Digital marketing refers to an umbrella of services that are together used to improve the online presence of any brand, business, or website. Where digital marketing scores over its traditional counterpart is that its results can be measured. And not just measured but analyzed in detail. Conventional marketing is an exercise akin to carpet bombing while digital marketing is more like a laser-guided missile.

A digital marketing service provider as such lets you dissect every aspect of your online marketing strategy using a variety of tools. These tools help you measure the success of your marketing campaign by tracking certain metrics. These metrics also paint an accurate picture of the flaws in your strategy, if any, and what needs to be done in order to increase your chances of success.

Each of the metrics discussed below plays an invaluable role in the search engine ranking of a website, which ultimately is what drives more traffic to your website.

  • Website Loading Speed

The loading speed of your website is a vital determinant of your search engine ranking, and this has been confirmed by none other than Google itself. Since the confirmation, it is one of the most important metrics that digital marketing companies focus on. The loading speed of your website depends on two factors mainly, viz. the website’s on-page optimization and its hosting provider. Another factor influencing loading speed is the website design and media content. A clunky design and several large media files can both increase the website’s loading speed considerably.

Multiple studies have shown how a visitor spends no more than three seconds waiting for a website to load fully. If not, the user simply goes back to the search engine results page and moves onto the next result. Basic things like hosting your website with an established provider and compressing media like images, videos and graphics can enable your site’s web pages to load faster.

  • Website Traffic

The numerous digital marketing methods converge around one and only one goal, traffic generation. That is why it pays to keep an eye on the flow of traffic to your website and if the strategy you’ve implemented is getting you the desired results. Even when analyzing visitor traffic, do not focus only on page views or even the number of hits that your website gets. Focus instead on how many unique visitors does your website manage to attract every month. When there is a steady rise in the number of unique visitors to your website, the chances of converting those visitors into paying or subscribing customers increases substantially.

  • Phone Traffic

Improvements in technology and the proliferation of smartphones have meant mobile devices dictate the direction of any digital marketing campaign. More people than ever are accessing the internet through their smartphones, which is an extremely important fact from the standpoint of digital marketing. That is because websites and services whose design and layout has been built to adapt to the smaller screen sizes of smartphones will get more visitors. On the other hand, websites with non-responsive design will suffer as visitors are unlikely to return to them. Going forward all websites and content have to be optimized for smartphones as it is one of the best tricks to get Google to rank you higher.

  • Traffic Sources

Another metric that can help you make vital changes to your digital marketing campaign, the source of your traffic refers to where a majority of your website’s visitors are coming from and which set of keywords or keyword phrases are bringing them in. Analyzing both these aspects can give you useful insights as to which traffic sources are working and which are not. And although search engines remain the richest source of website traffic, the rise of social media has opened up the possibility that other sources of traffic might play an equally bigger role in boosting your online presence.

  • Returning Visitors

A business is considered to have truly become a success when it enjoys a high rate of returning customers. These are customers who’ve come back for more and bring in what is referred to as repeat business.

The same applies for websites as well. A website might have thousands of visitors every week but it is not considered to be a success unless and until it gets a steady stream of returning visitors. These are visitors who liked your services, products or just the content you upload. Returning visitors are a very important ingredient of building a brand online and creating greater awareness about it. Not to mention that more returning visitors naturally means a higher chance of conversion.

  • Click Through Rate (CTR) 

Expressed as a percentage, the click-through rate is the number of people who click on an advertisement or email compared to the number of people who view (impressions) that advertisement or email. CTR is an excellent and proven way to measure how effective a paid search, email and display marketing campaign has been. It is also known to indicate how subject lines, Metadata, and ad copy of a particular campaign are performing. If the number of people who view your ads (the number of impressions) is far greater than the number of people who click on them, it means your campaign needs a course correction. Remember that higher the CTR, higher will be the number of people visiting your website.

  • Conversion Rate

While getting more people to visit your website is important, it is by no means the metric that matters the most. That honor goes to the conversion rate, a metric which defines in terms of pe