10.4 Return on Investment (ROI) of a Website.

INTRODUCTION:

ROI – When you are running a company/organisation or business, you want to know if your Marketing Strategy is working in the right direction or if your investments are paying off .

More well known as ROI, return on investment is the amount of profit you have made compared to the money you have spent. You always need to measure your spend across all your marketing platforms. You can optimize quite heavily here, and adjust your spending according to which channels are more profitable. You can include these figures in your reporting metrics.

How you can track that:

4.1 Website traffic.

3. Web Traffic

Website traffic is the foundation of content marketing success. That’s because without traffic, there’s no revenue.

To look at how much traffic a piece of content is generating for your site, you can use Google Analytics. In the main menu, click on Behavior » Site Content » Landing Pages. This report will show you which pages your website visitors are first landing on. By default, it’s sorted by your highest-traffic pages first.

Beside just looking at your raw traffic numbers, you can also look at how your traffic is growing over time by comparing time periods as shown above.

It’s also a good idea to take a look at where you traffic is coming from. When you know the source of your traffic, you can figure out which part of your marketing strategy is driving traffic with the potential to convert – and which parts are wasting your time.

Now you’ll be able to see where your traffic is origination from for that landing page. In this example, you can see that most people land on this page by searching on Google:

landing-pages-acquisition-source-medium-view-1

If you see results like this when you’re spending a lot of time promoting your content on social media, you’ll know that something isn’t working with your social media marketing strategy.

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website. This necessarily does not include the traffic generated by bots. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth.

Not all web traffic is welcomed. Some companies offer advertising schemes that, in return for increased web traffic (visitors), pay for screen space on the site. There is also „fake traffic“, which is bot traffic generated by a third party. This type of traffic can damage a website’s reputation, its visibility on Google, and overall domain authority.

Example graph of web traffic at Wikipedia in December 2004

Web traffic is measured to see the popularity of websites and individual pages or sections within a site. This can be done by viewing the traffic statistics found in the web server log file, an automatically generated list of all the pages served.

The page itself is considered a file, but images are also files, thus a page with 5 images could generate 6 hits (the 5 images and the page itself). A page view is generated when a visitor requests any page within the website – a visitor will always generate at least one page view (the main page) but could generate many more. Tracking applications external to the website can record traffic by inserting a small piece of HTML code in every page of the website.

The number of visitors.
The average number of page views per visitor – a high number would indicate that the average visitors go deep inside the site, possibly because they like it or find it useful.
Average visit duration – the total length of a user’s visit. As a rule the more time they spend the more they’re interested in your company and are more prone to contact.
Average page duration – how long a page is viewed for. The more pages viewed, the better it is for your company.
Domain classes – all levels of the IP Addressing information required to deliver web pages and content.
Busy times – the most popular viewing time of the site would show when would be the best time to do promotional campaigns and when would be the most ideal to perform maintenance
Most requested pages – the most popular pages
Most requested entry pages – the entry page is the first page viewed by a visitor and shows which are the pages most attracting visitors
Most requested exit pages – the most requested exit pages could help find bad pages, broken links or the exit pages may have a popular external link
Top paths – a path is the sequence of pages viewed by visitors from entry to exit, with the top paths identifying the way most customers go through the site
Referrers; The host can track the (apparent) source of the links and determine which sites are generating the most traffic for a particular page.

Traffic overload

Too much web traffic can dramatically slow down or prevent all access to a website. This is caused by more file requests going to the server than it can handle and may be an intentional attack on the site or simply caused by over-popularity. Large-scale websites with numerous servers can often cope with the traffic required, and it is more likely that smaller services are affected by traffic overload. Sudden traffic load may also hang your server or may result in a shutdown of your services.

Increasing traffic

Web traffic can be increased by placement of a site in search engines and purchase of advertising, including bulk e-mail, pop-up ads, and in-page advertisements.

Web traffic can also be increased by purchasing through web traffic providers who are experts at delivering targeted traffic, however, buying traffic in the past has seen many websites being penalized on search engines.

Web traffic can be increased not only by attracting more visitors to a site, but also by encouraging individual visitors to „linger“ on the site, viewing many pages in a visit. (see Outbrain for an example of this practice)

If a web page is not listed in the first pages of any search, the odds of someone finding it diminishes greatly (especially if there is other competition on the first page). Very few people go past the first page, and the percentage that go to subsequent pages is substantially lower. Consequently, getting proper placement on search engines, a practice known as SEO, is as important as the website itself.

Control

The amount of traffic seen by a website is a measure of its popularity. By analyzing the statistics of visitors it is possible to see shortcomings of the site and look to improve those areas. It is also possible to increase the popularity of a site and the number of people that visit it.

Limiting access

It is sometimes important to protect some parts of a site by password, allowing only authorized people to visit particular sections or pages.

Some site administrators have chosen to block their page to specific traffic, such as by geographic location. The re-election campaign site for U.S. President George W. Bush (GeorgeWBush.com) was blocked to all internet users outside of the U.S. on 25 October 2004 after a reported attack on the site.

It is also possible to limit access to a web server both based on the number of connections and by the bandwidth expended by each connection. On Apache HTTP servers, this is accomplished by the limitipconn module and others.

From search engines

The majority of website traffic is driven by the search engines. Millions of people use search engines every day to research various topics, buy products, and go about their daily surfing activities. Search engines use keywords to help users find relevant information, and each of the major search engines has developed a unique algorithm to determine where websites are placed within the search results. When a user clicks on one of the listings in the search results, they are directed to the corresponding website and data is transferred from the website’s server, thus counting the visitors towards the overall flow of traffic to that website.

Search engine optimization (SEO), is the ongoing practice of optimizing a website to help improve its rankings in the search engines. Several internal and external factors are involved which can help improve a site’s listing within the search engines. The higher a site ranks within the search engines for a particular keyword, the more traffic they will receive.

How to Measure Website Traffic

Author Info

Website traffic may be measured by adding code generated by a website traffic-measuring service to your web pages. This code may track more than just how many people visit your site. Other statistics that may be gathered are how long people stay on each web page in your site, what browsers people are using to see your site, and which geographic region(s) the majority of your website traffic comes from. You can use this information to better tailor your site to the most popular segments or to try to increase your traffic in other areas. Follow these steps to measure website traffic.

However, the implementation of inbound marketing strategies and smart website design isn’t the only things you need to put resources into. You should also be using analytics in order to track website traffic every month. Without the ability to track website traffic, you’ll have no idea if your marketing strategies or website design are working effectively.

By using analytics to track website traffic, you’ll be able to adjust your strategies and your website design regularly in order to make the best use of your resources and to achieve the best possible results.

The following are three of the benefits that you can take advantage of by measuring your website traffic on a monthly basis.

1. Judging the effectiveness of your marketing

On a whole, seeing how many people are visiting your website every month will give you an overall idea of whether or not your marketing is working. If you have the same web traffic every month, then it means your marketing efforts are having no impact. If your web traffic is increasing every month, it means that your marketing efforts are working.

Using certain analytics tools, you’ll be able to see where your website traffic is coming from as well. Odds are you are employing numerous marketing strategies, whether it’s sharing content on social media or using pay per click search engine ads, just to name a couple.

By looking at where your traffic is coming from, you’ll be able to tell which marketing strategies are the most effective, thereby giving you the opportunity to adjust your strategies and apply your resources in a more efficient manner.

2. Learning what visitors like about your website

In addition to looking at the overall traffic your website is getting every month and where it is coming from, you should look at which pages on your website are getting the most views as well as how long visitors are staying on each page. This gives you a better idea of what is working on your website and what isn’t – pages with fewer views are obviously of less interest to your target audience than those with more views.

For example, if your blog gets a lot of traffic but your e-commerce page doesn’t, it tells you that your audience is more interested in obtaining content than it is in purchasing your services or products online, allowing you to adjust your strategy accordingly.

You should also track the traffic on different content released through the month to see what subjects your audience is most interested in, thereby allowing you to tailor your content strategy to your audience.

3. Learning about technical issues with your website

Tracking the traffic to your web pages also allows you to spot potential technical issues. For example, if you notice that a page isn’t getting any views at all, it may be because the link is broken. These are things you’ll want to fix immediately since they not only turn off visitors, they make it seem like your website has been abandoned and can hurt your search engine ranking.

It’s also important to keep track of the bounce rate on your web pages. If you have pages that are getting normal traffic but have a high bounce rate, which means visitors leave almost immediately, then it means something might be wrong with that page; for example, maybe it’s loading incorrectly or loading at an incredibly slow rate.

These are three reasons why it is so important for you to keep track of your website traffic. Doing so can help you maintain your website as well as improve both its efficiency and effectiveness.

4.2 Measuring methods of ROI of a Website.

Is your investment in content marketing really paying off?

If you don’t know your content marketing ROI (return on investment), you’re not alone…

According to the Content Marketing Institute, most marketers aren’t even sure what a successful content marketing program looks like.

What counts as content marketing ROI
How to measure your content marketing ROI
The most important content marketing metrics you need to track

By the end, you’ll understand how to work out content marketing ROI, so you can be sure your content strategy is delivering value for your business.

For many businesses, ROI is the most important measure of successful content marketing, because it’s directly tied to revenue.

But money’s not the only indicator of how well your content marketing strategy is working. Let’s face it, if nobody’s viewing, sharing, and responding to your content, it’s unlikely to earn any revenue for you.

That’s why it’s also important to think about which content marketing metrics really matter. We’re going to look at 7 important metrics later in this article.

But first, let’s look at the content marketing ROI formula.

How to Measure Content Marketing ROI

There’s a simple content marketing formula to weigh the cost of content against the revenue you earn. Here’s how you work it out:

Step 1. Figure out how much you spent to produce the content.

Even if you produced it in-house, there’s still a cost attached, because you’re paying the content creator’s salary.

The cost of production will also include any external content assets you had to pay for, like images, video, audio or any outsourced work.

Step 2: Figure out what it cost you to distribute the content.

Again, don’t forget those in-house costs. Include any paid promotions, such as PPC advertising and social advertising, as well as promotion through other media channels. Be sure to include the cost of any special tools or software required for either content creation or content distribution. When you add up all these expenses, you’ll know the true cost of producing your content.

Step 3: Work out the money amount for what you got in return.

If your content is working well, it’ll generate leads that turn into sales.

Sometimes, there’s a clear link between content and revenue, such as when people read a piece of content, click on your call to action, then buy something.

At other times, that process takes a bit longer, the relationship between content and sales isn’t as direct. We’ll look at some of those less obvious content marketing metrics later in this guide.

But if you add up all the sales that resulted from a piece of content, you’ll know how much you earned, which is your return.

Step 4: Calculate your content marketing ROI.

We like the simple content marketing ROI formula from Convince and Convert: “Return minus investment, divided by investment, expressed as a percentage”.

Here’s an example of how that works. If you spend $500 on creating a piece of content, and get leads worth $2000, then your ROI is 300%:

$2000-$500 = $1500
$1500/$500 = 3
3 x 100% = 300%

The bottom line: if you spend less on producing content than you earn in sales, then it’s worth it.

Now that you understand how to work out content marketing ROI, we’re going to look at some of the key metrics that help you understand and report on content ROI better.

Be aware that content marketing success isn’t always about money; we’ll also look at some less tangible metrics below.

Before we get started, you’ll need to have Google Analytics set up on your site. If you’re using WordPress, you can follow this beginner’s guide to installing Google Analytics in WordPress.

First things first – make sure your website is using some kind of analytics. We like HubSpot and Google Analytics.

There are 7 key content marketing metrics that matter: lead quality, sales, web traffic, onsite engagement, social media engagement, SEO success, and exposure and authority. We’ll take a look at how to measure each one in detail below.

Content Marketing Metrics That Matter

But first…

Which Content Marketing Metrics Should You Track?

Looking at all the tips below, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Keep in mind: you don’t have to track every single metric here.

Instead, you should choose a few metrics to track depending on your goals. For example…

If you’re planning a big pillar article to attract links to your site and boost your search engine rankings, then you should set specific goals for the results you want. Then be sure to track new backlinks to that post and to your site, and monitor your search engine rankings after publication.
If you’re planning a social media campaign to build buzz around a new product launch, then you should track exposure and authority metrics listed below such as media mentions, and keep an eye on your social media engagement.

In order to determine your content marketing ROI, it always helps to plan ahead, set specific goals, and choose just a few meaningful metrics to track.

Ready to get started?

First, let’s look at whether your content has the potential to earn you money. To measure that, you’ll need to look at leads and sales.

1. Lead Quality

As our guide to lead generation says, great content attract an audience, and an audience can generate leads. That’s why content marketing is so crucial for lead generation.

There are a lot of ways to measure lead quality. For example, if you’ve just created an epic blog post with a lead magnet or content upgrade, you can tell it’s working to attract quality leads if:

People read your blog post and grab your lead magnet, which shows they could be thinking about doing business with you.
Your visitors check out related resources that are part of your marketing or sales funnel.
Visitors contact your sales team to ask pre-sales questions.

These actions indicate that your content is generating qualified leads, who are likely to buy eventually.

One way to track whether your visitors are qualified is to see whether they’re visiting important pages on your site, like your pricing page. To do so, you’ll need to set up goals in Google Analytics.

Once you’ve set your analytics goals, go to Conversions » Goals » Funnel Visualization to see which pieces of content help turn people into leads.

Here’s an example from a freelance writer. On this site, 98% of the people who looked at the portfolio followed the next step and checked out rates, which shows they are interested in using these services, making them qualified leads.

If you’re getting a lot of traffic but have a high bounce rate and low conversions, that’s an indicator that the leads you’re attracting are low quality, and aren’t looking for what you have to offer.

2. Sales

Next, you’re going to look at how many of these leads turn into sales, and what the value of those sales is. That’ll give you one of the key numbers in the content marketing ROI calculation we shared earlier.

If you’ve got qualified leads and are nurturing them with the right content at the right time, then some of those people should buy something.

You can get exact numbers on this in Google Analytics by navigating to Behavior » Site Content » All Pages if you’ve enabled eCommerce in Google Analytics.

In this view, the Page Value column shows you the average value for a page that a user visited before landing on the goal page or completing an eCommerce transaction. This stat gives you a general idea of which pages on your site contribute more to your site’s revenue.

Still, this only tracks conversions that happen during one session. As you know, content marketing isn’t always that linear.

What if a visitor reads a blog post they found through Google, then leaves your site to do some comparison shopping and research, and returns to your site the next day to make a purchase?

You can also track this through Google Analytics using Assisted Conversions. Assisted Conversions measure the number of conversions that a channel (such as paid ads or organic search) assisted with, at any point along the customer’s journey.

To see which channels are assisting in your conversions, you can go to Conversions » Multi-Channel Funnels » Assisted Conversions. Just click on a channel and look at the Lead or Click Direct Conversion Value column to see how much money it generated, directly and indirectly.

As well as tracking current performance, pay attention to content performance over time, as some pieces of content may become more or less relevant, and drive more or fewer leads and sales.

You can do this by adjusting the date parameters in whatever tool you’re using. Here’s how you change the dates in Google Analytics:

Go to the top right of the screen and click on the date. That’ll pop out a calendar.

Choose a preset time period, like the past week or month, from the drop down menu, or put in your own start and end dates by scrolling through the calendar.

You can also click the small checkbox to compare the selected data to the previous period, to see if your conversions and sales are increasing or decreasing over time.

Hit Apply, and your data will automatically refresh. You’ll continue to see data for this period as you move through the Analytics app.

This tells you which pieces of content are more successful long term, and will help you decide if they should be part of your sales funnel. This will be an important part of any content marketing ROI report.

Since leads and sales translate directly into income, they make it easy to measure content marketing ROI.

The other content performance metrics we’ll look at are a bit harder to translate into revenue, but they’re still worth tracking: they’ll tell you whether your content is making an impact, or whether you’re wasting your time.

5. Social Media ROI

When you’re measuring content effectiveness, offsite engagement is also important for assessing content marketing ROI.

If people find your content useful, they’ll usually link to it or share it with others on social media.

Social media engagement and referral traffic is important to keep track of because a lot of purchase decisions are influenced by peer recommendations. And guess where your potential customers are hanging out? On social media sites like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook.

Here are a couple of easy ways to track your content’s social media engagement:

1. Unique Visitors.

2. New Visitors Vs. Returning Visitors

This circular graph in Google Analytics compares how many of your unique visitors are new and how many are coming back for more. Ideally, you’d like to see that number get to about 15% for repeat visitors.

To some extent, a larger percentage of repeat visitors means your website contains enough valuable content that it keeps readers coming back to see what’s new, or to reference your incredibly useful blog post again. If that number gets too high – say 30% or more, this could mean you’re not generating enough new readers to grow your leads and sales.

To keep your new and repeat ratio healthy, create lots of great content, allow subscribers to sign up for a weekly or monthly blog recap, and use social media to attract new AND repeat readers.

3. Acquisition Channels or “Sources”

This section shows how people found your site – either directly (by entering your URL in a browser), through organic search engine traffic or referral traffic from another website, etc. A good figure for organic traffic is 40% or more. Referral traffic of 20-30% is a good sign that people are finding your content to be valuable – because they’re linking to your site!

Traffic is traffic and traffic is good, but if you want to increase organic traffic, spend some time on SEO and creating more content. Want more referrals? Write content that gets people talking. Innovative, controversial topics are great for this. Also, spend some time commenting on other blogs. Not only will you start to build a reputation as an authority, you’ll likely see referral traffic increasing!

3. Referring URLs

Look for “Referrals” in Google Analytics. This will show you sites other than search engines that send traffic to your site. These are also known as “inbound links” and they often provide a boost in search engine ranking as well as bringing in targeted visitors. You’ll notice that this report includes referrals from social media. Google’s Webmaster Tools have a more sophisticated report of all the websites that link to your site, in case you’re interested.

You’ll know you’re making progress with the number of referring URLs growing steadily over time. When people link to a page or blog post, it means they found your content valuable. Click on each referrer to see exactly where on their site your link is located. Then click on that link to see exactly what they linked to. This will tell you what kinds of content are working. Then write more just like it! It’s also good practice to thank people when they link to you.

4. Most/Least Popular Pages

In analytics, look at Behavior>Site Content>All Pages. You’ll see your most popular pages for your date range at the top. It’s only natural that posts will lose ground over time, but some will be a standout for months, or even years.

Take a look at what is bringing in the visitors. If the content supports your overall goals and appeals to the type of visitors you want, create more content like that. If some older pieces are still sitting at the top of the list, consider going back and updating them. Make sure these pages are optimized for lead generation with effective calls to action. Don’t waste that traffic!

5. Indexed Pages

This is the number of pages on your site that Google indexes. Find out how many of yours are indexed using Google Webmaster Tools, if you have it set up. The direct URL to the report is: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/index-status?hl=en&siteUrl=http://yourURLhere.com

To keep this trend moving in the right direction, add quality content on a regular basis, utilize basic SEO techniques, share on social media, and avoid questionable SEO tactics that can result in a large number of your pages being de-indexed (yikes).

6. Landing Page Conversion Rate

The percentage of visitors to your site who take a desired action, such as purchasing a product or filling out a form. This type of tracking must be set up manually in Google Analytics, easily seen in HubSpot (as in the shot below) or in landing page creation tools such as Lead Pages.

The higher the better here! When your conversion rate is high, you know your content is bringing the right people to your site – those who are interested in what you have to say and ultimately, to sell. It can also be a reflection of the consistency of your messaging. For example, if you share an image on social media that links to a landing page, does the message on social align tightly with that on the landing page, or is there a disconnect?

If people begin to recognize your brand and see you as an authority, that’ll lead to an increase in business referrals, leads and sales, improving content marketing ROI.

Remember, you don’t need to track every single metric above. In fact, trying to track too many metrics can be counterproductive and lead to “analysis paralysis.” Instead, start each new content marketing project or campaign by choosing a few relevant metrics to set concrete goals for. Then your ROI will be easy to track – you’ll know exactly what success will look like.

4.3 Tools to monitor the traffic.

Google Analytics

4. Onsite Engagement

Content marketing success isn’t just about getting people to your site; it’s about keeping them there. If you have a low bounce rate, and if people are spending a while on your site, or even coming back, then you know your content is working and you’re well on the way to generating leads and sales from your content.

For example, if people land on your epic blog post and leave within a few seconds, you’ve got a problem. But if your analytics data shows they are reading to the end, and even checking out other content or subscribing to your newsletter, then you know that content is successful.

Want a quick and easy way to see whether or not your website content is attracting quality leads? Then take a look at your engagement metrics. Measuring the way your website visitors interact with your content is a good way to see whether or not you’re attracting traffic that’s actually interested in what you have to offer.

To get a quick overview of your engagement metrics, you can go to Audience » Overview in Google Analytics.

Some important stats you’ll want to look at here are pages per session, average session duration, and your bounce rate. Engaged visitors will spend more time on your site and view more pages if they’re interested in what you have to offer.

Buzzsumo is another great tool for measuring content marketing success, by tracking social media shares.

If people are sharing your content, that means they find it valuable, and it also expands its potential reach, so you can get even more leads and sales.

Just type the URL of a piece of content to see how many shares it’s got.

If people are sharing your content on the social networks that are most important to you, then it’ll enhance your reputation, drive traffic, bring in leads and, potentially, help you make sales, so it’s important to do this kind of analysis.

6. SEO Success

If you’re measuring content marketing ROI, another important metric to keep track of is how well your content performs in search.

That’s because more people click on the top search results, and more clicks equals more traffic, and more potential leads and sales.

That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important. To gauge SEO performance, you’ll need to check that:

Your content ranks well for your target keywords.
You’re appearing in answer boxes for relevant terms.
Your domain authority is high (this happens when high authority sites link to you)
You’re getting more inbound links.

If all these things are true, your content will reach more people, and you’ll get more leads and sales as a result.

Here’s one way to analyze SEO performance for your content:

First, open an incognito or private window in your browser, and search for one of the key terms that you’d like people to use to find your site. In this example, we searched for “page-level targeting”, one of OptinMonster’s key features.

Check where your content appears. If it’s in the top 3, you can be pretty sure you’ll get some traffic from it. And more traffic means more leads and more sales, so this is a great way to get a quick snapshot of how your content is doing.

You obviously won’t use all of these tools all of the time, but it’s beneficial to know about some of the top options and how they fit into your overall web strategy. And using multiple tools only gives you further levels of insight into your customers and your success rate.

The rule that is often referenced in this regard is the 90/10 rule, so if you have $100 to spend on analytics, spend $10 on reports and data, and $90 on paying someone to filter through all of that information. Because without a proper understanding of the information these services will provide you with, it remains just raw data.

„Investing in people and the tools that those people need to be successful is key,“ notes Bryan Eisenberg, author and marketing consultant. „But it’s the people who can understand that data that really matter.“

„The deeper digital insights you have, the better understanding you have of your customer,“ says Aaron Smolick, senior director of marketing at Compete. „By using Compete products, you will have all of the information that you need to make educated decisions to optimize your online campaign, increase market share and dominate the competition.

There are also tools for tracking the Social media traffic of course – Facebook Insights – Free, Twitalyzer (twitalyzer.com) – Free,

4.4 ‘Bounce rate’

The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.

7. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of new visitors who leave your site without viewing more than one page.

When it comes to bounce rate, the lower the better. We want visitors to stick around and read more content. However, when your content is helpful and the way visitors find you is optimized so the content meets their exact needs, you may have a high bounce rate even with a fantastic website.

If you see your bounce rate increase, examine your website’s navigation – is it intuitive? People get frustrated when they can’t get around easily. Is your website slow to load? Is it lacking in calls to action? One way to keep people around longer is to link to related pages within your site.

A high bounce rate can hurt your search engine rankings, so try to get it as low as possible. Though high bounce rate is not always a terrible thing, and it doesn’t necessarily reflect a problem with your website, do try to lower it.

A high bounce rate means that indicates that site entrance pages are not relevant to your visitors. It is common for Blogs to have high ‘bounce rate’. It’s not always necessary if your ‘bounce rate’ is high to be bad thing or the opposite.

4.5 Impact of ‘bounce rate’ on a Website.

As a rule of thumb, a bounce rate in the range of 26 to 40 percent is excellent. 41 to 55 percent is roughly average. 56 to 70 percent is higher than average, but may not be cause for alarm depending on the website. Anything over 70 percent is disappointing for everything outside of blogs, news, events, etc.

The Unusually Good

Bounce rates from 25% to 30% are most likely as low as you’ll see them with everything working correctly. Anything under 40% that’s not the result of a broken GA installation is excellent, and indicative of a well built, professionally designed website that is meeting its users’ needs.

On the other hand, a bounce rate that low may also reflect a lack of dynamic (blogs, news, etc.) content on the website, which may or may not be beneficial

Bounce rate.

The Good and the Good-ish

Of the websites I reviewed, sixteen fell between 30 to 40 percent, and another sixteen fell between 40 to 55 percent. I was actually surprised to see so many websites land under 40%—credit RocketFuel’s designers and developers. Even though that 30 to 40 range appears to be closer to the rule than the exception, I would still say that’s the range for an exceptional bounce rate.

The bounce rate for the average website is more likely to dance to the tune of 40 to 55 percent. Once it tips over 50 percent, it’s probably time to identify which user segments or content are driving the bounce rate up.

Even a bounce rate over 60% might not be bad. It all depends on the website, which is why it is important to…

To set an appropriate baseline, consider the intent of the user and the purpose of the content. On a website that revolves around events, visitors often want the time, date, location, and that’s it. They get the information. They leave. The bounce rate on that website will skew towards a higher percentage, but that’s fine, because the user’s needs are still being met.

Mobile bounce rate:

Generally, expect mobile bounce rates to ring in about 10 to 20 percent higher than desktop. I looked at the mobile bounce rate across a small sample of websites from November, 2013 to February 21st (the time of writing), and the average mobile bounce rate was just a shade under 60%. The rate for tablets was roughly 49%. Desktop visitors bounced only 42% of the time on average.

The Bad and the Ugly

A bounce rate below 20% or over 90% is usually a bad sign. The former hints at a problem with the analytics setup, the latter with the website. The only times I saw those ranges in this study were on sites with broken analytics implementations.

The Bad: Over 90 Percent

Everybody’s bouncing! Horrible, right? That’s spot on most of the time. Something is scaring people off—it could be bad design, browser compatibility issues, or even a horribly disfigured tracking code. Maybe it’s time to move off of geocities.

Or perhaps this is a single page website without any content, links, or event tracking/virtual page views. In which case, it is probably time to start working on creating a real website.

The Ugly: Under 20 Percent

Nobody’s bouncing! Great, right? Wrong. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. The analytics implementation is almost certainly broken.

Some possible causes:

Duplicate analytics code
Incorrectly implemented event tracking
Third party add-ons, e.g. a live chat

Under 20% is highly unlikely. 20 to 25 percent is certainly possible, but don’t hand out gold stars until digging around a little bit.

When over 75% of users don’t bounce, buggy analytics implementation is probably the culprit. This could also be because the website is built in a way that forces most users to take at least one action before leaving, e.g., a gateway or landing page they have to pass through before reaching the main website. Bounce rate is typically thought of as a quick way to measure user engagement (through meeting the user’s needs and usability), and gateways are often contrary to everything other than aggravating people.

4.6 Improvements based on analytical information.

Do you want to improve your website this new year?

Google Analytics is the most comprehensive tracking tool available on the market. It gives you detailed data about your website visitors and the actions they take on your site. You’ll be able to see what people are doing on your site after they click on an email you send them and beyond.

By effectively using Google Analytics, you can stop making blind guesses and start making data-driven marketing decisions to boost your bottom line.

If you’re looking to get a head start to improve your website this new year, we’ll walk you through how to make data-driven decisions using Google Analytics.

Image result for improvements based on analytical information

Use your analytics to improve the quality and effectiveness of your Website.

CONCLUSION:

The ROI can be calculated.

Assessing ROI of CRM systems is a daunting task. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGEY) published a CRM Index based on a survey of nearly 200 European companies concluding that over 66% of companies cannot identify the ROI from their CRM investments. This is not that there is no ROI but that these companies have not put in place metrics to measure the ROI. The Total Cost of Ownership (one-time and ongoing costs) should be measured to understand the investment in the CRM system. For analyzing returns, a detailed benchmarking study should be carried out. Once the system is implemented, a study of benefits in all four domains (revenue enhancements, margin enhancements, reduction in costs and intangible benefits) would reveal the true benefits of the CRM system.

Optimizing your return on investment is the last important step when navigating your way through the digital jungle. You will get a great overview of how your money or time has been spent through all the planning, creating, marketing and reporting processes, and you should feel good! Keep optimizing your digital strategies and measuring your ROI, you can always do better, so keep at it!

References:

https://optinmonster.com/how-to-measure-content-marketing-roi-metrics/ – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/8-tips-measure-improve-roi-website-0943128 – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://www.christopherspenn.com/2016/10/how-to-calculate-marketing-roi/ – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://www.inc.com/guides/12/2010/11-best-web-analytics-tools.html – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://www.optimizesmart.com/two-powerful-ways-to-reduce-bounce-rate/#a18 – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_traffic – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://www.wikihow.com/Measure-Website-Traffic – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://blogs.constantcontact.com/google-analytics-improve-website/ – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/01/30/14-ways-you-can-use-google-analytics-to-improve-your-website/#7dce96e13e93 – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://www.inc.com/guides/12/2010/11-best-web-analytics-tools.html – accessed on 31.01.2019

https://blogs.constantcontact.com/google-analytics-improve-website/ – accessed on 31.01.2019