Many businesses get thwarted by the amount of data available from
web analytics tools. John Marshall (formerly of ClickTracks ...
explains how small business users can make their use of web analytics
intensely practical by answering business questions.
Quick Start Guide
Ask business questions
Do PPC listings do better than organic listing for same
keyword
Sales of product A are greater than product B, but which
product has greater interest before the sale
Log into the tool and spend 30 minutes answering that question
Main Tools
Clicktrax - commercial
Google Analytics - free
IndexTools
For the small business, its not about getting a tool - challenge
is finding someone to help you with the questions. There are a few
online resources
Web Analytics Associations - bit too high powered for small
business owners
Yahoo Groups Mailing List - free [Web Analytics Mailing List],
Very good information. Can use this list to hire consultants,
some work for new businesses
Coded Vision Consulting - a true business value approach to
website performance.
See more on MarketMotive.com
Give KPI's Context
The questions give your analytics data context. Data is only useful
in making decsions when you frame the data in terms of the questions
that need to be answered to improve your business.
Establishing context for your analytics data is more important
than picking the right KPIs. In this short video, Avinash Kaushik
explains how to establish context for your data and empower stakeholders
to take action.
Takeaways:
Compare months per year - make them the same months otherwise
they are not relevant.
You don't need to agree the key
definitions: It just doesn't matter - what matters is knowing
where you are doing well and where you are not. Need to have a
good set of benchmarks to give the numbers context.
Set goals - the absolute number doesn't matter, you need to
know whether your performance is improving or declining.
Make your metrics relative to each other - effective decisions
are best made between two data sets to give it context. If you
want to know what pages are important - the best articles, videos
etc. For instance, performance of page compared to time spent
on site.
Senior managers should not be spending time understanding data;
they should be spending time making decisions.
