Implement Web Analytics, But Don’t Forget What Matters

Marketers have always dreamed of having perfectly quantifiable communications – and more importantly quantifiable results. In the past they would throw money at old media and hope something sticks. When it did they could run a victory lap around the office high-fiving everyone on the floor. But more often than not, and even if the campaign is great, it was very difficult to know how your clients consumed the message.

Was the increase in sales a consequence of our marketing magic? Or was it because of other factors?

Fortunately, in today’s internet age, every click is quantifiable. Marketers are now presented with a dizzying amount of information about who you are, where you came from and how you interacted with our product. This seemingly endless information about your consumers should be marketing gold.

But too often marketers capture web analytics without the end goal in sight. They’re producing fancy reports but not effectively relating it to their business. Metrics for the sake of metrics will make you sound cool, but you’ll surely get lost in a sea of information.

The smart marketer combines Web Analytics with Strategic Management. It’s important to take a step back and define “what’s our core business,” “what are we trying to do with our internet presence,” and “how are we going to define performance.” By defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), marketers can match what’s important offline to an appropriate web analytics metric. For example, the New York Times might have a basic KPI such as “keep people intrigued with content as a means to sell advertising.” As such, NY Times online marketers might equate this offline KPI to web metrics that define site stickiness. “Average Time Spent on Site” and “Average Page Views Per Visit” might be good web metrics to concentrate on as they match the KPIs.

Conversely, a company like E-Trade would have an offline KPI such as “Number of Trades Executed.” According to this KPI, they would care little about “Average Time on Site” or “Average Page Views Per Visit.” In fact, this type of transaction-based company might avoid long average time on the site, as it means that trades are not being executed quickly and efficiently. Similarly, “Average Page Views Per Visit,” would be undesirable as it would mean they are clicking around and not getting to the desired action (in this case a transaction). A more effective metric to match their KPIs might be “Exit Pages ending on Trade Confirmation Page.”

Knowing your product and working hard to understand the consumer has always been paramount. It’s important that marketers don’t get so caught up in reporting every web metric imaginable, that they lose sight of what’s going to drive their business. Effectively defining your organization’s KPIs and applying them to matching web metric will maximize your website as a communication tool. Oh and you’ll still look cool, especially to those signing your check.



Jeff Howlett
Account Executive
Jeff handles much of the Web analytics information for eCrossings Media, our clients and our partners.