When you think about metrics or analytics related to your tree care company website, what comes to mind? If you’re like most business owners, you probably think of the numbers you get from Google Analytics – statistics such as the number of unique visitors, bounce rate, and time on page. Hopefully, you’re tracking those numbers on a regular basis.
These metrics are a good start, but they don't tell you the full story!
Sure, these metrics provide quite a bit of information; you can easily measure the success of your traffic generation efforts, the quality of your content, and the habits of your site visitors.
This data is important, but while it can help guide your website optimization, it tells you nothing about the single most important metric of all – your bottom line.
Measuring Your Bottom Line
Are your website visitors calling you, requesting an estimate, and converting into paying customers? If they aren’t, you need to rethink your digital marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter how much traffic your website gets if your visitors aren’t doing business with you.
So what website metrics really matter?
The most critical number to look at in Google Analytics (or whatever analytics program you’re using) is conversion rate. Simply put, the conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who respond to your call to action (CTA).
A CTA is an instruction to your audience, and is designed to provoke an immediate response. The best CTAs are those that put prospects on the path to a sale (EX: “Call us today!” or “Request an Estimate!”). These imperative statements should be accompanied by a form or link, which allows the visitor to take action.
While you can’t necessarily measure conversion rate for calls to your business from your website (at least not with the typical analytics packages), you can definitely measure how well your contact and estimate request forms are converting. How many people visit the page with the form on it? How many actually complete and submit the form? And how many of those become customers?
To really get a feel for the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and website optimization, dig a little deeper. Look at the conversion rate for each form, broken down by traffic source.
For example, do website visitors coming from your paid digital marketing campaigns convert (fill out and submit a form) at a higher rate than those coming through organic search? If not, you may need to position your paid digital marketing campaigns differently, direct the audience to a more targeted landing page, or tweak the wording in the ads. After you make changes to your ad campaign, check conversion rates again a month later. Did the numbers improve? If so, great – keep going! If not, go back to the drawing board.
If you operate in multiple towns or geographic areas, you can even measure conversion rates for each traffic source based on where the person lives. This will help you decide whether or not to invest more in marketing to these areas.
Ultimately, the goal with any metrics you use should be to assess the impact on your company’s bottom line. If you can’t do that, you’re measuring the wrong things.
This post was authored by Monica Hemingway
Monica Hemingway, Ph.D., is a Licensed Arborist, Industrial Psychologist, and Digital Strategist – an unusual combination that gives her unique insight into online business for the tree care industry. You’ll find her at ITG Multimedia helping companies grow their business or writing about digital strategy for the green industry at MonicaHemingway.com.