The best way to capitalize on your website is to identify its weak spots. If you don’t know the specifics of what’s not working, you can’t fix it. Monitoring specific metrics on your site allows you to pinpoint areas for improvement. This is where digital analytics come in.

Digital analytics provide detailed insights on the performance of your website. Closely monitoring this data can make a tremendous difference in the success of your company. If you’re not measuring the performance of your website, marketing is nothing more than a guessing game.

Most analytic tools offer a wealth of information, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Here’s the top 5 metrics Product Managers can benefit from:

Number of Sessions.

This is the best way to get a snapshot of your website’s health. The number of sessions metric shows the number of visits to your site. If this number is increasing you’ll know that your current marketing campaigns are working. If it’s decreasing, you need to take a deep look at your site and campaigns to determine why you aren’t getting results. Always keep in mind any recent changes you’ve made to your marketing campaigns when viewing these metrics.

Page Views

Monitoring individual page views gives you valuable insight on which pages and content your clients find the most valuable. Content tailored to a specific audience translates to longer visits and additional engagements. Another advantage to monitoring page views is seeing which pages are bringing the most traffic to your site.

Average Page Views Per Visit

Average page views per visit is without a doubt one of the most important metrics to monitor. This metric shows how many pages your clients are looking at while on your site. This shows how your clients are reacting to the content that you have posted. It also gives you significant insight to the specific content on your site that your customers enjoy the most. From this information, you can tailor your content better and create a more user friendly experience.

Traffic Channels

Knowing where your traffic is coming from is vital, this information helps you identify which campaigns are performing the best. If you are running marketing campaigns on multiple platforms such as Google Adwords or Facebook, channel data is crucial to monitor. Channels can also show you the amount of your traffic coming from direct links or organic search, which can help you determine how meaningful your guest blogging or SEO efforts are.

Exit Pages

Sometimes the sales process spans over several pages of your website. A site selling software options is a good example of a multi-step sales funnel. In addition to a landing page, you may need to show different options and values, as well as a final page to check out or schedule an appointment. In these scenarios it’s important to know at which stage you’re losing customers. By identifying when visitors are leaving your site you can identify weaknesses in your sales funnel.

So where can you get a trustworthy analytics solution? Some of the most notable providers include Google Analytics and Adobe Marketing Cloud. Our favorite is  Google Analytics because of their user friendly interface and superior reporting available in the free version.

Closely monitored metrics can make all the difference in our digital age. By analyzing data we can gain insight into our ideal buyer and optimize our website accordingly. This leads to more visitors, more engagement, and more sales.