Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
It is surprising how often these "simple" things come up. "What is the difference between a metric and a key performance indicator (KPI)?" "What is a dimension in analytics?" "What is segmentation?" "Are goals metrics?" And many more. There seems to be genuine confusion about the simplest, most foundational, parts of web metrics / analytics. So in this short post let's try and see if we can fix this really basic problem. Definitions and standard perspectives on these terms will be covered in this post: A standard definition will be provided, but more than that my hope is to solidify your understanding with concrete examples and pictures. The post will end with a "Web Analytics Measurement Framework" – a very lofty name for something that will help you put your understanding of this post into practice. Business Objectives: This is the answer to the question: "Why does your website exist?" Or: "What are you hoping to accomplish for your business by being on the web?" Or: "What are the three most important priorities for your site?" Or other questions like that. Without a clearly defined list of business objectives you are doomed, because if you don't know where you are going then any road will take you there. The objectives must be DUMB: Doable. Understandable. Manageable. Beneficial. 90% of the failures in web analytics, the reasons companies are data rich and information poor, is because they don't have DUMB objectives. Or they have just one (DUMB) Macro Conversion defined and completely ignore the Micro Conversions and Economic Value. Your company leadership (small business or fortune 100) will help you identify business objectives for your online existence. Beg, threaten, embarrass, sleep with someone, do what you have to get them defined. Point of confusion: People, like me, often also use the term Desirable Outcomes to refer to business objectives. They are one and the same thing. [Full disclosure: Depending on the specificity of your business objectives my asking you for your "desirable outcomes" could refer to "what are your goals". See below...] Goals: Goals are specific strategies you'll leverage to accomplish your business objectives. Business objectives can be quite strategic and high level. Sell more stuff. Create happy customers. Improve marketing effectiveness. Goals are the next level drill down. It goes something like this. . . Sell more stuff really means we have to: 1. do x 2. improve y 3. reduce z Improve marketing effectiveness might translate into these goals because currently they are our priorities: 1. identify broken things in m 2. figure out how to do n 3. experiment with p type of campaigns Get it? The beauty of goals is that they reflect specific strategies. They are really DUMB. They are priorities. They are actually things almost everyone in the company will understand as soon as you say them. I would not have included the step of identifying Goals were it not for the fact that almost every C level executive, every VP and SVP, give very high level nearly impossible to pin down business objectives. Point of confusion: Many web analytics tools, like Google Analytics, have a feature that encourages you to measure Goals. Like so. . . It is possible that some Analytics Tool Goals directly measure your business objectives or goals. Usually though Analytics Tool Goals do not rise to the strategic importance so as to measure either your business objectives or your goals. For example only one of the above, Subscribers, is an actual goal ("increase persistent reach")for me that lines up directly with a business objective ("effective permission marketing"). Others are nice to know. So to be clear: Just because you have Goals in your analytics tool defined is not a sure sign that you know what your business objectives or goals are. Before you touch the data make sure your business objectives (usually 3, or 5 max) are clearly identified and you have drilled down to really DUMB goals! A metric is a number. That is the simplest way to think about it. Technically a metric can be a Count (a total) or a Ratio (a division of one number by another). Examples of metrics that are a Count is Visits or Pageviews. Examples of a Ratio is Conversion Rate (a quantitative metric) or Task Completion Rate (a qualitative metric). This is a crude way to think about it but. . . Metrics almost always appear in columns in a report / excel spreadsheet. This is what metrics look like in your web analytics tool: Metrics form the life blood of all the measurement we do. They are the reason we call the web the most accountable channel on the planet. Key performance indicators (KPI's) are metrics. But not normal metrics. They are our BFF's. Here is the definition of a KPI that is on Page 37 of Web Analytics 2.0: A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives. That last word – objectives – is critical to something being called a KPI, which is also why KPI's tend to be unique to each company. I run www.bestbuy.com. My business objective is to sell lots of stuff. My web analytics KPI is: Average Order Size. Business objective: Sell Stuff. KPI: Average Order Size. I might use other metrics in my reports, say Visits or # of Videos Watched or whatever. But they won't be my KPI's. Makes sense? No? Ok one more. . . I run www.nytimes.com. My business objective is to make money. One of my KPI's is: Visitor Loyalty (number of visits to the site by the same person in a month) and another one is # of clicks on banner ads. So one thing should be pretty clear to you by now. . . if you don't have business objectives (from your HiPPO's) clearly defined, you can't identify what your KPI's are. No matter how metrics rich you are. You'll be information poor. Forever. So. Don't be. Business Objectives -> Goals -> KPI's -> Metrics -> Magic. Targets are numerical values you have pre-determined as indicators success or failure. It is rare, even with the best intentions, that you'll create targets for all the metrics you'll report on. Yet it is critical that you create targets for each web analytics key performance indicator. I am still at Best Buy. My KPI is still Average Order Value. But how do I know what's good or bad? I'll consult with my finance team. I'll confab with my Assistant Senior Vice President for American Online Sales. I'll look over my historical performance. Through this consultative process we'll create a 2010 AOV target of $95. Now when I do analysis of my performance (not just in aggregated but segmented by geo and campaign and source and…) I'll know if our results are good or bad or ugly. I will do this for every single KPI whose responsibility is thrust on em. You can create targets for the quarter (Christmas!) or for the year or to any drill down level of specificity. But at least have one overall target for each KPI. Business Objectives -> Goals -> KPIs -> Metrics -> Targets -> Minor Orgasms. A dimension is, typically, an attribute of the Visitor to your website. Here's a simplistic pictorial representation. . . The source that someone came from (referring urls, campaigns, countries etc) is a dimension in your web analytics data. So is technical information like browsers or mobile phones or (god save you if you are still doing daily reports on) screen resolution or ISP used. The activity a person performed such as the landing page name, the subsequent pages they saw, videos they played, searches they did on your website and the products they purchased are all dimensions. Finally the day they visited, the days since their last visit (if returning visitor) the number of visits they made, the number of pages they saw are all dimensions as well. I know, I know, they sound like metrics. But they are, as the definition says up top, attributes of the visitor and their activity on your website. This is a crude way to think about it but… Dimensions almost always appear in rows in a report / excel spreadsheet. Here are the metrics and dimensions in one of my favorite Yahoo! Web Analytics reports, it shows me how many clicks it takes for visitors to get to content I consider valuable. . . Columns and rows. Get it? Let's solidify this with another example of a report that shows metrics and dimensions. This report might not come to your mind most easily. I am looking at the internal site searches (on this blog) and the continent from where the search is done and a set of metrics to judge performance. . . Dimensions allow you to group your data into different buckets and they are most frequently used to slice and dice the web analytics data. In your web analytics tools you'll bump into dimensions when you are either creating custom reports (love this!) or doing advanced segmentation (worship this!). The chooser thingys look like this. . . In Yahoo! Web Analytics they are called "Groups" or "Group Selection" but they are the same thing: Dimensions. There are many long and complicated definitions of dimensions. There are some nuances that I have simplified. But I hope that this definition and explanation helps you internalize this key concept in web analytics. A segment contains a group of rows from one or more dimensions. In aggregate almost all data is useless (like # of Visits). The best way to find insights is to segment the data using one or more dimensions (like # of Visits from: USA, UK, India as a % of All Visits). You segment by dimensions and report by metrics. Here are some examples of segments I use in my Google Analytics account: Checkout the dimensions I am using to segment my website traffic to understand performance better.
These are just a few of the 28 advanced segments I have created in my analytics profile. And I am not even a real business. Think of how many segments I would analyze to truly analyze my Key Performance Indicators to understand causes of success or failure of my Business Objectives! The Analysis Ninja rallying cry: Segment or Die! : ) So now you know the seven most fundamental, yet critical, things you need to know about online analytics. If you fee that you did not understand it all, please go back and re-read it. You are very welcome to ask questions or for clarification via comments. Whatever it takes, make sure you are able to internalize this. Let's move to the last step. . . Web Analytics Measurement Framework As promised I want to wrap up this post with a couple of examples that pull this whole thing together. Let's say I am responsible for the National Council of La Raza (a wonderful organization I support). Here is how the measurement framework could possibly look for me. . . Business Objective: Attendance at immigration rallies. Goals: Increase web sign ups. Key Performance Indicators: # of NCLR Sign-ups for NCLR Action Alerts # of Individual Memberships Target: Action Alert: 14,000 per month Memberships: 4,800 per month Segments: Acquisition: Organic search, Email campaigns, Mid-western US states
Behavior: Visits to conversions (Action Alerts, Memberships) All this before I cracked open any web analytics tool. I have a framework I can use to ensure that the work I do is focused on what's important to the organization, what good or bad looks like in terms of performance and finally I have a segmentation plan ready to do the preliminary analysis of the data. No fishing expeditions. No data puking. No begging people to pay attention to data! One more example. If you are a student in the MarketMotive Master Certification course as a part of your final dissertation you have to submit complete analysis of two websites. One eCommerce and one non-eCommerce. You are supposed to start from scratch, do all of the above and present actionable recommendations. The path you follow, the quality of your analysis and your insights determine if you are awarded the certification, or not. One of the web analytics students in the just concluded course was Matt Smedley. In his dissertation Matt used the above framework very effectively to focus and structure his analysis. Here is Matt's actual picture from his dissertation that tells the whole story: [Click on the image for a higher resolution version.] I really liked Matt's presentation for his motor bike company analysis. In less than half a page one could see the complete picture of what the business was solving for and what the expectations were. Particularly clever I thought was his inclusion of the segmentation in his framework presentation. At a glance for the most important goal for the quarter (build a robust customer database for future marketing) you can see how their campaign strategy worked. Don't even get me started on how awesome it was for him to including Profit as a KPI. Truly heart warming. I hope you will find inspiration from Matt's presentation to go create a version of this framework for your company. We worry so much about tags and data collection and Omniture vs. WebTrends. What we should actually worry about is above. It is not easy to arrive at, but without it all you have is unlimited potential for failure. And I know that is not going to happen to you. I wish you all the very best. Ok now your turn. What do you think of the seven fundamental terms and their definitions? Agree? Disagree? Which one surprised you the most? Was there a point you think I missed in explaining these complex concepts? Do you have a measurement framework you use in your company you want to share with us? Please share your feedback via comments. Thanks. PS:
Couple other related posts you might find interesting:
April 19th, 2010 at 02:47
Thanks for all this – you really do some in-depth research for us all!
It's appreciated.
April 19th, 2010 at 04:15
I think what surprised me the most was how many breakdowns you showed for what is essentially the "goal" or "target."
I'm used to having one number that serves as the goal/target/KPI all rolled into one. But I can see how they shouldn't (and aren't) all one and the same. Your breakdown is a lot more sophisticated!
April 19th, 2010 at 05:11
Dear Avinash,
Really an excellent post. Crystal clear on many things now.
Could you share a list of the advanced segments you have set for this site?
Thanks,
Pavol
April 19th, 2010 at 05:38
Hey Avinash.
I know I say this a lot but this is an excellent post. I am a long-time advocate of education in our field and it's never a bad idea to go "back to basics" from time to time. This is actually an area that our industry should focus on a lot more than we currently do. We have an influx of new people in web analytics and the number keeps rising, yet we squabble over technical details and hyper-advanced topics (not that I don't like reading about any of that). It's hard for a freshman to take a 4000 level class and succeed, if you catch my drift.
I really like your framework at the end of this tutorial. I also had a question about Matt's final dissertation. Was wondering if you (or him) could expand upon using Monthly unique visitors as a Key Performance Indicator. I don't have anything against that, but I'm curious as to how that came about (there is a backdrop in my question of faint, distant echoes in my ear from web analytics practitioners that swear to never use counts of metrics like unique visitors as KPI's, which peaks my curiosity because I love it when someone goes against what "gurus" blog about). :)
How does the author feel that "Monthly Unique Visitors" DIRECTLY compare against the business objective of "Sell Bike Parts"?
April 19th, 2010 at 06:59
Avinash,
Another great post. Love the simplicity.
Diving in to Dimensions Vs. Metrics, which is always a question I get from colleagues. I've been using Advanced Segmentation for a while but seeing your list has me thinking of other great things to segment.
Hope you don't mind if I leverage your Web Analytics Measurement Framework because it's as concise an outline as I could ever get to fighting the compulsion to add levels of complimentary but generally ignored information.
Peeking at your MarketMotive Web Analytics Master Certification Program.
Thanks again for the knowledge share!
Anthony
April 19th, 2010 at 08:42
Great stuff Avinash and an excellent framework that can be and should be leveraged by anyone doing web analytics.
One way I visualize is to have a split in the Business Objectives section with the first part being the objectives for your company (overall) and the second being the objectives for your website. My reason for this is that I see the website objectives 'feeding' into the company objectives the same way the goals 'feed' into the website objectives.
The other reason why I like to have this is because I like to see one umbrella set of objectives that is common to all departments, organizations, and initiatives across the company and then funnel it down so that each player knows how they are contributing to the company's bottom line.
Once again, I love the way you have laid things out – simple to follow with a great flow from general to specifics.
April 19th, 2010 at 09:06
Good read, thanks for this.
What I found (and have found in the past) suprising is the apparent lack of business acumen that many of us in 'net marketing have. Any second year business student can define KPI, goals and dimensions, but there are a ton of ppl who are very handy with SEO'ing who can't.
I think that it speaks to the need for each side – traditional business and 2.0 business – to gain a better understanding of each other.
April 19th, 2010 at 09:39
Reading this was like pressing 'reset' – I am the same as before but just am thinking that bit clearer.
Big fan of the 'dimensions' concept.
Super times.
April 19th, 2010 at 09:50
Avinash,
Being an avid follower of your blog and reader of your books I have to admit I was floored when I saw a 101 post. How tempting was it to just say "if you don't know this already, go and read my books" and nothing else? Though, the dissertation example is a nice little nugget.
My personal advice to anyone needing this type of information. Read the books.
Mike
April 19th, 2010 at 10:14
Avinash,
Great post! The biggest value for me was Matt's framework. Congratulations to Matt for conceiving and creating it! It almost seems like you need to incorporate this framework into the ongoing reporting so that it sticks in people's minds why we're measuring what we're measuring everytime those numbers (KPI's) appear in an report or on a slide.
I liked your mention of creating KPI Targets based on seasonality as many businesses have a seasonality aspect to them, yet I see targets set for the year, but rarely for the various times of the year when the business experiences highs and lows. If you are managing the seasonality of your business the right way throughout the year, the end of year numbers would likely benefit.
As for your definition of metric. I agree. Just thought that I'd add that Webtrends calls them 'measures'. I'm sure other tools use different terminology, too.
Thank you!
Alice Cooper's Stalker
April 19th, 2010 at 10:38
Thanks Avinash,
this is a great one!
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a big e-mail printer. But for all those working with numbers in an online business: Print this out, keep it on your desk and read it from time to time!
It will make your life a lot easier. ;-)
April 19th, 2010 at 13:22
I liked practical examples, and in particular Matt Smedley's "Bike Company X Web Analytics Framework".
April 19th, 2010 at 18:09
Hey Avinash!
This blog post is truly a blessing. I'm confident that through this article you'll be able to evangelize a lot of people.
:)
Jurgen
April 19th, 2010 at 19:44
Fantastic post Avinash!
I have been trying to get our management and HiPPOs to move beyond simplistic measures but they insist on page views as their ultimate weapon.
Now I can print out your blog post move our company to a much better way of thinking by using the web analytics measurement framework.
Cheers!
April 19th, 2010 at 21:50
Thanks Avinash,
Once again an awesome post from the expert himself. Would help if you could share some insights on common mistakes that newbies make while starting the web analytics.
April 19th, 2010 at 23:43
Joe: To compare two different months it is ok to use Monthly Unique Visitors (what is evil is to sum up the Daily Unique Visitors for each day of the month and call it Monthly Unique Visitors!).
The bike company is small. A key part of their ability to sell more bike parts is to get more people into the top of the funnel. So having it as a goal is ok. The hope is over time they will become more sophisticated and move to even better KPI's.
Ned: Excellent feedback to up-level the objectives and have a direct line of sight to overall non-line objectives.
Conner: Great point on the value of business acumen. The only thing I would add to that is common sense.
You put those two together and you have the formula for massive success anywhere!
Rob: That is the best possible I could have hoped for from my little post. Thank you!
Neeraj: I think the biggest mistake they make is outlined in this post: The failure to understand what they are solving for.
From a technical perspective the biggest mistake I think is not tagging the campaigns.
From a day to day perspective the biggest mistake is thinking reporting is analysis.
From a self perspective the biggest it is not investing enough to educate oneself in learning new tools & techniques.
Hope this helps.
Avinash.
April 20th, 2010 at 14:43
Avinash,
I like that you go with making sure that the Business Objectives are DUMB. I was going to go with SMART (Simple, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound). I suppose the acronyms are meant to be memorable to make you do them and make them sensible (SENSIBLE being too long a word for a proper acronym).
Quite agree with Joe above, by the way. It's great to have lots of posts saying 'this is why you should measure' this rather than the technical 'this is how you should measure'. The more we make the basics easier to understand, the more we'll get this new influx in to the heart of things!
Cheers,
Alec
April 20th, 2010 at 16:14
I love the way you think about analytics and how to extract value form data that is already available in spades.
I recently took a job as in a large tech company on the acquisition side. The company has a lot of things already in analytics but they are, to use your term, reporting data pukes. There is no framework or well thought out process to approach data analytics.
This blog post has inspired me and will prove to be invaluable as I create a framework for data analytics in my new job.
Thanks much.
James.
April 20th, 2010 at 22:06
Excellent write-up Avinash. I have always felt that we spend a lot of time in finding ways to acquire new traffic but and we don't do enough for the traffic already coming to our websites. Segmentation is so critical but missed so often. Matt's dissertation is a great tool to rework the way many of us are going about their online businesses.
It used to be a challenge to make web analytics popular with the team as often statistics are taken as boring. But your blog and books are making easier to make this exciting and interesting.
April 21st, 2010 at 03:53
Thanks for giving valuable information Avinash.
April 21st, 2010 at 10:55
I have to say I learned so much from this. I truly appreciate it.
I will print and keep it with me.
Thank you again.
April 21st, 2010 at 21:03
[...] Web Analytics 101. Amazing and in-depth post on web analytics. A must read, a must print. [...]
April 22nd, 2010 at 08:47
[...] Muchas veces los problemas surgen cuando no tenemos claros los conceptos básicos. Avinash Kaushik hace en su página un repaso de los principios de la analítica web: Web Analytics 101. [...]
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:02
[...] Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets | Occam's Razor by Av… Web Analytics Measurement Framework" – a very lofty name for something that will help you put your understanding of this post into practice. (tags: analytics business) [...]
April 22nd, 2010 at 23:52
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Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets – Occam's Razor
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April 23rd, 2010 at 12:07
Avinash:
Love this. Had to read it twice, but I never was very good with math and this is mathmatical – this just in ;).
Anyway, your dry humor is a nice way to pitstop along the way and reminded me at the right moments, not to take myself too seriously and to enjoy the process.
I can see why advanced segmentation is nirvana and enjoyed the paint-by-numbers examples.
I look forward to your unique approach to educating us newbs.
April 24th, 2010 at 04:33
[...]
Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targe – Long, but important stuff.
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April 26th, 2010 at 06:55
[...]
5. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
It's not uncommon to be so wrapped up in the details of a subject that you forget some of the basics. Avinash's post encourages you to take a step back by indentifying some basic definitions to help solidify your understanding of web metrics/analytics.
Avinash dives into 7 fundamental terms/concepts — business objectives, goals, metrics, key performance indicators (KPI's), targets, dimensions, segments — we should all understand when thinking about analytics.
Marketing Takeaway: Before you jump into complex web analytics, it's first critical to understand the basics.
[...]
April 26th, 2010 at 21:15
Simple, clear and digestable. Wonderful.
Avinash, it is a truly refreshing to see posts that express potentially confusing, loaded and misused terms, with clear and simple explanations.
Loved Matt's framework. Nicely done :)
April 27th, 2010 at 04:28
hey avinash,
very helpful indeed, and in the same spirit of basic knowledge, can you say a few words on the exact way Google analytics treats bounce rate?
how does it calculate it and by what criteria?
i seem to remember you said it what for one page visits that last under 5 seconds, but i may be wrong.
a second matter is regarding using both metrics and dimensions in advanced settings. i understand the use of both together in report, but you actually go through analytics it much easier to use only metrics and look up at interesting dimensions in analytics it self, or the other way around.
am i missing something?
back to basics is good, i always forget.
April 27th, 2010 at 10:45
Ilan: Every single web analytics tool provider now (except ClickTracks perhaps) uses the standard bounce rate definition as defined by the Web Analytics Association:
Any session (Visit) with only one page view (hit) = Bounce.
Bounce Rate is the % of sessions (visits) on your site that meet the above criteria.
With regards to custom reports each person will find their own path. Here is a blog post that shares lots of practical examples and best practices for custom reporting:
Analysis Ninjas: Leverage Custom Reports For Better Insights!
Good luck!
Avinash.
April 28th, 2010 at 08:00
Hey , i have found your web-blog very helpful in defining terms and giving an overview of topics related to web analysis. However i have a few suggestions from a user standpoint that might be useful. 1) it would be helpful to have an outline of the material listed in the posting. I have found you cover a larger amount of material than the average blog. Seeing your outline would be great for later reference and for understanding the work flow before i gave it a first read over.2) i understand that you are not a graphic design guy but i would appreciate headings that pop out more to help readers follow your flow of writing. I find sometimes that the headings get lost in the information and its hard to keep on track with what your talking about.
Overall i really appreciate your insight and diligence in writing . Cheers , Rick
April 28th, 2010 at 11:06
I really like Matt's framework. Nice way to squeeze the insights of an analysis and communicate the big picture to clients fast.
Thanks for sharing it!
April 30th, 2010 at 07:09
Extremely insightful information for anyone looking to gain deeper knowledge of customer behaviour and how to measure and analyse it, not just in this post, but on the whole site (and probably in the books as well, going to check this out ;) ).
April 30th, 2010 at 07:55
Hello Avinash,
I just saw you speak at the Havas analytics conference. I really enjoyed and felt inspired. Thanks.
April 30th, 2010 at 10:25
[...] Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets [...]
April 30th, 2010 at 20:37
[...]
Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets by Avinash Kaushik – It is surprising how often these “simple” things come up
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May 2nd, 2010 at 23:14
Hi Avinash,
Excellent post as usual and you do a fantastic job at walking folks through the stuff we should really care about, rather than getting lost in data. Although, I'm not focused on Web Analytics, I feel that the content here is really applicable to any area of the business. Every time I read one of your posts, I always think: This is what I should be talking to my Manager about and more importantly HOW I should be approaching the topic.
At the end, you asked for feedback on the seven fundamental terms and their definitions and which one surprised you the most…
What follows might be considered mostly nit-picking, but since you asked ….:-)
Personally, I was most surprised to see Goals as the second term defined. I definitely see the need to break down a high-level business objective further where it is measurable, but I didn't expect to see the term: Goals there. I'm probably reading this too literally but from a layman's perspective and in most common usage: Objective is a synonym of Goal, so I found this a bit confusing for it to be included in a hierarchical structure under Objectives.
Further, in the definition of Goals: Goals are specific strategies you'll leverage to accomplish your business objectives.
you seem to be equating Goals to Strategies which is more confusing. The rest of the text clearly indicates what you mean and what function the "goal" plays in the scheme of things. If I get the gist of your framework right, it seems as though you tailored your first two steps in the framework on the well known Vision-Strategy-Execution paradigm. Thus Business Objective =Vision (high level stuff), Goals = Strategy (one level lower and more DUMB according to your definition).
Again, the reason I'm having some trouble with this is probably because I'm coming at this from a Strategy framework (e.g: Balanced Scorecard) where if you drilled down from Business Objectives, you would expect to see Strategies and then Initiatives (which reflect business priorities) which you could then measure via KPI. I don't know if "Goals" has any special significance in the Web 2.0 or SEO Analytics space, that made you chose it instead of another word that clearly conveyed that hierarchical relationship, but that's the only term I didn't expect to see come after Objectives in your framework.
Thanks
Prakash
May 3rd, 2010 at 03:26
Good post. Thanks for sharing………
May 9th, 2010 at 05:02
One of the challenges in defining and measuring online success, including social media, is determining what success looks like. It could be an increase in sales or better customer service or more partnership opportunities. For many companies, it is important to establish "success", and then create benchmarks so it can be measured. Then, you can use objective or subjective criteria to do the measurement.
Mark
Mark Evans
Director of Communications
Sysomos Inc.
May 9th, 2010 at 10:25
[...] Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets [...]
May 12th, 2010 at 14:14
Thank you for your insights and excellent examples in this post! I am just getting started as a web analyst (a new position in our smaller company) and I found this information quite helpful for a beginner like me.
May 16th, 2010 at 06:56
Astounding..very informative, covers the things I needed to know, it really is Web Analytics 101.
Kudos.
May 20th, 2010 at 02:37
Im agree with all of those 7.. just i have some issues with prioritizing the KPIs. Not just for an e-commerce website, for a social e-commerce website. even its objective to generate more revenue with sales, but also the social features r the crucial parts to make visitors and customers turn back again and again…
so while i set same KPI; Average order size, how i suppose to check how commenting on feed items or making friends features make them turn back and drive it indirectly to sales…?
May 20th, 2010 at 14:40
Prakash: Thanks for the feedback.
Perhaps tactics is a better world in that context than strategies, if "specific strategies" is confusing.
Mehmet: I treat those as micro conversions (things that add value in the longer scheme of things). Using controlled experiments, trackble links, segmenting referrers, reduction in marketing expenses (if any), and more are ideas I would use to try to figure out what is the value added from those social marketing activities to the core business.
-Avinash.
May 25th, 2010 at 03:40
Great post! Thanks for sharing Matt's framework, I will definitely use it as a template :) I especially liked the Segmented KPI's part. – I would however add a "Delta" (week/month/quarter) to see the evolution (good or bad).
June 28th, 2010 at 06:54
[...]
Now What?
The data that is collected allows analysts (like me) to review the data and make suggestions to optimize the service. These services range from many different things, and could either be beneficial to the business or extremely detrimental…it just depends.
In order to get a little more background into the question, I would suggest reviewing “Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik.” This guy is absolutely amazing when dealing with analytics and provides invaluable.
[...]
July 18th, 2010 at 03:20
I'm less impressed with the segmentation framework presentation, only because I like to see segmentation as customer focused rather than media based.
I think with further analysis you could pull these out even with a basic analytics package by grouping together the search keywords and on-site behaviour eg 'Returning price led visitor' etc
July 19th, 2010 at 02:26
Hi Avinash
As always Great Post. Your Book is really helpful within the Marketing Department and to the C level executives. My biggest Challenge is trying to convince them to fix the basics within the website such as basic usability, SEO elements. All they look for is the conversion rate without fixing anything in the website. Competitors ads are all over. Not to mention while the searches happens within the site, it takes them to another ad.
After all this they still want to a high conversion. The problem is they dont want to measure the number of clicks and exits to the ads. We do our best to bring in traffic thru various channels but they dont want to understand what is happening after they land.
Is there a way that I can explain to them in such a way that they can understand or have you had any blog post posted related to these kind of issue. Appreciate your posts and enjoy all of your Interviews. Mitch Joel from Twist Image especially always has something to talk about you in his podcasts.
Thank you
Suresh
July 20th, 2010 at 02:52
Suresh: Thanks for fighting the good fight, and trying to create a more data driven organization.
I have written about transforming organizations and bosses before. Here are two posts that might be of value:
* Six Rules For Creating A Data Driven Boss!
* How To Excite People About Web Analytics: Five Tips.
Please check out the above ideas, perhaps there will be a couple that you can directly apply in your company.
Transforming organizations does take time and it is not easy. But it is well worth it.
Good luck,
Avinash.
July 20th, 2010 at 06:41
Hi Avinash
Thank you for the links and yes I found it Valuable.
Would love to hear your experience in fighting the good fight :)
Regards
Suresh
July 21st, 2010 at 12:09
[...]
Goal Conversion Rate can be greater than zero, even for the abandons. This means they completed another action that we deemed worthy of note, such as using a simpler form, or exceeding X numbers of page views, etc. Avanish Kaushik outlines Micro and Macro Goal set up very well at his blog here: Web Analytics 101. So we see even the abandons are not total losses.
[...]
July 25th, 2010 at 18:04
Your statement "Now when I do analysis of my performance (not just in aggregated but segmented by geo and campaign and source and…) I'll know if our results are good or bad or ugly." is the first point at which the concept of "segmentation" made practical sense to me.
Prior to that, "Segmentation? What is that for? He keeps raving about it, but what does it mean? I mean I know what it looks like, but why do it? How do you choose how to segment?" etc.
July 25th, 2010 at 18:10
Chris: I am glad that clarified segmentation.
If you want to get a much better view of segmentation I recommend checking out this post:
* Web Analytics Segmentation: Do Or Die, There Is No Try!
And to solidify the concept, assuming you are using Google Analytics, this post is chock full of practical examples of segments you can create for your own website:
* Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja!
Good luck!
Avinash.
August 1st, 2010 at 20:20
[...]
Have I scared anybody yet? I hope not. Here is the deal: getting started in the web is easy and you should do it because it is only through doing that you’re going to learn. Remember that before you get going you should work out what your requirements are. What are you trying to do? How are you going to measure success? Work out those business objectives and attack them like hell.
[...]
September 15th, 2010 at 06:48
Hello Avinash,
I have defined 18 goal and funnel for our 5 landing pages. Each landing pages have 3 types of subscriptions option and same one Thankyou page for all goal funnel. Problem is that when we see goal and funnel report in Google Analytic where is showing all completed conversion are same for all goal and funnels. for instance Set1 showing 100 completed Goal and funnel same all other set 2,3,5 showing 100 completed Goal and funnel. I thinks this report is not right.
I have the following pages.
ThankYou Page for all Goal and Funnel : /CheckoutPricing/SubscriptionThanks.aspx
Goal 1 :
Set 1
Step1 : /sports-cards-price-guide.aspx
Step2 : /Sports-Cards/Baseball-Card-Price-Guide.aspx
Step3 : /Membership/Login.aspx?o=47&i=3&b=-1&pp=5
Step4 : /Membership/SignUpNew.aspx?o=47&i=3&b=-1&pp=5
Step5 : /CheckoutPricing/NewUserPayment.aspx?o=47&i=3&b=-1&pp=5
Set 2
Step1 : /sports-cards-price-guide.aspx
Step2 : /Sports-Cards/Basketball-Card-Price-Guide.aspx
Step3 : /Membership/Login.aspx?o=56&i=186454&b=-1&pp=5
Step4 : /Membership/SignUpNew.aspx?o=56&i=186454&b=-1&pp=5
Step5 : /CheckoutPricing/NewUserPayment.aspx?o=56&i=186454&b=-1&pp=5
Set 3
Step1 : /sports-cards-price-guide.aspx
Step2 : /Sports-Cards/Hockey-Card-Price-Guide.aspx
Step3 : /Membership/Login.aspx?o=53&i=186453&b=-1&pp=5
Step4 : /Membership/SignUpNew.aspx?o=53&i=186453&b=-1&pp=5
Step5 : /CheckoutPricing/NewUserPayment.aspx?o=53&i=186453&b=-1&pp=5
November 10th, 2010 at 07:45
Avinash,
Thanks for this truly awesome framework. Its beauty lies in its simplicity and it really seems to work in my conversation with marketing colleagues. Finally you can tie web metrics to business issues and it's all on one page!
One question for clarification: what's the difference between a "goal" and a "conversion"? Aren't they synonymous in this context?
I understand that the web-analytics world is very much used to using the term "conversion" but to me it seems the two mean the same. So in Matt's example his "macro goal" (or "macro conversion") could be "monthly revenue" (given that it's a small business they're probably trying to grow through online sales). All other listed goals would then qualify as "micro goals" (or "micro conversions"). Doest this make sense?
Thanks,
Daniel
November 10th, 2010 at 11:49
Daniel: Good question.
I encourage you to see this section "Point of confusion" under the Goals section of this blog post. It clarifies this precise point.
In a nutshell conversions have a very specific ecommerce connotation to them (good connotation) and goals sometimes refer to only some tools (like GA). In my framework Goals are a much higher level entity.
"Goals are specific strategies you'll leverage to accomplish your business objectives."
-Avinash.
December 1st, 2010 at 04:25
Thanks, very useful.
January 5th, 2011 at 11:08
[...]
Web Analytics
Web Analytics 2.0 Style (Highly recommend knowledge source is the Web Analytics 2.0 book – Written by Avinash Kaushik – @avinash – your should follow him!)
Driving Customer Engagement Online – meaning how to respond & create community with your customers
Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques
Follow Google Webmaster Tools Youtube Channel and Matt Cutts via twitter @mattcutts (amazing info straight form the horses mouth!)
How to Create DUMB Goals: Doable. Understandable. Manageable. Beneficial.
[...]
April 10th, 2011 at 09:38
[...] Occam's Razor: Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets [...]
April 17th, 2011 at 18:15
Thanks for the breakdown!
I'm a web analytics newb, so this was very helpful!
May 15th, 2011 at 22:50
[...]
Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets – A deep piece by analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik, describing the differences between goals, metrics, and targets.
[...]
May 19th, 2011 at 08:21
[...]
Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
A very good introduction to all things analytics, via Occam’s Razor.
[...]
May 19th, 2011 at 13:57
I am a young graphic designer and looking to build my foundational knowledge in web design and user experience. This post was incredibly helpful and interesting. I will have to read it over to remember everything. But you really broke this down into eatable bites! Thanks a lot for your help!
If you can, let me know what other resources you'd suggest that a budding web designer should read.
Thanks again.
May 19th, 2011 at 15:28
Leslie: If you are new here are three posts that I think will be of immense value to you (and only just because I have written them, rather because they cover foundational concepts)…
#1: Keys To Web Analytics Maturity: Structure, Process, Hyper-focus
#2: The Difference Between Web Reporting And Web Analysis
#3: Beginner's Guide To Web Data Analysis: Ten Steps To Love & Success
All the best!
Avinash.
May 30th, 2011 at 20:08
[...]
Develop trackable goals and visit monthly by reviewing your DTC KPIs
[...]