eHealth Articles & White Papers

Making the Case for Web Analytics

Ben Dillon - Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

Web analytics highly subjective. Any values that you measure are driven by elements of site design, methods of collection and finely-tuned definitions of abstract metric concepts. If you analyze your site with two different analytics tools, for example one log-based and one javascript-based, you'll likely find the results bare only a vague resemblance to one another.

So, why bother with metrics?

The information that you get from any single tool, applied consistently, will provide information that is accurate relative to other measurements taken from that same tool. With this in mind, there are many ways to apply these tools to provide valuable information.

Traffic to your site will evolve over time. Your audience gradually changes-they are getting older and, in most cases, becoming more comfortable with the Internet as a tool for conducting business.

External factors also have an impact. Major disease outbreaks, advertising campaigns, and even TV and movies can influence Web viewing (e.g., 23 percent of regular "ER" viewers have sought additional information due to something they've seen on the show).

As a result, monitoring site metrics over time and focusing on trending information can provide valuable insights. It is particularly valuable to watch how your site usage changes in response to changes you make to your site. Updates to site copy, design, layout or transaction flow can significantly change the way visitors interact with the site.

The ability to track these changes in near real-time facilitates the measurement of significant site changes. In fact, if you test competing concepts by making one change at a time and verifying its impact, you can determine which change will be most effective.

Metrics help you make comparisons

The Web analytic tools provide raw numbers to measure the effectiveness of your site, but determining how you are doing relative to industry peers is more challenging.

The key to getting worthwhile comparisons against peers is to ensure you are using the same definition for each metric - for practical purposes, this means all metrics must be captured through the same tool and created in the same way.

Comparing between numbers generated in Web trends and Google Analytics will not produce reliable results, nor will comparing between two Web trends implementations if one filters search engine spider traffic and the other does not.

There are two approaches that we' e used with some success for this type of benchmarking:

• If you are working with a Web partner who works with similar organizations, they are likely able to provide some baseline data (with permission of their other clients)
• Google Analytics now has a benchmarking service that compares your site with others in an industry set.

Metrics help you track value

Perhaps the most important use of Web analytics is to track the value you're generating through your website. For the large number of organizations that have analytics tools, few use the information actively and even fewer tie the metrics to their organization's strategic goals or bottom-line financial measures.

Some information can be gathered strictly within your site, but most information will require you to connect the dots with data from other systems. I encourage you to work with your CFO to determine the rules for capturing such financial information so that the results you derive are acceptable to your organization.

Once you make that effort, you do indeed have a powerful tool for garnering the support of senior leadership. Make sure that you are measuring things that are relevant to the audience and then communicate your results proactively.

Metrics help you accomplish your goals

Don't let the challenges in translating the data collected into a story that resonates with your senior leadership discourage you from making the effort.

It does take some time to set such a program into motion and to maintain it over time, but the impact of good data is irreplaceable in an environment of tight budgets and increasing scrutiny and accountability.

If you take an approach that develops defensible numbers and conclusions then you'll find that this data will help you accomplish your online goals more effectively.