Website Metrics to Track in 2024

Often the problem isn’t that there’s too little website data to sort through—anyone who has spent any amount of time in Google Analytics or Google Search Console knows that there’s data aplenty. The problem is figuring out what data is important and what decisions to make based on it.

If you’ve ever jumped into Google Analytics or Google Search Console and felt overwhelmed, this post is for you. In this post we’re covering the website metrics that every business owner should know in 2024—no more, no less. Our goal is to provide an easy-to-follow framework for determining key website metrics to measure so that you can track and improve your website’s performance.

Let’s dive in…

Why is it important to track website metrics?

It’s hard to improve what you’re not measuring. Tracking certain website metrics will allow you to better understand how your website is performing and ways that you can improve its performance.

For instance, if you’re trying to increase the number of leads or inquiries you receive through your website, it’s helpful to know how many total visitors you get in a given month and the percentage of those visitors who complete an inquiry form. Why? Because there are really only two ways to increase the number of inquiries: increasing the number of people who are visiting your site or improving the form’s conversion rate.

Even if everything is currently going well, it’s important to understand what “going well” looks like in hard numbers. That way if you ever experience a dip, you can more easily diagnose issues and make a plan to recover.

In general, tracking website metrics is important because you can learn:

• where traffic is coming from (traffic sources)
• what content resonates with visitors
• helpful information about audience demographics
• how well certain pages are converting

And it can help you avoid—and quickly fix—issues you may run into.

How can I track website metrics? Some of our favorite website metric tools…

Google Search Console and Google Analytics are two free platforms that will provide ample data about your website. If you haven’t verified your website with Google Search Console or set-up Google Analytics on your website, we highly recommend doing so.

There are other tools, however, that might make understanding your data a bit easier. Our favorite tool that makes Google Analytics easier is MonsterInsights. E-commerce websites, in particular, have more elements to track than portfolio sites. A tool like MonsterInsights makes it much easier for e-commerce businesses to get set-up with Google Analytics and be able to track things like conversion value. Additionally, the MonsterInsight reports are generally easier to read and understand than what is found in Google Analytics.

If you’re a service-based business, something like MonsterInsights is still beneficial. Not only does it make set-up easier and provide easy-to-understand reports, but you can use add-on features to track the conversion rates of forms on your website, too. This is a particularly helpful feature if you’re hoping to understand your form conversion rates.

Another specifically e-commerce tool that we’ve been experimenting with is Metorik, which provides enhanced reports beyond what Woocommerce and Shopify provide.

With all that said, here are a few key tips for tracking website metrics:

• Don’t overcomplicate it. We focus on “bottom-line metrics”—those metrics that impact the bottom line of our business. There are so many “rabbit hole metrics” like average duration on page. Avoid those unless you’re investigating something specific.
• Get comfortable. The best way to get comfortable with Google Analytics and Google Search Console is spend time using those platforms. What you’ll likely find are few specific places/reports within both platforms where you spend 90% of your time—and that it’s not as complicated as you thought.
• Ask for help. If you’re having trouble figuring out how to understand your metrics, there are businesses out there (like Till Agency) that will set-up tracking and dashboards for you, then educate you. It’s usually a relatively little up-front expense for a lifetime of insight.

So onto the real question: What website metrics should business owners be tracking?

What website metrics should I track?

Different types of businesses will track different metrics. For instance, a service-based business is going to be more concerned with lead form conversion than a product-based, e-commerce business.

We’ve tried to divide the portion up into categories specific to business types. The first few categories (Aggregate Website Metrics, Top Landing Pages, and Lead Generation Metrics) will be relevant to most, if not all, businesses. The following categories will be specific to either service-based businesses or e-commerce businesses.

Aggregate Website Metrics

Every website owner can benefit from seeing a ‘big picture’ view of how much traffic one’s website generates, where that traffic is coming from, and how one’s website performs in search engines. Recognizing trends can help you head-off potential issues and take advantage of opportunities.

What metrics to track and how often:

• Total visitors trends (Google Analytics): In Google Analytics this would be labeled as Users or New Users. We receive an automated report via MonsterInsights every week with this information.
• Traffic Sources (Google Analytics): Traffic sources can be found in the Traffic Acquisition report in Google Analytics. This report tells you from where your traffic is coming. We typically check this report about once a month.
• Total impressions + clicks (Google Search Console): The Performance tab in Google Search Console is a gold mine of information. We mostly care about total impressions and clicks because this gives us an idea if our search visibility is growing. Metrics like Average Search Position can be misleading (more information about why in our Content + SEO Course).

Why you need to know these metrics: This number should be increasing over time. Recognizing sudden drops early can help you head-off potential issues.

Where to find these metrics:

• Total visitors: Google Analytics > Overview
• Traffic Sources: Google Analytics > Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition
• Impressions + clicks: Google Search Console > Performance > Search Results

Other notes: We typically filter data so that we’re comparing the same periods year-over-year. For instance, we’ll compare Q4 (Oct-Dec) of this year to Q4 (Oct-Dec) of last year because we feel like it’s a better apples-to-apples comparison.

Top 5-10 Landing Pages Metrics

There are different ways to determine your website’s “top” landing pages. We typically view our top landing pages as those landing pages that generate the most traffic. However, you might decide to view your top landing pages as those that generate the most leads. Regardless, it’s a good idea to have a sense of which pages or posts are your best pages or posts. You might be surprised after checking Google Analytics…

What metrics to track:

• What are the most popular pages on your website?
• What are the most popular posts on your website?

Why you need to know these metrics: We want to know what content on our website resonates with our audience and where that traffic is coming from (search, social, etc.?). We typically measure popularity based on total traffic to the page.

Where to find these metrics: Google Analytics > Reports > Engagement > Landing Pages

Other Notes: What is your most popular content? Do more of that.

Lead Generation Landing Pages Metrics

Lead generation should be of critical importance for every business.

What metrics to track:

• Total visitors to the page (how many people visit the page)
• # of conversions (how many people sign up for your mailing list)
• # of conversions/total visitors = conversion rate

Why you need to know these metrics: Pages that produce leads are among the most important pages of a website. Conversion rates for lead gen landing pages should be at least 30%, but we typically strive for closer to 50+%.

Where to find these metrics: There are a few ways to track this information. Ideally, your list building platform will have that information. For instance, I can see the conversion rate of various forms in Kit. MonsterInsights also makes this easier.

Other notes: Conversion rates for lead generation landing pages should be at least 30%, but we typically strive for closer to 50%. Understanding how your landing pages are converting is crucial, especially if you’re running ads to those pages.

Service-Based Website Metrics

A service-based business is likely to going to focus on the same metrics noted above under the heading Lead Generation Landing Page Metrics. Typically, a service-based business is trying to drive email or phone inquiries.

What metrics to track:

• Total visitors: The number of people who visit a page with a lead form.
• Lead form submissions: The number of people who call or submit the lead form.
• Lead form submissions/total visitors = conversion rate

Why you need to know these metrics: Consistent inquiries are crucial to the success of a service-based business. It helps to know both how well a page or form is converting and where that inquiry came from.

Where to find these metrics: Your lead generation platform probably has analytics on how well a form is converting. Phone calls can be tracked too, but it requires a bit more set-up.

Other notes: Phone calls can be more difficult to track and we typically recommend that people ask callers where they heard about the business.

Shop and Sales Page Metrics

These metrics are concerned with individual shop or sales pages. Those who don’t have a shop, but do have sales pages should also take a look at the metrics included in the next section like CAC and LTV (especially if you’re running ads).

What metrics to track:

• Total visitors: The number of people who visit the page.
• # of conversions: The number of people who purchase.
• # of conversions/total visitors = conversion rate

Why you need to know these metrics: Total traffic is cool and all, but at the end of the day, your business needs to be producing $$.

Where to find these metrics: Google Analytics can tell you how many people are visiting a page. Your shop set-up (Woocommerce, Shopify, etc.) should provide purchase analytics. Your shop should also provide other helpful insights for investigating issues such as how many people add something to their cart or view the checkout without purchasing.

Other notes: Keep in mind that conversion rates will vary based on a number of factors. The typical benchmarks that is thrown around is 1-4%. We typically pay more attention to the overall conversion rate of our shop vs. the individual product pages.

Shop Sales Metrics

Understanding these metrics is key in running a profitable business, especially if you’re running ads. If you don’t know how much a customer is worth vs. how much it will cost to acquire that customer, it becomes very challenging to understand what marketing and sales efforts are worth it.

What metrics to track:

• Revenue: The total amount of money your shop produces.
• Profit: Revenue – Expenses = Profit
• Average cart value: The average value of a customer’s purchase.
• Cost-to-Acquire a Customer (CAC): The amount of money spent to acquire a customer.
• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): The average amount of money a customer spends with a business over their “lifetime.”

Why you need to know: These are important benchmarks to understand whether your marketing + sales efforts are working. There are really only 3-4 ways to increase revenue—increasing customers, increasing the cart value of each order + lifetime value of customers, or raising prices.

Where to find these metrics: Your shop or sales platform may have some of these analytics readily available.

Other notes: All businesses ought to understand CAC and LTV, but it’s an especially relevant metric for e-commerce businesses.

Secondary Website Metrics to Track

You may have noticed that there are a lot of website metrics that we left off this list such as bounce rate, average engagement time per session, amount of pages visited per session, etc.

We’re not suggesting that those metrics aren’t important. However, we do view those (and many other metrics) as secondary metrics.

If we’re trying to troubleshoot an issue with a particular page, we will likely take a look at some of those metrics. For instance, if a sales page isn’t converting, we might take a look at how long it takes for the page to load. If it’s taking too long to load (or not loading at all), then maybe it’s as simple as fixing that issue. More times than not, however, the page speed isn’t the problem.

We often find that businesses spend a lot of time worrying about a secondary metric as if it is the problem and not just a consequence or signal of a problem. For instance, if the bounce rate is high, it could very well indicate the page loads slowly. In our experience, it usually has more to do with less-than-compelling copy + design.

What should I do if my website isn’t converting?

We’re working on another post that addresses this question. In the meantime, we’d recommend taking some time to map out the customer journey in order to try and diagnose the problem. Oftentimes it’s not the website, but that the website is not generating a lot of traffic.

You know what also might help in the meantime? Taking our website conversion assessment. It’s a free, in-depth quiz that analyzes the various pages on your website and provides a detailed report with suggestions you can implement to improve your site.