Sep 25th 09 Posted by Fritz McDonald in Digital, Featured Articles

Why Should You Worry about Analytics?

Recently, Stamats hired Matt Arnold as our new Interactive Media Consultant. Matt brings an extensive background in interactive media, including more than six years at Capella University where he led communication strategy and managed the online experience. In addition, he has successfully led interactive and technology projects for the National Marrow Donor Program, Medtronic, UnitedHealth, Allstate, and Discover Card. Prior to joining Stamats, Matt was an online channel manager for Best Buy.

One of the many areas Matt will focus on for Stamats is Web analytics, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce him by asking a few questions.

1. Perhaps we could start by having you define Web analytics…

The Web Analytics Association’s definition is:

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

That definition succinctly defines the topic, however as interactive media and an institution’s Web site continue to play a more important role in integrated marketing efforts, Web analytics needs to account for issues of people, process, and technology.  The technology issues may be the easiest to recognize— these involve what reporting tool to use, what it does, and how data is gathered on the site.  Tool possibilities can range from free with options, such as Google Analytics, Yahoo Web Analytics, and Piwik, to paid solutions from companies such as Coremetrics or Omniture.

As powerful as the analytics tool may be, you still need someone or a team of people to manage the technology to leverage its potential.  They not only need to be trained in analytics and reporting functionality, they also need to have the ability and authority to influence stakeholders within the institution.

The people and the technology need to be supported by strong processes, especially around reporting, information sharing, and taking action to continually improve your online presence and effectiveness.  If you have a bad process, your technology will simply help you mess up faster.

In short, Web analytics is not just technology or reporting.  Web analytics efforts need to be tied to institutional goals, be action-oriented, and be supported by people, process, and technology.

2. Matt, why is Web analytics important to our clients?

Web analytics is incredibly important, because it provides us with the potential for a rich understanding of what our constituents or key audiences are doing on our Web site and helps us determine how to better leverage interactive media for recruiting, marketing, and fundraising.

Everything on our Web sites has the potential to be measured, which can be a blessing and a curse.  The key for effective management of our online presence is to determine what key things we need to measure, and more importantly how that data and information can drive continuous improvement, while not drowning in a sea of data.

Pragmatically, when compared to other initiatives, Web analytics allows college and university Web teams to demonstrate numbers more clearly to institution leaders and stakeholders. A commitment to analytics will enable institutional Web teams to operationalize key metrics, make sense of the data, and convert that data into actionable information.

3. How can incorporating Web analytics into their Web development process impact our clients’ ROI?

In short, Web analytics can help impact ROI by determining more effective institutional marketing spending. For example, an institution could use analytics to support the reallocation of money to higher-performing activities from the budget of underperforming.  I believe a focus on analytics will help Web teams better understand how visitors use their sites, areas where their design may be hampering conversion efforts, and most importantly begin to demonstrate ROI for their efforts.

The notion of incorporating analytics into the development process is very important.  Web teams need to incorporate an analytics mindset into the design and development phases of their Web process.  Along with overall Web design, the analytics process should be centered on the pillars of institutional objectives and visitor goals.

Getting to the how—Web teams can start simple, set baselines and start to look for trends.   Make more of the “right” things measurable.  Be clear on your call to action for your visitors.  Make it easy for people to interact and transact with your site.  Use reports to understand the current state and continuously drive improvements to meet institutional goals.

When other activities are used to drive traffic to your site, look at the effective use of landing pages or unique URLs to trace traffic sources and measure their effectiveness, and expand this beyond the site to all interactive media.  I think Web teams should work to incorporate ROI into all interactive initiatives.

Matt will be speaking about analytics and other emerging Web trends at Stamats’ upcoming SIM Tech Conference and Stamats Integrated Marketing Graduate Student Conference, November 10-12, 2009 in Boston. We hope to see you there!

A question to the readers of the blog:

How many of you are using analytics to guide your web design and marketing processes? What kinds of success or challenges are you experiencing?

Photo by kurtxio