Different numbers tell different stories.
Knowing your measurements, knowing your metrics, knowing your key performance indicators – call it what you will – but if you know your numbers – you can turn failures into wins.
Numbers may not be as shiny as new products, but they DO matter.
If you are running an information product-based business and selling online courses and you want to continue to sell and continue to grow, you need to know your numbers.
Unless you’re operating off of your memory and let’s face it, everybody’s memory sucks, especially before your first cup of coffee. If you’re not checking your numbers periodically, you don’t know whether you are growing and you don’t know how things are moving in your business.
Figuring out your numbers may require a bit of a scavenger hunt. Let’s get started. The first, very important, number that you need to understand is website traffic:
The second important number is your conversion rate, which can tell you how much money you are making from the products and courses you are selling. In short, your conversion rate is the percentage of visits which result in sales. This helps you determine how many visitors are actually turning into customers, or your business profitability.
To determine your conversion rate, you’ll need to know:
Once you know this, you can divide the total number of course sales by the number of leads that visited your sales page. Voila! That’s your conversion rate, the higher percentage, the better.
The last important number you need to understand is your list to purchase ratio, as well as stats that track your customer’s course movement. Ask yourself these questions while gathering data:
If your student is super interested in your topic and wants to learn more, you need to have another course for them to progress to. Remember, if you’re not offering another course, they’ll go learn from someone else!
This is imperative if you want your students coming back for more. So take a look at your course from an outside point of view:
Those are our top three important numbers, but of course there are so many metrics out there that can help you understand and grow your online business. Looking at metrics from a business standpoint, these are the must-knows:
If you are selling services, plus a course, what does that look like? How many packages do you need so that you know what your breakeven point is? $3,000 per month? $5,000 per month? $500 per month? You need to know where those numbers are.
Last, but certainly NOT least.
Be sure that you set up a time on your calendar to find your numbers. There are two pieces to finding your numbers:
If you don’t know and write down your numbers, you can’t figure out whether you are growing or whether you are shrinking. And yes, at the end of the day you are either going uphill or downhill.
Life is more about climbing mountains and going down mountains than it is about things being status quo. As Vince Lambardi said, “The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there.”
Take action.
If you enjoyed this article, we put together a resource with our recommendations of the important numbers for you to track. (Read more about it below and get it by filling out the form.)
When it comes to measuring your business, what you’re measuring matters.
That’s why we put together the Metrics Matter Checklist. Get our list of the eighteen metrics we recommend measuring.
I encourage you to print it out and put up next to your work area. Read it. Remember it. Use it.
Inside, you’ll read about metrics for each of these areas:
When you fill out the form to the right, you’ll be instantly redirected to download your copy of the Metrics Matter Checklist, plus you’ll get a copy in your inbox.
“You can just see everything that you want to see without having to dig into the details or look up any numbers on a daily basis. You just automatically have them ping on your dashboard. It’s nice to have the big picture and then be able to get directly into a more detailed view when you need it.”
Read the Case Study