Top 7 must-track metrics for website performance
Popular websites don’t just dependent on higher SEO. They focus on how well their overall website performance is and for this standard metrics for website performance is needed.
Website performance benchmarks or metrics are like a health checkup for your website which keeps a track of its efficient performance or lack of any important individual element. So the first step towards improving your website is to measure it. And for this, we take the help of website performance metrics tools like — bounce rates, click-through rates, response times, website business transactions and sales, social media interaction, web server usage, and many other KPIs (key performance indicators) to ensure that your website is optimal. So to make your sites’ inefficiency clearer and to find the aspects which are to be dealt with, we are here with the top 10 must-track metrics. But keep in mind the overall goals of your website, while going through this list. Although there are lots of KPIs such as content performance metrics, speed metrics, and behavioural metrics, you shouldn’t be losing sight of your main purpose.
Alright then, let’s get started.
1. Time to Start Render
The time to start render can be simply be understood as the time interval between a visitor’s request and the display of content. The engagement of your visitors or their time to interact mainly depends on this element as the sooner a viewer is given his requested content, the more time they will be spending on your site and your bounce rates will be-low.
To measure this metric for web page performance, one of the best website metrics tools is Speed Index. It measures as to how long does it takes for your website to render content.
2. Website Weight in Bytes
Your website’s weight is the most important website metric as it is negatively correlated with the speed of your website. A websites’ overall weight is measured in bytes, the more your website bytes is, the slower it will load.
So, to lower your sites’ weight, you can get rid of unnecessary widgets, reduce image sizes or can implement a minification or concatenation plugins.
3. Time to First Byte
Time to the first byte aka TTFB is the time that transpires between a visitor’s click the “go” and your site’s responding to the browser. When the searched title takes too long to display, it gives your visitors a doubt about the authenticity of the website. TTFB is specified by the delivery speed from the website’s original server of origin to the viewer’s ISP. This will help you in website engagement metrics.
4. Time to Interact
The time to interact can be understood as the actual interaction by clicking the buttons or hovering over the menu after the site has been fully loaded. or in other words, it is the time taken between a viewer requesting site access to the ability for the viewer to interact with the requested website. Even though this is closely related to Time to Render, it usually occurs later and is largely dependent on javascript.
5. Bounce Rate
When your website visitors leave the site without even having any interaction with the sites’ content, it leads to a bounce rate. An increase in the bounce rate can be due to your content available on the website, which is not according to the interest of the visitor or the site taking too long to load. Keep in mind that if your sites’ bounce rate is high, it will negatively affect your website’s SEO. So keep a check on this behavioural metric.
6. DNS Lookup Time
The time it takes for your domain name to be translated into an IP address is measured by DNS Lookup Time (aka the DNS resolution process). Generally, most hosts do provide their DNS servers, which is nice – but not always optimal. So, if you’re seeing DNS lookups above 100ms, you should consider a third-party DNS service.
7. Conversion Rate
Your potential leads have to be contacted by your sales team to turn them into paying clients. The Lead-to-Conversion business metric reflects on your sales team’s performance. Moreover, it might indicate the quality of your product such as if leads fail to convert, this means your client might not be impressed with what you’re offering.
How to measure these top performance metrics?
We have listed down the most important metrics here, and we hope that you will consider each of the KPIs to track the performance of your website.
And the good news is that– all of these metrics can be measured consistently and reliably for free through the use of website analytics platforms like Google Analytics and a speed monitoring service such as MachMetrics, which will give you the data you need to ensure your website is optimal.
