Measuring the success of your metrics sounds like something from a Möbius strip, doesn’t it? But investing lots of money in reporting tools and testing and analytics and all the rest just doesn’t make any sense if it doesn’t produce business results. Fortunately, some of the biggest of Big Thinkers have been thinking about this for some time – and are sharing those thoughts with all of us. Here are the best ideas I’ve seen lately on developing a complete framework for web analytics to drive your business forward:
Leading off is Thomas McMahon at TopRank who offers up 10 reasons analytics are failing as well as suggesting tools that can help. While Thomas could use some more context on why his suggested tools help, his last three points in particular hit the problem squarely on the head. Fortunately, others have picked up the thread, such as…
One great example of how companies tie business results and web analytics together comes from this 3-part series from a few years ago [part 1, part 2, part 3] exploring how a catalog merchandiser can integrate web analytics and a catalog matchback analysis. Very cool.
And, just to wrap things up, this TED talk from Rory Sutherland looks at how details make all the difference. Which is the real goal of analysis in the first place: finding the details that make a meaningful difference.
Have a great weekend, folks. Catch you right back here next week.
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Sure, measuring the success of your online marketing can be tough. But, you know more than you think you do. Seriously. You’ve got plenty of simple, low-cost ways to measure your success. How?
Ask your customers. Surveys don’t have to be sophisticated. Just ask your customers where they found out about you. Was it on your website? Facebook? Or maybe your last email? Even better, ask whether they’d recommend you to a friend when they’re settling up. If the answer to that second question is “no,” you’ll want to ask them why not, too.
Coupons. Put a printable coupon on your website good for a discount or value-added offer. While it doesn’t always scale well, it will give you some insights into whether your message is reaching the right customer.
None of these are foolproof. And they require some thought about what you’re looking to measure. But, if it helps you make better business decisions, isn’t a little bit of information better than none at all? Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today. Or subscribe via email. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.
Do you check your analytics dashboard every day? Yeah, me neither. We all mean to do it. We know it’s important. But, real life – helping customers, dealing with employees, what-have-you – sometimes takes priority. That’s what makes Google’s new “Analytics Intelligence” and Analytics Alerts so handy.
Basically, the new features within Google Analytics allow you to define events – a big jump in traffic, or worse, a big decline – and receive alerts when those events occur. Here’s what they say about it on the Google Analytics blog:
Analytics Intelligence: We’re launching the initial phase of an algorithmic driven Intelligence engine to Google Analytics. Analytics Intelligence will provide automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods. For instance, Intelligence could call out a 300% surge in visits from YouTube referrals last Tuesday or let you know bounce rates of visitors from Virginia dropped by 70% two weeks ago. Instead of you having to monitor reports and comb through data, Analytics Intelligence alerts you to the most significant information to pay attention to, saving you time and surfacing traffic insights that could affect your business. Now, you can spend your time actually taking action, instead of trying to figure out what needs to be done.
Custom Alerts make it possible for you to tell Google Analytics what to watch for. You can set daily, weekly, and monthly triggers on different dimensions & metrics, and be notified by email or right in the user interface when the changes actually occur
And here’s Google’s video that explains how to use them:
What do you think? Will Intelligence and Analytics Alerts help your business? Tell us about it in the comments.
Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.
Measuring the success of your metrics sounds like something from a Möbius strip, doesn’t it? But investing lots of money in reporting tools and testing and analytics and all the rest just doesn’t make any sense if it doesn’t produce business results. Fortunately, some of the biggest of Big Thinkers have been thinking about this for some time – and are sharing those thoughts with all of us. Here are the best ideas I’ve seen lately on developing a complete framework for web analytics to drive your business forward:Excellent references, all.
is pretty awesome, too.
