*Update 9/7/2023
Are your digital efforts accomplishing everything you intend for your business and brand? If you are not sure, it is probably time for a measurement plan for your website and supporting digital solutions. This article highlights an introduction to a strategic website measurement plan as well as a five-step process to help get it right.
What is a Website Measurement Plan?
A measurement plan is a thorough assessment and strategy within digital solutions that establish the specific ways business goals will be measured. It begins with a top-line business objective that gets broken down into measurable goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics, and ways to analyze those metrics to inform impactful business strategy.
Why Does This Matter?
According to an annual survey of chief marketing officers, companies spend around 12% of their overall budget, every year, on marketing. Certainly, all of those companies will eventually ask, “Were our marketing dollars spent wisely?”
Clear website business objectives should run parallel to, and be recognized as core contributors toward, overall business objectives. Lessons learned from a strategic website measurement plan should intelligently inform future marketing efforts and priorities, both online and offline.
For business websites, excellent data analysis improves search engine optimization (SEO), content, paid traffic, email, conversions, and every other aspect of digital marketing performance. User and conversion trends should help prioritize new website content development. Smart, user-centered content development and thought leadership build SEO success.
Digging into the Data
Follow the Steps of Your Important Site Visitors
Utilize Google Analytics 4 and any other website analytics measurement resources available to your business to help decide what you need to measure. If we want to mine datasets to discover insights that fuel business performance, we need to identify the key data and implement the right tracking to capture it.
Looker Studio is a free tool that can help uncover specifics about who is doing what on your website and why. You may want to run a leak-finder report within Looker Studio to show the top pages of your site where users are dropping out.
Personas
Personas are not a marketing fad. Understanding the people with whom business is done has been a fundamental practice of every successful business from the beginning of time. Personas provide businesses an opportunity to sharpen their focus on their specific audience(s). As personas are considered, identify the primary ways that reach, engagement, and conversions occur. For each, what should be measured?
Data examples:
- Website traffic
- Social media likes, comments, and shares
- Video views
- Contact form completions
- Event registrations
- Subscriptions (newsletter)
- Content information submissions for gated content
- Transactions
- Revenue
Five Step Website Measurement Plan
1. Why do you have a website?
Unwavering confidence in the answer to this fundamental question is a great place to start. Identify what is important. Once that is clearly determined, you are on your way toward a successful website measurement plan.
Examples of “Why do you have a website?” answers:
- Sell Products Online
- Create a Relationship with Customers
- Provide a Platform for Software or Services
- Sell Placements for Ad Revenue
2. Create goals
Goals drive the achievement of clearly established business objectives. Do you want to increase brand awareness within new demographics? Do you want to increase new users to the website by 20% next quarter? Do you want to increase ecommerce revenue by 10% next holiday season?
Goals should be all of three things: 1. actionable, 2. measurable, and 3. understandable.
3. Select KPIs
Your KPIs should be digital outcomes that help you gauge the success of your goals. Pick KPIs that unquestionably influence the performance of your business.
Examples:
Goal: Increase lead volume via online form completions
- KPI – form abandonment rate
- KPI – cost per lead
Goal: Drive online revenue via paid subscriptions
- KPI – % of new users
- KPI – Application Starts
4. Set benchmarks
Benchmarks (or targets) are a numeric value that enable measurement of goal success. Use historical data to choose initial benchmarks.
Goal: Increase lead volume via online form completions
- KPI – form abandonment rate (benchmark – 10% form abandonment)
- KPI – cost per lead (benchmark – 5% cost per lead)
Goal: Drive online revenue via paid subscriptions
- KPI – % of new users (10% new subscribers)
- KPI – application starts (15% application starts)
5. Create segments
Define segments that help you uncover additional insights and causation.
Goal: Increase lead volume via online form completions
- Segment – acquisition channel (paid, organic, direct, email)
Goal: Drive online revenue via paid subscriptions
- Segment – device categories (desktop, mobile, and tablet)
Make Adjustments from Analysis
Now it is time to maximize your measurement strategy to make informed data-driven decisions that will propel your business forward.
Is measurement strategy an area where you and your business could use some help?
- Analytics Technical Audit
- Google Analytics Set Up
- Tag Management Set Up
- Measurement Strategies
- Dashboards
- Third-Party Service Tracking and Reporting
What's Next?
The data and analytics professionals at Americaneagle.com have helped some of the world’s most recognized brands to successfully set up, or reimagine, a website measurement plan. We are here for you too! Our analytics consulting services team has extensive experience working with clients to identify and set up the right measurement strategies to support business success. Contact us today to speak with a data and analytics expert.
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