Identify your CRO program’s KPIs
Identify your CRO program’s KPIs
1. Select 3-6 key performance indicators to monitor.
Too few can lead to designing around the metric rather than overall business health. Too many becomes onerous to track.
2. Include a mixture of engagement, conversion, and usability metrics to ensure you are not overly focused on short-term conversion.
Focusing too much on conversion in isolation can lead to dark patterns, undermining profitability in the long term.
3. When adding conversion metrics, include long term metrics such as customer lifetime value and short term metrics such as monthly conversions.
If you focus just on the short term, you can end up adopting techniques that alienate customers. That will undermine repeat business and lead to a higher cost of sale.
4. For engagement metrics, monitor both the amount of engagement and sentiment.
For example, many mentions on social media might not be good if those comments are negative. Measuring engagement takes a bit of lateral thinking.
5. With usability metrics, seek out metrics that you can monitor regularly.
It is great to carry out usability testing, but it can be time-consuming. A quarterly system usability scale survey could prove more manageable. Analytics is another good source for measuring usability. For example, dwell time, combined with page views and conversion, indicates how quickly users complete tasks. A tool like Maze can provide data such as time to complete the task and whether users do it through the most direct route.
6. Set expectations around metrics with management.
In the early days, there will be many quick wins that will improve conversion. However, you cannot maintain these kinds of improvements once the big issues are addressed.