Challenges in Reporting Web Metrics

Regardless who you are reporting the metrics to, web metrics need to be reported in certain format or forms. Some users might prefer PDF files; excel sheet, word documents, extranet web reporting, business object, crystal report, etc.

Every company has there own standard of reporting practice, and web metrics would most likely need to comply with such reporting practice done by your clients. Due to security issues, certain clients would want the reports to be published in their secured extranet environment in web based format. Some clients would probably want to receive the web metrics in a form of excel sheet, so their in-house analyst can process the data in their own method.

There are many challenges that need to be addressed from web analytics stand point. Certain KPI (key performance indicators) would require taking the conversion rate of how many people registered into the database per visitors. In such cases, it could be required to access database server (example: SQL server, Oracle, mySQL, etc.) to pull the data. If the web analytics software does not support third party database server connection, then manual intervention might be required to set up the metrics. Therefore, the typical dashboards provided in the web analytics software would not support such metrics.

So pulling data from multiple sources and consolidating it into centralized repository of reports would be a challenge of web analytics, unless there is a business intelligence group embraced within companies. It is definitely a challenge for clients who do not have the resources, infrastructure, and good document management.

Although it may sound like a huge challenge, the most important point is to get the actionable metrics to the key stakeholders. Regardless of those reporting challenges, having those KPI in the hands of the right people is the critical measure of success for web analytics solution.