Web Analytics Tracking Requirements 101

When launching a site or considering implementing a web analytics trackings, you may want to consider thinking about the following points.

This should guide you in formulating your thoughts around what to track on your site.

• All pages should contain tracking codes with unique page identifier (page name, content title, etc.).
• All campaign initiatives driving traffic to the site (via banner, email, link exchanges,e tc.) should be tracked through campaign tracking. Typically done through putting a unique query code in the URL string.
• Any conversion pages (thank you pages) should be defined as a "Goal" or an event in analytics tool. Any key pages where you want data to persist across the site or metrics, consider using special custom tracking to reflect those trackings. Example, SiteCatalyst uses eVar and Google Analytics uses "user defined" tracking.
• Activate eCommerce tracking in your analytics suite if your site is an eCommerce site.
• Make sure to activate or acquire internal search tracking in analytics tools. It is also important to assess what users are searching within your site.
• Create segmentation strategy and consider implementing it in your analytics tool. Custom segmentation should be assigned around several key factors for deeper insights and analysis. i.e. Users that bounced, users from search with specific terms, users from specific campaign, login vs. not logged in, etc.
• Take into consideration of Flash & AJAX tracking if your site is planned to be rich in graphics.
• Any click events including outbound link should be tracked if it is part of a key business strategies or objectives.

In site tracking strategy, you have to consider analyzing many data points. You won't be able to cover every single data points. That'll be TOO much. Understand your site's goal, and select your KPI -- KEY Performance Indicators.

Understand and at least formulate your thoughts for analysis around the following:

Traffic Source

• Traffic source or campaign includes (not limited to): banner, rich media, email, PPC, link exchanges, RSS, etc.


• Consider using vanity URL or friendly URL when driving traffic from other medium such as DM, radio, tv, etc. (offline). Make sure you're tracking those vanity URLs.


• Segmentation should be applied to all different sources to assess the optimal source of traffic with great ROI.

What users are doing (behavior metrics)

• All content should be tracked to see what users are interested, and their level of engagement.


• Customer advocacy should be tracked (tell a friend, share with friend, etc.).


• Product awareness and exposures should be assessed separately from content performance.


• Conversion metrics should be tracked by identifying the conversion pages, and set up necessary funnels to view optimization opportunities.


• If possible, track RSS subscription click on "subscribe to RSS".


• Capture internal search queries to assess what users are interested in and looking for.

Visitor Type

• Identify demographic of site visitors. Especially if viral and brand awareness is the key to success, it may start at regional level and spread across the country. It would be worth gauging traffic level and engagement metrics by demographic data. Such demographic data could be utilized when investing in PPC campaign to target your audience and properly allocate budget to proper regions.


• New vs. Returning traffic. This would be an important data to observe, especially considering that loyal users would come back to the site, and they would definitely behave differently from new visitors. Acquire deep insights from your visitors by looking at new vs. returning traffic.


• Loyalty metrics would be important to identify deeper insights about the site's audience who are loyal to your site/brand/product/services. Especially if your repeat buyers or highly engaged audience are key to the site's success.

Segmentation

• Always think about segmentation during your analysis. Segment various dimensions. (i.e. by source, conversion, specific behavior, etc.)


• Think about integration of different variables from campaigns to conversions. Then segment according to the integration.


• Tie metrics to conversion. Making sure that every key conversion pages are tracked and able to segment by different dimension of metrics. (i.e. conversion by traffic sources, conversion by demographic, etc.)

Hopefully this bulleted points will contribute to your thoughts around setting up web analytics trackings. Feel free to throw me your thoughts. I may have missed out an important point.