Measure your digital performance

Before you start tracking anything, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve with your online platforms.

For example, you might want to:

• increase product sales through your website
• build a community around your brand on social media
• position yourself as an expert in your field by publishing blog posts or videos.

If you haven’t got a digital strategy, create one to set your digital goals.

Metrics are things you can measure that indicate whether you’re meeting your digital goals.

For example:

• total revenue from your online store (a metric for online sales)
• number of social media followers (a metric for building an online community)
• number of people that watch your videos (a metric for how much they trust your expertise).

Different platforms and analytics tools offer different metrics to choose from. Look at each tool’s documentation for options – there might be some useful metrics you haven’t thought about.

If you can, set a target for each of your key metrics. For example, you might want to increase your social media followers by 50% this year. Don’t worry if you’re not ready to set targets yet – you can monitor your digital performance for a while and set some specific targets later.

Website and e-commerce

Use a website analytics tool to track metrics like:

• how many people visit your website
• where they live
• how they find your site
• which pages they are most interested in.

If you have an online store, you can use web analytics to track things such as:

• your online revenue
• which products are most popular
• the ads, social posts and other promotions that bring in the most sales
• if people add items to their shopping carts but leave before buying
• number of refunds
• proportion of repeat and first-time buyers.

If you’re using a cloud-based content management system for your website, it probably already has analytics tools. Otherwise you can use a free tool like Google Analytics.

Search engines

Most search engines offer analytics tools that show you:

• where your website shows up in search results
• how many people are clicking on your site in search results
• the search queries and web pages that bring in the most traffic.

Social media

Most social media platforms have built-in analytics tools. You can also use a separate social media management system to measure your performance across multiple platforms.

Some important metrics for social media are:

• reach (how many people saw your post)
• engagement (how many people interacted with your post, including reactions, shares, saves and comments)
• audience demographics, including age, gender, location and other interests
• when your audience is using social media
• performance differences between paid and organic (unpaid) posts.

Email newsletters

Email marketing platforms usually have built-in analytics tools. They can track metrics like:

• open rate (how many people opened your email to read it)
• click-through rate (how many people clicked on a link in your email)
• bounce rate (how many emails couldn’t be delivered)
• unsubscribe rate (how many people unsubscribed from your mailing list)
• how these metrics compare to other businesses in your industry.

Use your performance data to make changes to your digital approach. Keep monitoring your digital metrics over time to see what works and what doesn’t.

Some things you could try:

• Use search engine optimisation to improve your rankings for the search terms your target customers use most.
• Improve social media engagement by taking the time to reply to comments and messages from followers.
• Look at your metrics to see what kind of web and social content is most popular with your customers. Then make more content like that.
• Schedule social media posts and email newsletters at times when your customers are most likely to read them.
• Use A/B testing (also known as split testing) to test 2 different versions of a web page or email and see which one performs best.

Don’t forget to update your digital strategy with your new goals and actions.