As websites continue to become more important in the consumer journey, the need to measure the efficiency of digital marketing also increases. This is a shared burden between those selling digital media and business owners and marketers who are looking to maximize their ROI. We know that “clicks” provide an incomplete picture into the impact of digital advertising, as most users do not click on ads but still find their way to a business's website after being exposed to ads.
So what should we look at? Here are five metrics to help give a more in-depth insight into the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts.
Determine the Effectiveness of Your Digital Marketing Efforts with These 5 Metrics:
1. Overall Site Traffic
Establish a base line prior to adding any new components to your marketing efforts. Do you see a lift in overall traffic to the site during your campaign? Examining the lift in overall traffic to the website will help to give you a more complete picture beyond a click-through report.
2. New vs. Returning Traffic
Based on the website goals and the purchase cycle of the consumer, you may be looking to increase new or returning users. The goal here should be to understand at the start of the campaign what is most important to you and make sure that you design a campaign to achieve that goal.
In other words, if you're looking to get as many new people to the site, look for the percentage of new traffic to increase. However, if you find that the typical consumer comes back to the site multiple times before making a purchase in store or online, you may want to design a campaign that gets people coming back to the site and, in turn, examine the percentage of returning traffic.
3. Mobile Traffic
More than half of digital traffic online comes from mobile devices and through mobile apps. Because of that trend, understanding how many users access your site via mobile devices each month should demand attention. Look at your mobile traffic metrics to learn about how many users are accessing your site via a mobile device. Also, examine how long they stay on the site and how deep they go on a mobile device. Compare those to your non-mobile traffic to determine if users are more or less engaged with your site on their mobile devices, and use that insight to enhance the experience for users.
4. Traffic Sources
Use your traffic sources to determine how users are getting to your site. What keywords do they use? What websites are they coming from? For search traffic, aim to increase the percentage of traffic that comes to the site via branded keywords or specific keywords that are being highlighted in your marketing efforts that are important to your business.
5. Average Time Spent per Visit
Assess the average time that users spend on the site to learn about how engaging they find your content. You can also look at the average pages per visit in conjunction with this metric to get a deeper understanding of the engagement with the content. The longer they stay and the more pages they view, the more likely they enjoy the content and the experience of your site.
Ultimately, the importance of each metric will vary based on individual campaign goals. These metrics will all provide deeper insight into how well your digital marketing is performing. 
Editor's Note: This post was originally published on August 15, 2017, and has been updated.
