Don’t worry, business owners. If you’ve felt out of touch with the online world and how quickly it changes, you’re not the only one. While the once “in style” mullet and fanny pack are, unfortunately, a distant memory of the past (for most of us), that doesn’t mean your business’s online presence needs to follow suit.
There are many key performance indicators that can be tracked in every business, but for this article, I wanted to highlight three important items on your KPI dashboard that are free to track for your business.
KPI Report: not to be confused with TPS reports
First, What is a KPI Dashboard, and How Can I Make One?
A KPI dashboard is a simple way to visualize all of your key performance indicators on one screen. In this day and age with multiple sources to track different KPIs, there are a variety of tools to help gather all of these metrics from different sources and display them in one place. We prefer to use Klipfolio, but ultimately, you need to choose the platform that collects all of the data you need and displays it in a way that makes sense to you.
A Note About Using KPIs to Grow Business Online
Through all of the online developments and changes, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: the way new business is grown. With every firm handshake, you’ve grown your business with integrity, service to your customers, and the tenacity to never settle.
So how, then, do you start to expand your business in the ever-evolving world online? Furthermore, and most importantly, how are you tracking your online presence on your KPI dashboard to better understand if you’re accomplishing your goals?
Business is all about relationships, and the online world is the perfect arena to begin cultivating those relationships. In order to best determine which type of tactics are working best for you and your business, I have put together the top three things you need to be tracking to help gauge whether your online efforts are working for you and your business or not.
Not every business is the same, but there are core tracking principles you can follow to best use your investment. Stop throwing crap at the wall in hopes that something sticks, and start building your business responsibly.
KPI Dashboard Item #1: Organic Traffic
Organic traffic represents real people who are searching on a major search engine, like Google, on a particular topic or solution they are looking for and finding your site. Therefore, when you measure the organic traffic coming to your site, you’re measuring potential customers that are actively searching for a solution and have come across your website.
The reason why we love measuring organic traffic is that typically the people searching for answers online and coming to your site are a form of warm traffic.
Organic traffic users typically like to do their own research, and you can build trust with them by properly educating them on your website. For one of our clients, the goal was to attract people who are experiencing back pain and need a solution.
In building trust with potential new patients, it would be hard to build that trust by just asking them to schedule an appointment. So we took a relevant topic, i.e., people searching for ways to rebuild cartilage, and we wrote a blog about foods that help rebuild cartilage. This attracted users searching for solutions to joint pain and provided helpful information on how to address the problem they were facing.
That blog continues to rank for over 100 different search terms and accounts for 5000 visits/month just for that one blog!
By focusing on tracking your organic traffic, you will be able to create content that is compelling and focused on educating, not selling, your users.
It’s through this education that you will be able to build trust and become a trusted authority in the market for your customers. The best customers you’ve built in the past were based on a handshake, right?
In the online world, you have the unique ability to build that same trust through content creation, so make sure you’re capitalizing on this content with the right keywords and trends.
It’s through compelling content creation that you will continue to allow your business to move on up in the rankings over time.
KPI Dashboard Item #2: Online Business Presence
The second item that you need to be tracking online is your local business presence. This is represented by your company’s location online. The best ways that you can be tracking your company’s business location is through positive reviews left by customers, how many people have found your page directly, and how many people have found your page by discovering it on a category or keyword search.
These three factors are vital in understanding how your brick-and-mortar location is operating.
This tracking is done by making sure your Google Business account is set up and optimized properly and that you’re doing proper outreach to gain positive reviews.
As you’ve built your business, you have had people come to you because of ease and convenience and have raved about your service. Now it’s time for those customers to show you and other customers just how well your company has served them and the community and can help others like them. Don’t let any low-hanging fruit opportunities pass you by, and make sure you’re tracking these factors.
KPI Dashboard Item #3: Goal Conversions
In the words of Michael G. Scott, the Hottie of the Office Award goes to “Goal Conversions!” Arguably the most fun and vital to track is the conversions your company is receiving online. You have to make sure you’re tracking all forms of conversions, and this can be done and set up easily in Google Analytics. Some examples of goal conversions are:
- Phone Calls
- Form Submissions
- Contact Forms
- Call to Action Forms
- Newsletter Sign Ups
- Interactive Quiz Completions
- Calculator Completions
The best place to start is to list out all of the ways that a potential customer can convert into your business and then establish tracking mechanisms. In Google Analytics, you can set up goal conversions based on where users submit their information on your site. For phone calls, tracking numbers are highly effective as well, as they can show you who is calling in from your online presence.
Whether you’re a new business or you’ve been in business for quite some time, it’s never too late to look at the ways in which you’re tracking your business. Instead of taking educated guesses each month, start to track your marketing tactics effectively so that you can grow your business online.