How do you know if your website is worth the money? Are your
tweets really doing anything other than filling up time? The answer
to success and failure lies in capturing and analyzing web metrics
and calculating ROI (return on investment). Using these valuable
tools can help you answer the question, "is it worth it?"
Begin with Objectives
You can use a few different approaches to determine the best
metrics for your website. In An Introduction to Web Metrics by Paul G.
Strupp, Ph.D., one of the most important considerations is to
strike a balance between your business and customer focuses. Your
web strategy should include tracking metrics that demonstrate
business success, such as cost savings. At the same time, you
should have metrics in place that measure customers' ease of
use.
Choose "Triple-A" Metrics
Once you have settled on the top objectives of your web
strategy, choose metrics that are:
Actionable - meaning you can do something to
affect the metric
Attainable - meaning you can capture and rely
on the numbers
Appropriate - meaning it indicates whether your
website strategy is supporting your objectives
Triple-A metrics to measure increased sales might include the
number of times your inquiry form is completed, the number of
visits to the inquiry page, and total number of repeat visits
to your website.
Monitor Benchmarks
Now that you've chosen your metrics, where you'll find them, and
how often you'll review them, you might need to "work backwards" to
determine your benchmarks. Let's say your chosen objective is to
have quality leads from your inquiry forms. Begin counting how many
times the form is filled out before you receive a quality lead.
Once you know your frequency, you can project how many leads you
will receive in the upcoming year. Next, consider the cost of your
website and related efforts. For example, let's assume your ongoing
website and related activities (such as search engine optimization
and social media) cost $30,000 annually. Let's also assume every
other completed inquiry form results in a quality lead that
produces $1,000 in revenue. If your web strategy results in 30
qualified leads that each produce $1,000, then your ROI calculation
shows that your website breaks even.
Continual Tracking Drives Improvements
If you are tracking your ROI throughout the year and it's
looking like you won't break even, you'll need to take actions to
improve your results. Using our qualified leads example, you could
work back further to see how many visitors per lead your website
attracts. Then, you could increase the number of visitors through
marketing campaigns or referral programs. Based on your analysis of
the past relationship between visitors and qualified leads, it
should follow that increasing visitors will increase
leads
Of course, ensuring success or avoiding failure cannot be done
without having a set of measurable elements that you can change to
affect the outcome. Hopefully this post will start you in the right
direction. If you have any questions or advice for others who are
searching for good metrics, leave a comment!