Creating a successful website and user experience can't be purely driven by measurement & analytics. We also need to use our gut to make decisions, as we know our own businesses. However, it is important to remember that measuring success (and failure) will help inform and direct those decisions.

To do this effectively, it is good practice to establish a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Key Performance Indicators are measures that indicate the performance level of your business and which are clearly linked to your business goals. Because KPIs reflect an organisation's unique business objectives, they will differ from one organisation to the other. Remember that KPIs should be key, measurable and specific.

In relation to your business web presence and mobile apps, Google Analytics offers two types of data: dimensions & metrics. Dimensions are characteristics of your website users and their visits. Metrics are the quantitative measurements that describe visitor behaviour and these equate to your KPIs. You can ensure that you automate the collection of this data by using custom dashboards in Google Analytics and therefore avoid wasting time every day/week/month. How does this work in practice?   We've picked two very common but very different online businesses to illustrate this.

Example 1. Analytics for eCommerce Websites

For an online retailer of sports products, where business goals are to increase customer engagement and sales, important KPIs to consider would include the following:

  1. Sessions, Users and New vs Returning Users Examining sessions (i.e. visits) and users (i.e. unique visitors) is essential for the online retailer to determine how many unique people are visiting the website and their demographics including age and gender, as well as geographic location. It can also be valuable for the retailer to see how often their audience returns to their site. Understanding who is visiting their site, if they made a purchase and where they came from is incredibly valuable information so the retailer can put more resources into channels that are showing results. By carrying out this monitoring, the retailer can determine their strengths and weaknesses in attracting new visitors and develop strategies to convert those visitors into customers.
  2. Revenue by Channel Revenue by channel (e.g. social media, organic search, paid search, display advertising and email marketing) will help the online retailer see which channels are bringing in the sales. This research will indicate which channels, that are being invested in, are under-performing or over-performing and the retailer can adjust accordingly.
  3. Task Completion Rate Task completion rate is an excellent way for the online retailer to examine the smaller micro conversions that add up to larger macro conversions on the website i.e. what people should be doing on the website and if they're able to do it. For example, it might be how users research various sports products on the website. The retailer would have to take average visit duration, time-on-site and pages-per-visit into account.

Example 2. Analytics for Professional Services

Another example might be a consultancy firm in the media industry whose objectives are to increase the number of new clients and to broaden their customer base nationally. The company has engaged in a content marketing strategy (via blog, LinkedIn and Twitter) to help achieve this goal.

  1. Visitor Acquisition by Traffic Source Visitor acquisition by traffic source is a great way of measuring of how the consultancy firm's content marketing campaign is working by source. By looking at the site usage for each of the mediums the company can examine growth over time and find out if their efforts are paying off.
  2. Conversions and Conversion Rate by Channel Conversion can mean different things for different companies and even for different parts of a website. Each company has to set up their own 'goal conversions' for Google Analytics to track. For the consultancy firm, a user signing up for an ezine could be counted as a conversion. With this goal in place, the firm can see which channels brought the most conversions. The firm can compare their channel-specific conversions rates with the bounce rates/average session durations and should see a correlation between low bounce rates, high average session durations and high conversion rates.
  3. Cost per Conversion by Channel Cost per conversion, e.g. per click rate on the consultancy firm's contact and call-back pages, is an essential metric because the firm can calculate the 'true' return on their content marketing strategy investment. These web analytics KPIs ensure that the firm is not paying more for a customer than they are worth. A high cost per conversion can indicate ineffective marketing activities. By utilising the cost per conversion KPI and identifying what channels the conversion were coming from, the firm can optimise their marketing budgets and bring in more revenue.

To ensure that your Business Strategy is connected to your Digital Strategy, why not contact us today?