The web analytics business is booming. Which means a proliferation of sleek digital weapons all promising to provide insight into the ROI of your organization’s digital marketing. But measuring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are less about what tools you use and more about establishing clear benchmarks. Before you define your organization’s goals, you need to define your terms.
Define what you mean by a conversion
A “conversion” can be as basic as getting someone to visit your landing page or as complex as making all the steps involved in purchasing your product or service. Determining what you mean by a conversion is fundamental. Start by asking, “What is our goal for marketing on the Web?” You’d be surprise how many people never stop to ask this basic question. But if you never ask it, metrics have no benchmarks. Without a clear business objective, measuring success is impossible.
Define what a conversion is worth
Conversion data can be straightforward––the sale of a product, for instance. Or it can be as involved as generating leads through some sort of conversion funnel. Defining what a conversion is worth requires a clear understanding of objectives: goals, KPIs and metrics. Determining how your digital marketing generates revenue is clear-cut in an e-commerce site. In the context of a lead gen site, however, establishing metrics is trickier. Take the time to plot this out.
Choose your tools
There are dozens of these web analytic tools out there. Some are quite technical, others, less so. Dominating the market is Google Analytics. This is a foundational tool. After all, Google knows a thing or two about how traffic moves about the digital landscape. Google Analytics provides unparalleled intuitive use, segmenting traffic by channel. With its latest update, Google has grouped its reporting segments into the categories of Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion.
Google Analytics offers relevant conversion features like Goals, Funnels, Visitor Flow, Multi-Channel Funnel and Attribution. Attribution is what most digital marketers are really after. Once you’ve identified logical Goals in Google Analytics, the system applies that information seamlessly to the Acquisition and Behavior segments, making it easy to understand how each channel is performing over time.
Webtrends is another analytics tool that has value. Unlike Google Analytics, this digital weapon places emphasis on quantifying the quality of the user experience. The Webtrends platform offers a limitless suite of customizable metrics, which can be helpful in the context of mobile and social measurement. The integrated heat map system can provide powerful insights into key user behaviors responsible for conversion.
Other platforms like KiSSmetrics and FoxMetrics take a more people-focused approach to tracking conversion.
Their systems are designed to deliver intelligence on visitor-focused data, rather than broad stats like Google Analytics or Webtrends provide. These sorts of tools are particularly valuable for businesses that leverage CRMs for lead management.
No matter which weapons you choose, make sure the data is actionable. Shiny charts and graphs are all well and good, but data is worthless unless it can effectively shed light on how your brand is achieving its marketing goals. Take the time to define your goals up front and move on from there.
Tracking digital conversions is as much art as it is science. If your organization would like guidance in its web marketing and lead tracking give us a toll-free call at 866.642.7559.
We are a Dallas Advertising Agency with expertise in digital marketing.
