Measuring what matters: A longitudinal evaluation of website metrics and their association with UK manufacturing firm financial performance

Prior research has examined web analytics as a tool for measuring digital marketing performance but has largely applied business-to-consumer (B2C) frameworks to business-to-business (B2B) contexts without accounting for the distinctive characteristics of industrial buying processes. This study addresses this gap by identifying which website metrics predict financial performance, measured by return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). Drawing on a panel dataset of 358 publicly listed UK manufacturing firms over the period 2019–2024, the results indicate that website visibility metric is positively associated with website traffic, which in turn predicts ROE among profitable firms. Conversely, average visit duration and pages per visit are negatively associated with ROA, while visit frequency per visitor is negatively associated with ROE. Bounce rate has no significant effect across any model specification, suggesting that single-page exits do not constitute a meaningful signal of commercial disengagement in B2B contexts. Collectively, these findings challenge the transfer of B2C web analytics frameworks to B2B manufacturing, reinterpreting prolonged visit duration, higher pages per visit, and high return visit frequency as indicators of unresolved awareness rather than purchase intent.