Measurement and Analytics

Tips

I don’t have many images or stats for this page because most of the measurement I’ve worked on has been proprietary information. So instead, some things I’ve learned.

Why Compare Apples and Oranges?

Often, people ask, “What’s a good conversion rate?”, or “How does our clickthrough rate/return on ad spend/etc. compare to the industry average?” However, there are so many variables that can contribute to your campaign’s performance that this is not very actionable information. Instead, it’s better to set benchmarks within your own organization and try to improve on those.

Establish KPI’s

KPIs are “key performance indicators”. There are many stats you can measure and it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. Measure results that:

  • derive from factors you can change if need be

  • can be related to your larger business goals

Start with about five to ten KPIs - you can always add more when you’ve got a handle on these.

As an example, you might want to track new vs. returning visitors, and that might be one of your KPIs. However, you don’t want to simply report this number in isolation. Perhaps your traffic is seasonal, and you get a higher percentage of return visitors at specific times of year. Perhaps some press coverage linked to you so you suddenly see more new visitors. Establishing a pattern year-over-year will help you discern the trends.

Annotations in Google Analytics

This screen cap dates from some years ago and the interface no longer looks exactly like this, but the idea is the same.

Make Notes in Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers an Annotations feature. When you make a change which will likely impact your campaign, note down the date and what you did. (See the example on this page.) For example, if you launch a radio campaign and you expect a spike in visits from that, make an annotation. That way, at the end of the campaign when you’re reviewing it, you won’t have to struggle to remember what exactly was different on July 22.

Provide Context in Your Dashboard Reports

Related to the above, when you send a dashboard report to management, be sure to provide context around what’s happening.

Without context and interpretation, measures can be misleading. The classic (old-school) example of this is Bounce Rate (the percentage of website visitors who view only one page on your site and then leave). A high bounce rate was sometimes taken to indicate that visitors weren’t interested in your content. However, what if they simply found what they needed on the page they landed on? Then your site is working efficiently. (But I’d still take a look at what search terms were sending people to that page.)

Finally, don’t get hung up on the exact numbers. Analytics tools rely on extrapolation and assumptions. Use them to determine general trends over time.

Track Microconversions

What if your online transactional capability has been added on to your legacy website and the two systems barely talk to each other? Then you can’t fully track the customer journey through to conversion and you’re losing a lot of information.

For example, you can’t calculate:

  • CPA (cost per acquisition):

  • ROAS (return on ad spend)

  • location of most profitable customers

  • and so much more.

Customized programming solutions can be expensive, and may not always work. One thing you can do in-house is set up microconversions. These are smaller milestones, and more likely to be transacted on the site itself.

For example, if a visitor signs up for your enews, downloads a whitepaper, or clicks through to a specific page, these are indications that they’re heading further down the funnel and they can be tracked as goals in Google Analytics. While these actions won’t allow you to evaluate ultimate value, they will help you figure out patterns of behaviour, and that’s always useful.