Getting a website online is easy enough these days. Many web hosts offer instant setup for sites that let you get started with little to zero technology experience. However, there’s more to running a successful site than getting it online.

When 88% of shoppers don’t return to a site after a poor experience, you need to know how well your site works. That’s why knowing what website performance metrics to track is critical to offering the information and services your visitors need.

Keep reading to learn four of the most critical metrics that web admins need to know.

1. Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate tells you if people stick around on your site. If all someone does is click on your site and go back to where they were after a few seconds, your bounce rate will be high.

This may not be a big deal if you have informational content. If a visitor finds what they need, it makes sense to return to where they came from.

That’s a different story if you have an eCommerce store. If you have a high bounce rate on product pages, it shows a lack of interest in your products or that you’re sending the wrong traffic to the page.

2. SEO Ranking

With so much traffic coming from Google, it’s a mistake to dismiss SEO. Even if it takes a lot of work to improve your Google ranking and get to the first page, the benefits are worth the effort.

Use a tracking tool to figure out where your website ranks. Use that data to find the keywords that supply the most traffic and optimize your website and off-page SEO to rank for those keywords.

As an additional benefit, the more you can prove that you offer valuable content to searchers, the more likely Google is to rank other pages on your site.

3. Conversion Rate

The conversion rate metric is a must to discover which traffic sources and ads supply the most customers. You use tracking software to set up goal pages, such as an order confirmation page, and track which traffic source sent a visitor there.

You can use that data to track your website conversion rates over time. You can use your conversion rate data to cut traffic sources that don’t produce results and optimize the ones that do.

4. Page Load Time

People expect fast websites today. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, you’ll lose a lot of your traffic to your competitors. Unfortunately, this is a hard metric to track if you only visit your site from your devices.

PageSpeed Insights is a way to track the problem areas affecting your website speed. You’ll see what elements slow things down and get an overall score for your site. If you have a poor score, you’ll need to invest more in web design to increase your site speed.

Start Tracking Website Performance Metrics Today

It isn’t enough to have an excellent web design in today’s world. Your website is there to move the needle for your business, so you need to do everything you can to optimize it for results. Track the website performance metrics above to learn what you need to do to optimize your website.

Head back to the blog if you want to find more tips that will help you build an amazing website for your customers.