Web Analytic Matt

Web Analytics Methodology Part 2
Matt Hopkins posted in Web Analytics on May 20th, 2007

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In the previous part we dealt with the way of describing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) but each website is unique and so requires different KPIs. A KPI is a way of measuring the success of your website and so is based upon the tracking metrics of your site analytics.

Lets take the example of this blog. I measure the number of visits, unique visitors, RSS subscribers, internal search keywords, external keywords and referrers. From this data I can calculate the number of visits via my RSS feed as another metric and a KPI as the number of RSS visits per RSS subscriber.

The main purpose of my site is to provide educational information to people interested in web analytics, to achieve this purpose my main objective is to increase the readership of my site. So my new KPI will effectively let me know how one aspect of my readership is doing.

So, I have identified my site purpose, objective to achieve my site purpose, a method for measuring my site objective and based a KPI on this method. Over time I would hope that my KPI of RSS readership per subscriber will increase.

How Many KPIs Do I Need?

How many KPIs can you handle? 5? 6? 20? It is said that people can only handle a maximum of 7 pieces of information at any one time, so with this in mind I would suggest no more than 7 KPIs on a dashboard per person.

You should use the rule that if you have a KPI that someone could not make a direct business decision based upon then that KPI is useless and should not exist.

Who Needs KPIs?

The only people that need to know the value of KPIs are those people that can act upon them, this is reiterated in the table from the previous part of this methodology.

What is a Tracking Plan?

To be honest this is just a glorified name for taking the above table and populating it. To achieve a goal you normally need a plan to get there, be it in business, in life or with your website. This table is my version of a plan for achieving your website objectives. The idea being that you fill it out once when you design your website, but it is not just left, instead it should be a living document that grows and changes just as your business changes. Set a quarterly review cycle for looking at the table and seeing if the KPIs set are still relevant to your business, or has the market/technologies changed in a way that you need to meausre success in a different way. For instance if you initiate an RSS feed on your site then you will need further KPIs to meausre the success of this RSS feed.

Part 3 will cover capturing your web analytics data, picking the right tool and hiring a web analyst.

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