What does it mean to say ‘my website is performing well’ ?

Our approach to web performance and KPIs.

 

It is self-evident to everyone in the world of digital that the explosion of available data over the last decade has completely changed the way we think about marketing performance and measurement. 

The opportunity to get real time data about how well things are working means that we can gain immediate, valuable information about how our websites are performing, what users are responding to, and elicit opportunities for ongoing optimisations. 

But with websites often needing to meet many objectives at once, and the vast amount of measurement tools within the wider industry, it can often be confusing for many clients as to what actually constitutes ‘success’.

At TWK, our approach to website performance takes into account big picture objectives as well as the small details that help drive incremental gains.

 

1. Start with the basics

At the foundation of all web performance for our clients is ensuring that their website is loading quickly and efficiently. We utilise Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI) and Core Web Vitals (CWV) as benchmarking tools to tell us how a site’s doing in terms of speed and loading performance. 

We have API connections in place to be able to automate these readings across all your key pages to make sure that baseline performance is improving over time, and ensure that any changes being made to the site aren’t adversely affecting loading speed and other vital metrics. 

These metrics also factor into SEO rankings, so speedy sites aren’t just good for users who have reached your site, they’re good for bringing people there too. All of the websites that we create and maintain are built using wider SEO best practices to ensure high website visibility and so they rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

We install the Yoast SEO plugin on all of our sites, which is a leading tool that has lots of helpful features, advice and guidance to help our clients meet SEO best practice as they continue adding content to their site. In addition, depending on the level of Ongoing Partnership that our clients choose, we put in place long term SEO strategies which combine technical, on-page and off-page improvements over time.

 

2. Don’t forget about the big picture!

The vast proliferation of available data and digital metrics for your website means that the opportunities to drive ongoing efficiencies are greater than ever before. However, it is very easy to get caught up trying to drive improvements for the most easily available metrics – generally quantitative metrics such as engagement/action rates, time spent on site or number of pages viewed – when they may not always be the best proxies for many wider marketing objectives, and therefore shouldn’t be viewed and analysed in isolation.

Whilst quantitative data informs us about behaviours and actions on your site, it doesn’t tell us anything about audience attitudes, feelings or perceptions. These are all crucial in understanding the relationship between your brand and audiences, and in measuring the success of your website in building an emotional connection, brand affinity and future intent.  

That is why at TWK we put Qualitative data at the heart of our approach to measurement and performance. Captured through surveys, interviews, and feedback, qualitative data enables us to get a more informed and layered view of the overarching effect of your new site, and the impact of our TWK creative approach, which centres bold, emotive and original design. 

By capturing what users are thinking and feeling, Qualitative data is therefore essential in understanding the bigger picture impact of your new site, and measuring its success in driving specific impressions and perceptions. It is from this foundation that we can then use quantitative data to help move the needle further by driving ongoing action-based efficiencies.

 

3. Iteratively Optimise

At TWK, we are set up to become long term partners to our clients by helping them improve and optimise their sites on an ongoing basis. 

As standard, all of our websites are set up with both Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Microsoft Clarity. These tools allow us to see site performance through event based tracking, use journeys, session recordings, heatmaps and more, and we set up custom dashboards for our clients to ensure the right data is being visualised in the most relevant way possible. Where relevant, we can also connect your website to a Customer Data Platform (CDP), to integrate different data sources together and get a deeper understanding of your audiences.

But data on its own is useless, and you need to have frameworks and processes in place to make sure that you can actually turn insights into action and data into optimisations. 

In addition to helping clients establish the best KPIs to look at and providing easy access Analytics dashboards, we help surface insights and create testing plans so that we can A/B test different versions of pages, designs and user journeys. Performance should always be measured against a clear set of agreed benchmarks, which also allow us to look at trends over time and test specific hypotheses.

 

Interested to learn more about our strategic approach to performance? 

Get in touch here.

 

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