Website Metrics For Business Owners: Desirable Actions

This week’s metric will be conversion funnels and conversion rates.

This metric falls into the category of desirable actions. A desirable action of a website selling a product is different than a blog or informational site. In the case of an informational website, a desirable action may be signing up for an e-newsletter or subscribing to a blog. Every website has different actions they consider desirable actions.

Desirable actions can be simple actions, including when a user visits a specific page, clicks a specific link, or even enters data into a form. These types of actions are typically ones that help with goal conversion. The key of desirable actions is that they require an action by the user.

Depending on the type of website that you have, this metric can track things that vary; from filling out a form, clickthrough rates, to a specific page on the website, signing up for an e-newsletter, or making a website purchase.

Conversion funnels and conversion rates can be used to understand what messages resonate with your users. This can also help measure advertising campaigns’ effectiveness. This includes the number of leads from each advertisement. Which advertisement brought in the most visitors? And which advertisement converted the most buyers? Both of these are important questions to ask.

A conversion rate is usually more important than the actual conversion count. The conversion rate can relate directly to UX efforts. Marketing managers use conversion rates to analyze user interest and loyalty.

Related to this is how many visits does it take for a user to convert or purchase? Do your customers make a purchase on the first visit? If not, it’s important to analyze what prompted the purchase decision on subsequent visits. Related to this is when and where do users abandon the website forms or shopping cart? Does it seem to happen often at the same step during the checkout process? These are all things to analyze.

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week!