The Most Important B2B Website KPIs to Track
Imagine driving a car without a dashboard. No speed or fuel indicator and you don’t even know if the engines are running smoothly.
Sounds pretty chaotic, right?
That’s how your website is without KPIs. If you’re not tracking them, you’re essentially ‘driving your car’ blindfolded.
But tracking them isn’t enough. You need to track the right ones.
23% of marketers aren’t sure whether they’re tracking the right KPIs or not.
This blog discusses what exactly are website KPIs and why you need to track them. We’ll also discuss ten of the most important KPIs you need to track.
What Are Website KPIs?
KPIs or Key Performance Indicators, are quantifiable measures of your website’s performance. Examples include B2B marketing metrics like customer lifetime value, conversion rate, lead generated, campaign performance, and more.
Website KPIs offer valuable data on how specific actions contribute to achieving business goals. This data helps in making informed decisions and optimizing strategies or investments.
They gauge the effectiveness of your B2B marketing efforts and assess experiments. They also provide insights into potential customer behavior, SEO performance, B2B marketing performance, and the health of e-commerce websites. This enables businesses to detect and address potential issues proactively.
For instance, if there's a noticeable increase in one key performance indicator but a decrease in another, it signals the need to adjust tactics or introduce a new approach.
Why Do You Need to Monitor Your Website KPIs?
Now that we know what website KPIs are, let's explore how they are useful in improving your B2B marketing strategy.
Optimization of conversion rate
Your website's performance and conversion rate hinge on understanding how website visitors interact with it. Metrics like website KPIs help understand if they're taking the desired actions.
It can be anything from downloading an e-book, subscribing to your newsletter (micro-conversions), or even making a purchase (macro-conversions). Analyze these insights to identify areas for improvement, boost your website conversion rate, and achieve business objectives.
Increased ROI
Data-driven decisions fueled by KPIs lead to higher ROI. Tracking key metrics like conversion rate and customer acquisition costs allows businesses to pinpoint areas for improvement and optimize their B2B marketing efforts.
Imagine a website where A/B testing reveals a specific call-to-action button significantly boosts signups. This data-driven insight directly translates to a more efficient marketing spend and a higher return on investment.
Increased customer satisfaction
Good customer service increases the likelihood of repurchase for 88% of customers. If you can grasp the pulse of your target audience, you can understand exactly what they want from you.
KPIs can tell you how well your website sits with your potential customers, whether they move further in the sales pipeline or bounce off. It gives actionable insights for areas of improvement, boosting customer satisfaction and your likelihood of generating leads.
Defining your content strategy
KPIs like conversion rate and time spent on content pinpoint high-performing content for sales lead generation. It helps you analyze which blog posts, guides, or landing pages drive the most downloads, signups, or purchases. This data helps you tailor future content to improve lead quality and nurture them toward conversion.
Defining your B2B marketing campaigns strategy
B2B marketing KPIs help you build data-backed marketing campaigns to boost website traffic and gain qualified leads. It can also help you streamline your content marketing strategy tracking metrics like page views, organic website traffic, social media engagement, backlinks, and more.
Parameters For Choosing The Right KPIs for Your Business to Business Website
Not all KPIs are essential to track.
Tracking unnecessary KPIs can result in "KPI overload" — an overwhelming volume of data, making it difficult for you to segment the redundant data from the useful one.
As Kerfuffle founder, Simon Whale says, “When selecting your KPIs, remember to limit their number. Tracking too many KPIs can be overwhelming and make it difficult to focus on what matters most.”
Here are pointers to decide what makes a useful KPI.
Useful KPIs
Wasteful KPIs
Capable of being measured and acted upon
Unclear and ambiguous
Assesses factors essential for the organization's success
Measures unrelated factors
Connected to business goals and targets
Connected to short-term and minimum-impact goals
5-8 key metrics
Too many B2B marketing metrics to keep track of
Can be applied consistently throughout the business
Has niche uses
Long stuff short, the KPIs you monitor should share the following traits:
- They should be specific and tell you exactly what you want from your website
- They should be quantifiable
- Must be realistic
- Relevant to your business and B2B marketing goals
- Finally, your KPIs need to be measurable and executable within a specific timeframe
The Most Important Key Performance Indicators to Monitor
Now that you’ve understood how to select relevant KPIs and how to leverage them to make your B2B marketing campaigns successful. Let's get started:
Pageviews
Pageviews measures the number of times visitors view a certain page on your site.
You can use this to see which pages are doing well with your audiences and which are not. Based on that information, you can create page templates to turn all your web pages into high performing ones.
Most viewed pages
You can use the previous metric to monitor which page garners the most attention from your audiences. You must be doing something very right on that one.
Take note of it and try to implement similar strokes of genius throughout your website.
Average session duration
Just because someone visits your page does not mean that they like it.
Average session duration tells you how much time they spent on your website on average.
Your B2B marketing goals boil down to one thing—keeping people engaged so you can eventually convert them. The longer they stay on your site, the higher the chances of them turning into paying customers
This info is available on the Audience Overview Report on Google Analytics.
Pages-per-session
People are visiting your website and they are spending a formidable amount of time on it too. But now you also want them to explore pages like the product page or the solution page to move them forward in the sales funnel.
Pages-per-session tracks the number of pages users are visiting on your site before they leave. Thus, this KPI is basically the average number of pages viewed during a singular session on your website.
This information is also available on the Google Analytics Audience Overview Report.
Visitor acquisition vs retention
New customers acquired cost five times greater than retaining an existing one.
On the flip side, selling to an existing customer boasts a success rate of 60-70%, whereas the success rate of selling to a new customer typically ranges between 5% and 20%.
Visitor acquisition implies the number of new visitors that land on your site. Retention, on the other hand, is the number of repeat visitors to your site.
So, the higher the number of visitors returning to your website, the better the conversion rate and the lower the customer acquisition cost.
To retrieve this information, navigate to the Audience section located in the left sidebar of your Google Analytics dashboard. Next, click on Behavior and choose "New vs Returning" from the dropdown menu.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
It measures how often people who see your ad actually click on it. This metric is especially important for driving traffic to your landing page.
Analyzing both CTR and landing page conversions helps with lead scoring. By seeing which ads lead to qualified leads (those likely to convert), you can prioritize your B2B marketing efforts.
Number of downloads
Your sales-driven website likely uses downloadable content such as ebooks, guides, and research papers to attract leads. Number of downloads KPI indicates how many people are downloading your content. It gives a valuable insight into client engagement levels.
Content with lead forms helps your sales team track downloads using form submissions, allowing them to assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and the health of the sales pipeline.
For resources lacking lead forms, it becomes essential to monitor and analyze user interactions to optimize lead generation efforts.
Email subscriptions
B2B websites often employ pop-ups to encourage users to subscribe to email marketing communications. This touchpoint serves as a direct channel for ongoing engagement and communication with customers and helps your sales team improve your content marketing efforts.
Number of leads generated
This KPI essentially measures the quantity of prospective customer contacts initiated through website interactions, particularly through lead forms. Leads can range from initial inquiries to more qualified prospects.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) tracks the cost of customers acquired. It's like figuring out the total bill for all your B2B marketing team and sales efforts – advertising, website development, content creation, and even your sales team's salaries. It helps you adjust the costs to improve your campaign performance.
It uses the following formula:
Divide that by the number of new customers you bring in over a period, and you've got your CAC. A lower CAC means you're attracting customers more efficiently, without breaking the bank.
Number of abandoned leads
Monitoring the number of leads that are started but not completed provides insights into potential barriers or issues within the lead-generation process. Tools like Google Analytics can help identify specific points of abandonment for optimization.
Customer retention rate
This metric tracks how well you keep your existing customers happy and coming back for more. It's essentially the percentage of customers who continue doing business with you over a specific period.
A high customer retention rate indicates loyal customers who contribute significantly to your customer lifetime value. The longer you retain customers, the more opportunities your B2B marketing team has for repeat business and increased revenue throughout the sales process.
Goals Reached (Google Analytics Goals)
Google Analytics Goals allows the setup and tracking of specific objectives on a website, such as form submissions, page interactions, or session durations. Achieving these goals indicates successful user engagement.
Number of Marketing-Qualified Leads (MQL)
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) indicates prospects showing interest in a business's offerings based on interactions like web visits, content downloads, or traffic through social media platforms. This metric helps assess lead quality for prioritized follow-up.
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) Conversion Rate
The MQL to SQL Conversion Rate KPI measures the percentage of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) that progress to becoming Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). This rate reflects the effectiveness of B2B marketing efforts in nurturing leads toward sales readiness.
Source Reports
Tracking website traffic sources (e.g., social media engagement, email campaigns, organic search) provides valuable insights into where website visitors originate, aiding in optimizing B2B marketing strategies and allocation of resources.
Cost per Click (CPC)
Cost per Click (CPC) is the expense incurred per click on an advertisement. Understanding CPC helps evaluate advertising costs relative to user engagement.
Cost per Action (CPA)
Cost per Action (CPA) calculates the cost associated with specific customer actions, such as purchases or downloads, attributed to advertising efforts. This metric ensures efficient spending aligned with desired outcomes.
Advertising Campaign ROI Report
The Advertising Campaign ROI Report compares the costs of advertising campaigns to the revenue generated. This analysis helps you improve the performance of your paid campaigns.
Search Rankings (SEO)
SEO metrics, including keyword performance and backlinks, influence a website's visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). Monitoring search rankings helps gauge the effectiveness of SEO strategies in driving organic traffic and potential sales.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Customer lifetime value looks at the total revenue generated by a single customer for your business throughout their relationship with you. Imagine it as the average amount of money a customer spends with your company over their lifetime.
Conversion rate
This KPI measures the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action. This could be anything from signing up for your newsletter (a micro-conversion) to making a purchase (a macro-conversion).
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
Monthly Recurring Revenue tracks how much revenue your business generates each month from subscriptions or recurring services. It helps you gauge your marketing performance and tailor future campaigns accordingly.
Sales Qualified Opportunities (SQOs)
Sales Qualified Opportunities identify potential customers who have shown a strong interest in your product or service and are considered likely to make a purchase. Imagine them as leads who are warm and ready to be contacted by your sales team. This helps streamline your marketing campaign in the right direction and make the most of your marketing spend.
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