Digital Marketing Metrics Homebuilders and Remodelers Should Measure

Researching digital marketing metrics can quickly lead you down the rabbit hole. 

There are a ton of KPIs you can track and even more ways to measure them. But the housing industry is unique and the metrics a consumer brand should measure, for example, aren’t necessarily important for a homebuilder or remodeler.

We compiled a list of 14 digital marketing metrics spanning website, email, social media, and customer satisfaction, that we believe are most useful to professionals in the housing industry.

Website metrics

Here are the most important website metrics to measure with instructions on how to view them using Google Analytics (version Universal GA). If you use a different platform to track your digital marketing metrics, ask your marketing guru to show you how to access these.

Sessions by channel

Sessions by channel is the total number of visits to your website via each traffic channel, which you can view over specific periods of time. Monthly views is the most common measurement.

Why it matters: This is a bit of a vanity metric, but knowing how many visits your website is getting gives you an idea of where your site engagement stands. More traffic means people are finding your website more, whether that be through local searches, ads, email calls to action, social media, or referrals. 

Note: Keep in mind this data is based on using Google Analytics, which uses data sampling. By default, a “session” lasts until 30 minutes of inactivity has been detected, so a user could have multiple sessions on your site if they go back to it multiple times in a 30 minute period, but it would only count as one.

How to measure:

1. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard
2. Go to your ‘Acquisition’ report
3. Click on ‘Overview’
4. Check the ‘Sessions’ column

New vs. returning visitors

This metric measures how many of your website visits are by new people and how many are returning.

Why it matters: This metric tells you how effective your inbound and outbound marketing efforts are for bringing people to your website. An increase in new visitors means something you’re doing with your content and marketing is working. An increase in return visitors means the website on your content and your brand is engaging them enough to come back. Watching how these numbers change as you deploy new campaigns helps you identify what strategies are working well for you.

How to measure:

1. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard
2. Go to ‘Audience’
3. Click on ‘Behavior’
4. Look at ‘Now vs. Returning’

Traffic sources

Tracking your traffic sources will tell you where your website traffic is originating from e.g. local Google searches, direct URL searches, social media, emails.

Why it matters: This metric tells you what channels are generating the most traffic to your site and which ones are lacking in engagement, helping you prioritize resources to the best channels and determine what strategies work best for your content distribution.

How to measure:

1. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard
2. Go to your ‘Acquisition’ report
3. Click on ‘All Traffic’
4. Click on ‘Channels’

Pagesviews

Pageviews tells you how many views each page of your website is getting 

Why it matters: Pageviews tell you what visitors are looking at when they visit your website and what information they are looking for. It also tells you which pages are visited most, like landing pages, blog posts, photo galleries, or your contact page. Knowing what content your potential customers are seeking makes it easier to tailor future marketing to their interests.

How to measure:

1. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard
2. Go to ‘Behavior’
3. Click on ‘Site Content’
4. Click on ‘All Pages Tab’
5. Sort the data by ‘Unique Pageviews’

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of users that left a web page without looking at any other pages on your website.

Why it matters: If people are clicking through to your website and leaving right away, you might have a problem. Maybe your advertising is misleading, your web pages load too slow, or the pages they’re visiting are not providing the information they need. Knowing your bounce rate gives you an idea of how effective your content and marketing is for the lead generation and engagement of different channels.

Note: High bounce rates are perfectly normal on blog pages, landing pages, or other pages where a single session is expected. Be sure to look at your bounce rate from different perspectives: Audience Overview, Channels, All Traffic, and All pages.

How to measure overall website bounce by channel:

1. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard
2. Go to ‘Acquisition’
3. Click on ‘All Traffic’
4. Click on ‘Channels’
5. Choose a specific channel to view
6. Look at the ‘Bounce Rate’ column

How to measure specific page bounce by channel:

1. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard
2. Go to ‘Behavior’
3. Click on ‘Site Content’
4. Select ‘All Pages’ or “landing Pages’
5. Look at the ‘Bounce Rate’ column

Email metrics

Here are the top three email marketing metrics to measure. Where you find these metrics will depend on the email marketing platform you use.

Open rate

Open rate is the percentage of people who opened an email, compared to the total number of people the email was sent to.

Why it matters: You want to know if people are opening your emails to determine how effective an email campaign is. If you have a low open rate that means your subject line is not engaging your audience and you’ll need to revisit it. A/B testing subject lines is a great way to test out different strategies.

Note: Keep in mind open rate includes people who are opening an email multiple times, as well as one-time openers (unique opens). So make sure to look at your ‘Unique Opens vs. Opens’.

How to measure:

1. Divide the number of opened emails by the number of total emails sent.
2. Multiply that number by 100 to get your percentage.

Example: (300 opened/1500 sent) x 100 = 20% 

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR tells you the percentage of people who clicked a link you provided in your email (such as your website or a landing page) compared to those who opened it.

Why it matters: This metric tells you if the content of your email is engaging. If your email is promoting a link to sign up for a virtual model home tour for example, and people aren’t clicking through to that page, there is something missing from your messaging to push them through.

How to measure:

1. Divide the number of clicks by the number of opened emails.
2. Multiply that number by 100 to get your percentage.

Example: (55 clicks/300 opened) x 100 = 18.3%

Conversion rate

Conversion rate tells you how many people are clicking the links of your calls to action (CTA), like signing up for a virtual tour or filling out a contact form, and actually following through with that action.

Why it matters: Conversion rate indicates how effective your sales funnel, content, and offerings are. If you’re holding a virtual tour you want every potential homebuyer to attend, but a low conversion rate on your registration landing page means people who are clicking through to it aren’t following through with signing up. This is called Click-Through Bounce Rate (CTBR) and indicates your CTA is appealing, but the form page you’re sending them to is not. 

How to measure:

1. Divide the number of conversions by the number of click-throughs.
2. Multiply that number by 100 to get your percentage.

Example: (30 conversions/55 clicks) x 100 = 54%

These three email metrics are directly related to one another, so be sure to measure them each.

Social metrics

Here are four social media metrics you should measure to determine your social engagement. Social metrics include text, picture, and video content. These metrics can be found on each of your platforms separately or aggregated if you use a tool such as Sprout or Hootsuite.

Post reach

Post reach tells you how many people have seen your post since it went live.

Why it matters: You want to make sure your posts are being seen. Online visibility is important for lead generation and building a positive reputation.

How to measure: Visit each individual platform or your social tool, and look at ‘Post Reach’, ‘Total Views’, or an equivalent category. 

Average engagement rate

Average engagement combines engagement metrics of a social platform such as likes, shares, video views, and comments.

Why it matters: Higher engagement on a post tells you your audience is interested in that content. The more interesting your content is to your audience, the more likely they are to take interaction a step further like subscribing to your emails, attending webinars, or reaching out for information about your services.

How to measure: Add the number of likes, shares, and comments (not including ones you’ve left as replies) together.

Social click-through rate

Just like emails, social posts also have a click-through rate if you include a CTA like a link to your website, a downloadable infographic, or some other offer. It tells you how many people have clicked the CTA compared to how many people have viewed the post.

Why it matters: Click-through rate should be measured for every channel with a call to action. If you don’t pay attention to the number of people who are viewing your social posts compared to those who saw it, you can’t assess the effectiveness of your social messaging and its delivery.

How to measure: 

1. Divide the post reach (views) by the number of clicks.
2. Multiply that number by 100 to get your percentage.

Example: (240 clicks/2000 views) x 100 = 12%

Social Conversions

This metric is the same as an email conversion rate but measured for each social media platform you use. It tells you how many people are following through with a CTA from a post.

Why it matters: Measuring the conversion rate for each social platform tells you how effective your call to action is once people have clicked through to it from a post. It also tells you which of your social channels are performing the best in terms of engagement and lead generation.

How to measure: 

1. Divide the number of completed CTAs by the number of click-throughs.
2. Multiply that number by 100 to get your percentage.

Example: (68 completed CTAs/240 clicks) x 100 = 28.3%

View count (videos only)

View count tells you how many times a video you posted has been viewed. Platforms measure this differently, so keep that in mind when looking at the numbers. Youtube counts a “view” as 30 seconds, while Facebook and Instagram count a view as 3 seconds.

Why it matters: Videos generally take more effort to produce but have an excellent ROI compared to photos and text-only posts, so you only want to pay attention to how many views a video is getting and how long your average views are. You might have thousands of views on a video, but if the average view is only 5 seconds the video isn’t really effective.

How to measure: If you use a social tool or look at your individual accounts, you can find video views with your post metrics. If you put your videos on Youtube (which you absolutely should because Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world), then you’ll follow these steps:

1. Login to your Youtube account
2. Click on your profile icon in the top right corner
3. Select ‘Youtube Studio’
4. Select ‘Analytics’ 

Related: The ROI of Video Marketing for Housing Professionals

Customer satisfaction metrics

There are a number of more complicated customer satisfaction metrics, but two of the most critical ones are ratings and reviews.

Ratings and reviews

Star rating is an overall snapshot of your company’s customer satisfaction performance. Reviews are closely tied to your star-rating and tell you what your customers are actually thinking about the experience you provided them.

Why they matter: We could write an entire article about how important your rating and reviews are (actually, we have!), but to put it simply, these are the metrics that everyone sees and pays attention to. Your potential customers don’t know what your email open rate is, nor do they care. But they care about your reputation. And one of the first things they look at before they consider you as their homebuilder or remodeler is what other people think of you. Your reviews are also closely related to your search engine ranking in Google, which determines where your website shows up in a local Google search.

Read More: How Reviews Affect Google Ranking

How to measure:

Measuring your star rating is the easiest since sites like Google and Yelp collect these for you. You can take all your ratings from each website you’re on and simply average them out.

But if you want to measure the overall impact of your reviews and ratings on your lead generation, sales, and return on investment, you’ll want to use a third-party customer survey solution like AvidCX. Using a third-party takes the guesswork out of customer surveying and ensures the feedback you receive is authentic. AvidCX collects, measures, and organizes your customer data so you can clearly see the scope of your customer satisfaction performance.

Measure the customer experience metrics that matter with AvidCX.

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