conversion rate

Over the last week, I have been discussing which metrics are critical for analysis, depending upon the type of website. The last two posts covered: Critical Metrics for Lead Generation Sites and Critical Metrics for e-Commerce Sites. Both posts covered analytics you need to be paying attention to if you run an e-commerce or lead generation site, respectively, as well as common metrics for all types of websites.


The analytics you should devote your time to depends on what type of website you have. Here’s a quick classification of a few analytics:

Side Note: Relative importance of site metrics based on site type. Critical goals should be measured and improved. Trend indicators can tell you if your site is headed in the right direction. Good means that it's something to keep your eyes on but it's not a primary indicator. Don't waste your time with Not Important indicators.

The final main type of website is ad-driven, which is a different kind of animal than e-commerce or lead generation. Join me after the jump an intensive breakdown of critical metrics for ad-driven websites as well as some secondary metrics worth tracking.

Last Friday, I discussed the Mona Lisa’s smile - the “knowing smile”. When you look at her, she’s looking at you and she is subtly letting on that she knows something no one else knows; well, at least you don’t know it.

Last week I dove into a topic very critical for nearly every website – metrics – in a post entitled: Increasing the Conversion Rate: Critical Metrics for e-Commerce Sites. The post covered analytics you need to be paying attention to if you run an e-commerce site, as well as common metrics for all types of websites.


The analytics you should devote your time to depends on what type of website you have. Here’s a quick classification of a few analytics:

Side Note: Relative importance of site metrics based on site type. Critical goals should be measured and improved. Trend indicators can tell you if your site is headed in the right direction. Good means that it's something to keep your eyes on but it's not a primary indicator. Don't waste your time with Not Important indicators.

Beyond these, there are certain internal numbers you may want to track, especially for a lead-generation site. For example, you may keep a log of web-leads after they go to the sales department. Wouldn't it be great to know if leads from a certain keyword or web site turn into deals more often than other types of leads? Integrating your web site with a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) suite can show you these types of things. Examples of CRM include SalesForce.com, SugarCRM, and my personal favorite, ZohoCRM, which is free for the first few users.

Join me after the jump for critical metrics common to all sites, as well as an intensive breakdown of critical metrics for lead generation websites.

The mantra of a great web site team should be 'measure everything'. Understanding what and why you're tracking certain things will help you make sound design improvements to your web site. Not all data is useful, though. The analytics you should be paying attention to will vary by the type of web site that you run. Here's a quick classification of a few analytics:

Side Note: Relative importance of site metrics based on site type. Critical goals should be measured and improved. Trend indicators can tell you if your site is headed in the right direction. Good means that it's something to keep your eyes on but it's not a primary indicator. Don't waste your time with Not Important indicators.

Beyond these, there are certain internal numbers you may want to track, especially for a lead-generation site (which I will cover in a later post). For example, you may keep a log of web-leads after they go to the sales department. Wouldn't it be great to know if leads from a certain keyword or web site turn into deals more often than other types of leads? Integrating your web site with a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) suite can show you these types of things. Examples of CRM include SalesForce.com, SugarCRM, and my personal favorite, ZohoCRM, which is free for the first few users.

Join me after the jump for critical metrics common to all sites, as well as an intensive breakdown of critical e-commerce website metrics.

Last week we talked about which visitor analytics to look at when determining the effectiveness of your online ad campaign. The bottom line is conversion rate. It doesn't matter if 10,000 people see your ad if only a handful of them click on it. The same rule applies when you are looking at visitors to your website. How long do your visitors stay? When they visit do they buy your product or take your survey?