Search Engine Marketing: How to Successfully Measure Your Web Site Analytics, Part 3

Staff Responsibly A lone web analyst asked to support 100
information recipients is destined to fail. Organizations should staff
one web analyst for every twelve key data consumers. Experience
indicates that when substantial demands are placed on a web analyst,
he will spend all available time addressing the reporting needs of the
organization to ensure that no one is dissatisfied. Yet, this leaves
no time for any real analysis or change recommendations. Companies
that behave in this manner often find the net result to be thousands
of dollars invested in web analytics that returns a large quantity of
information and very little measurable site improvement.Disseminate
Information Regularly, but in Small Doses Decision makers do not have
time to review 100 slides, 15 tab notebooks or 50 online reports. Most
times, they only want to know the conclusion, why you want to
implement the action, and, the resulting numbers.If you have proven
yourself through a series of winning projects, each decision point
should move more quickly than the previous one. If you are not yet at
this stage in your organization, you need your decision makers to gain
an initial comfort level with what you are doing. To do this, feed
them small snippets of information on a regular basis. This could be a
daily report of the one to five key performance indicators most
essential to the business or a weekly email with the three bullets
that the decision maker needs to know.Regardless, deliver it
regularly, but in small doses. This will keep the emphasis on metrics
fresh in their minds without inundating them with data. Further, make
sure that you hold a regular meeting with all the key players to
inform them of your next set of recommendations and test plans.
Organizations are often more open to new ideas in this setting than
through ad hoc recommendations every time an epiphany hits. If these
meetings aren't regular and scheduled, it is easy for the importance
of web analysis to be lost. By using this forum to communicate your
ideas, you will reinforce your authority to drive change and to keep
everyone on the same page.Some organizations haven't found any value
from web metrics because they aren't acting on the data. Some
organizations may be getting some good information and making strong
recommendations, but lack the process and focal point necessary to see
changes through to implementation. For some organizations, the problem
is that little has been done to convince decision makers of the value
of the recommendations.Companies who have determined the value in
using and integrating web analytics have done so because they not only
will integrate it into the marketing, but know how easy it is to
measure the improvements. They have an individual or team that is a
strong focal point to work with business managers and deliver only the
most appropriate information. And, they engage in planning and action
by developing hypotheses, testing these hypotheses and making
iterative adjustments. For these organizations web analytics powers
their success.