Understanding the Importance of Your Website’s Engagement Metrics

In today’s culture, your business’ website is competing for the attention of potential clients not only against your direct competitors but also against distractions such as social media sites, YouTube, news outlets, and many more. It is critical that your website retains the attention of your customers long enough to turn page views into conversions. 

The length of time users remain on and explore your website also helps your organic search result ranking on Google. In addition to solid site optimization completed by expert SEO (Search Engine Optimization) professionals, it is also important for you to understand which engagement metrics are the most useful to your business and how monitoring these metrics will lead to marketing success.

Get Engaged with Your Website Visitors!

Google Analytics provides you with a variety of website metrics that you can use to determine who is visiting your website, how long they are engaged with your content, and which areas of your site are the most/least popular. When it comes to marketing success, there are a few metrics which are most useful in helping you turn visitors into customers and ranking higher in the organic search results.

• Time Spent on Page: One of the most integral metrics to track is the amount of time a visitor spends on your site. Dwell time for your site may be able to show you where visitors find value in your content and help you improve user experience. There are two-time measurements which are equally important in their own ways: time on particular pages and the average session duration on your entire site.
  • Examining the micro view (time spent on particular pages) can reveal which pages contain the most engaging content for your visitors. It is a clear indication of your potential customers’ interest. Perhaps your business blog gains quite a bit of attention but certain service pages are rarely visited. This information allows you to determine what aspects of your blog are the most interesting and to find a way to transfer that type of engaging content to the underperforming pages.
  • Conversely, the average session duration measures the total length of time visitors spend throughout your entire site. Using this metric in combination with individual page time can show you where your site gains the most attention holistically and where the average user spends most of his time.
• Bounce Rate: Obviously, the longer a user spends on your site the more likely it will be that the user will become a customer. What you don’t want is a high bounce rate, or the percentage of visitors to your site which leave after only viewing one page. This lack of engagement with your site may be caused by several factors including an unclear call to action, boredom, and unexpected or unexceptional content. Even if users find you after you’ve worked diligently on your site optimization, it won’t benefit your business if your bounce rate is sky-high.
• Pages per Session: Once a user finds your site, you want them to navigate through it and explore the content you have to offer. Measuring the number of unique page visits per session allows you to see how engaged your customers are with your website and to understand the path they took while on your site. The longer they wander through your website and learn more about your company and what you have to offer the more likely they will become a customer.
• Scroll Depth: Not only do you want your visitors to explore your site and learn as much as they can about your business but you also want them to absorb the content you are displaying. While they may visit various pages, this does not mean that they fully read the whole page. The scroll depth analytic (an add-on plugin for Google Analytics) allows you to measure how far into the page your visitors read the level of interest they have with the content.

Monitoring for Success

It is critical for your business that your website is optimized with the latest SEO techniques so that you rank well in the Google organic search results; it is also important that you understand and monitor your website’s engagement metrics to be successful online. You clearly want your visitors to engage with your site, so you need to be aware of exactly how potential customers interact with your content once they’ve reached you. Even with high traffic volume, an equally high bounce rate indicates an issue. However, you wouldn’t know there was a problem unless you are monitoring your metrics. Having an exceptional product or service is only part of the business battle; you also need to have engaging site content to convert visitors to customers.

51Blocks Can Help!

If the prospect of understanding and monitoring your website’s engagement metrics seems intimidating or you simply don’t have the time to do so, don’t worry! At 51Blocks, we are experts in SEO, marketing management, content, advertising, and much more. We will help you make sense of these metrics and use them to your advantage. Our team understands all of these metrics intimately and can assist you in developing a strategy to improve areas of your site with low page views or scroll depth rates and to keep the pages with high levels of engagement performing well. Contact us today to find out how we can help you with your site engagement metrics as well as all of your site optimization needs.