How to Choose the Right KPIs to Measure eCommerce Marketing Goals
To determine whether your marketing efforts are successful, you need to be able to effectively measure the results of your campaigns. Otherwise, you’ll be in the dark about how your marketing strategy is actually performing when it could benefit from significant improvement.
One of the best ways to measure your marketing efforts is to look at specific key performance indicators (KPIs). These will give you a clear indication of what’s working and what isn’t as you work toward your goals.
Here we’ll explore what KPIs are and how you can select the right ones to track based on your marketing goals.
What Is a KPI?
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are specific ways to measure the results of a campaign as you work toward a set goal. There are many KPIs that you can measure to track the progress of your efforts and determine which steps you need to take to achieve your goals.
If you don’t track the right KPIs, you won’t have a clear idea of how your campaigns are performing based on the goals you have in place. Even if it appears as though your efforts are successful, you won’t know precisely how successful unless you’re tracking critical KPIs and metrics.
What Are the Different Marketing KPIs for Marketing?
There are different types of KPIs based on what you want to accomplish. KPIs can apply to goals around sales, customer service, manufacturing, project management, and, in this case, marketing.
There are many KPIs you can track to help gauge progress. Some common KPIs for marketing campaigns include the following:
Traffic
This tracks the total number of visitors who land on your website from another source, whether that source is a search engine, another website, or directly entering the URL.
Time on Site
Using this KPI, you can determine how long people stay on your website after their initial visit. If you see long session durations on blog posts and web pages, this indicates that your content is engaging and relevant. Conversely, if people spend too much time on product pages and the checkout process, you may want to find ways to streamline the buying process.
New vs. Returning Visitors
You may also want to keep track of how many new visitors your website gets compared to returning visitors. If you have a high number of new visitors but a low number of returning visitors, you may need to take some steps to drive more engagement and conversion.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate measures the rate at which people immediately leave your website after visiting. A high bounce rate could be a sign that your content is irrelevant or of low quality and turning people away. A high bounce rate could ultimately have a negative effect on search engine rankings, as Google and other search engines see a high bounce rate as a sign of irrelevant and unhelpful content.
Traffic Source
This KPI indicates where people are visiting your site from, whether the source is a social media ad, paid search ad, organic search result, another website, or another source.
Average Session Duration
The average session duration measures the average amount of time a person spends on your website at a time. Like the time on site metric, a high average session duration shows that your content is engaging and connecting with visitors.
Mobile Site Traffic
Using this KPI, you can see how many people are visiting your website using a mobile device. If this number is low, it may indicate that you need to make your website mobile-responsive to appear online.
Email Open Rate
In your email campaigns, you need to track how many people are actually opening your emails upon receiving them, which is where this metric can help. See how many people are opening your emails, and if this number is low, you may want to optimize your subject line or clean up your contact list to reach people who are actively interested in your brand.
Email Click-Through Rate (CTR)
A high open rate lets you know that people are opening your emails, but that’s not enough to gauge the success of your emails. In addition to a high open rate, you’ll want a high click-through rate, which shows that people are clicking the links in your emails. If your CTR rate is low, you may want to touch up the content in the email body, make your call-to-action clearer or more visible, or consider a more compelling offer that gets people to click.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
In addition to emails, you can use CTR to track clicks across all of your marketing materials. The CTR could indicate the rate at which people click on links on your website, display ads, social media posts, and more.
Choosing the Right KPIs
There are many KPIs, but the ones you track will depend on your unique goals. In marketing, you might aim to build brand awareness, boost sales, or increase lead conversions. Each goal will have corresponding KPIs and metrics to help you track your progress.
For instance, if your goal is to build brand awareness with your marketing, a couple of vital KPIs to measure will include website traffic and click-through rates. If you’re getting plenty of people to visit your website and click on links after initially encountering your brand, this indicates a successful brand awareness campaign.
If you want to increase lead conversions, CTR, average session duration, and time on site are a few KPIs that can help you measure these efforts.
Consider how your goals relate to the specific KPIs you want to track to decide on the appropriate metrics to measure. You can then use analytics tools to measure progress and use the insights you glean to make any necessary changes to your campaigns.
Use KPIs for Continuous Improvement of Marketing Efforts
Tracking the appropriate KPIs will help guide your optimization efforts as you work to improve your marketing strategy. Using Google Analytics and other analytics tools, you can measure the performance of your campaigns and take steps to meet your goals more efficiently.
For additional assistance with growing your eCommerce business and developing successful strategies, consult with the experts at Gray Growth Logistics.