The Elusive Web Measurement Strategy

Imag­ine tak­ing a class in col­lege with­out clearly know­ing what is expected by your pro­fes­sor or how you will be graded. Noth­ing could be more stress­ful to a recov­er­ing “grade whore” like me. You could lean over to an intelligent-looking class­mate beside you and ask their opin­ion of what is expected and how you will be graded. That’s not going to help you get the high­est grade.

If you’re going to be suc­cess­ful in the class you really need to have a copy of the syl­labus from the teacher. If you think back to your col­lege days, a syl­labus (that col­ored piece of paper that ended up crum­pled at the bot­tom of your back­pack by the end of the semes­ter) was pretty impor­tant because it pro­vided the course objec­tives, top­ics, and grad­ing plan. With a syl­labus in hand, any stu­dent has the poten­tial to achieve an “A” in the class (mmmm “A”).

After empha­siz­ing the need for an exec­u­tive spon­sor, my next key to cre­at­ing a data-driven orga­ni­za­tion is align­ing your imple­men­ta­tion with busi­ness objec­tives. Many com­pa­nies strug­gle with becom­ing more data-driven because they don’t have the equiv­a­lent of a “syl­labus” for their online busi­ness. A web mea­sure­ment strat­egy is a clear, cohe­sive strat­egy for mea­sur­ing online busi­ness per­for­mance against busi­ness objec­tives. It encap­su­lates the organization’s cur­rent online busi­ness objec­tives and strat­egy, KPIs, and other unique report­ing requirements.

In a recently released report by e-Consultancy, we con­tinue to see that many com­pa­nies still don’t have a mea­sure­ment strat­egy in place. After sur­vey­ing more than 800 dig­i­tal mar­keters, e-Consultancy found “…that just one in five com­pa­nies (22%) has an inter­nal strat­egy that ‘ties data col­lec­tion and analy­sis to busi­ness objec­tives’ and only 27% say their web ana­lyt­ics ‘def­i­nitely drive action­able insights.’”

Why do we need a mea­sure­ment strategy?

In my opin­ion, there are four main ben­e­fits to devel­op­ing a web mea­sure­ment strategy:

1. Gain a clearer under­stand­ing of your company’s online busi­ness per­for­mance. With­out well-defined KPIs, you’re not going to truly under­stand busi­ness per­for­mance and take appro­pri­ate action.
2. Achieve greater buy-in and adop­tion by involv­ing key exec­u­tives and stake­hold­ers in the busi­ness require­ments gath­er­ing phase.
3. Align your orga­ni­za­tion around shared mea­sure­ment objec­tives that are tied to key busi­ness goals. Hav­ing every­one focused on what’s most impor­tant to the busi­ness is extremely valuable.
4. Avoid costly mis­steps that may require re-implementation and delay “time-to-value”. Mea­sure twice, cut once.

Why are they so elusive?

In terms of man­ag­ing a web­site, the pace of work hasn’t let up much since the late 1990’s. It’s a daily bat­tle to keep the company’s web­site cur­rent in terms of con­tent (e.g., prod­ucts, arti­cles, spe­cial pro­mo­tions, cam­paigns, brand­ing, etc.) and tech­nol­ogy (e.g., video, social media, behav­ioral tar­get­ing, mer­chan­dis­ing, test­ing, etc.). Being caught up in the day-to-day demands of man­ag­ing one or more web­sites, many com­pa­nies fail to set aside time to estab­lish and com­mu­ni­cate a clear online strat­egy for their web ini­tia­tives. It’s hard to form a web mea­sure­ment strat­egy when there isn’t a clearly artic­u­lated web strat­egy to begin with.

At a suc­cess­ful high tech com­pany, I met with 15–20 prod­uct mar­ket­ing man­agers to dis­cuss their busi­ness require­ments. After some debate about what they wanted to mea­sure online, the prod­uct mar­ket­ing man­agers told me to ask senior man­age­ment what their web strat­egy was and “let us know when you find out what it is.” Ouch.

When approach­ing a new imple­men­ta­tion project, man­agers who are tasked with man­ag­ing the project can be tempted to dive right in and may feel a web mea­sure­ment strat­egy isn’t nec­es­sary. They may feel they can suf­fi­ciently rep­re­sent the “inter­ests” of the busi­ness based on their inter­nal con­ver­sa­tions and insights. Unfor­tu­nately, this approach has led to sit­u­a­tions where senior exec­u­tives later com­plain that the pro­duced web ana­lyt­ics reports do not reflect their actual busi­ness needs.

Sim­i­lar to the children’s “tele­phone” game where a whis­pered mes­sage dis­torts as it passes from child to child, key busi­ness objec­tives can become equally dis­torted or mis­in­ter­preted as they are passed from VP-to-director-to-manager-to-analyst within an orga­ni­za­tion. Unless you go through the process of build­ing a for­mal web mea­sure­ment strat­egy, you may not fully under­stand the key require­ments of your business.

Build­ing a mea­sure­ment strategy

Omni­ture Con­sult­ing has worked with var­i­ous com­pa­nies to help define their online mea­sure­ment strate­gies, and I’ve iden­ti­fied three main stages in this process: Gather, Refine, and Align. The Gather stage typ­i­cally involves sev­eral stake­holder inter­views to bet­ter under­stand busi­ness goals and require­ments (prefer­ably face-to-face ses­sions). In the Refine stage, we eval­u­ate, clar­ify, and pri­or­i­tize objec­tives in order to develop a sound mea­sure­ment strat­egy. In the Align stage, we share the new mea­sure­ment strat­egy with the orga­ni­za­tion and then work towards align­ing the imple­men­ta­tion with key busi­ness objectives.

Is your over­all busi­ness strat­egy static?

Prob­a­bly not (or you may be touch­ing up your resume if it is). Most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies will adapt online strate­gies to new mar­ket con­di­tions to seize oppor­tu­ni­ties and avoid threats. For exam­ple, I imag­ine very few busi­nesses have the same strat­egy today as they did two years ago.

How­ever, many com­pa­nies fail to re-calibrate their web mea­sure­ment strat­egy and imple­men­ta­tions when their busi­ness objec­tives have changed. These com­pa­nies then won­der why their web ana­lyt­ics reports aren’t help­ing them to man­age their online busi­ness. A Ger­man proverb states, “What’s the use of run­ning if you are not on the right road.” What’s the use of track­ing “met­rics” if they don’t align with your busi­ness? Align­ment is critical.

My next arti­cle in this series will focus on the impor­tance of staffing and train­ing.