Welcome to Episode 15 of Season 1 – Essential Metrics For Online Business Success
Season 1 of the podcast is all about how you can start your first profitable online business. This season draws its shows from the free downloadable resource 'The 13 Steps to Creating Your First Profitable Online Business.'
In todays show we cover Essential Metrics For Online Business Success
It is so easy to look around the landscape of online business and feel overwhelmed with other people's successes. In fact, the first lesson we need to learn as entrepreneurs is:
Compare & dispair.
One of the other temptations that we face is to look at successful online personalities and want to imitate what they are doing. The trouble with this is that they are in a completely different season of business than you are.
So how do we market and grow our business. Do we just follow the latest and greatest shiny object that entrepreneurs are raving about? Do we just keep throwing things out there and see what sticks?
It used to be that marketing was a hit and miss activity. But today marketing has become a science thanks to the wonders of the internet and the amazing apps available to us.
You don't have to do business blind!
How do you know what is working and what's not?
How do you know what needs adjusting and what doesn't?
How do you know where to place your time and resources?
Tracking your metrics is the answer. Marketing is a science, not a shot in the dark. And while you can get buried in the sea of metrics that are available, I'm going to save you the overwhelm and share the essential few that you want to track.
The Free Tools You'll Need To Get Started:
You're going to need two powerful and absolutely free tools to start tracking your metrics.
The first is Google Analytics. Google Analytics will give you a tracking code that you need to install into your website. They give you the needed instructions and it really isn't too complicated.
If you're using FaceBook ads then your FaceBook Ads Manager will provide you with a FaceBook Pixel that you can install in your site.
This will enable you to track all the metrics that we'll discuss in this post.
Your 6 Essential Website Metrics:
You can find this in your main overview page of your Google Analytics page.
Here you want to see a general upward trend from month to month. If your numbers go down suddenly then investigate any changes you've made to your marketing.
(You can of course also measure the traffic to individual pages , etc.)
- New Visits - Returning Visitors
(You can find this as a pie diagram on Google Analytics under your Audience Overview tab.)
What you want to pay attention to here is if you are getting returning visitors. This lets you know if your website is sticky enough for people to want to return to it.
(You can find these details in Google Analytics under the Acquisition tab.)
This shows you your traffics point of origin:
- Social Media
- Referral
- Direct Search
- Organic Search
The beauty of this metric is that you can see exactly how your visitors are finding you.
You may realise that you've been investing a lot of time and effort in a strategy that just isn't producing results for you.
You may also find for example that a source of traffic is referring a lot of traffic to you. You may then wish to invest in or formalise your relationship with them.
(This metric is found in your Google Analytics under the Audience Overview tab.)
A 'bounce' happens when someone comes to your site and immediately leaves. This usually means that people did not find what they were looking for. For a variety of reasons you will always have some bounce rate. Here's a benchmark for you:
- 26% - 40% Excellent
- 41% - 55% Average
- 56% -70% Higher than average, but not a cause to panic
- 71%+ You need to change some things
(You can set this as a goal in your Google Analytics or work it out manually.)
This is the percentage of people who have achieved a goal on your site (e.g. signing up to your opt-in, making a purchase, etc.)
This is your most important metric!
You can work this out by dividing your total number of visitors who took the goal action by the total number of visitors to the site.
Here's a benchmark for you:
- 3% is the average conversion rate when people visit your site
Some tips to improve your conversion rate:
- Make it easy for your visitors to find what they're looking
- Make use of videos and images as these capture people's attention
- Make the opt-in and checkout process faster by streamlining and removing unnecessary steps
(You can find this in your Behavioural tab in Google Analytics)
Knowing what your top 10 most visited pages is important as this information lets you know what is important to your site visitors and allows you to make more of the same type of content.
You can also increase your conversion rate by adding content upgrades to these pages such as check lists, cheat sheets, etc.
Your 2 Essential Email Marketing Metrics
Your email marketing service provides these for you. If you'd like to know more check out Episode 5 of Season 1 of the podcast or you can check out Aweber HERE.
This is how many people open your email.
The industry average is 20%.
Tip: Look at your emails with the highest and lowest open rates and see what you can learn. The subject line is the main reason why people do or don't open emails.
This is how many people have clicked on a link/s in your email.
The industry average is 2% -4%.
Tip: Over half of emails are opened on mobile devices make sure that it is easy to click on the links. Check your emails on your mobile phone to see how easy it is to read and click on the links.
Your 5 Essential FaceBook Ads Marketing Metrics Plus A Few Others You May Want To Glance At
Your FaceBook Ads Manager provides these metrics.
To view the metrics that matter in your FaceBook Ads Manager, click on the Columns button on the bottom right hand side of the page. Then select customise columns. Here you can add and remove metrics that you want. Be sure to save these settings.
- Cost Per Acquisition / CPA
This IS your most important metric. What is the cost of getting your new client / sale?
To work out your CPA you first need to know your CPL and the average number of leads you need to get a new client / sale.
E.g. if you generally get 1 new client / sale from every 10 leads and your CPL is $10, then your CPA is $100.
To work this out you take the amount spent on your ad and divide it by the number of leads that it produced.
E.g. If you spent $100 on your ad and you got 10 leads. Your CPL would then be $10.
This is the number of people who clicked on your ad and were directed to your opt-in page, etc.
Anything 2%+ is good.
This is how many people clicked through to your opt-in page, etc., and completed the desired action.
This is worked out by dividing the number of link clicks by the number of leads / opt-ins.
You should expect to be getting 20% - 30% conversion rate from your ad.
Tip: If you're getting a decent CTR but low conversions then you need to work on your landing page:
- Does your the look, feel and language of your FB ad match your landing page?
- The more information you ask for on your opt-in page the less you'll get. All you need is their name and email.
- Is there a clear call to action on your landing page?
The importance of this metric increase with the amount of money you are spending on your ads. This is the number of times that the same person is seeing your ad. If they see your ad too much they get 'banner blindness' or worse, they'll get annoyed.
Aim for a frequency of 1-2.
These are your absolute must metrics for your FaceBook metrics. But below are a few others that you might want to have a glance at.
This is how relevant your ad is to the audience that it is being shown to. The better the relevancy, the cheaper your ad will be.
A relevancy score of 7-10 is exceptional and 4-6 is average.
- Cost Per Impression / CPM
This is the cost per 1000 views.
This is the average cost of each click from your ad to your website
Well, there we have it my friend. Your essential metrics or your website, email campaigns and FaceBook ads.
By paying attention to your metrics you'll be able to scientifically work out your marketing actions and get a great ROI (return on investment).
Leave a comment and let me know what you metrics you see as most important.
In The Next Episode:
In the next episode I'll wrap up the season
I look forward to reading your questions and comments!
Make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss any further episodes.
Show Sponsor:
This show is brought to you by my coaching program: Business Success Foundations.
This is an 8 week coaching program that covers all the essentials so you can start your first profitable online business.
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