Conversions are the ultimate goal of any digital marketing strategy. Without conversions, there are no leads, no sales and no customers.
However, the road to conversion is not always a straight line. There are a number of factors that can influence a person's decision to convert, including the quality of your website, your marketing channels, and even the wording on your CTAs.
This is why it's so important to track conversion metrics in Google Analytics. By understanding which conversion metrics are most important for your business, you can fine-tune your marketing strategy and maximize your ROI.
In this article, we'll define what conversions are in Google Analytics, which metrics matter to conversion, and how each metric helps you understand your conversion rate in Google Analytics.
What are conversion metrics?
In Google Analytics, metrics are numerical values that are used to measure the performance of a website or web app. They can be used to determine how many visits a page gets, how long someone stays on a page, how many people click on an ad, how much money is spent on a product, and much more.
One type of GA metric that is particularly important for marketers are conversion metrics.
Conversion metrics are metrics that measure the actions that you want your visitors to take on your site.
So what are conversions in Google Analytics? These are directly related to your business goals, and because of that, conversion looks different for every business. For an E-commerce site, conversions can be:
- Product purchases
- Newsletter signups
- Contact form submissions
- etc.
For a lead generation site, conversions can be:
- White paper downloads
- Ebook downloads
- Free trial signups
- etc.
In short, conversion metrics can be anything that is important for your business. The key is to identify which actions you want your visitors to take and then track the metrics that measure those actions.
From there, you can optimize your website and marketing strategy to increase the number of conversions and, ultimately, grow your business.
Conversion metrics to track in GA
The sheer number of metrics and dimensions available in GA can be overwhelming.
The good news is that you don't need to track all of them. In fact, you shouldn't.
The key is to identify and focus only on the metrics that matter to your business goals. With that said, there are some universally important conversion metrics that all businesses should track regardless of their specific goals.
Conversion metric examples include:
1. Bounce rate
Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors to your site who navigate away from it without engaging with any other page on your site.
It provides a quick snapshot of how many people are coming to your site and then leaving, which can help you determine whether or not there's anything on your site that might cause visitors to leave before they've had a chance to engage with it.
Bounce Rate is one of the most important conversion metrics because it can tell you whether or not people are engaging with your content and whether or not they're using what you've made for them. If someone visits your site and immediately leaves without visiting any other pages, then it's possible that something about the way you present information or interact with users may be turning them off from engaging further.
It’s important to note that bounce rate is tracked differently in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) - and it might be more valuable to track engagement rate.
2. Traffic sources
In Google Analytics, traffic source refers to the way that a visitor arrived at your site. This includes search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!), social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter), email marketing services, and referral sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon.
It's important to track traffic sources because each one provides different value to your business. For example, if you see that most of your traffic is coming from Facebook ads, but the conversion rate is low for those visits, then you may want to reallocate some of your budget away from Facebook towards other traffic sources.
If almost all of your traffic comes from organic search results and you want to increase your paid advertising reach, then it might make sense to boost your keyword bids or add more keywords to an existing ad group.
3. Overall conversion rate
The overall conversion rate is the percentage of people who complete a goal, such as making a purchase. It’s also referred to as the “conversion rate” or “conversion percentage.”
It’s important because it helps you determine whether your site is meeting your goals. If you have a 20% conversion rate, that means that 20% of people who visit your site end up completing a goal, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. If you want more people to convert, then you can make changes (like improving your landing page) to bring up those numbers.
4. Soft vs. hard conversions
Soft conversions are actions that are not directly related to the action or goal you’ve set. They’re a step in the right direction, but they’re not a direct action. Soft conversions are often tracked as a way to understand how a user got to your website and what they did before they took the action you were hoping for.
Hard conversions are actions that directly result in your goal being realized. For example, if your goal is a sale, then someone completing one of your forms would be considered a hard conversion.
Both soft and hard conversions play an important role in optimizing your website for better results. For example, if you have a goal set up for a certain action on your site (like signing up for a newsletter), you'll want to track the number of people who complete that action so that you can see how much progress has been made toward reaching that goal.
You'll also want to track hard conversions (like signups) because they can provide valuable information about what content resonates with your audience most and where people are getting stuck when visiting your site.
5. New visitors
In Google Analytics, "new visitors" is a metric that tracks the number of people who come to your website for the first time. They tell you how many of your website visitors have visited your site for the first time during a certain time period — like a month, week, or day.
The most important thing to remember about new visitors is that they haven't converted yet. That means this metric isn't an indicator of how successful your business is or how much money you're making.
However, it does tell you about the effectiveness of your marketing efforts at bringing people into your sales funnel.
You need to make sure that people are coming to your website and staying there long enough to become customers, so this metric will tell you if you're doing a good job at getting people in the door.
New visitors also give you an idea of how much traffic has grown over time, which can help you identify seasonality trends in your business.
For example, if you see an increase in new visitors at the beginning of each quarter (as opposed to at the end), that might mean you need to reevaluate how much marketing is being done during those months and whether it needs to be ramped up or down.
6. New visitor conversion rate
GA's New visitor conversion rate is a metric that shows the percentage of people who visit your website for the first time and then return to buy something or take other actions.
It’s a sign that you’re doing a good job at getting your audience to take action on your site, which can help you make decisions about how to improve the experience they have while they’re there.
7. Return visitor conversion rate
Return visitors are people who visit your website multiple times. The return visitor conversion rate is the percentage of return visitors who convert.
If your return visitor conversion rate is low, it means that your site isn’t doing a good job of drawing people back for repeat business. You may want to consider some changes to make sure that you’re providing the type of experience that keeps people coming back for more.
8. Ecommerce product performance
Ecommerce product performance is another critical GA sales conversion metric that measures the number of orders your store receives for each product in a given time period. This data can be used to track how well individual products are doing, as well as how their performance compares to other products within the same category.
Tracking product performance can help you identify which products and product variants are performing well, which ones aren't doing so well, and why.
Product performance data can also help you determine what areas of your store have room for improvement, such as pricing or description copy. It's important to know when your business is doing well so you can capitalize on those successes and continue growing your sales.
9. Form completion
The form completion website conversion metric measures the percentage of users who completed a form on your website.
This can be an obvious action, like when users complete a newsletter signup or purchase order form, or it can also be more subtle, like when they click “next” on a modal window that asks them what they thought of their experience on your site.
A high form completion rate shows that users are able to complete the form and allows you to identify potential issues with the design of your form. If users are having trouble completing your forms, you may want to consider updating them so they're more user-friendly or adding some sort of assistance tool.
On the other hand, if your form completion rate is low, it may mean that people aren't interested in filling out your forms at all. You should take a look at how long your forms are and how much information they ask for before deciding whether or not they need to be adjusted. websi
10. Landing page views
This GA conversion metric tells you how many people viewed a particular landing page on your website. It also shows you how much time they spent on that landing page and where they navigated to next after viewing it.
This data can be used to identify which landing pages are most effective at converting visitors into customers or leads and which ones need some work.
11. Time on site
Time on site is the amount of time a visitor spends on your website. It is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days and so on.
It's a great way to measure how long your visitors are spending on your site, and it tells you a lot about how engaged they are.
For example, if your visitors spend about 10 seconds on the site before leaving, then it's likely that they didn't find what they were looking for or weren't interested in what you had to offer.
But if they're staying on the page for 20 minutes or more, then they're probably reading every word of your copy and absorbing all of your content — which means they're likely truly engaging with your brand.
And the more engaged people are with your brand, the higher the chances of them converting.
12. Phone call clicks / email clicks
Phone call clicks and email clicks tell you how many people who were interested in the product or service on your website actually contacted you or clicked through to a form where they provided their contact information.
Why are these GA metrics important? Because they tell you whether your site is doing its job: getting people to contact your business.
If someone is clicking on your phone number or email address, it means that they're interested enough in what you're offering that they want to talk to someone about it. They might not be ready to buy, but they've at least got an interest in what you're selling. If a lot of people are clicking on those links, then it seems like it could be worth reaching out to those customers and offering them more information or setting up a demo — something to try and convince them to buy.
But if only a small percentage of people click on those links? Well, maybe it's time to rethink your product or service offering.
13. Engagement rate in GA4
Engagement rate is one of a number of engagement metrics available from GA4. Engagement rate is effectively the inverse of bounce rate, and it tells you what percentage of users who landed on your site from another site actually did something on your site.
In other words, if someone clicks through to your site from Twitter and then leaves without doing anything else, that's considered a bounce.
If you have a high engagement rate, it means that most of your visitors are staying on your page long enough to actually do something — like register for an account or make a purchase.
This can help you understand how well your content is engaging with visitors and whether or not they're finding what they need when they visit.
14. Cost per click (CPC)
The Cost per Click (CPC) metric is one of the most commonly used conversion metrics in Google Analytics. It measures the cost of every click on an ad, which can help you determine how much it costs to acquire a new customer.
You can use this data to compare your current advertising campaigns against previous ones and see if there's been an increase or decrease in the cost per click.
The CPC metric helps you determine the effectiveness of your paid advertising strategy by showing you how many users are clicking on your ads based on how much money you're spending on each click.
This will help you figure out what kind of return on investment (ROI) you're getting from your ads and whether or not they're worth continuing.
The CPC metric also gives you insight into what keywords are driving traffic to your website, which helps give you an idea of which keywords are worth targeting in future campaigns.
15. Exit pages
Exit pages are the pages that users visit immediately before they leave your site. It's a great way to see where you're losing customers, so you can focus on improving those areas.
For example, if someone lands on the homepage and then immediately leaves, you might want to investigate why.
Maybe there's something about the content on the homepage that makes people feel like they need to go elsewhere. Or maybe it's not clear enough how they can get started with your product or service.
No matter the reason, this presents an opportunity to improve the user experience and, ultimately, your conversion rate.
16. Cost per conversion
Finally, cost per conversion is a GA metric that tells you how much it costs, on average, to get a single customer to make a purchase.
This helps you understand how much money you're spending to bring in new customers, and if you can improve the conversion rate (and therefore increase the number of people who buy from you), then you'll be able to spend less money to get those same results.
Wrapping it up
Google Analytics provides both the big picture and the granular details you need to see how well your conversion strategies are performing. Tracking, analyzing, and understanding these metrics is essential to optimizing your conversion rate and improving your bottom line.
When it comes to increasing conversions, every little bit counts. Reporting Ninja's Google Analytics integration saves you time and effort by automatically generating the reports you need to track your progress and extract insights to boost your conversions.
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