Web Analytics Association: Key Metrics and KPIs

I am a few days away from posting the next cheat sheet for one of the newer books on web analytics.

But I wanted to post something which I found in the book. This is a document published by the Web Analytics Association and which states the Key Metrics and KPIs.

Web Analytics Association ket metrics and KPIs

Call to Action

I just finished reading Call To Action secret formulas to improve online results written by Bryan Eisenberg and Jeffrey Eisenberg.

This is an excellent book that goes into aspects of usability and business together. Some of the chapters also talk about sales and marketing.

I have created another cheat sheet which is more from of a perspective of being a web analyst. All the work listed in the spreadsheet are the ideas from the book. I also wanted to mention that my cheat sheet is list of few useful questions and notes, but the book has lots of tips which I havent included in my cheat sheet because they would be more from a Usability engineer perspective or a person in a position who can make the business decision to make the change. So I highly recommend reading the book if you are a small medium business and can make changes to your website after discussions with a small group of business owners and developers.

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Here is the link to the cheat sheet:
Call To Action Cheat Sheet
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Here are the questions that I have about the website I work on after reading this book:
Improving Conversion:Who are the owners of metrics and KPIs and what actions are they responsible for?
Improving Conversion:Did you survey the high abandonement but conversion hungry pages?
Improving Conversion:Did you consider rephrasing some of the content to drive urgency? "Limited Time Offer!"
Improving Conversion:Did you provide pointers to get complete information?
Improving Conversion:Do you present the information on your web-pages in a consistent fashion?
Improving Conversion:Whats most relevant to the customer?
Improving Conversion:What to do with the traffic once it lands on the website?
Improving Conversion:How to get the visitor to take the first action and click deeper?
Improving Conversion:How to induce visitors to click to the next step and the next?
Formulating Segment/Control Group:Who needs to be persuaded? When you know whom you need to persuade, you can create personas that allow you to design meaningful navigation scenarios.
Formulating Segment/Control Group:What actions this person need to take? Not all actions will be direct functions of your sales process;many will be actions your personas need to take to satisfy their buying decision process
Formulating Segment/Control Group:How will you most effectively persuade that person? Knowing "who" and "what" helps you create persuasive copy and content
Critical factor - knowledge:How difficult is it for pospective buyers to understand the nature of your product or service, or the procedures for buying? What do they need to know?
Critical factor - Need:How urgent is the need for your product or service? How fast are prospects likely to make their decisions to buy?
Critical factor - Need:Will the need be satisfied by one-time purchase or is the need on-going?
Critical factor - Risk:How risky, especially with respect to issues of finance, is the sale?
Critical factor - Con census:Just how many people do you have to pursuade? An inidvidual or a group?
Advertsing inkling:What will people perceive as valuable enough to pay for?
Advertsing inkling:Why can you provide it better than the competition?
For small phrases below google ads:Who are your customers?
For small phrases below google ads:What do they really need?
For small phrases below google ads:What benefits (no features) of your product or service satisfy the real needs of your customers?
For small phrases below google ads:What about your product or services is unique, and how can you answer the customers question: "Why should I buy from you?"
For small phrases below google ads:What other options does a customer have to buying your product or service (including doing nothing at all)? Are they better options or worse?
For small phrases below google ads:How does a s customer make a decision to buy products or services like yours?
For small phrases below google ads:What does your customer need to know before he or she will buy from you?
For small phrases below google ads:How does your customer perceive not only your product, but also your company compared to your competition?
For small phrases below google ads:What is the process a customer goes through before buying your products or services?
For small phrases below google ads:What is the value of your product or service to the client?
For small phrases below google ads:What would a customer say if a colleage asked him or her to recommed your product or service?
Improving Conversion:What is the Pop-up count on your website?
Improving Conversion:Do you display the contact center number and other self service help options prominently?
Page Design:Is the look and feel professional?
Page Design:Is the navigation obvious, simple and consistent through the website?
Page Design:Is your USP clearly stated and strong?
Page Design:Is your information architecture constructed from the visitor's point of view?
Page Design:Does your navigation anticipate and clearly support all resonable path choices?
Page Design:Does the layout reflect knowledge of eye-scanning patterns and "sweet spots"?
Page Design:Does the choice of page elements reflect knowledge of how visitors use text versus graphics online as opposed to in print?
Page Design:Are the graphics and the text appropriate and well-chosen/written?
Page Design:Does the page reflect principles of good usability?
Page Design:Does the page utilize expert sales principles that encourage a buying decision?
Page Design:Does the page utilize knowledge about consumer psychology and the different personality types?
Page Design:Does the page make use of knowledge about online buying behaviour?
Page Design:Does the page inspire trust and build rapport?
Page Design:Is your contact information easy to find?
Page Design:Is help available? Is it user centric?
Page Design:How many help channels do you provide?
Page Design:Are the smallest details, such as fonts and colors, chosen with an understanding and knowledge of what maximizes sales?
Page Design:Does the page delight visitors and inspire them to go deeper into the website? Does it actually guide them in doing so?
Page Design:Can your visitors resize pages and adjust their screen resolutions without distorting the content?
Page Design:They can chose how large or small text appears on their screen, is your content strutured to accommodate this?
Page Design:They can decide wheter or not they want to display pictures, is your content telling the complete story without pictures?
Page Design:They can choose wheter or not they want to see color, is your content optimized for monochrome?
Page Design:They can see your content on variety of devices, is your content optimized for that?
Page Design:How do you ask your visitors to read your content Skim or Scan?
Search Keywords Keywords equate directly to the customers need. Do you know what that need is and how does your product fulfill that need?
Email Campaign:What actions do prospective customers need to take that will lead to them buying decisions?
Email Campaign:Who has to be persuaded to take actions?
Email Campaign:How do we persuade them to take action?

Web Analytics Demystified

I am returning to the blog after some time now. I read through Eric Peterson's Web Analytics Demystified and I am attaching the cheat sheet I made for myself after reading the book.

Please note that this attached spreadsheet is just a list of useful things but I highly recommend reading the book as Eric has done a wonderful job of giving details not only about KPIs but also how they should be interpreted. I would also like to mention that contents in the spreadsheet are adapted from Web Analytics Demystified so all the credit for the work goes to Eric. I have just re-iterated his work as per my interpretation.

This "Cheat Sheet" will help you if you are already on the hot seat and need a list of questions you should be answering using your web analytics package.

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Link to the spreadsheet:
Web Analytics Demystified Cheat Sheet

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Here are the questions that I gathered as an analyst
Type: Question
Technology: How do visitors connect to your web site?
Technology: What is the weight of your landing page?
Survey: What is your gender?
Survey: When were you born?
Survey: Family income level?
Survey: Presence of children in the household?
Survey: Preferences?
Survey: Indicated likelihood to purchase?
Content Organization: What are the number of visits to a content group?
Content Organization: What are number of unique visitors, broken down by day and month?
Content Organization: What is the average time spent viewing the content group?
Content Organization: What are some type of content usage analysis, such as what content groups led visitors to this particular group, and what content groups they were likely to visit after the current group?
Process Measurement: What are multiple step processes in terms of steps in the process?
Process Measurement: What are the pages involved in the process?
Process Measurement: What is the drop off rate from step to step?
Visitor Segmentation: Do different segments of visitors behave differently in terms of the pages or products they view?
Visitor Segmentation: Do different segments of visitors spend more time on your web site or return more or less frequently than others?
Visitor Segmentation: Are different segments of visitors converting at higher or lower rates than others?
Visitor Segmentation: How long does it take, on average, to move a visitor from a lower value group to a higher-value group and can that time be influenced by making changes to web site?
Visitor Segmentation: Has the visitor converted before or this is the first time?
Visitor Segmentation: Registered or Unregistered?
Visitor Segmentation: High and Low Life Time Value?
Campaign Analysis: What is the conversion goal?
Campaign Analysis: What is the number of campaign response?
Campaign Analysis: What is the number of campaign conversions?
Campaign Analysis: What is the campaign conversion rate?
Campaign Analysis: What are the campaign entry pages?
Campaign Analysis: What are the campaign goal pages?
Campaign Analysis: What are the products purchased?
Campaign Analysis: What are the conversion goals? Are they multiple steps? First register and then buy
Campaign Analysis: What are the groups the campaigns can be organized in?
Commerce Measurement: How many cart adds?
Commerce Measurement: How many checkouts?
Commerce Measurement: What is the browse to buy ratio?
Commerce Measurement: Most abandoned products?
Commerce Measurement: Who is making the purchase? What segment?
Commerce Measurement: What are most bought products?
Commerce Measurement: When are people buying?
Commerce Measurement: Where do people buying products come from?
Commerce Measurement: How did the customers make a purchase?
Commerce Measurement: What are the most popular product categories sold?
Commerce Measurement: What are the internal search terms?
Commerce Measurement: Can you measure the cross selling activities?
Measuring Reach What are the page views, visits and unique visitors?
Measuring Reach How the spikes from average trend can explain other activity going on the web site?
Measuring Reach: What are the Year over Year change for the
Measuring Reach: How many new visitors do you have in a calendar day, week, month or year?
Measuring Reach: Do you reach new people more effectively on weekends, early in the week or later in the week?
Measuring Reach: Are new visitors more likely to visit during the daytime or in the evening?
Measuring Reach: Do new visitors react to new marketing materials immediately or is there lag time between media drops and new visitor response?
Measuring Reach: What is ratio of new to returning visitors?
Measuring Reach: What is ratio of new visitor to total visitors?
Measuring Reach: What are the pages with top entries?
Measuring Reach: What are the pages with top exits?
Measuring Reach: What is the geographic distribution of your visitors?
Measuring Reach: What is the geographic reach of your market?
Measuring Reach: What are the traffic trends to error pages? - Monitor Weekly
Measuring Reach: What are the error pages? - Monitor Weekly
Measuring Reach: What is the email campaign Open rate?
Measuring Reach: What is the rough email campaign Open rate?
Email Campaign: What is the number of total sends?
Email Campaign: What is the number of successful sends?
Email Campaign: What is the number of Hard Bounces?
Email Campaign: What is the number of Soft Bounces?
Email Campaign: What is the number of messages MIA?
Email Campaign: What is the number of Tracked Opens?
Email Campaign: What is the number of Estimated Opens?
Email Campaign: What is the number of Tracked Clickthroughs?
Email Campaign: What is the number of Forwards and Referrals?
Measuring Acquisition: What are average visits/visitors?
Measuring Acquisition: What are the average Page Views/Visit
Measuring Acquisition: What are the average Page Views/Visitors
Measuring Acquisition: What is the Page Slips ratio for your key acquisition pages?
Measuring Acquisition: What is the Page Stick ratio for your key acquisition pages?
Measuring Acquisition: What is the Cost per Visitor?
Measuring Acquisition: What is the Heavy User Share?
Measuring Acquisition: What is is the Content "Focus"? For new sections and new properties?
Measuring Acquisition: Whats the percentage of visits below 90 seconds to total visits?
Measuring Acquisition: What is the Response Rate of your campaign?
Measuring Acquisition: What is Cost per Acuisition of your campaign?
Measuring Acquisition: What is Cost per Click for your campaign?
Measuring Acquisition: What is the Cost per Respondent that you can spend? - Look at the algorithm in comments in the metric tab
Measuring Acquisition: What are the referring sources?
Measuring Acquisition: What are the search engines?
Measuring Acquisition: Are visitors coming from Organic or Paid searches?
Measuring Acquisition: What are the search keywords and phrases?
Measuring Conversion: What is the conversion rate?
Measuring Conversion: What is the "Rolling" Campaign Return On Investment?
Measuring Conversion: What is the "Total" Campaign Return On Investment?
Measuring Conversion: What is the Abandonment Rate at each step?
Measuring Conversion: How does the Conversion Funnel Look like? (Usage of Abandonment Rate and calculating for the complete flow)
Measuring Conversion: What is the Averag Order Value?
Measuring Conversion: What is the Conversion Rate for New Customers?
Measuring Conversion: What is the Conversion Rate for Repeat Customers?
Measuring Conversion: What is the ratio Sales per Visitor?
Measuring Conversion: What is ratio of search result to no result?
Measuring Retention: What is the Ratio of Daily to Monthly Returning Visitors?
Measuring Retention: What is the Frequency of Visit?
Measuring Retention: What is the Retained visitor conversion rate?
Measuring Retention: What is the Retention Rate for visitors?



I am going to read Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results written by Brian and Jeffrey Eisenberg and will be back on the blog after I have a cheat sheet made for the book.

Where to start?

There exists a group of well respected experts in the field of web analytics and one can follow their blogs and gain insight about the latest happenings and views.

Since, I consider myself a newbie, I thought reading on the books of the same experts would be a good starting place. So I did a quick search on Amazon and found the following books:
1) Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity by Avinash Kaushik
2) Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik
3) Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, 2nd Edition by Brian Clifton
4) Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business by Eric Peterson
5) Call to Action.

I have 4 of these 5 books and I am going to start with Web Analytics Demystified and my next posts are going to be about my findings from this book.

My attempt is to read the earlier thought philosophy about the material and then delve into different aspects that interest me.

So if this approach suits you then keep visiting and I will try my level best to write something engaging on the blog.

Web Analytics market space

Hello Dear Reader,

I've spent about 3.5 years working in web analytics for a leading web analytics provider. In the past few years I survived 3 acquisitions and have gotten a chance to experience the changes in this landscape.

My experience with web analytics is more from the data perspective rather than a tagging guy. So if you were looking for the next tagging innovation then this might be a boring place for you. If you are interested in web analytics program management and experimenting with data in excel sheets, SQL, R or any other tools then I welcome you to join my learning experience.

Thank you,
Mangesh