The Essential Website Metrics Every Owner Needs to Track (And Why They Matter)

Published on January 28, 2025

Do you feel lost in a sea of numbers when you look at your website analytics? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. The key isn’t tracking everything but knowing which metrics give you the insights to grow your business while respecting user privacy.

Traffic Metrics: Understanding Your Visitors

The first thing that comes into mind is to track metrics – or sometimes called Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – such as page views and unique visitors. And that’s a great start indeed.

But that doesn’t mean to just track how many page views you get for your site and how many people visited them. You should track which pages are getting the most attention to see what’s working. And while this is essential you are missing out one thing. Where are they coming from? Or also called what’s their referrer. You can easily track this with UTM parameters.

What are UTM parameters?

Well, Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are simple tags added to your URLs to track where you traffic is coming from. You can use them to identify which campaigns, platforms or ads are driving the most visitors to your site.

For example:

  • utm_source = “Facebook”

  • utm_medium = “CPC” (Call per Click)

  • utm_campaign = “Lead Campaign”

You would add them to your site URL. So as an example, it would be https://www.iodiasix.com/blog?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=lead_campaign.

With analytics software you can then filter the UTM parameters and find out from which source your visitors came from and if it’s from an ad campaign, which one. Yes, you will probably not append those parameters to all URLs, they become quite long and “ugly”. That’s why it’s important to use analytics software that can filter these UTM parameters for you.

What is a visitor?

A visitor – a human being if we want to get philosophical – is simply one person. A person that visited your website.

And each visitor is different, based on where he came from. In most cases there are good and bad visitors if you want to put it like this. There are visitors who come to your site just to leave it immediately and there are visitors who stay a long time on you site. They click through your blog, read through your product pages and maybe even sign up for your newsletter.

Some might have found you through an organic Google search, others might be returning users, while some could be coming from a paid ad.

Now, in the beginning we said unique visitors. A visitor is a human being, one person, he is unique. Don’t mess this up. Track the unique visitors of your website. From the analytical perspective you need to find out who your best visitors are.

This is why the general statement of “I get 1.500 visitors per month” is kind of irrelevant if the bounce rate is above 90% and the average time on the site is only a few seconds. And they probably have a low conversion rate – given if your site has some sort of lead capturing whatsoever.

On the other hand you may get a lot less visitors but they have a low bounce rate and read carefully through your sites and sign up for your newsletter.

Understanding where your visitors came from, what content they engaged with, and how long they stayed can help you make informed decisions.

This is why you will not only use UTM parameters but also need sooner or later some sort of analytic software to individually track your visitors. To filter their referrer (where they came from) and then see how long those people are staying on your site.

So, while every visitor starts as just "one person" in its simplest sense, in the world of analytics, they’re an individual whose actions – multiplied across hundreds or thousands of others – create patterns that guide the decisions you make to grow and improve your business.

Geographical & Device Usage

And the last two metrics you should track are geography and device usage. Where are your visitors coming from and how are they accessing your site? Especially mobile users are growing rapidly. It may not apply to you, but how can, you be sure? Tracking the individual page views paired with device usage you can find it out.

Quick Recap For your visitor’s track:

  • Pageviews: Track which pages are getting the most attention to see what’s working.

  • Unique Visitors: Measure your reach—how many individual people are visiting your site?

  • Geography & Device Usage: Understand where your visitors are coming from and how they’re accessing your site (mobile, desktop, etc.).

Engagement Metrics: Are They Staying or Leaving?

We have already discussed it a bit. There is no use in having thousands of visitors if they are immediately leaving your site. So, the two metrics for Engagement are the

  1. Bounce Rate: Learn how many visitors leave your site after viewing only one page and identify areas for improvement.

  2. Average Time on Page: Find out which content keeps users engaged the longest.

The idea is straightforward. Engagement metrics measure how visitors interact with your website once they arrive.

Are they reading your blog posts, browsing your product catalog, or filling out a form? Let’s break down the two most essential engagement metrics:

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate shows you the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. This is a crucial indicator because it tells you if people are finding what they're looking for and quickly leaving if they don’t.

Use Case: Imagine you’re running an e-commerce store, and you notice that your homepage has a high bounce rate (over 80%). This could mean visitors aren’t immediately finding what they expected when they arrive. Maybe your homepage isn’t aligned with their search intent, or your call-to-action is unclear.

What can you do? You could:

  • Improve the clarity of your product offerings and the value proposition on your homepage.

  • Test new design elements or rework your copy to make it more appealing and direct.

  • Create internal links to guide users to popular product categories or best-sellers.

  • Optimize loading speeds so visitors don't leave out of frustration.

The lower your bounce rate, the more engaged your visitors are with your site and content. A low bounce rate means your visitors are likely exploring more pages and finding valuable information, which is essential for turning them into loyal customers.

Average Time on Page

This metric shows you how long visitors are spending on a particular page of your website. If they’re spending a lot of time reading an article, it’s a sign that the content is relevant, engaging, and interesting. If they’re leaving too soon, you’ve got room for improvement.

Use Case: Let’s say you run a blog, and your goal is to educate users on privacy laws. You notice that one of your articles has a very high average time on page users are staying on the page for 5+ minutes on average, reading every word. This tells you that your article is resonating with your audience, providing valuable information that’s making them stick around.

On the other hand, if an article is getting a short time on page (let’s say 30 seconds to 1 minute), this could indicate that:

  • The title or introduction isn’t captivating enough to grab attention.

  • The content may not be answering the user’s search intent.

  • There may be distractions on the page, or it’s not easy to digest (i.e., long paragraphs, no subheadings, etc.).

To optimize time on page:

  • Break down long-form content into easy-to-read sections with compelling subheadings.

  • Add images, infographics, or videos to make the content more engaging.

  • Link to related content to keep users browsing more pages on your site.

Conversion Metrics: Turning Visitors into Customers

At the end of the day, all the traffic in the world is meaningless if it doesn’t convert into valuable actions. That’s where conversion metrics come in. These are the indicators that show how well your website is performing in terms of achieving its goals whether it’s getting sign-ups, generating sales, or driving any other key action that’s important to your business.

If engagement metrics tell you if people are sticking around on your site, conversion metrics tell you if they’re doing what you want them to do. Let’s break down some of the most important conversion metrics you should be tracking: Goal Completions

A "goal" on your website is anything that you define as a successful action. This could be making a purchase, signing up for your newsletter or filling out your contact form. Goal completions are important because they measure the success of your website in achieving your business objectives.

Use Case: You run an e-commerce store, and your goal is for customers to complete a purchase. By tracking goal completions, you can easily see how many visitors followed through with that purchase.

Tip for improvement: If your goal completions aren’t meeting expectations, you might need to optimize the purchase process or sign-up forms by removing friction points, simplifying steps, or offering incentives like free shipping or discounts.

Click-Through Rates (CTR)

Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures how many visitors click on a link, button, or call-to-action (CTA) on your website, divided by the total number of visitors who saw the link or button.

Use Case: Let’s say you’ve added a new "Shop Now" button on your homepage. By tracking the CTR, you can see how effective that button is at driving users deeper into the site. A low CTR could indicate that the button isn’t noticeable enough, while a high CTR suggests it's resonating with your audience and prompting action.

Form Submissions

Forms are a crucial part of turning visitors into leads, whether it's for a contact form, newsletter sign-up, demo request, or any other type of user engagement. Form submissions are key conversion events for many websites, and monitoring how well they perform helps you evaluate the effectiveness of your forms.

Use Case: If you're running a SaaS business, your primary conversion metric might be how many people sign up for a free trial via your registration form. By monitoring form submissions, you can see how many visitors are entering their data and becoming part of your customer journey.

What is the conclusion? You should define specific goals for your website. Whether it’s the newsletter signup, or the download of an eBook, filling out a contact form. If you track the clicks, the submission, however you want to call them and measure their CTR based on the total unique visitors, you can find out how well your website is performing.

Privacy Metrics: Building Trust While Tracking Data

In our privacy-concious world it is also important to respect your visitors privacy. Always. Don’t use cross-site tracking, fingerprint tracking, behavioral analysis whatsoever. This will only destroy the trust your visitors have in your business.

If you want to track all this data and build trust while doing so you can use the Privacy Isolation Framework from iodiasix. Using this framework, the data you track from your users never leaves the European Union. The data is and stays within the territory of the EU.

The priority when designing this framework was to never collect nor store any personal data in the first place. We don’t use cookies, browser cache, session or local storage. Your visitors can’t be tracked across site. And there is no such thing as persistent identifier that will always lead back to an individual.

All this, so you don’t have to worry about the Schrems II ruling that invalidates the EU-US Privacy Shield when using iodiasix.

The moment a visitor arrives at your site you no longer need intrusive banners. Your visitors can immediately start browsing on your beautiful site. Still, you get all the data you need to make informed decisions.

Choose the Right Metrics (and the Right Tools)

Not all metrics are created equal, and you don’t need to track everything just the insights that help you grow your business responsibly. With privacy-first tools, you can get actionable data while respecting your users and staying compliant.

Ready to focus on the metrics that matter most? Try iodiasix for 30-days free and simplify your website analytics today.