How to Determine Key Performance Indicators

1. Analyze the type of website you are running, such as purely informational, a How To site or a blog, or an eCommerce website, in which you are selling products or services online and the customer can checkout through the site. Or perhaps you are running a lead generation site, where maybe you are selling a product or service, but don’t have a venue for online sales transactions.

2. Determine the goals of your website. If you are operating a lead generation website, your goal is for the customer to create an account, request more information, call a phone number or sign up for an email list. The action that you hope to be taken on your site will help you determine your key performance indicators.

3. Analyze the following key performance indicator and how it applies to your site: Visitors per conversion, lead or purchase. This is the first KPI that will measure site effectiveness. Based on the type of site you run and the goals of your site, you can decide how this KPI applies to you. If you are running an eCommerce site, calculate how many people are coming to your site versus how many people are making a purchase. For a lead generation site, measure how many visitors are actually requesting more information, and finally, if you are running an information site, analyze the number of visitors your site receives, versus the number of visitors who are creating a member account.

4. Determine how you will measure the costs of your site. No matter what type of website you are running, the cost per lead or sale is an important key performance indicator of any site. If you are getting five leads a week, but it is costing you $10,000 a week, you need to reanalyze your marketing and advertising methods.

5. Decide where you want your visitors to spend the most time, and then use web analytics to track how long the visitors are actually staying in those areas. If you want a visitor to explore further than your homepage, and you are losing him at the member registration, there may be a problem with the registration form, a question that makes the visitor uncomfortable or perhaps the visitor needs more information before he registers.

6. Figure out how important new visitors are to your business. If you want to constantly be gaining traffic, as most sites do, use new visitors as a key performance indicator to measure the effectiveness of your advertising programs.