The main challenge encountered by businesses today is identifying appropriate methods of measuring the success of online activities and determining which acquisition sources deliver higher value to the business.
The basic metrics of unique visitors to the website and their conversion rate provide a macro view of your website’s performance but more analysis is required when determining what acquisition source is worthy of investing time and money. By segmenting your conversions by source it becomes apparent that in the majority of cases, search engines generate the most traffic and leads. However, leads add no value to real world business profitability.
To measure real business profitability, it is important to analyse the conversion rate from each source at various stages during the conversion path. From here you will be able to see:
- Which traffic sources provide the highest amount of site traffic
- Which traffic sources provide the highest conversion rates
- The abandonment rate of each step in the process
With this data, you also can determine the most valuable traffic source by their conversion rate as well as identify where there are overall issues, or particular areas that require fixing. By reviewing the data in this method it focuses your efforts on actions that add business value. It is best to analyse data over a significant period of time (such as 6 months instead of 30 days) as the additional information provides a more accurate overview and can provide high-quality insights such as identifying customer lifetime value.
The secret to ensuring real business profitability is simple – focus on the end business goal, quantify how your digital efforts add business value and regularly review your data over a reasonable period of time.
