Review End of Year Metrics to Set New Year Goals
If you’re working on wrapping things up for this year and planning out your business goals for next year, this is the video for you. (They can be super helpful to review at the end of each month, too!)
So, there are three primary metrics that I think every online business should cover during their end of year review. These will help you gauge how your business did this year and – more importantly – set effective goals for next year.
#1: Product and Service Conversion Rates
What is a Sales Conversion Rate?
The percentage of people who purchased your product or service after viewing it.
Now, before I scare you off with math, let me tell you that my 30-Min Metrics™ analytics system calculates these conversion rates (and a whole lot more) for you. It also helps you collect all the necessary data throughout the year, so you don’t have to go digging to do your end of year review.
It makes analytics quick and easy, and is fully customizable for any business. So if you don’t want to have to dig through all your numbers at the end of the year and then have to do a bunch of math, click to grab 30-Min Metrics™ now.
Ok, back to the math.
How To Calculate Your Conversion Rates
For products with sales pages, take the number of product sales made this year and divide it by the number of sales page views you had this year.
For services where you use some sort of sales call or consultation as a point-of-sale, take the number of service bookings this year, and divide it by the number of sales calls or consultations you did.
What You Can Tell From Your Conversion Rates
With your sales conversion rates in hand, you know approximately how many people need to go through your funnel for you to make a sale.
This helps you plan out your traffic needs based on your revenue goals for next year.
For example, let’s say you want to sell 100 of your handmade slippers for cats next year, and you know your product conversion rate is 3%. You know you can expect to make approximately 3 sales for every 100 people who visit your Cat-tastic Kitty Slippers, so to make 100 sales, you’ll need to get 3,333 views on your sales page.
Here’s the math:
The same thing works for services. If you want to book 10 clients for your 1:1 Standing Up To Your Cat Training, and you know your consult call conversion rate is 40% (so for every 100 consult calls you would expect to book 40 clients), you know you’ll need to do 25 consult calls next year to reach your goal.
In other words:
That way you can put some real math behind your goals for the new year!
#2: Your Most Popular Content
What counts as "popular"?
Which of your primary content got you the most attention. More specifically, which of your content got the most traffic.
How To Find Your Most Popular Content
In Google Analytics, go to Behavior>Site Content>All Pages, and change the primary dimension to Page Title. Which pages and posts had the most page views? Which had the highest average time on page?
For YouTube, open Advanced Mode in Channel Analytics and check out the list in the Videos tab. Which videos had the most views? Which had the highest average percentage viewed?
(The video above includes a quick walk-through on these!)
What You Can Tell From Your Most Popular Content
This helps you figure out what kind of content gets your audience to click through, and what keeps them around the longest. That way you know what kinds of content to focus on more next year.
(You can also flip this around and check out your worst-performing content, to see what you should avoid.
#3: Your Primary Traffic Sources
What Are Your Primary Traffic Sources?
Here, we’re looking at where most of your customers and/or clients came from this year.
How To Find Your Primary Traffic Sources
This might mean looking at…
- Website traffic acquisition channels in Google Analytics
- YouTube channel traffic
- Client referral sources (something you should be tracking during your client intake process)
(The video above includes quick walk-throughs on the first two of these, as well!)
What You Can Tell From Your Primary Traffic Sources
You’ll be able to tell where most of your audience is coming from. This might seem like a “no – duh” moment, but…
When you know where your audience came from this year you can make better decisions about where to direct your content marketing efforts next year.
If something worked really well this year, keep doing it! Do it more!
On the other hand, if you spent a bunch of time putting out content on a platform and your end of year review shows it didn’t bring in a lot of traffic to your offers, you know you need to make some adjustments next year.
Now... Homework Time!
Go alculate your conversion rates, find your best content (or your worst), and identify your top traffic sources. Then come back and tell me: What is one goal you’re setting for your business for next year?
And if you want to make your business analytics super easy, check out 30-Min Metrics™.
I help you identify your most important metrics so you don’t waste your time and energy tracking numbers that don’t matter.
Plus, you get my endlessly customizable 30-Min Metrics™ tracking template and step-by-step video guide on how to make it perfect for your business, so you can actually use your numbers to grow your business in the coming year.
I can’t wait to see you inside!
