In this post, I would like to introduce and illustrate my web analytics framework or methodology for connecting the dots between Web Site Objectives and Outcomes.
Avinash, a well known web analytics evangelist says three specific desired Outcomes from a website are:
- Increased Revenue
- Reduced Costs
- Improved Customer Satisfaction/Loyaly
Now stepping a back a little bit, on a higher level, the three main Objectives for making a website are:
- Acquire
- Convert
- Retain
In a nutshell, the web analytics framework should support you (web analyst), to en light key business people with actionable insights on the desired outcomes to the site objectives. There should be nine main initial points of thinking to help you start analyzing and inspire actions through data.
- How your acquisition initiatives impacted your desired outcomes in terms of revenue? So the three areas of points would be: Acquisition vs. Increase Revenue, Acquisition vs. Reduction in Cost, Acquisition vs. Customer Satisfaction/Loyalty. 3 points of interests here.
- How your tactics in increasing conversions impacted revenue, reduction in costs, improving satisfaction/loyalty. Another 3 things here.
- How did your customer retention efforts impacted your revenue, costs, and improved satisfaction/loyalty. Another 3 things here.
This sounds good, but it can be confusing... For example, with "Acquisition vs. Reduction in Cost", you may ask how can you reduce cost when you're investing your money to drive traffic? Well, maybe one of your acquisition efforts is SEO, so that you could spend "less" on PPC campaign and drive free traffic.
To make things less confusing, let's take a look at a visual of an idea and possible KPIs to look at for these 9 different points (actions points, web analytics methods, whatever you call it...).
These KPIs are just examples of what I thought really quickly, but hope you get the point.
The challenges for web analyst is to work with people, managers, executives, marketers, etc. Even if this methodology explicitly clarify the what needs to go into dashboards or actually do the changes, if those people don't help supporting the actions, then the data could become useless.
The main point of this visual table is for web analysts to vision and make decisions to connect the dots between Outcomes and Site Objectives. KPIs won't do all the work, analysts will need to dive into the analytics software and do more analysis to be confident in the findings and justifying the next action. Action to make more money!!
Depending on your reporting needs, you may come across making a weekly/monthly/adhoc reports just for an acquisition, conversion, or retention efforts. In that case, make sure to not forget the basic principle of 3 outcomes, and do your analytics magic to find actionable insights through the metrics you (including business people) think are important.
Remember, connecting the dots (analysis) is the fun part of doing web analytics.
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