Fundamentals of Measurement: Beyond Views and Visits

This blog is the first in a series on the essentials of becoming a data-driven organization. These topics are inspired by conversations that commonly occur in Webtrends training classes.

Do you ever get the feeling that people just don’t care about what you’re reporting on?

You work hard to make the analytics reports beautiful and easy to understand, and yet you don’t get so much as a “nice job Steve.” You’re providing exactly what they asked for, with benchmarks and dashboards, but then the data just lies there, and nothing more happens with it. I regularly hear feedback like this during the classes I teach at Webtrends.

Think about this for a moment: how many of your reports lead to action? I strongly believe that there is no point in measuring something that cannot or will not lead to action. While the number of visits to the product content page is an interesting metric, does it drive change? If that number doubles next month, will that kick off some action?

In a Webtrends class on creating Key Performance Indicators, I recommend that an important, fundamental step of a measurement strategy is making sure that each metric has at least one action tied to it. While it can be challenging to move from reporting on results to driving action, it’s a critical one for measuring success. It can transform your organization and put you on the path to marketing glory.

So how and where to start?

In the next blog post in this Fundamentals of Measurement series, I’ll describe how to go about making this change.

In the meantime, please visit the Webtrends Documentation Center and download Guide to Web Analytics.