Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [250]
The secondary goals all revolve around the visitor actions that make you money. What actions do visitors take that lead directly to making your business money? What actions are indirectly making you money? What events can lead to better customers? The secondary goals are those where you should rank the actions of visitors and develop a priority for those visits based on revenue and profitability.
This is a significant part of analytics, and no analytics program will be successful unless goals are established and values are communicated based on all the goals for the visitor. For example, if the visitor does not purchase a product, then you want them to request a catalog or more information; if they do not do that, then you want them to give you their email address for the newsletter or offers. If they do not do that, then you want them to download a white paper, request a demo, or do something else where you can attach a value to the business.
Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” I like to modify that statement for the world of online marketing: the unexamined website is not worth hosting. If you are not measuring goals and revenue from the actions of your website visitors, then you have no idea if you are successful. Only by measuring your goals will you know whether you have created a successful online marketing presence.
Use KPIs to Grow Your Business Analytics
Business goals in analytics are called key performance indicators (KPIs). These key performance indicators are just that—indicators. Smart analysts understand that indicators are signposts to additional data, not specific data in itself.
For example, a report on new vs. returning visitors is helpful as an indicator. It is a quick method of ensuring that your website is continually gaining new visitors or retaining visitors, based on your goals. However, while the indicator shows an immediate signpost of success, you need to delve beyond the initial layer of data in order to see where the new visitors are coming and why. This is how you capitalize on trends and find additional opportunities.
In the same way, watching the number of your unique visitors is important, but it is still an indicator. Visitors need to be explored in context of conversion in order to find out what is effective and why. Unique visitors as a goal is good if that is how you monetize your site, maybe through advertising, but you still have to create an actionable plan to increase those unique visitors by analyzing what sources are providing those visitors and which are able to be grown more effectively. The number of unique visitors is a KPI, not a goal. It is an indicator of direction—in that you are either heading in the right direction or heading in the wrong direction. The KPI reports your progress, but it does not report a plan to improve the site.
The top pages viewed can be an important report, if it is not used as the primary report. Having a KPI goal of increasing page views is good, but it serves little purpose if the page views are not explored beyond the KPI report. Knowing which pages are being viewed, why, and where they fall in visibility, prominence, and demand by visitors, you will have no understanding of the means necessary to increase those page views.
This understanding of using KPIs to monitor goals rather than be reported as an objective will enable you to take the step in tomorrow’s content. KPIs need to be associated with other KPIs and data in order to find trends and opportunities to improve the site, but marketers need to be able to read the signs provided by the KPIs in order to become analysts.
Three Obstacles to Effective Analytics
In the years of dealing with businesses, I have found that there are three consistent factors that prevent marketers and business owners from effectively using analytics in their marketing. Despite the intent of the business to improve and use the data to improve the website, there is