advanced data gathering technologies and statistical methods are available at affordable costs. That said, to stay ahead of the pack, you must gain a deep understanding of existing metrics and choose those relevant to your growth story.