Posted on 7 April 2008 by Jack No Comments

Actionable KPI reporting

Web analysts out there, add this to your list of metrics: how often do your web analytics reports end up in the waste-bin unread or misunderstood?

Your primary goal as a web analyst should be to reduce this measure to zero. Question is, how?

Before you even pull your analytics software out of its box, you need to identify what metrics different people in your organisation need.

Sit down with key stakeholders and agree on a defined set of metrics. For example, your marketing manager will want to see campaign response rate, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition; while executives will want to understand, in dollar terms, how much the online channel is contributing to the business.

The article Web Analytics Reporting Framework outlines possible KPI reports by job roles, and reiterates that a one-size-fits-all approach to reporting will not work.

You should acknowledge that KPIs change – your web governance model should include strategies for monitoring and updating KPIs to reflect changing business objectives.

Generate reports on the metrics identified, and then get stuck into the analysis. Remember, reporting is only a fraction of the job – it’s the analysis and subsequent action that counts in terms of meaningful business outcomes.

You should be looking for trends and shifts in metrics, and then the broader business picture. What caused a shift? Why did sales drop in this month? Why did the conversion rate suddenly spike?

Analytics versus reporting highlights the importance of asking these ‘how and why’ questions to get the most out of the reports that web analytics generate. It shows the typical investigations for a variety of metrics by job roles in an organisation.

One of the most common misconceptions about actionable analysis is that a shift in a metric equates to a ‘good or bad’, ‘black or white’ answer – for example, the campaign response rate on a new marketing campaign is lower than last year’s; hence the product isn’t as popular.

This doesn’t take into account context – what if this year’s campaign faced off against an aggressive campaign run by your biggest competitor? What if this year’s campaign was sent out to everyone on your database, instead of a targeted sub-set as per last year?

It’s important to remember that actionable KPI reporting generally means that you’ll be doing deeper analysis before you get to the ‘action’. If a metric trends upwards or downwards, it provides the catalyst for further analysis.

Further reading

The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Eric T. Peterson

Actionable Web Analytics by Jason Burby and Shane Atchison