{"id":41073,"date":"2023-07-06T07:00:33","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T14:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dhblog.dream.press\/blog\/?p=41073"},"modified":"2025-05-21T20:49:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T03:49:36","slug":"website-metrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www-dev.dreamhost.com\/blog\/website-metrics\/","title":{"rendered":"Website Metrics: 20 Critical KPIs for Your Online Business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Success is a journey, not a destination, and in this expedition, understanding metrics is your most reliable compass. It\u2019s the secret language that translates user behavior into actionable insights. In this blog post, we delve into the world of web analytics, sessions, and bounce rates, to uncover the hidden story behind the numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key is finding the correct KPIs for your site\u2013 success can come in many different forms, and you need to know if your site is sailing or sinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve written this guide to give you the tools and knowledge you need to make it easy. We\u2019ll help you understand why this data is valuable and how to start collecting it for your own website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s dive into the 20 key metrics you should track to measure your site\u2019s success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traffic Metrics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Traffic is like oxygen for your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If people aren\u2019t visiting your site, they can\u2019t engage with your content, sign up for your email list, or purchase your products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step one for measuring any website is to understand how much traffic is coming and then understand what that traffic is doing once they arrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Sessions or Users<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The top-line metric for understanding your website\u2019s traffic is sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sessions refer to the number of unique visits to your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, it\u2019s the number of times someone (anyone) visited your website in a given period. Think of it like the number of people who walk through the door of a restaurant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sessions are closely related to users and pageviews. Users are the number of uniquely identifiable people who come to your website; Pageviews are the number of pages viewed across all sessions by every user. A single user can visit your site more than once (multiple sessions) and look at more than one page (multiple pageviews).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These metrics can often be tracked through your hosting provider. For example, DreamHost\u2019s managed WordPress hosting<\/a> includes access to this information in your user dashboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, you probably want to track your traffic with an analytics tool like Google Analytics<\/a> or a custom-built analytics report<\/a> in Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sessions<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is no one correct number when it comes to sessions. It will differ radically depending on your goals, audience, and niche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in a general sense, you should be looking for a steady increase in sessions over time, which means your website is growing in visibility and popularity. If you\u2019re not getting the numbers you expect, you may want to look into some of your other traffic metrics to fully understand where the problem lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nerd note: If you really want to go down the rabbit hole here, you can segment your traffic even further. Beyond just looking at sessions, users, and pageviews, you can also look at segments like new users vs. returning users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anytime we\u2019re measuring website performance, it\u2019s important to track a single, consistent metric over time rather than jumping between two different data points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Top Pages (By Traffic)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now, which pages are your website visitors actually viewing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another key metric is looking at the top pages on your website, ranked by the amount of traffic (sessions or pageviews) they receive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracking your top pages can tell you what kind of content hits home with your readers and how they find it, which can help you determine where to direct resources or which parts of your website to focus on in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, looking at the top pages on your website, you might notice that your audience responds more favorably to video than text-based content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that case, you might shift resources to create more videos to grow your site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another way you can use Top Pages data is by guiding visitors to content that others have found valuable. If you\u2019re willing to experiment with adding some WordPress plugins<\/a> to your site, you can even display a \u201cpopular posts\u201d section to highlight content based on traffic counts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketing Metrics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now that we know a bit about how many people visit your site and which pages they visit, we should try to work backward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did we do to bring them here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the central question in all of marketing. It\u2019s about understanding what activities you or your marketing team are doing to drive traffic so you can do more of it in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These website metrics will help you answer that question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Traffic By Channel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to marketing and analytics, a \u201cchannel\u201d is any path visitors take to reach your website and other content. For example, some users may arrive at a site through your social media profiles (one channel), while others may get there via paid search (a second channel).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Traffic<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Google Analytics, you can take your session data and filter it by channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google provides a list of channel definitions as they pertain to tagging in its analytics system. This is so you can appropriately organize different funnels and keep tabs on which channels drive the most traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might want to look at all the traffic that comes to your site via social media links, for example. You can compare that result to traffic coming from email marketing campaigns. This can tell you which of your digital marketing strategies are most successful and which might need more work to improve their Return on Investment (ROI).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organic Search Traffic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Organic search traffic includes visitors who arrive at your website from search engines like Google (or one of the many Google alternatives<\/a>) rather than through other channels such as social media, paid advertising, or referrals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Organic<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Organic search is significant because users who find your site this way are typically searching with a specific goal in mind. In fact, 51 percent<\/a> of all web traffic comes from organic search, and over 40 percent of revenue is generated from search engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasing organic traffic means improving your website\u2019s SEO<\/a> to rank higher in search results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Email Open Rates<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If your business is anything like most businesses, you probably generate a lot of traffic through email marketing. Getting your email opened is the first step in driving a visitor to your website, and understanding your email open rate gives you a sense of the quality of your email list and your emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An email\u2019s \u201copen rate\u201d represents how many recipients actually opened it in their inboxes. Mailchimp\u2019s benchmarking data<\/a> puts the average open rate between 15 percent and just over 28 percent, depending on your industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there are many ways to encourage people to open your emails, your best option may be to try various strategies and keep an eye on the numbers to see which ones result in the most engagement. Just remember that tracking open rates does require email-specific tracking tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n

Get Content Delivered Straight to Your Inbox<\/h2>

Subscribe now to receive all the latest updates, delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>

<\/div>