4 Steps to Build a Web Analytics Measurement Plan

If you have been using web analytics for a long time, then you know that it can hugely impact how you do digital marketing. It is a fact that people believe that web analytics is the most important component of any digital marketing strategy. However, before you start implementing it, you must first understand what to measure and how to measure it.

According to W3tech, 65% of websites use one or another web analytics tool, where the leading data provider is Google Analytics.

There are no single rules when it comes to creating an analytics strategy, as it will take a long time to analyze and determine how your business is reporting its data. Before you start implementing an analytics strategy, it’s important that you thoroughly understand what the strategy is all about. One of the most important factors that you should consider is the measurement plan.

A measurement plan is a document that describes the main goals of your business and how it will support those goals. It can help you keep track of all of your metrics and improve the efficiency of your operations. Unfortunately, many companies struggle to measure their goals.

Many businesses fail to measure their marketing effectiveness because they are not sure where their strategy is headed and how they are going to achieve their goals. Having a measurement plan can help them make informed decisions and improve the efficiency of their operations. One of the most crucial factors you can consider when creating a measurement plan is ensuring that every activity is tracked and analyzed.

There’s no need to go too sophisticated with your measurement plan. As my practice shows, it will be enough to have a simple Google or Excel sheet. Remember that as business goals change and adapt, your measurement plan should also be updated. Thus, schedule a few regular revision sessions throughout the year to keep your plan up-to-date.

Want to start with a template? Fair enough. I recommend downloading the template made by Stela Yordanova, a Web Analytics specialist:

#1. Refresh your website objectives

According to Andrew Kucheriavy, the founder and CEO of Intechnic, the use of the SMART model is a great way to set goals and improve a website's performance. It can help executives make informed decisions and achieve their goals. A clear and consistent goal is also important to ensure the site is successful. You can easily start setting goals using the SMART model by downloading a free template.

Here are the main goals that are typically achieved by each of these departments:

• Marketing — drive traffic, engage prospects, generate leads and re-engage existing customers;
• Sales — help close sales by validation and supporting sales team communications;
• Customer Support — improve customer satisfaction through better service;
• Webmasters — simplify and optimize content updates and website management;
• IT — integrate with other systems; meet security, performances and scalability requirements;
• Operations — reduce costs by streamlining and automating workflows and tasks;
• HR — attract and recruit new employees and support current employees;
• C-suite — grow the company’s bottom line and increase profitability.

#2. It all goes with KPIs

Before you start creating your measurement plan, ensure that you clearly understand your main business objectives and the KPIs that will be used to measure them. Having a well-defined set of goals can help you make informed decisions and improve the efficiency of your organization. For instance, if you want to grow your customer base and increase revenue, you should have a plan that is aligned with these goals.

This may include the number of purchases, the average order value, the number of free trials, and the conversion rate. Having a clear understanding of your goals can help you make informed decisions and improve the effectiveness of your business.

#3. Connect with Web Analytics metrics

Next, you should align your business goals with web analytics metrics. Once you have a set of goals and KPIs that you want to implement, it’s time to start translating these into metrics. There are a variety of metrics that can be used to measure these goals, and this is already subject to a Web Analytics tool you use.

For example, a high-traffic site may demand more tracking abilities and thus have another tool than Google Analytics. As W3techs reported, Finteza, for instance, might be a better option for a website with high traffic:

Finteza is a website analytics tool that helps digital marketers maximize their conversions. It can analyze various aspects of a website and its users, such as its traffic quality and user behavior or even low-performing content on your site.

The Lighthouse report from Finteza is a tool that helps website owners keep track of their projects and improve their ranking in search engines. It can also help them remove vulnerabilities and bring web pages in line with Google's recommendations. It assesses your website by:

1. Performance. The speed test measures how fast your site loads compared to the load speed of other websites. For instance, a score of 100 indicates that your project is faster than almost all of the sites, while a score of 50 means that it is more likely to load faster than 75% of them.

2. Accessibility. The report is focused on assessing a website's overall usability. It looks into factors such as the code's semantically correct and well-structured, as well as the link styling and background contrast. It also performs 46 checks in this area.

3. Best practices. The report has a variety of tips that will help you optimize your site for Google's best practices. For instance, it can analyze various aspects of a website, such as its aspect ratio and browser errors.

4. SEO. This report highlights the various factors that can improve a website's search engine rankings. These include the title, meta tags, and canonical tags. With the help of this tool, you can also keep track of your project's progress and improve its rankings. In addition, it can help you protect your site from vulnerabilities.

   
   

Translate your KPIs into Metrics

After you have determined your website goals and specific marketing KPIs to track, you need to decide which actions are required to reach them. There are usually multiple measures and actions that are tied to the KPIs.

Identify the target area that is being measured. For instance, we are looking at how the Customer Database Grow KPIs is being achieved. We will then look at the various metrics that are related to this KPI, such as the number of sessions over time, clicks, number of purchases by channel, and the complete path to the purchase, which can be determined as a reach to a “Thank You” page.

#4. Mind the technical implementation

The final step involves setting and fixing your Web Analytics in order to track all necessary metrics you’ve come up with (based on your business goals, of course).

Here you’d probably involve your webmaster or data analyst to precisely set up the data flow, tagging, and reporting. You can also discuss the various steps in the process of implementing the measurement. For instance, you might want to tag users to be part of a specific audience (segment).

Bottomline

Digital marketing is about measurement and analytics. Having a documented measurement plan for web analytics will help you make informed decisions and improve the effectiveness of your campaign. It can also help you identify areas of your website that need to be improved.

Remember regularly update it. Doing so will allow you to keep it up to date and provide you with the necessary insights for your marketing.