UNIT-IV

WEB ANALYTICS

Web analytics is the process of analyzing the behavior of visitors to a website. This involves
tracking, reviewing and reporting data to measure web activity, including the use of a website
and its components, such as webpages, images and videos.

Data collected through web analytics may include traffic sources, referring sites, page views,
paths taken and conversion rates. The compiled data often forms a part of customer
relationship management analytics (CRM analytics) to facilitate and streamline better
business decisions.

Web analytics enables a business to retain customers, attract more visitors and increase the
dollar volume each customer spends.

Analytics can help in the following ways:

• Determine the likelihood that a given customer will repurchase a product after
purchasing it in the past.
• Personalize the site to customers who visit it repeatedly.
• Monitor the amount of money individual customers or specific groups of customers
spend.
• Observe the geographic regions from which the most and the least customers visit the
site and purchase specific products.
• Predict which products customers are most and least likely to buy in the future.

The objective of web analytics is to serve as a business metric for promoting specific
products to the customers who are most likely to buy them and to determine which products a
specific customer is most likely to purchase. This can help improve the ratio of revenue to
marketing costs.

In addition to these features, web analytics may track the clickthrough and drilldown
behavior of customers within a website, determine the sites from which customers most often
arrive, and communicate with browsers to track and analyze online behavior. The results of
web analytics are provided in the form of tables, charts and graphs.
Follow these steps as part of the web analytics processes.

Web analytics process

The web analytics process involves the following steps:

1. Setting goals. The first step in the web analytics process is for businesses to
determine goals and the end results they are trying to achieve. These goals can include
increased sales, customer satisfaction and brand awareness. Business goals can be
both quantitative and qualitative.
2. Collecting data. The second step in web analytics is the collection and storage of
data. Businesses can collect data directly from a website or web analytics tool, such as
Google Analytics. The data mainly comes from Hypertext Transfer Protocol requests
-- including data at the network and application levels -- and can be combined with
external data to interpret web usage. For example, a user's Internet Protocol address is
typically associated with many factors, including geographic location and
clickthrough rates.
3. Processing data. The next stage of the web analytics funnel involves businesses
processing the collected data into actionable information.
4. Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs). In web analytics, a KPI is a
quantifiable measure to monitor and analyze user behavior on a website. Examples
include bounce rates, unique users, user sessions and on-site search queries.
5. Developing a strategy. This stage involves implementing insights to formulate
strategies that align with an organization's goals. For example, search queries
 conducted on-site can help an organization develop a content strategy based on what
users are searching for on its website.
6. Experimenting and testing. Businesses need to experiment with different strategies
in order to find the one that yields the best results. For example, A/B testing is a
simple strategy to help learn how an audience responds to different content. The
process involves creating two or more versions of content and then displaying it to
different audience segments to reveal which version of the content performs better.

What are the two main categories of web analytics?

The two main categories of web analytics are off-site web analytics and on-site web analytics.

Off-site web analytics

The term off-site web analytics refers to the practice of monitoring visitor activity outside of
an organization's website to measure potential audience. Off-site web analytics provides an
industry wide analysis that gives insight into how a business is performing in comparison to
competitors. It refers to the type of analytics that focuses on data collected from across the
web, such as social media, search engines and forums.

On-site web analytics

On-site web analytics refers to a narrower focus that uses analytics to track the activity of
visitors to a specific site to see how the site is performing. The data gathered is usually more
relevant to a site's owner and can include details on site engagement, such as what content is
most popular. Two technological approaches to on-site web analytics include log file analysis
and page tagging.

Log file analysis, also known as log management, is the process of analyzing data gathered
from log files to monitor, troubleshoot and report on the performance of a website. Log files
hold records of virtually every action taken on a network server, such as a web server, email
server, database server or file server.

Page tagging is the process of adding snippets of code into a website's HyperText Markup
Language code using a tag management system to track website visitors and their interactions
across the website. These snippets of code are called tags. When businesses add these tags to
a website, they can be used to track any number of metrics, such as the number of pages
viewed, the number of unique visitors and the number of specific products viewed.

Web analytics tools

Web analytics tools report important statistics on a website, such as where visitors came
from, how long they stayed, how they found the site and their online activity while on the
site. In addition to web analytics, these tools are commonly used for product analytics, social
media analytics and marketing analytics.

Web analytics tools, like Google Analytics, report important website statistics to analyze the
behavior of visitors as part of CRM analytics to facilitate and streamline business decisions.

Some examples of web analytics tools include the following:

• Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a web analytics platform that monitors website
traffic, behaviors and conversions. The platform tracks page views, unique visitors,
bounce rates, referral Uniform Resource Locators, average time on-site, page
abandonment, new vs. returning visitors and demographic data.
• Optimizely. Optimizely is a customer experience and A/B testing platform that helps
businesses test and optimize their online experiences and marketing efforts, including
conversion rate optimization.
• Kissmetrics. Kissmetrics is a customer analytics platform that gathers website data
and presents it in an easy-to-read format. The platform also serves as a customer
 intelligence tool, as it enables businesses to dive deeper into customer behavior and
use this information to enhance their website and marketing campaigns.
• Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg is a tool that tracks where customers click on a page. This
information can help organizations understand how visitors interact with content and
why they leave the site. The tool tracks visitors, heatmaps and user session recordings.

WEB ANALYTICS PRSENT AND FUTURE:

Today, web analytics are an important part of how millions of businesses operate. Businesses
of all sizes and stripes rely on services like Google Analytics to help them understand
consumer wants and optimize web experiences for them. Data analytics is a rapidly growing
field as well, expected to be worth $550 billion by 2028.

With all the newness and excitement, it may come as a surprise to know that web analytics is
almost as old as the internet itself. The first example of web analytics was hit counters, or
simple code that kept track of how often a page is visited. These numbers are easy to
understand without expertise. Next came log analysis, which helped individuals interpret
server logs. Log analysis could identify traffic sources and new inbound links.

As websites grew more complex, so too did log analysis. As sites added images, audio, and
video, browsers had to make HTTP requests per page visit, which got redundant. Caching, or
temporarily storing a file in the system to avoid multiple HTTP requests, didn’t show up on
the server log. The solution to this problem was tag-based tracking, which collected
information on more than just hits. Said additional information allowed analytics to move
into the field of marketing.

At the turn of the century, large companies struggled to make use of all the marketing data
their website offered. They would take up to 24 hours to process it all. That is, until a
company called Urchin arrived on the scene and processed it in as little as 15 minutes. Urchin
grew in size and client base until Google acquired them in 2005. And so Google Analytics
was born.
Google’s most expansive web analytics product was Universal Analytics, launched in 2012.
Capable of offline behavior monitoring and tracking users across multiple platforms and
devices, Universal Analytics fueled part of the growing concern for consumer’s digital
privacy. Governments like the European Union acted, passing the General Data Protection
Regulation in 2016. In response, Google came out with Google Analytics 4 in 2020, which
combines depth of insight with compliance to the GDPR’s standards.
DATA COLLECTION IN WEB ANALYTICS:

Data collection is the methodological process of gathering information about a specific

subject. It’s crucial to ensure your data is complete during the collection phase and that it’s
collected legally and ethically. If not, your analysis won’t be accurate and could have far-
reaching consequences.

In general, there are three types of consumer data:

• First-party data, which is collected directly from users by your organization

• Second-party data, which is data shared by another organization about its customers
(or its first-party data)
• Third-party data, which is data that’s been aggregated and rented or sold by
organizations that don’t have a connection to your company or users

Although there are use cases for second- and third-party data, first-party data (data you’ve
collected yourself) is more valuable because you receive information about how your
audience behaves, thinks, and feels—all from a trusted source.

Data can be qualitative (meaning contextual in nature) or quantitative (meaning numeric in

nature). Many data collection methods apply to either type, but some are better suited to one
over the other.

In the data life cycle, data collection is the second step. After data is generated, it must be
collected to be of use to your team. After that, it can be processed, stored, managed, analyzed,
and visualized to aid in your organization’s decision-making.
Before collecting data, there are several factors you need to define:

• The question you aim to answer

• The data subject(s) you need to collect data from
• The collection timeframe
• The data collection method(s) best suited to your needs

The data collection method you select should be based on the question you want to answer,
the type of data you need, your timeframe, and your company’s budget.

The Importance of Data Collection

Collecting data is an integral part of a business’s success; it can enable you to ensure the
data’s accuracy, completeness, and relevance to your organization and the issue at hand. The
information gathered allows organizations to analyze past strategies and stay informed on
what needs to change.
The insights gleaned from data can make you hyperaware of your organization’s efforts and
give you actionable steps to improve various strategies—from altering marketing strategies to
assessing customer complaints.

Basing decisions on inaccurate data can have far-reaching negative consequences, so it’s
important to be able to trust your own data collection procedures and abilities. By ensuring
accurate data collection, business professionals can feel secure in their business decisions.

Explore the options in the next section to see which data collection method is the best fit for
your company.

7 Data Collection Methods Used in Business Analytics

1. Surveys

Surveys are physical or digital questionnaires that gather both qualitative and quantitative
data from subjects. One situation in which you might conduct a survey is gathering attendee
feedback after an event. This can provide a sense of what attendees enjoyed, what they wish
was different, and areas in which you can improve or save money during your next event for
a similar audience.

While physical copies of surveys can be sent out to participants, online surveys present the
opportunity for distribution at scale. They can also be inexpensive; running a survey can cost
nothing if you use a free tool. If you wish to target a specific group of people, partnering with
a market research firm to get the survey in front of that demographic may be worth the
money.

Something to watch out for when crafting and running surveys is the effect of bias, including:

• Collection bias: It can be easy to accidentally write survey questions with a biased
lean. Watch out for this when creating questions to ensure your subjects answer
honestly and aren’t swayed by your wording.
• Subject bias: Because your subjects know their responses will be read by you, their
answers may be biased toward what seems socially acceptable. For this reason,
consider pairing survey data with behavioral data from other collection methods to get
the full picture.

2. Transactional Tracking

Each time your customers make a purchase, tracking that data can allow you to make
decisions about targeted marketing efforts and understand your customer base better.

Often, e-commerce and point-of-sale platforms allow you to store data as soon as it’s
generated, making this a seamless data collection method that can pay off in the form of
customer insights.

3. Interviews and Focus Groups

Interviews and focus groups consist of talking to subjects face-to-face about a specific topic
or issue. Interviews tend to be one-on-one, and focus groups are typically made up of several
people. You can use both to gather qualitative and quantitative data.

Through interviews and focus groups, you can gather feedback from people in your target
audience about new product features. Seeing them interact with your product in real-time and
recording their reactions and responses to questions can provide valuable data about which
product features to pursue.

As is the case with surveys, these collection methods allow you to ask subjects anything you
want about their opinions, motivations, and feelings regarding your product or brand. It also
introduces the potential for bias. Aim to craft questions that don’t lead them in one particular
direction.

One downside of interviewing and conducting focus groups is they can be time-consuming
and expensive. If you plan to conduct them yourself, it can be a lengthy process. To avoid
this, you can hire a market research facilitator to organize and conduct interviews on your
behalf.

4. Observation

Observing people interacting with your website or product can be useful for data collection
because of the candor it offers. If your user experience is confusing or difficult, you can
witness it in real-time.

Yet, setting up observation sessions can be difficult. You can use a third-party tool to record
users’ journeys through your site or observe a user’s interaction with a beta version of your
site or product.

While less accessible than other data collection methods, observations enable you to see
firsthand how users interact with your product or site. You can leverage the qualitative and
quantitative data gleaned from this to make improvements and double down on points of
success.

5. Online Tracking

To gather behavioral data, you can implement pixels and cookies. These are both tools that
track users’ online behavior across websites and provide insight into what content they’re
interested in and typically engage with.

You can also track users’ behavior on your company’s website, including which parts are of
the highest interest, whether users are confused when using it, and how long they spend on
product pages. This can enable you to improve the website’s design and help users navigate
to their destination.

Inserting a pixel is often free and relatively easy to set up. Implementing cookies may come
with a fee but could be worth it for the quality of data you’ll receive. Once pixels and cookies
are set, they gather data on their own and don’t need much maintenance, if any.

It’s important to note: Tracking online behavior can have legal and ethical privacy
implications. Before tracking users’ online behavior, ensure you’re in compliance with local
and industry data privacy standards.

6. Forms

Online forms are beneficial for gathering qualitative data about users, specifically
demographic data or contact information. They’re relatively inexpensive and simple to set up,
and you can use them to gate content or registrations, such as webinars and email newsletters.

You can then use this data to contact people who may be interested in your product, build out
demographic profiles of existing customers, and in remarketing efforts, such as email
workflows and content recommendations.

7. Social Media Monitoring

Monitoring your company’s social media channels for follower engagement is an accessible
way to track data about your audience’s interests and motivations. Many social media
platforms have analytics built in, but there are also third-party social platforms that give more
detailed, organized insights pulled from multiple channels.

You can use data collected from social media to determine which issues are most important to
your followers. For instance, you may notice that the number of engagements dramatically
increases when your company posts about its sustainability efforts.

IMPORTANCE AND OPTIONS IN WEB ANALYTICS

Web Analytics may be defined as a system that collects, process and reports a web site data
which can be used to get insights about customers and how they interact with a business’s
site.

Using Analytics reports we get access to valuable data that helps the business to achieve their
goals and objective. Most of the brands use such data to create strategies to achieve their
goals.

So today, we are going to discuss Web Analytics and why it is important for business?

Importance of Web Analytics

1. Access to Accurate Data to Understand the Traffic

Access to Accurate Data

Web Analytics is all about data and reporting data but not all data is useful. Google Analytics
provides valuable data which can be used to discover hidden trends and insights thus it is
very important for a business.

However, this data alone can also mislead a business if irrelevant data is not filtered out.
Google Analytics filter helps in refining the data and provide you with data that is important
and relevant for your business.

For example: Using exclude filter to see data related to your real prospects and not office
staff.

2. Helps you to Understand Website Audience

 Understand Website Audience

A website that does not provide its visitors good user experience can not think of getting
business using it. In order to improve user experience, we must understand a website
audience, devices they use, the language they speak etc.

Web Analytics provides this data to business through its reports and thus help them
understand their audience and develop strategies to improve their user experience when they
visit the website. For example:

a. Technology Report: Provide data about which technology, browser and OS and network
being used by a visitor.

b. Behaviour Report: Provide data about how a visitor is engaging with the website and
their behaviour on the site.

c. Demographic Report: Provide data to understand and better know the audience of the
site.

3. Understand Return on Investment

Understand Return on Investment

Web Analytics help in knowing ROI by tracking the performance of social media campaigns,
email campaigns, ad campaigns etc.

By default, Google Analytics tracks only traffic from 3 mediums that are organic, referral and
direct. In order to track the performance of traffic from other sources and mediums link
tagging is used.

This help in understanding the performance of campaigns and source and mediums used for
the campaigns. By using this data, we can know the ROI from campaigns and optimise them
to improve it.

4. Improve SEO

Improve SEO

Another important benefit of using Web Analytics is that it helps in improving SEO for the
site. It Helps in identifying issues like slow loading, browser or OS issues.

Landing pages that are getting most of the organic traffic for the site.

Metrics like bounce rates, landing page report, exit page report etc can also be used to
measure the quality of pages. Google Analytics can also help in identifying new
opportunities.

For example: Identifying keywords for which you have a good position but poor CTR. Using
this insight, a business can improve the content for that keyword and thus improve CTR.

In order to get access to this data, one must link Google Analytics with Google Search
Console.
5. Improve PPC Performance

Improve PPC Performance

Another important benefit of using Web Analytics is that it helps in optimising the
performance of Google ads by providing the enhanced remarketing capability, import of
goals, analytics remarketing audience and ecommerce transactions directly into Google Ads
account.

It can also help to track the behaviour of the customer on the website after an ad click or
impression in order to use these features, one must link Google Analytics with Google Ads.

6. Identify Pain Points

Identify Pain Points

When it comes to providing great user experience all the pain areas of the website must be
rectified and Web Analytics helps a business in identifying them.

Reports like exit page reports, site speed report, device, browser and OS report etc. These
reports help in identifying the pain area of the website and thus help in rectifying them to
improve the user experience of the visitors.
7. Optimize Conversion Funnel

Optimise Conversion Funnel

Using Web Analytics, we can set a number of goals which are important for the business
these can be signing up for the newsletter, buying a product, register for a demo of product
etc.

While creating a goal we write down each and every step that a user must take to successfully
complete goal on the site.

Google Analytics through funnel visualization helps in identifying how many visitors who
enter the funnel gets successfully converted(Complete the goal).

This helps a business to identify at which point of the funnel the customers are getting
dropped out.

Using this data, a business can identify any issues that might be present on the site or
particular pages of the site that are leading to drop out of customers from the funnel and thus
solve these issues so that maximum number of customers in the funnel is successfully
converted.

8. Data Reporting

Refining and optimization of data are necessary before its use. Using Web Analytics, a
business can not only refine the data but helps in the visual representation of this data so that
it can be easily understood.
 Data Reporting

Google Analytics has a variety of viewing options like:

a. Data View: Tabular representation of data

b. Percentage View: Representation of data as a pie graph

c. Performance View: Bar graph representation of data.

d. Comparison View: It allows to see whether each metric in the table is performing above
or below average.

e. Pivot View: Creates a pivot table.

Besides this Google Analytics allows creating custom reports a report that can be customized
based upon needs.

Conclusion

Web Analytics is a very useful tool that not only helps in understanding our audience but also
helps you discover business insights that might not be visible directly.

No business can ignore Analytics if they want to provide a great user experience to its visitors
as well as gain access to business insights.

If you like my post or have any question or suggestion feel free to write to me about it in the
comment section below.
OVERVIEW OF QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS:

What is Qualitative Analysis?

Qualitative analysis is a research tool used in businesses in order to analyze an organization’s
overall value based on non-quantifiable indicators. The non-quantifiable indicators can be
information on items within an organization, such as their industry cycle, management
expertise, responsiveness to inquiries, strength of business functions, labor relations, or even
their visibility within media.

Qualitative analysis differs from quantitative analysis in terms of measurement. The former
measures non-numeric information such as the examples used above, while the latter
measures numerical data such as numbers on an income statement.

In most cases, both qualitative and quantitative analysis will be used together in order to
extensively examine an organization’s trajectory and potential, both of which are incredibly
important indicators used to determine investment opportunities.

Qualitative Aspects

Qualitative data comprises specific aspects that differ from other forms of data. For example,
qualitative data is used to characterize objects or observations. Such observations include
data that use your senses, such as sight, touch, and hearing.

Qualitative data does not refer to aspects that can be measured or numbered. For example, the
numbers on a tax return or a balance sheet are not considered qualitative.
Qualitative observations and data can be incredibly helpful to businesses and investors due to
the implications they can make. For example, if an organization were to determine that
employee satisfaction is a crucial indicator that impacts productivity, it would improve the
business tenfold.

Qualitative Analysis in Finance

Qualitative analysis is used in the financial industry to measure a company’s performance,

help organizations make crucial decisions, and assist investors on whether or not to invest.

The most common use within finance, helping an investor make big decisions, is started by
getting to know the management system extensively. Research analysts and investors do it by
examining several qualitative variables, such as employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction,
quality assurance, market recognition, and other precise aspects such as customer servicing
and returns.

For the most part, examining the qualitative variables can be incredibly hard due to the
inaccessibility of information. Many investors rely on news reports and company filings in
order to gain a sense of the organization’s philosophy and how they serve their clients. In
particular, investors analyze the management discussion and analysis (MD&A) section of an
organization’s 10-k report, which is legally required to be published to shareholders.

Qualitative Business Analysis

Qualitative analysis is a highly prominent research tool used in business due to the vast
implications that can be made on the statistical data. Researchers measure qualitative
variables within an organization to examine a wide array of indicators, such as trajectory,
proficiency, and satisfaction, all of which help investors decide on the company’s overall
investment potential.

As for actual research, qualitative variables are much more complex to examine due to their
non-numeric nature. To solve this, we attach numeric values to the qualitative data.

For example, let’s say ABC Company would like to analyze the satisfaction of their
customers for their products. Measuring satisfaction is not numeric, but if we attribute
numbers to each level of satisfaction, we can successfully examine the variable.
ABC Company would then ask their consumers to rate their satisfaction on a scale of five,
which they would then be able to put into a statistical software. It would like something like
the one below:

Qualitative Financial Analysis

Qualitative financial analysis is a research method in business that uses mathematics and
statistical software in order to determine the value of specific financial items in a company.

From a base level, qualitative financial analysis is highly subjective. Investment analysts look
for a variety of different factors in order to determine overall value.

The factors can include but are not limited to industry trends, management effectiveness,
strength of a product line or brand, and consumer opinion. They are used in qualitative
financial analysis to help an investor or business form an opinion about a company’s value
and its stock.

Uses of Qualitative Analysis

Listed below are the many uses of qualitative analysis:

• Develop extensive consumer profiles

• Analyze business information that is not commonly examined
• Determine the impact of customer and employee satisfaction
• Better understand the trajectory of a business
• Help investors make more lucrative decisions
• Learn the importance of surveys and focus groups
• Determine if there is a market for your company’s products and services
• Determine the needs of the target market and audience
• More effectively understand management systems and how it impacts operations
• Gain a competitive advantage over other organizations and investors
BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Business analysis is a professional discipline of identifying business needs and determining

solutions to business problems. Solutions often include a software-systems development
component, but may also consist of process improvements, organizational change or strategic
planning and policy development. The person who carries out this task is called a business
analyst or BA.[2]

Business analysts do not work solely on developing software systems. But work across the
organization, solving business problems in consultation with business stakeholders. Whilst
most of the work that business analysts do today relate to software development/solutions,
this derives from the ongoing massive changes businesses all over the world are experiencing
in their attempts to digitize.

Although there are different role definitions, depending upon the organization, there does
seem to be an area of common ground where most business analysts work. The
responsibilities appear to be:

• To investigate business systems, taking a holistic view of the situation. This may
include examining elements of the organization structures and staff development
issues as well as current processes and IT systems.
• To evaluate actions to improve the operation of a business system. Again, this may
require an examination of organizational structure and staff development needs, to
ensure that they are in line with any proposed process redesign and IT system
development.
• To document the business requirements for the IT system support using appropriate
documentation standards.

In line with this, the core business analyst role could be defined as an internal consultancy
role that has the responsibility for investigating business situations, identifying and evaluating
options for improving business systems, defining requirements and ensuring the effective use
of information systems in meeting the needs of the business.
KPI AND PLANNING:

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the elements of your plan that express what you
want to achieve by when. They are the quantifiable, outcome-based statements you'll use to
measure if you're on track to meet your goals or objectives. Good plans use 5-7 KPIs to
manage and track the progress of their plan

Like many things in life, sometimes following a process or a series of steps creates the
structure you need to achieve a better outcome. Here is a series of steps that will help you
plan, create and track the right KPIs for you company and teams to use.

Step 1 – What are your Strategic Objectives?

A good way to create the steps is to start with your strategic objectives or aims. Why?
Because KPIs that don’t align with and support what you want to achieve run the risk of not
being fit for purpose, and not helping you to execute your strategy and achieve your goals. A
commonly used approach to setting Strategic Objectives is to use Strategy Maps and
Balanced Scorecard. Under the headings of Financial, Customer, Internal Processes &
Learning & Growth, you can set Strategic Objectives and plan KPIs for these.

Examples of Strategic Objectives:

• Be the fastest growing company in your category (financial)

• Deliver on our promises to stakeholders (financial)
• To be the most recommended in our category (customer)
• Have the fastest delivery in a category (process)
• Provide the most choice in a category (process)
• Be the fastest to resolve an insurance claim from when first notified (process)
• Build and maintain great teams (learning and development)

Brilliant, best & excellent are hard to measure

Be warned that if you set goals that are about being ‘brilliant’, ‘the best’ or even ‘excellent’
you may get caught up in long and drawn out debates on how you measure that. So having
goals that are measurable is a great starting point and will save you lots of time.

It’s a good sign if you can have between 3 and 6 of these objectives as that would mean
you’ve good coverage of the key areas of your business.
Step 2 – Enlist the right people to discuss KPIs

You are going to be talking to a variety of people within your team and in other teams
about KPI planning. Some of these people will like being involved and some might be
skeptical or even measurement resistant. Either way, metrics and measurement can’t be an
option and you’ll need the ‘right people on your bus’. There are also roles
in KPI management that need to be defined and assigned:

KPI owners

The person who is ultimately responsible for the KPI and it’s target level of achievement.

KPI collaborators

The people that are accountable and directly contribute towards the maintenance or
improvement of a KPI.

Data originators

These are the people that work closely with the data and make it available to be used. This
data might not be a KPI yet.

Data aggregators

These are the people that pull data from lots of sources and make it available to teams. This
could be your Accounts or IT team for example. They might combine data sources and / or
perform calculations on the data to create a KPI.

Data source

The source of the data whether that’s a person or a system like a BI system, software tool or
spreadsheet.

KPI Management Software

ZOKRI has KPI ownership and collaboration as part of the OKR software, in addition to
allowing KPIs to be updated from many sources, including manual updates. These KPIs can
have targets set, can be used as part of an OKR, are available for dashboards, and can be
included in check-in and meeting discussion.
Step 3 – Create the long list using a cascade or mindmap

When you’ve got the right people together you can start to plan your KPI examples. A good
way of discussing candidates for KPIs is to create a cascade of metrics. This can start with
your Strategic Objectives and at the outermost branches have your leading indicators.

For example, you can start with your objective / aim, discuss what the building blocks are to
achieving that, what the KPIs are that would measure that objective’s achievement, what the
drivers of those KPIs are, and which leading indicators might drive those.

In the example above, ‘fastest growing’ would be achieved via the building blocks of New
Business, Retention, and Expansion / Upsell of Accounts. New Revenue would be measured
by the ‘deals closed’, ‘deal contract value’, and ‘contract length’. If you were to consider the
KPIs that drive ‘more deals to be closed’ you might agree that you need ‘qualified leads’,
‘meetings’ and ‘quotes’ to be measured. ‘Qualified leads’ might be driven by ‘email
performance’ and outbound ‘call connects / discussions’.

You can see how this exercise can quickly lead to there being a lot of branches created. Using
mindmap tools of infinite whiteboard tools can help hugely.

Step 4 – Shortlist those that are important

Some of the KPIs you list available and some will need to be sourced and baselined.
Baselining KPIs is essentially the exercise where you get the first metrics. After this you can
start to think about setting targets.
Upon reflection, some of your KPIs might be seen as being unimportant, whether available or
not. The result of which will result in a shortlist. You might want to use your cascade to label
the KPIs you’re going to use and have now, and the ones you’re going to use and need to
baseline.

Step 5 – Start tracking & setting goals

You are now in a position to define, assign, source, and set targets for your KPIs. Some you
will decide need to be improved by increasing or decreasing the metric. Some might need
maintaining between a range.

When creating KPIs, the calculations, any limitations or assumptions made in reporting
should be explained in the narrative. ZOKRI has an area for this. Anyone looking at the
metric can then judge its reliability and make any necessary adjustments in their own analysis
and interpretation. And as far as trust and reliability goes, people are often as interested in the
trend of a KPI rather than the absolute performance being reported.

Part of the management process is deciding what the target value of a KPIs should be within a
specified date range which are usually standard planning periods like Quarters and Years.

What is not true is everything needs to be improved all of the time. Not every KPI can be a
priority to improve. The more priorities you have the less effort goes into the KPIs that need
the most attention. The effort required to improve what is already ‘great’ might also prove to
offer a marginal gain, versus focusing on what would have a greater likelihood of improving
performance.

The KPIs that are priorities to improve might then form a core part of SMART goals or
OKR (Objective and Key Results). The advantage OKR has is you can have groups of Key
Results as part of the Objective, often combining quality and quality KPIs for example, and
OKRs can cascade and align in a similar way to the KPI cascade.

Step 6 – Stay on track and agile

Setting and forgetting KPIs or goals is obviously a bad idea. KPIs need to be updated,
reviewed, discussed, kept agile, have work like projects and tasks aligned with them. These
processes can be done individually and in teams via check-ins and review meetings in OKR
software like ZOKRI,
If KPIs stop aligning with strategic objectives or stop working as KPIs, then they can be
abandoned as well. It’s important to continually evaluate what we measure and why.

Your strategies and objectives will of course develop over time. This makes it inappropriate
to have the same KPIs from period to periods. Your choice of KPIs is not set in stone.

Critical Components of a Successful Web Analytics Strategy

You might have already realized how important the web analytics measurement strategy is
when it comes to making business and marketing decisions based on the actionable data. In
fact, the latter is quite impossible without a consistent measurement and data culture in the
company. I’ve gathered, as I believe, the most crucial keys to a successful digital analytics
strategy below. These will trigger a sizable uplift in your paid marketing efficacy by
establishing a robust data measurement foundation.

Is your data actionable?

Speaking of the prerequisites, the reason you are doing this is to make your data actionable.
You are not just collecting it for the sake of having web analytics in place but utilizing it for
marketing effectiveness and UI optimization. Trust in the collected data among the key
stakeholders and its actionability is a valid justification for developing and implementing a
structured measurement approach.

Business Goals, KPIs and Conversions

Not a secret at all, of course, business goals should be directly translated into macro and
micro conversions in the online measurement strategy. It’s not necessary to go too far down
the rabbit hole, but ‘good enough’ approach would at least entail aligning on the macro
conversions, optimization objectives, transaction tracking accuracy, and the consistency
across multiple vendors if they exist in the mix.
This alignment means that your conversions should match the back-end CRM system (no
revenue discrepancy). The marketing conversions for Google Ads, Floodlights, Paid Social
should use the same triggering logic. Finally, your UI/UX optimization should be targeting
those confirmed macro conversions as the primary objective.
Now, what’s more important is that the web analytics team should know the business context,
not just the list of KPIs. Do include the people that put forward optimization proposals to the
higher-level business meetings to understand the dynamics better.
Measurement Governance

Don’t underestimate the necessity of documenting the measurement strategy. In the long run,
having a governance process is the main prerequisite for scalability and informed
advancement. Have your analytics team plan and develop a robust measurement plan (a
tracking brief) based on the laid out business requirements. This documentation should be
updated with every prod release for the sake of future references, regression testing, and
knowledge sharing across the company.

For a reliable data roadmap, make sure to have these items developed:

• Business requirements documentation including the major KPIs laid out (BRD)
• Measurement roadmap (tracking brief) with the tracking logic explained
• Metadata roadmap indicating the logic of the collected custom attributes
• Tag governance documentation describing your current TMS system state including
your 3P vendor tagging logic
• Event governance document listing all collected events, locations and corresponding
attributes
Meaningful Collection and Benchmarks

Don’t waste your time, money, and resources on tracking ‘everything’ unless you are running
ML on this data and require as many signals as possible to capture (trajectories analysis,
churn rates, next best actions, etc.). Tracking every single element on the site doesn’t always
lead to incremental value and will impose a significant burden on the implementation teams.
In all other respects, measure as much as it’s required by the business and enough to make an
insight leading to action.

• Start by tracking only essentials that can provide a valid input for UI/UX
optimization.
• Move faster, plan iterations, deploy analytics in sprints synched with the production
release schedule.
 • Set internal benchmarks for vital ‘Health of Business’ metrics.
• Act on the data that you collect or stop wasting time on meaningless reporting for the
sake of reporting.
• Make changes, improve, repeat.

The key takeaway here is that collection has to lead to action. Don’t accept any reports
without clear takeaways and subsequent next steps.

Integrations

Utilize platform integrations where necessary and aim to end-to-end approach in the web
measurement.

• Cross-platform data: aggregate the customer journey data across web and app
properties. You’ll only get meaningful information if these flows are unified by a user
identifier (deduplicate users)
• Integrations for unsampled data: use BQ and API connectors, sampled data is useless
if you want to be data-driven.
• Integrate the back-end: expand the funnel by mapping the online data to the offline
CRM pipelines, optimize against the objective that’s further down the pipeline.
• Integrate marketing cost and impression data: add the impression touchpoints into
the online conversion paths for a more sophisticated attribution, stream marketing cost
data into your web analytics solution. If native integrations aren’t available, use click
and impression trackers.

Regression Testing

The successful implementation doesn’t guarantee the stability and scalability of your web
analytics tracking. The analytics measurement team needs to run regression testing cycles
regularly to make sure web deployment doesn’t impact your tracking code.

• Run regression testing of analytics code in every release cycle during active analytics
implementation or at least once a quarter after all tracking is deployed for
sustainability reasons.
• Implement automation testing of the most critical features (e.g., ecommerce code on
the confirmation page)
Test, Analyze, Act and Repeat

As long as you have a reliable pipeline of data, make use of this information to run quick
HADI cycles in your organization. Keep your optimization initiatives as fast and cheap as
you can and aim for a shorter turnaround with clear next steps to apply changes.

Hypothesis > Action > Data > Insight

1. Start the cycle with the hypothesis laid out in an “If.. — then..” format. Not all of
them require testing, and you can choose those that have the most impact on the
business (or a business growth metric) and require the least effort (cost less).
2. Act on the accepted hypothesis, run A/B testing to confirm the lift in the chosen
metric over the original state.
3. Collect the data to analyze the delta of the success metrics. If your technology allows
tracking multiple objectives, have several critical KPIs analyzed.
4. Generate insights based on the collected data. If the hypothesis is confirmed — scale
the change, if not — analyze what didn’t go as expected and why.

Keep continuously running the HADI cycles to provide the business with incremental value
steadily over time. Ideally, this process should never stop.

Final Thoughts

In my experience, things went wrong when at least one of these pillars wasn’t paid enough
attention: Process, Governance, Sustainability, and Actionability.

Put the right process and people in place, manage and document your measurement program,
verify its stability over time, and act on the data you collect. This will allow trust in the data
and provide the business and marketing with incremental value add.