Archive for February, 2008
Creation of KPI Web Analytics back to basic series
Although it took me long to continue the series but here’s the next in the Web Analytics Back to basic series.
Here’s what was covered in series before
- Web Analytics Back to Basic Series – An Intro to the series
- Web Analytics Terminology – An Intro to important Terms and metrics involved in Web Analytics
- Web Analytics Technologies – A Overview of Web Analytics Technologies Used.
Key Performance Indicators – KPI
Definition:A KPI is a measure of an essential outcome of a particular activity.
The most important aspect of any performance indicator is relationship between the current and previous measurement. This ratio is what makes them key because then we know when to act upon them. All true KPIs drive action
Without Key Performance Indicators it can be an overwhelming task to share relevant and actionable data with various stakeholders within an organization.
Importance of Key Performance Indicators:
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are financial and non-financial metrics used to help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals. KPIs are used in Business Intelligence to assess the present state of the business and to prescribe a course of action. The act of monitoring KPIs in real-time is known as business activity monitoring. KPIs are frequently used to “value” difficult to measure activities such as the benefits of leadership development, engagement, service, and satisfaction. KPIs are typically tied to an organization’s strategy
What is a good Key Performance Indicators & Steps in Determining Key Performance Indicators
Remember KPI’s are Metrics, but not all metrics are KPI’s. There are no set number for having KPI’s but anything between 5 to 8 should help you summarize (in all aspects) your Business Goals. However there’s no thumb rule and you can have as many.
Thanks to Dennis Mortensen who recently spoke about how a metrics qualifies as KPI, he discusses some of the characterstics for KPI. Here are the 7 of them.
- A KPI should echo Organizational Goal
- KPI is decided by the Management
- KPI Provides Context
- KPI Creates meaning on all organizational levels
- KPI is based on legitimate data
- KPI is easily understood
- KPI leads to action
In Addition, creating KPI’s using Top-Down approach always help
More Posts and Articles on KPI’s
- Dennis Mortensen
- Avinash Kaushik
- Hurol Inan
- Anil Batra
- Eric Peterson
Books:
The Big Book of KPIs – Eric Peterson
References: Information and articles from
Did i miss any post, article or books? Add on via comments your favorite posts/articles related to KPI
Omniture Summit 2008 Salt Lake City, Are you attending?
If yes! Drop me a note and I’ll drop by to say hi 
Omniture Summit 2008 is all set to happen early march, Personally this will be my first experience at the summit.
Although I could not make it to the last year version. I read most of the whitepapers (Omniture Users you can find them at the help section) and found it really useful.
Omniture summit 2008 has a great agenda, the summit being the World’s largest Web analytics and online marketing community-sharing case studies and best practice. In Span of 3 days, Omniture summit will have more than 40 sessions tailored to the needs of the Omniture Community:
Some of the Keynote Speakers include Lance Armstrong and Seth Godin
There’ll also be best practices knowledge sharing on
- A/B & Multivariate testing (MVT)
- Video, Social Media
- Search marketing
- Email marketing and Multi-channel marketing
Some of the sessions that’ll be interesting to attend and i will try my best to cover all i can from Salt lake city.
1.) Web 2.0 Track: Video & Social Media
Leveraging User-Generated Content to Increase Consumer Interaction and Loyalty
User Generated content (UGC) can increase customer interaction and loyalty on your site. learn how to maximize UGC in order to drive more content consumption, content creation and other site business goals. We’ll also talk about how to determine which media sources and customer segments tend to drive more UGC.
2.) Optimizing the Customer Experience using Rich Media Technologies
The use of Streaming Media, Rich Internet Apps, Blogs, RSS, Widgets, and more is rapidly increasing, but do you understand their real impact and how to use these emerging technologies to more fully engage your customer? Join us for an interactive session with industry innovators and case studies that highlight a three-step approach to achieving higher ROI and an optimized customer experience.
3.) Use SiteCatalyst 14 to Measure and Optimize Video Consumption
New video features in SiteCatalyst 14 inform you about which videos are being watched, (even which parts of the video are being watched), and how effectively video contributes to conversion. See how easy video is to track as the data simply collects to a single server. If you have video or are considering it for your site, this is a session you won’t want to miss.
4.) Site Optimization Track
Testing and Targeting: New Approaches for Turning Analytics into Action
More customer engagement means more yield for every dollar invested. Optimization, fortunately, no longer takes big IT development projects, an advanced degree in statistics or months to get results. With Omniture’s integrated testing and targeting suite, marketers can now easily control and optimize the visitor experience using strategies such as A/B testing, multivariate testing, and behavioral targeting. In this session, Omniture experts will give an overview of the most popular approaches to optimization and when each should be used.5.) Analytics into Action: A/B and Multivariate Testing with Omniture Offermatica
Online marketers have aggressive goals and numerous ideas to try, but IT priorities and conventional wisdom often get in the way. Learn how marketers are taking control and using the speed of A/B and multivariate testing to acquire, engage and convert more customers.
6.) Shortening the Cycle of Analysis to Action with Site Search
The power to significantly drive revenue is at your fingertips. When analytics and “searchandising” come together, the opportunity for nimble and effective merchandising decisions and actions increase substantially. Mercado will talk about the benefits of integrating valuable business metrics into merchandising practices, and why automating this process not only saves online retailers time and money, but also generates more revenue.
Behavioral Targeting on Your Site: Deliver Relevant Content, Engage More Customers, and Measure the Uplift
Presented by Brent Hieggelke & Brigham Graf
Targeting relevant content to visitors enables Web sites to listen and respond to customers in an intelligent manner, producing significant uplift in customer engagement through to conversion. Site behavioral targeting is an important strategy for delivering customer-centric experiences. This session will discuss the advantages of segment based targeting and 1-to-1 predictive targeting-how they work, what dataset is used for decision making, how uplift is measured and how content is controlled.
As i look forward to attend this session which certainly is great knowledge sharing platform, and also a chance to to meet some of the industry experts. So if your around! drop me a note
Anil
Are you a Web Analytics Beginner? Read this!
June Dershewitz wrote a article on Web Analytics association site, The “title” caught my attention and when i read that i could probably relate to my early days in web analytics. Tittled Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Web Analytics .
Here’s the three things which probably i can relate to most!
Excerpts from the Article
- Ahem, what is this thing you call a “Visit”? Know your standard web metric definitions by heart, and be able to recite them concisely for people who ask. They will ask.
- Dirty, dirty, dirty. Numbers won’t match, they won’t add up, they won’t make sense, sometimes they won’t even exist. Know how much dirt you’re willing to live with, then accept it and move on.
- You will learn to love the query string. You will come to see it as a beautiful haiku. You will know it backwards and forwards. You will repeatedly explain its usage to people who need to append campaign codes to URLs.
So if your a beginner read the Article, and use it as a things you need to be aware off and which you might encounter in your web analytics career path.
And ah! let us know your experience in your early days
Anil
Web Analytics Team Structure and Communication Startegies
Judah over at Web Analytics Demystified wrote about an Team Structure for Web Analytics, and i agree with his thoughts on web analytics team structure. Many articles and best practices guide for Web Analytics governance and forming a new team, but at the end of the day it depends on Company size, Structure , Process, Priorities, and of course budget.
Here’s in brief of what Judah talks about how a web analytics team should look
- An Executive Sponsor: A Hippo (Highest Paid Person in the Organisation)
- A Web Analyst: This person is most likely you. You may be an MBA, a techie, a marketer, an IT person, or someone who was promoted into the position
- A Technology Expert: A computer science graduate! or web Technologist
Here’s also more about related topic, this time written by Eric Peterson over his blog. This is a 2 part series on Web Analytics Communication Strategies.
In the Part 1, Eric speaks about first three steps
- Defining Business Objectives
- Define who owns analytics at your company
- Define your analytics organizational structure
In Part 2, following is covered:
- Determining Your Key Performance Indicators and Critical Factors
- Determine How you will Deliver Analysis
- Putting all your information together
How to decide if a metric qualifies as key performance indicators
Dennis Mortensen recently did a presentation on how to decide if a metric qualifies as a KPI – Key performance indicator.
Here’s an overview of what he speaks about
- How does one decide if a Metric Qualifies as a Key Performance Indicator? ..and if so, what are the characteristics of an excellent online marketing KPI?
- 7 KPI Characterstics
- Examples
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