Web analytics tools are ultimately only a means to an end.
Organisations need answers to critical questions:
- What marketing and content works (and doesn't work)?
- How do customers engage online?
- Where are the opportunities to add value?
To answer these vital questions we need to bridge the gap between the complexities of online data and the need for concise analysis.
Pragmatic steps can be taken to unlock technology’s real potential
Here we look at the common practical issues in getting analytics to work. Based on our experience, we look at pragmatic steps that can be taken to resolve these and unlock the technology’s real potential.
1. From the start, get a high level analytics strategy in place that summarises your key business questions
An analytics strategy sets out in simple language the high-level questions the business needs to understand in order of priority.
For example, the key questions for a retailer might be:
- What is the true cost of acquiring a new customer online?
- What investment in content is most likely to engage visitors profitably?
- Where do my most valuable customers actually come from and where can I find more of them?
The brief for the service provider is then “how will you help us answer these questions?”
2. Be disciplined in choosing key performance indicators and challenge the assumptions used in the process
It's all too easy to focus only on a metric that doesn't actually represent real economic value.
For example, retailers with impulse-buy products might favour average revenue per visit as a better site performance metric than conversion rate.
The process of choosing key performance indicators based on real business objectives (eg, profit) is vital, and needs to challenge assumptions at every stage.
3. Don't try to complete tool implementation in one, final cycle
An iterative approach is far more likely to get good results on time and avoid a seemingly never-ending quest to get a deployment fit for purpose.
There's no golden formula for this (it's rare to find two sites with an identical technical setup), but a typical process might be:
Basic tagging – focus on getting site tagging across the entire site in its vanilla form.
Conversion events – do whatever re-tagging or customisation you need to capture the events that are most economically critical
Campaign segmentation – get a labelling scheme for all your off-site marketing activity
Content/engagement – review on-site content segmentation and tagging requirements for grouping content and tracking engagement events
4. To achieve accuracy, focus on consistent data collection and understanding metrics clearly
Accuracy and trust are big issues in analytics. If the highest echelons of the organisation don't believe the figures, the whole analytics exercise can become futile.
Often training for the senior management team on web metrics is the most important step to resolving the ongoing accuracy debate.
Then focus on making sure your deployment stays consistent when other things change.
5. ‘Like a rabbit in the headlights’
For every new report and every new jazzy feature on a web analytics tool there's more information to look at.
If there’s a feeling of ‘drowning in data’, return to your key questions and get professional advice on translating these into the required metrics and analysis.
6. The web analyst to the rescue?
Web analysts need an awareness of a broad spectrum of commercial and technical issues, with some quite niche skills such as JavaScript programming, database skills, marketing nuance, business clout as well as analytical skills.
Fully-formed web analysts are in short supply, so bringing together the right combination of skills (internally and externally) as a team may be a better approach.
7. Focus your optimisation and analysis across the customer cycle
If your business is customer-centric, then making your analytics customer-centric is a great way of focusing the process. We can then wrap optimisation and analysis around the customer cycle of acquisition, retention and monetisation.
Finally, you can feed back lifetime value insights into your acquisition targeting to ensure you focus on getting the right kind of customers.
8. Don't forget the big picture of competitor and survey intelligence
Examine the key trends in context rather than in isolation. Analyse the marketing and opportunities available.
What is and isn't working within the confines of your own site and marketing.
Finally, what do your customers really think?
