Successful energy and utility businesses have always prioritized confident measurement. The modern transition to a digitally connected industry has elevated the importance of website analytics. Are your digital efforts accomplishing everything you intend for your business and customers?
If you are not sure, it is probably time for a website measurement plan. This article shares an introduction to a strategic website measurement plan, as well as a five-step process to help you get it right.
What is a Website Measurement Plan?
A website measurement plan is a thorough digital assessment and strategy that establishes 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. All of those companies will eventually ask, “Were our marketing dollars spent wisely?”
Clear website objectives should run parallel to, and contribute toward, overall business objectives. Lessons learned from a strategic website measurement plan should intelligently inform future marketing efforts and priorities, both online and offline.
A successful website measurement plan helps brands improve search engine optimization (SEO), content priorities, paid traffic, email campaigns, conversions, and every other aspect of digital marketing performance.
Measurement Strategy Tools and Data Visualization
Utilize any of the website analytics measurement resources available to your business to help decide what you need to measure. To uncover insights that fuel business performance, you need to first identify key data and where it is tracked.
These resources may also provide free tools that can help brands visualize who is doing what on their website and why. For example, a leak-finder report can show the top pages where website users are dropping out.
Business intelligence platforms that effectively aggregate data sources are also useful to help brands isolate KPIs and visualize real-time performance and trends. Data sources can range from locally stored files, network databases, or cloud data.
Persona Development and Segmentation
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.
Marketing personas are fictional representations of your brand’s ideal customers and significant relationships that are based on research and data. They help align marketing strategies with business objectives. Trends for engagement and conversion with specific personas is typically different from overall trends. Personas provide businesses an opportunity to sharpen their focus on their specific audiences.
As personas are considered for your business, identify the primary ways that reach, engagement, and conversions occur. For each, what should be measured?
- Website traffic
- Social media likes, comments, and shares
- Video views
- Contact form completions
- Event registrations
- Subscriptions (newsletter)
- Content information submissions for gated content
- Transactions
Five Step Website Measurement Strategy
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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)
-
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.
Ongoing Analytics Reporting and Analysis
When a heathy business identifies opportunities to work smarter, the next step is to make that a consistent practice. A solid measurement strategy includes a clearly defined cadence for ongoing reporting and analysis.
Developing a Reporting Schedule:
There are four essential considerations to be made within a reporting schedule. They are audience, message, mode, and timing. Who needs what report when, and how will they receive it?
There may be a designated cadence as frequent as daily or weekly for dashboards or reports specific to individual work groups. Optimally, there is a quarterly to annual review of all business analytics across a coordinated, multidiscipline leadership group.
Creating Effective Reports for Actionable Insights:
Assessing the reports should a consistent practice within an ongoing measurement strategy for your business. Are the visualizations of available data representing the most critical KPIs? Are trends clear and actionable? Are teams using the reports to execute confident strategies and campaigns to grow business success?
If the answers to the questions above are not a resounding “yes,” then it may be time to take another look at ever-evolving business intelligence tools.
Start your Website Measurement Strategy
In today’s digital-first economy, measuring the effectiveness of your business website is critically important. Don’t delay! Now is the best time to begin, or reprioritize, your website measurement strategy.
About the Author
Rex Paisley is a Senior Marketing Specialist with Americaneagle.com. With contributions consistently centered around website and digital marketing solutions, he is a career creative professional who has authored, designed, and developed marketing assets across a wide range of industries. A competitive spirit, he enjoys unpacking the success factors behind the many business wins with clients of Americaneagle.com.
Americaneagle.com and Liferay have partnered together as sponsors for Utility Analytics Week 2024.
UA Week 2024 is brought to you by Utility Analytics Institute and is produced by Endeavor Business Media.
