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Key Performance Indicators for Successful Websites

When thinking in terms of analytics, we must speak of what makes a successful website. Success on the web is getting people to do what you want when they visit your site. So before you can move any further down the road to succes, you must first decide what it is you want your visitors to do. This is called the target action.

Ask yourself if your sites design makes it easy for people to engage in your target action.
Ease of navigation is constantly one of the top-10 complaints.

In order to improve your website, you will need to establish where it is failing. The secret is to work backward from your target action. The first thing to ask yourself is “How many visitors are getting to that point in the site?” This is also known as your prospect rate. Those visitors who “find” the target action ( which is anyone who finds that page regardless of action ) and don’t complete the action you desire are said to have “abandoned.” Each target action therefor has an abandonment rate. This is defined as the percentage of people who looked at the target action page, but did not complete the desired action.

Basic rule for reducing abandonment on forms is to ask fewer questions.

Keep in mind the 8-second rule. Most people will allow no more than 8-seconds to scan and review a site before deciding if your site is providing what they are after. If they leave, they become a scanning visitor; one who decides your website is not what they are looking for. You might want to ask yourself if the core offering of your site can be clearly conveyed in a half a minute or less. In contrast, a committed visitor is one who sticks around and browses through your site. Most people count committed visitors as those who read more than one (1) page or spend more than one (1) minute. You should design from your site design what constitutes a serious visit.

Getting visitors to stop scanning and start reading requires different design elements for selling to them once they are seriously reading. Your site should have both and your designers should be able to identify which elements of the site these are.
Some pages should be designed for new arrivals to switch them from scanning to reading. These are your landing pages. Your landing pages should funnel visitors into pages inside the site that are designed to get visitors to commit to your target action.

The percentage of visitors who merely scan your site and then leave is your total bounce rate. You should be able to determine the bounce rate for each site sending visitors to your site. Each landing page has its own bounce rate. Put this all together by determining your ROI (return on investment) for online advertising. The ROI needs to be based on total conversions. Multiply the conversion rate for visitors coming from each ad by the cost per visitor and you will know your cost per acquisition (CPA). In a nutshell, work backward from your target action, attempt to determine the cause for abandonment and fix it. This will reduce the number of scanning visitors, increase committed visitors, and propel conversions and improving ROI.