By Vivian Shen Corwin, Web Analytics Manager, Advanstar Communications

Through Web Analytics, you can learn a lot about the visitors to your site or landing page and their behaviors.  And beyond that, you can track and analyze most, if not all, of your online marketing efforts, such as:

• Offline-to-online advertising campaigns

• E-mail marketing campaigns

• Search engine marketing, including SEO

Whatever you’re planning to do, be sure to first determine your goals and objectives (increase ad revenue, generate leads, etc.). These are the Key Business Requirements (KBR). Then identify quantifiable metrics that that will help you determine whether you’re achieving the KBRs. These are the Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

Examples of KPIs:

• Reach (Return Visitors and New Visitors)

• Stickiness (Average Page Views per Visit)

• Leads (Prospective customers)

• Ad inventory (Increased ad impressions)

• Revenue ($)

It’s important to make a note here. If you’re using a sophisticated web analytics platform, you’ll find that it will provide many, many reports that you will likely find useful to monitor the most commonly used metrics, answer the random question, or pinpoint an issue. However, one pitfall many people fall into is that they get overwhelmed with the amount of data at their fingertips and end up looking at the data so infrequently that it becomes meaningless in terms of being able to take action against it. The only way to avoid this pitfall is to establish a limited number of KPIs that are specific and relevant to the marketing initiative, and to make a routine of consulting them frequently.

You’ll need to establish tracking and reporting processes to be used by your team of marketers. Who on your team will be responsible for setting up the tracking? Who will create/disseminate the reports?  Who will analyze the results and make recommendations for improvement?

Be thoughtful about how you design your dashboard and trending reports as that will facilitate the monitoring of your KPIs and your ability to quickly make any necessary changes. Remember that you’ll likely need different templates for internal reports and client reports. A good rule of thumb for dashboard design is to include five sections: 1) campaign details (such as run dates, target audience, size of mailing, if applicable, KBRs and KPIs), 2) tables of numerical data, 3) graphical representation of data  showing trends, 4) summary of results, and 5) suggestions for improvement.

Before you start any new marketing initiatives, you need to establish KPI benchmarks, against which you can assess how successful your marketing efforts are.

Below is a checklist to help you integrate analytics into your day-to-day marketing activities.

Analytics To-Do Checklist

• Track everything unless there is a specific reason not to.
  

• Compile a list of questions you have about your site and marketing activities.
  

• Explore the web analytics system (and any other system you’re using to track emails, newsletters, ads, etc.) and try to find the answers to the questions you have about your site and marketing activities.
  

• Be sure to access the system often, if only for 10 minutes per day. This is the only way you will learn and absorb.
  

• Incorporate analytics into your planning/strategy. Establish KPIs.
  

• Set up the KPI dashboards that you need to assess the performance of your site and marketing activities. 
  

• Review KPI performance regularly with your team/customers. Analyze the results and make recommendations for improvement.