13 Website Metrics You Must Track & What They Reveal About Your Performance

Your website is more than a fancy tool. It’s a complex extension of your business where you’ve invested time, money, and energy. But is your website paying off? 

If you want to know the answer, you should check the metrics. Even if the numbers are one side of the story, they are an important part of the puzzle.

Metrics reveal a lot about your performance. They will point out what works for you and what doesn’t. It can suggest which areas you can improve and what aspects of your website are blooming.

Knowing the key metrics to track will help you understand how far your website went, and was  your investment worth of it.

We will breakdown website metrics in this article and guide you through numbers to help you identify what exactly your website is telling you about your performance.

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Why Is Following Website Metrics Important?

As we said, metrics are a key pieces you should put together to get a bigger picture. 

Every metric provides valuable insights that help you tailor your strategies, make informed decisions, and enhance your online visibility. Beyond explaining how your website is performing, metrics can also reveal patterns and trends in your performance.

When we understand metrics, we can:

1. Easily identify what to improve on our website: If we see high numbers – great! But if we see that our website is underperforming, it’s time for a change.
2. Measure the effectiveness of our marketing strategies: Marketing campaigns are constantly running, but it will be the metrics that will show how effective they are.
3. Make precise decisions: With metrics, we don’t have second-guessing. Our decisions are precise and supported by data.

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The Secret of Metrics: Quantity or Quality?

Shown in numbers, metrics are 100% pointing out the quantity of our performance, but are high numbers strong proof that we have a high-quality website? Well, the answer is no.

In practice, there are so many things that metrics aren’t telling us.

1. Metrics don’t show how a brand is perceived - Yes, we can have 50,000 visitors every month but metrics won’t reveal why we are getting it.
2. Metrics don’t  show why something’s happening - Also, metrics can’t say what is the general impression of our user experience. If we, on the contrary, aren’t getting high traffic, metrics may refer to the bad UX. But there’s no answer to why that’s happening.

The website’s quality revolves around the emotional connection users have with our brand. But numbers can’t capture it. So before dealing with numbers, we have to know what exactly we can find out with data we get.

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Key Metrics To Follow

Now, let’s get straight to the metrics. We will break down them into 5 categories explaining what each of these is telling us.

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1.  Traffic Metrics

Website traffic is the amount of users visiting our website. It can show different situations of various patterns of visitor behavior and it mostly depends on industry and audience.

• Pageviews: This is the total number of pages viewed on the website. 
• Unique Visitors: The total number of individuals who visit your website. 
• Sessions: A single visit to your website, which may include multiple pageviews. 

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2. Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics are explaining user engagement and interaction with our content, and the data they provide is one of the keys for long-term stability.

• Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave the website after viewing one page. A good range is 40–55%, but if it’s above 60%, the website needs heavy improvement. 
• Average Session Duration: This metric refers to the average length of time visitors spend on the website during a single session.  Ideally, it’s 2–3 minutes, while everything above 3 minutes is great.
• Time on Page: Time on page is the average amount of time visitors spend on a specific page. 1-2 minutes per page is a great deal.
• Pages per Session: The metric shows the average number of pages viewed by a visitor during a single session, and a strong website usually sees 2–3 pages per session. 

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3. Conversion Metrics

Conversion metrics are talking about conversions based on the business’s goals or marketing strategy. If the goal is to get sign-ups, sales, or leads, we should track these metrics.

• Conversions: Conversion shows a number of visitors who complete a desired action (e.g., making a purchase, filling out a form).
• Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is one of the favorite metrics of all businesses, and it’s a percentage of visitors who complete a conversion. A solid conversion rate is 2–5%.
• Cost per Acquisition (CPA): CPA is the cost of acquiring a new customer or lead can be $10–$50 per customer for e-commerce, and $20–$150 per lead (varies by industry).

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4. User Behavior Metrics

User behavior metrics show how visitors navigate through our pages and interact with the website. With this metric we can see the best performing pages but also highlight those that drive users away.

• Top Pages: Top pages are the most frequently visited pages on the website. Usually, the homepage and key landing pages make up 50%+ of total traffic.
• Exit Pages: On the opposite, exit pages are pages from which visitors most often leave the website. If the exit page is a landing page, that’s a major red flag. 

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5. Technical Metrics

Technical performance metrics are all about the data that’s happening behind. 

They show data about the speed and performance of the website, and are closely connected to the technical SEO. We all know how slow load times or broken pages can be frustrating, so keeping an eye on these ensures the performance runs smoothly on all fronts.

• Page Load Time: Page load time shows how long it takes for a website page to load, ideally up to 3 seconds. Everything under 3 seconds is better, and everything above is risking the high bounce rate.
• Core Web Vitals: Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure everything regarding the user experience. They will show loading speed, interactivity, and stability based on some standards. Based on Google, the ideal metrics are: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - under 2.5 seconds, Interaction To Next Paint (INP) - less than 200 milliseconds, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - less than 0.1.

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Top Tools For Tracking Website’s Metrics

Now that we have determined the top metrics to track, we need to discuss how to track them. 

There are many tools for tracking a website’s metrics online, and all of them can help us understand how our website performs. Of all the available tools, we recommend the following three, which you can use separately or combine for the best data.

1. Google Analytics & Google Search Console - Best for overall website analytics
2. Hotjar - Best for analyzing user behavior and heatmaps
3. SEMrush - Best for SEO & Competitive Analysis

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So, Which Metrics To Focus On?

With so many metrics available, you may wonder which of these are the most important to track, analyze, and prioritize.

In practice, the best combination is to focus on the ones you need at that point. Yes, you can have all of them in mind, but there’s no need to track everything all the time. 

With the knowledge of what can be tracked and with tools for tracking, we can access this data anytime and focus on conversion metrics when we want to check leads. Or analyze engagement metrics to see if our bounce rate is getting high.

Next Steps

Here are a few steps you can follow to always be on the right track with your metrics:

• Invest in professional assistance: A Professional Webflow agency will always know how to keep your metrics high by observing and improving everything.
• Set goals before tracking: Be clear what are your goals, and based on that track metrics and data.
• Track metrics over time: Focus on the key metrics, but monitor everything over time to detect patterns and changes.
• See a bigger picture: The most accurate data isn’t just one or two numbers, it’s a combination of different metrics that will help you see a bigger picture.

Analyze and act: Gathering data is the first step, and the next step is to act on it and implement strategies based on the insights you get.