Online businesses live and die on web metrics, but most webmasters rely on a very narrow range of them to make mission-critical decisions.
While page views and unique visitors are definitely important numbers, they’re hardly the only ones affiliates should be watching.
In a recent posting on Hubspot titled, 15 Metrics Every Marketing Manager Should Be Tracking, blogger Rebecca Corliss dug deep into this important subject. While the whole posting is worth a read, here are a few of them that are particularly useful to gambling affiliates.
1. Leads and Traffic Waterfall: Going to any campaign or marketing effort you’ll (hopefully) have some well defined goals you’re hoping to hit. Tracking how close you are to those goals on a daily basis can be done quite easily with a waterfall graph. Waterfall graphs compare the number you want to hit against the number you’ve actually hit. Corliss suggests using waterfalls on a daily basis to track leads and traffic to your site. When you’ve kept up on your waterfalls over time, you’ll be well equipped to adjust your strategies and actually meet your goals.
2. Channel Effectiveness: Web marketing has always involved a lot more than just just web sites, but the rise of social media and the mobile web have added a lot more moving parts to the picture. Corliss defines a channel as any source of leads. This includes social, e-mail, SEO, banner ads and more. Once you’ve identified your various channels, they can be broken down further in to a number of separate measurements including:
- Month to Date Goal Per Channel – This metric takes the info from your waterfall graphs a step further by separating out by channel. If your social or SEO strategies are failing, it should show up here.
- Close Rate Per Channel – Are your CTA’s really working on every level?
- Paid vs. Organic Lead Percentage – There’s no point in throwing money at paid leads if your organic methods are doing the trick.
As the Web fragments into more and more pieces, channel metrics become more and more useful.
3. Content Effectiveness: Content is more important than ever, so it makes sense that measuring content effectiveness is more important than ever, too. Corliss’ suggestions for content metrics include:
- Lead Generated per Offer – Most affiliates don’t need to be told to track conversions, but it’s always worth reiterating the importance of knowing how well your landing pages are working.
- Landing Page New Contacts Rate – Last year we talked about how advanced A/B testing techniques can differentiate between repeat visitors and first time visitors. Serving up a landing page that says, Welcome Back, Here’s a Special Bonus for Repeat Visitors, goes a long ways towards building your brands.
Finally
Adjusting marketing and SEO strategies on the fly can help affiliates stay competitive in an increasingly tight market and web metrics allow for just that. The further you dig into, analyze, end-user behavior, the more conversions you’ll get.
What are your most important metrics? Let us know in the comments section below.