V8.36: Understanding 3 Measurement Mistakes and How to Fix Them

We talk a lot about marketing strategy and various tactics to achieve our goals – but underneath all that, measurement is key. How else will we know what’s working and how to optimize?

As you know, there are a lot of metrics out there that really don’t matter or might even be misleading!

Let’s go through Marketing Land’s three metric myths we should be aware of and how to address them.

1. “Using time on site/page to make decisions” While time on site has certain advantages to understand, it can be quite a misleading metric. One person might spend 5 minutes on the site looking around new products or downloading a report. While another might spend 15 seconds on the site because they already know what they are looking for and just pops onto grab it before exiting again. That person would objectively look like a fail, but actually they are a really quality interaction. And finally, yet another person has a bunch of tabs open and forgets about your website. That just blows up your metrics and looks like 45 minutes of time on site. 

   So, what can we do about this? Instead of only looking at time on site, look at pages per visit or scroll depth to see how people move around your site. You can also look to see what CTA buttons people click on or content they pursue.

2. “Relying on a single metric with no other context” No one metric holds the answer- especially when you remove the context. A high conversion rate means next to nothing unless it’s paired with a high volume of conversions at low costs. The numbers get skewed if you only look at one by itself. For example, a low number of conversions might yield a high conversion rate because there weren’t that many clicks to begin with. If you only look at the rate, it would seem like a top performer, but that’s clearly not the case. Another example would be only looking at revenue. Bringing in 6 million dollars in revenue might look great on the surface, but if you didn’t meet your goals or if you completely missed your target audience that would paint a different picture. 

   The solution here is quite simple really. Always look for context when analyzing your metrics. Make sure to have the full story before making decisions! 

3. “Continuing to report on metrics just because they’ve been used in the past” The world is constantly changing. This means that metrics are going to change too! Just because you used certain metrics in the past doesn’t mean they are still relevant in the present. We must move with the times and with the technology available to us to measure success.

So, are you ready to tighten up your measurement analysis? We know this will do wonders for your business!