The Four Steps of Web Analytics

The industry continues to buzz about the importance of measuring marketing and advertising results and proving out ROI.  The recession has heightened marketers’ sense of urgency to show measurable results for their efforts to the point that even the last traditional media loyalists are realizing that they can’t continue without building digital skills.

One of the most powerful features of the Internet is that everything, and I mean everything, can be tracked and reported on including:  Ad campaigns, media buys, customer activity, final sales, email opens, Pay-Per-Click results, and even traditional efforts which can be bridged by the Internet and tracked. The ability to track and report at these levels presents tremendous opportunities to develop marketing programs that really work to achieve business goals, rather than just spending budgeted dollars without knowing the true results of the efforts. Analytics serve as the foundation of successful marketing in today’s electronic marketplace allowing the ability to measure, collect, analyze and report on Internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing marketing efforts.

The first step to creating a solid web analytics program is determining what you want to know. This involves establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that define what information should be collected and analyzed.  KPI’s typically focus on setting goal-based directives which can include some (there are many more) of the following:

• Email - Deliverability, opens, click-throughs, and unsubscribes

• Website - Unique visits, average page views, average time spent, and key page views

• Search Engine Optimization -  Keyword rankings, page rank, directory inclusions, and inbound links

• Pay-Per-Click - Cost-Per-Click costs, quality score, click-through rate, and conversions

• Rich Media - Cost-Per-Thousand, Cost Per Click, and Cost-Per-Lead

• Traditional Advertising - Dedicated URL traffic, dedicated phone number activity and conversions

As you can see there are many different KPI’s that a company may focus on depending on their campaign goals, as well as which marketing channels will be utilized to achieve those goals. The next step is to collect the data necessary to report on progress. Reporting involves gathering information from various analytic sources in relation to the KPI’s so that results can be analyzed.  There are many analytics tools to choose from, but some of the most popular are Google Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends, and Coremetrics. Regardless of which software program is used, proper data must be collected and pulled into reports that clearly provide performance metrics. Software reporting capabilities and reporting formats can differ depending on needs, but typically, Microsoft Excel is a useful tool as most analytic programs can easily export performance data into Excel friendly file formats. Once in Excel, data can be easily compared to KPI’s and an understanding of results can begin to form.

Obtaining data is one thing, but understanding it is another. To get a realistic picture of what’s going on and what the numbers really mean, a detailed analysis process should be followed. This involves carefully comparing actual results to desired results. This is where the rubber meets the road in the analytics world. In most cases there are many moving parts that affect performance, and understanding the significance and impact of each, can be (and usually is) the difference between success and failure.

An example of the analytics process could be taken from an email campaign. In this particular case, the main goal is to receive a 20% conversion rate for webinar sign ups, resulting in 200 out of 1,000 recipients to sign up. Initial tracking may show a 15% conversion rate after the first send, which is 5% lower than our established 20% conversion rate for the KPI.  To improve the response we would report on and analyze the following:

• The Deliverability Rate - How many emails made it to subscriber inboxes? Maybe certain words in the email are triggering SPAM filters?

• The Open Rate - Did we generate enough opens? Perhaps the subject line should be changed?

• The Click-Through Rate - How many recipients are clicking through to the webinar registration page?  Perhaps the call-to-action message should be modified?  Maybe an incentive offer should be included? (i.e $5.00 gift card to Starbucks)

• The Webinar Registration Page - If enough traffic is arriving, but not the desired number of signs ups, perhaps the form is too long? Maybe requiring users to provide their phone number is a detractor and causing them to abandon the process?

In our email example, improving the subject line could have resulted in more opens, thus enhancing our chances for conversion. If we also provided an incentive offer to the next 50 subscribers who registered within the next 2 days, we may have reached, if not exceed the desired 20% KPI.

As you can see, a KPI can be comprised of many moving parts, and each of them can be associated with a separate KPI.  While it can get complicated, the opportunities to report, analyze and optimize using analytics are fundamental for success. Normally, a marketing effort’s life cycle is short and there are KPI’s that need to reached and exceeded. Analytics enables marketers to gather information intelligently, produce result-oriented reports, analyze and make improvements.   Analytics are the key that will unlock the secrets to achieving success in the 21 century.