Website measurement 1: What is your data for?

Few companies come to a web project knowing exactly what they want to measure and why. Some have a vague idea that it would be good, parts of the clients then the measurement will be recommended by their marketing agency. Let's take a look at what the measurement of a web project might be useful for you and what you need for it.

If you can't measure something, you can't even control it.

-Peter Drucker

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Need to understand

You wonder what's going on on the site so you can get a picture of it. In this case, we are talking more about applied research. The goal is to gain knowledge — whether about Your customersSelling products or marketing. And then continue to use this knowledge — for example for designing new products, editing the website, etc. And through these steps, you gain a competitive advantage.

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Need to drive

You are interested in what is happening on the site so that you can manage related activities. For example, marketing campaigns can be directed to the website, which you want to revise through the current PNO -- you measure that any campaign given PNO they outnumber, so you limit and adjust them. You may want to manage the stocking of new products so that there are not too many of them in the warehouse. You may want to manage your website so that it delivers enough leads or queries to your business on an ongoing basis.

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So why do you want to measure the web?

Measurements and data obtained by themselves have no value. They only get the prize when something happens to them — for example, data helps you get to know customers better and tailor services to them, find a broken campaign and change it, find a problematic place in the cart and change it, etc. In all the cases mentioned, there was someone (human or machine) who gained knowledge or performed some action. Let's look at the reasons for measurement through the perspective of the people (or their roles) who need the data.

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You are the boss and you need to run the company

A website is often one of the first things your future customers see and build a picture of your business based on the web. The number of users on the site and their experience reflects the number of customers you have in the final. Typically in a B2C business, this can be seen immediately — if a user can't find and select a product or if you can't convince them to buy from you, they're about two clicks away from your competitor's website.

Typically, you will need to know:

• As the number of visits to the site evolves,
• whether the site pays for marketing — you just need to have a basic overview,
• Whether users are satisfied with the site and your services,
• whether they manage to meet the stated goals — e.g. turnover for the e-shop or the number of registrations to the newsletter for the blog.

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Nothing detailed, just long-term trends, possibly comparisons with the previous period.

Example: a small business blog
The chart below shows a slight decrease in the number of visits to the site at the end of March.

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At that moment, it is necessary for the boss to give out tasks and someone to find out why the number of visits is decreasing. Maybe you'll find out that half of your site dropped out of your search as part of Google's algorithm update — as in this case. And you can start to deal with it.

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You are a marketer and need to manage marketing communications

You do a lot of activities around the web — you write content, try to climb higher in the search, launch PPC campaigns, deal with remarketing, PR articles, shoot videos on FB, display products on marketers. You need to fit into the budget and at the same time be in control of the profit from individual activities. For this you need to know e.g. :

• How many visits are coming from individual traffic sources,
• how much do you which resources cost money and time (and time is money)
• how much money or conversions resources generate,
• how resources interact with each other.

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Example: e-shop with multiple performance campaigns
Looking at campaigns in Google Analytics, you can see campaign #9 — which has a high PNO and at the same time a significantly lower conversion rate. At that point, the marketer needs to check:

• whether the content of the campaign corresponds to what you write about the product on the site
• whether campaign landing pages are suitable landing pages,
• in what position does the campaign typically figure in attribution models — if it does not happen to bring users in earlier stages of the purchasing process (then a high PNO might be fine).

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And if there is no problem in anything listed (as in this case), the campaign needs to be curtailed or stopped altogether.

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You are a designer and need to design a website or service

If you are designing a service as a designer, you need to know its users. You need to know what situation they are in, what their needs and concerns are, why they come to the site. It will best help you in this user research, online questionnaires, some data can also be obtained e.g. from Google Analytics.

Example: the official website of the city
The table lists the most common reasons why users come to the city site. Obviously it doesn't make them a problem to find the thing they need to sort out or find contacts. On the contrary, you should focus on the scenario of finding a city plan and development.

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You are a designer and you need to optimize your website

Optimization typically begins with understanding customers (i.e., evaluating the measured data) and naming the problem. And then you try to improve the design of the site through gradual adjustments and evaluations. And you continuously measure and evaluate the results. Optimization begins and ends with measurement.

Example: e-shop optimization
On the graph you can see the passage through the e-shop — from the total number of visits, product views to the order.

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It is quite clear that in this case you will focus on the detail of the product. You will discuss what you can do to convince users to add products to their cart.

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And other specific scenarios

In addition to the above, those who work with your website may need different data for their work. In addition to the above-mentioned marketers and designers, we have encountered the following uses:

• The IT department wants to monitor in real-time whether someone is currently completing the order process — in which case it delays the deployment of the new version until after the user completes the order.
• The IT department needs information about which countries and parts of the world the web is accessed from. Accordingly, they can better design a way to distribute content — so that the site is fast and at an affordable price.
• The coder needs data on typical screen resolutions — in order to better tailor the design of the site.
• Product specialists need data on how much people search for specific products and how they buy them as a result. Based on this, they decide which products to graduate and which products to withdraw from sale.
• A copywriter needs to know what topics users are most interested in.

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Or you are not human

Another interesting group of data recipients are various robots. For example, those who manage PPC campaigns of large companies, help you calculate attribution models, check for changes in trends. They typically get by with basic GA views, but they need to have the data as accurate as possible.

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In conclusion

So why does your business want a set site measurement?

• The boss will help the data to better manage the company,
• help designers understand the data for users
• marketers will allow data to drive marketing communications.

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Simply — they will help them do their job better.

Do you want to measure and do not have a set measurement? Or are you measuring unintelligible data that does not answer your questions? If you want to do something about it, the other articles in this series will help you with this. In the next part, we will look at what should be included in the order to set up measurements.

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