Part 2 – Where do I begin to start analyzing web data?
Knowing that you have so much data available to you can be both enlightening and daunting. The question you need to ask is where I begin. Start with your company goals for the year. If you don’t have any, well that’s a blog
topic for another day. From your company goals, you can create specific marketing objectives that transcend to your website. From these marketing objectives, you will identify and measure key performance indicators (KPIs). Your KPIs are key web activities or actions that you want to focus on.
It is unrealistic to state “I want to merely increase web traffic to your website”. It is more useful, for example, to define a goal of increasing web traffic by 10% to support a product launch for September.
Let’s consider the following company example:
Company Goal:
Acme Company sells consumer widgets and one of their 2009 business goals is to improve customer loyalty.
Web Marketing Objectives:
Benchmark, measure and improve online customer satisfaction KPIs for the 1st quarter of 2009.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Example:
Retention KPI = Ratio of “Returning visitors”/”All visitors”
What it measures: determines how you are doing at retaining visitors
Metric: increase by 10%
How: promote webinar and product announcements
Action:
First determine your KPI benchmark to identify a % goal increase. I usually lean towards measuring the same period before. Since we are measuring performance for the 1st qtr of 2009, I would recommend you compare metrics to December Qtr 2008. Use your judgment here; if your company has strong cyclical sales you may want to measure the same period from the year before.
~Michael Senger
Next week: Part3 What do my KPI measurements mean?
