It’s all about traffic, right?
Well, maybe not.
Many of us focus on boosting traffic to our websites because, after all, more eyes mean more potential for sales and conversions.
However, traffic doesn’t tell the whole story. Worse, it can lull you into a false sense of marketing-related security.
Every Business Must Identify Appropriate KPIs
Do you really understand your KPIs?
One company’s KPIs, or key performance indicators, might look radically different from those of another business. They’re at different stages of development, or they have conflicting goals.
Take a look at Intuit Quickbook’s list of the seven most important KPIs for small businesses to track. You’ll notice that website traffic doesn’t appear at all.
While Quickbook’s list doesn’t deal with marketing directly, it contains marketing-related KPIs, such as funnel drop-off rate.
Additionally, your KPIs change depending on what you want to accomplish. If you’re hoping to build more brand awareness, for instance, website traffic might serve as a worthy KPI.
But what if you want to increase conversion rates? Gaining more traffic might actually hurt your numbers.
You won’t know which KPIs to track unless you know what you want to achieve. Your business goals will change over time as your sales fluctuate and your brand evolves.
The important thing is to leave vanity at the door. Website traffic looks impressive when you hit big numbers, but it doesn’t make your business more successful — or profitable.
Visitors Don’t Equal Customers
Leads and sales are more valuable than all the traffic in the world.
Writing for Forbes, marketing expert Jayson DeMers points out that businesses can’t put a value on website traffic. Instead, they have to put a value on individual visitors.
I can visit a website 20 times in one day just because I’m bored. I never buy anything, give away my email address, or share its content with my friends. I just visit.
My visitor value is 0.
Another person might visit that same website once, fall in love with a product advertised on the home page, and buy the product 20 seconds later. That visitor’s value skyrockets based on the price of the item and the potential for repeat purchases.
You Need to Dig Deeper
I’m not telling you to ignore website traffic. It’s a valuable metric to know.
However, digging into granular-level metrics will yield far more valuable information.
For instance, where do your visitors come from? How long do they stay on the page? Do they ever return? Do your visitors share your content on social media? How many pages does the average user visit?
These numbers will tell you what you need to know about your business’s marketing success or failure. Website traffic alone won’t.
We work with businesses that want to improve their website traffic and increase conversion rates every day. We’ve learned that website traffic alone isn’t enough to keep a business afloat, which is why we focus on creating content that converts. Get three free content ideas to take the next step toward business success.
