What metrics do you track most to determine the success of your business?
I am close to launching a website for my artwork! I am hoping my online sales will give me a better idea of where my audience is coming from, in order to better direct my marketing efforts. Is this the most important metric to look at? What other metrics should I be tracking from my website to help manage the success of my business? Thank you for your answers!
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Jan 9, 2015
You are looking for business success and not website performance, isn't it? I hope I get that correct.
Let's say this is the successful formula you want:
Inspiration x art skills x art tools x marketing & selling x operation x finance = profit
The role of your website should perform some functions above, and you should base on the above to extract the metrics to match your formula.
Take "operation" for example, we can extend the formula to:
Orders from sales x logistic x human resource x operation platform x artwork warehousing x CRM x post sales service x artwork handling = costs - potential sales
Metrics from your website may be:
1. no.of clicks per sale
2. web sales transaction/ web operating cost
3. web orders/ total orders
4. web orders/ transportation costs
5. order returns/ total order
6. web data will be part of the data to calculate stock level and reorder level of a particular artwork
7. respond time to order from the operation employee
8. no. of complains per month/ day
Jan 3, 2015
The best way to track success is to include metrics from start to finish of the process of lead acquisition to purchase. I think some of the below answers already address the internal sales metrics for post purchcase analysis. So, I'd like to share what I think should be considered for pre-purchase analysis.
Definitely install Google Analytics on all your webpages. This will allow you to track a lot of data on your potential customers, from what source brought them to your website, where they are from, what pages they visit, how many pages they visit, how then they stay on each page, and more.
These metrics will help you assess things like where people come from to get to your site and how to capitalize on that; what is the most common or best flow of users through the website; is there a page people get lost on and how can you fix that, etc. This will also help you see what some people who made a purchase looked at in addition to the purchased item for potential upselling.
Jan 2, 2015
best work with the right tools, so they provide you a number of different informations. You don't only want to know from where your audience is coming, but do they like it, what are they looking for, why did they come to your site, why didn't they buy something, give aways, landing pages, newsletters to visitors with a work put in the picture. you can do much more. Succes
Jan 2, 2015
Website metrics are only part of the equation. With website metrics make sure you use a tool such as Google analytics to track where leads are coming from, as well as what they are clicking on.
Are you using a newsletter? If so you'll want to look at those metrics as well.
You also want to examine your financial metrics. What activities are producing the greatest amount of return for the initial investment.
Jan 2, 2015
A dynamic and Complimentary team contributes to the success of any professionally managed business
Jan 1, 2015
Number of traffic of visiting your website
Order tracking
Comments and feedback
What is your website? I will check it out and see what I can recommend more
Jan 1, 2015
Great question...The website is a great idea and a great way to market your artwork. Through certain analytic tools, you will definitely be able to not only gather where they audience is coming from, but other dynamics to help define your audience. Also on your website, you can place an action call that will allow your viewers to leave you information about themselves. You want to also track the age, income, and how they found out about you. As an artist, you will be able to tailor your marketing efforts better when you know who and where your base is coming from and ways to interact with them to increase your sales. But I would also encourage you to work with a local marketing or pr firm to create events around your art. It is a great way to be face to face with customers and gather information to create a strong database and send traffic to your site.
Jan 1, 2015
Try and get cart statistics . If it is possible for you to track the cart behaviour of the buyer ; it will help you enhance your website as well as your core product [ artworks ]
Jan 1, 2015
- Sales lead data should be synchronize with your marketing.
- Predefined questions including like " where did you find us?"
- Google analytic data " Location, keywords or referral sites etc"
- Lead details like company, position etc.
Dec 30, 2014
well first you need to understand what is your targeted market and audience. who all are your competitors and how they are capturing the market.what is your market size and what you want to achieve the market size.work on UI and UX of the website which is easy to use by targeted audience
Dec 30, 2014
Best way to get your work market online is SEO and internet marketing. Before you launch your website and start your online sales you must need to do full marketing and branding of your work and products. Please reach for more details and good advice @ apgroupin on Skype
Dec 30, 2014
Hi, Zoe
First of all good luck on your venture! There are already valuable responses covering cash and financial theory. Bernadette has already covered the critical financial aspects which are indeed important. Google Analytics can be helpful but make certain that you ask yourself these fundamental questions. I must state that I am NOT an art expert BUT I think these questions can help guide you through the process.
Who is my target audience (market)? Is this high-end? Is this art targeted for the general consumer or is this a luxury (low production) product? If this is high end, a web site alone may not be the best avenue. A distribution partner would be advisable if this is the case. I am not familiar with your business model but the William Henry approach to custom high end knives comes to mind with this approach. www.williamhenry.com
Is this website the only sales outlet or is product also being sold through galleries?
What is the customer (market) willing to pay for my art?
What is the target margin?
What is your hourly rate worth? Especially if the product is labor intensive. (keep records of your time! !! ALWAYS) This will be probably your MOST important metric.
Will you have to keep inventory of material and final products? (this is important as this is basically tied up cash)
Inventory Turnover - how often does your product turn into revenue.
Business Intelligence such as Google Analytics are helpful but my suggestion is to first know the market and your customer. IMHO art is a very primal and human product and requires partners to generate sales.
Hope this helps
Dec 30, 2014
Zoe...as mentioned below, there are various categories and purposes of tracking key data points, i.e. profit, monies available for reinvestment, identifying target clients, determining which products are working and which are not, whether you are priced appropriately or need change, etc...Assuming you are a new business owner, I tend to have clients start slow and build on - as many get overwhelmed with the amount of data you SHOULD BE tracking if you want a successful business ...First, be sure your online ecommerce store and website (Google Analytics), as well as budgeting/finance tool (i.e. Quickbooks,) has statistics that will allow you to track:
Profit/Loss (on a Weekly/Monthly basis)
Sales
Expenses
Profit
Cashflow
Products/Services:
# of Items Sold
# of Units/Item
Average Purchase $ (item and/or receipt)
Customer Acquisition:
# of Unique Visits
Length of Visit
# of Visits/Visitor
Top Pages Visited
Top Items Visited (for your specific artwork)
As you make evaluating your business metrics a discipline on a daily, weekly and definitely monthly basis (proactively - not after the fact), then you can engage other financial evaluation to get a deeper grasp on your business.
You business is NOT successful by the number of clicks on a page...you have to learn the health of your business and that is all $$$$$ - elements of profit and loss. Engage your Accountant to help you with this, or if you are working with a consultant, etc...
Dec 30, 2014
There rare several different sets of metrics you should track, and which you use depends on your business goals and objectives and where you are, i.e. start-up, growth oriented, making a comeback, etc. I divide them up into five categories: human capital, finance, sales and marketing, operations and customer assets.
Initially, you should be looking at lead generation and conversion rate metrics, cost per lead, lifetime value of a client, gross profit per customer, etc..
I have a list of 20 metrics we introduce to our clients and then another 18 or so for their marketing and sales departments.
Dec 30, 2014
There are a lot of metrics you should be interested in. The most important are cash flow and profitability.
From there you will probably be interested in other financial and non-financial reporting metrics.
Revenue by customer/ product, cost of sales, etc.
You need to determine what are the most important factors to run your business and track those things, if you track it and regularly review it you will be more likely to actively manage it.
Determining what these factors are may not be easily, and what these factors are may not be obvious. You may need to dig a little because what you think is important may not really be. It could be determined by some other underlying factor.
Dec 30, 2014
Hi Zoe, I would also suggest you add Google analytics to your new website so you can see what art works your browsers are interested in. That way you know what pieces to give more prominence etc. You can customize your dashboard to see unique visitors on certain pages. Trial and error is part of the process but you're on the right track.
Great points in the various comments. A good starting point would be to check what others in similar business are doing and the indicators they are focusing on; how they are using the measures. You can then review and adapt the ones that are appropriate to your business plan, target customers, etc.
Thereafter you can review and update based on assessment of which measures are most relevant to your specific offerings.