Brisbane Web Analytics and conversion consultancy | Metricks


Web Analytics: How to focus

by Jon

Often businesses have not had the resources to develop a measurement framework. When presented with 80 or more reports, many graphs and lots of customisation possibilities, you can be overwhelmed by web analytics tools very quickly.

To avoid this, ask business questions. What have you done today that needs some data from your website? Are your email blasts effective? Is your boss demanding to know if anyone came to the site from the URL printed in the awesome glossy brochure printed on 180gsm last week?

For example, a common question when using a web analytics tool is “ I’m driving a lot of traffic to the site, but it’s not converting – where should I look for problems? “. This is a high level general question that could be answered in many ways – so it is important to break it down.

First, check that the site is actually getting traffic to support the claim of driving a lot of traffic to the site.

Next, some of the places you could look for information include:

  • Sources – how is traffic driven to the site? What are the outcomes?
  • Tagging – are all campaign links tagged?
  • Landing pages – are landing pages optimised? (hint: don’t simply link to home page)
  • Conversion points – Macro/micro
  • Goal identification

Then ask business questions of the data

  • E.g. are our email blasts effective? (general question)
  • Do those who receive email sign up for events more than general site visitors? (specific and measurable)
  • Create a segment for email users and compare with other users their likelihood to convert

This process is like onion skinning – each answer is likely to spark more questions, but give you more specific and relevant data to discover and optimise with.

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