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The pitfalls of 'vanity metrics'

We’ve often said at CORE that reporting should be the cornerstone of any ‘digital marketing’ activity.

If a client was ever to say to us that they were willing only to invest in one area related to the ongoing upkeep of their digital presence (beyond its technical maintenance) it would be reporting. This is because it unlocks so many doors as to understanding your website and therefore understanding where exactly future investment would be best served.

However, we’ve also in our time seen how reporting can be, put simply, done wrong. Inaccurate or uninformed reporting can lead to the exact opposite of what was mentioned above in seeing funds wasted in areas either which have no need or no hope of success.

One of the leading causes of this issue is a preoccupation with what are called ‘vanity metrics’. The name gives a clue as to what they entail; metrics which look and sound important but can actually give no deeper insight or bear any relation on their own to how your business is actually performing beyond a surface level.

We have gathered some of these metrics together which hopefully will give you food for thought on their usage in your own reports and how they should be considered;

  • Sessions - This seems like it should be one of the founding elements of any report and indeed it should be, but crucially sessions on their own should rarely be the defining factor of the success of your website. Sessions may go up and down throughout the year but how do they relate to your KPIs and can you determine trends from these movements? That’s where the real value lies.
  • Bounce Rate - A term which is often claimed as a ‘buzzword’ when it comes to reporting but on many occasions has no bearing as to the performance of a website. Of course you want a user to be engaged with your site, so a user immediately leaving a website with no onward action seems like bad news, but there are instances where this may be misleading. As an example, for an informational site a user lands on a page from a Google search where their questions are satisfactorily answered and they have no need to visit further pages of the site. This would in fact be a success for that site but also registered as a bounce at the same time. For this also see ‘average engagement time/session duration’ and ‘average pages viewed/views per session’ which have similar caveats, all grouped as ‘user engagement’ metrics.
  • Impressions - Now we would caveat this by saying that of course if the goal of your website/campaign is to drive brand awareness then yes, impressions would indeed be an important standalone metric. However, for a website designed for a user to actually engage with it in some form (i.e. lead, sale etc), impressions on their own should not be seen as a barometer of success. In much the same way as sessions, they can sometimes blind you to the ‘quality’ of the traffic you are attracting to the site in the search for ‘quantity’. Yes you have eyes on the site/brand, but who’s eyes?
  • Cost Per Click - A paid advertising specific example for you here and, in truth, there’s lots of examples we could take from this traffic source - clicks, clickthrough rate, impression share. But we thought we’d highlight cost per click because it has the word ‘cost’ in it which always draws attention. Although monitoring cost per click is important as part of a holistic PPC reporting strategy it must always tie into your KPI. Sometimes that converting traffic is unfortunately always going to cost you that bit more!
  • Average Position - “I can get you to number 1 in Google?” has been the most common refrain from a large number of different digital marketing organisations over the years. To which the answer should really be “Yeah, but for what?”. It’s crucial that the terms/queries you’re seeking to rank well for are for traffic which has a high level of ‘intent’ behind it - whether that’s an intent to book, buy or even just browse, if that’s what your website goals are. Also more specifically it’s important to note the Average Position metric you can find in Google Search Console includes all search queries picked up by the tool. So ironically you could be ranking for more terms (and still maintaining or even improving rankings for key terms) while your average position dips because those new terms you are ranking for in positions 72, 84 & 93 (etc) are dragging your average down.

Now what we’d never want to do is tell you to ignore these metrics, it’s important to be aware of them and monitor (where appropriate) as part of a holistic reporting strategy. The key aspect here is that these metrics on their own in the majority of instances will not give you a reliable indicator as to the performance of your website. 

So by chasing your tail in seeking to improve a metric or resting on your laurels with a metric riding high, you may be missing the bigger picture.

Where these ‘vanity’ metrics come into their own is when you do see issues with your KPI activity - can you determine any relationship between the trendlines of these metrics with your KPIs? As an example if conversions have gone down at the same time as sessions you may be looking at an acquisition issue or if bounce rate has increased you could be looking at a user engagement or UX/UI issue. These metrics will make triage of your wider performance problems that much easier.

If you’ve been looking for a helping hand with sorting your KPIs from your ‘vanity metrics’ as you seek to establish a tried and trusted reporting strategy for your digital presence, drop us a line or @ us on our socials.