What are digital marketing metrics? (part 01)

Digital marketing metrics are values that are used to track and measure campaign performance. The right marketing metrics show how customers react to your digital marketing efforts. To capitalize on what the data is telling you, metrics should align with your goals and evolve with your strategy.

1. Overall website traffic

Website traffic is a digital marketing staple. In Google Analytics and other analytics software shows how many people visited or engaged with your website. Overall traffic gives you a bird’s eye view of your marketing efforts. If a lot of people are visiting your website, it’s a signal that your campaigns are effective.

2. Traffic by channel

Traffic by channel adds meat to the bones of overall traffic. In Google Analytics or other analytic platforms, channels are the sources featured on the overall traffic dashboard. They show where users were before arriving at your website, providing insight into how your campaigns are performing.

Here are different channels to track and what they mean:

• Direct – Traffic from users that entered a URL into a browser, clicked on a saved bookmark, or clicked on a direct link from outside of the browser.
• Referral – Traffic from direct links, such as an affiliate link or news source.
• Organic – Traffic from non-paid results on search engines.
• Paid – Traffic from paid search ads on search engines.
• Social – Traffic from social media platforms.

3. Engagement rate

Engagement rate is a content performance metric. It tracks how actively involved with your content your audience is. From this, you can understand if you’re reaching the right people with the right message.

Use engagement metrics to measure performance and learn which content resonates with your audience so you can create more of it. When doing so, pay attention to the make-up of your audience.

4. Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that contain a single view of your website. Bounce rate is calculated when a visitor lands on your website and leaves without navigating to another page and without interacting.

Bounce rate can tell you how relevant your content is and whether you’re driving traffic to the right landing pages.

5. Exit rate

Exit rate measures the percentage of users who have left from a specific page. It’s calculated by dividing the total number of visitors to a page by the total exits it received.

6. New visitors vs returning visitors

Comparing the number of new visitors with the number of return visitors is a good way to measure the effectiveness of your website and new content.

In Google Analytics, new visitors are users navigating to your website for the first time on a specific device. Returning visitors are users who come back to your website on a specific device within a two-year period. If it’s been more than two years since a person has visited your site, the next time they return will be counted as a new visit.