The advent of free Web Analytics tools puts pressure upon pricings. Media buying agencies are working hard to report useful results. Advanced Web Analytics clients are adapting their data gathering strategies to feed online data into data warehouses and revisiting the very concept of business intelligence.
We all agree that we have to make decisions based upon data. Where to start?
With which tool, using which team to support findings – and actions -, which consequences would it hold upon the very core of your organisation?
Web Analytics is, for various reasons, an attractive angle to initiate change management related to data usage within your company, supporting strategic decision making.
The online channel is prolific, in terms of data gathering. The data can accommodate your “just in time” needs – what, when, at the price you are willing to pay for it – and allow for reporting and analysis upon any kind of test you’d like to undergo within the realm of the online channel. Cross-channel behavioural targeting is the next step of an analytics journey.
A successful Web Analytics project allows you to start adapting your company mentality in order to make decisions based upon tangible data, while assuring the right processes are put into place so as to collect the very data needed.
Everybody raves about KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, those financial and non-financial metrics used to quantify objectives to reflect strategic performance of an organization!
Once objectives have been quantified, they should result in accountability assessments and hopefully action. After all, isn’t that the name of the game? Know how you’re doing? And do better?
The Web Analytics sector has embraced the obligation of defending business cases and stetting standards for the definition of return on investment of WA projects. Your company can do the same: setting up business cases to classify online opportunities by ROI and learn from the reported findings, fine tuning your investment in this highly measurable channel.
You can measure conversion rates, set benchmarks, request the KPI owner for a thorough explanation of why something happen, realign your online and off line marketing spending, make decisions about sales based upon cost per acquisition and margins, …
And at some point, you will inevitably start thinking about other data repositories that already exist within your company and, as your successes are being echoed internally, other department heads will support your accountability initiatives.
That’s where often the words BI &/or CRM pop-up, together with the odd data warehouse or mart. Coincidently, it’s also then that your Web Analytics guy/gall or team will not only report to the CMO and will enclose the Chief Financial Officer in the required continuous feedback loop.
The question today is not anymore about where the data should sit.
While BI talks about ETL, Web Analytics talks about aligning processes and passing through unique identifiers to plug data together, push or pull, either way, according to reporting and analysis needs. Web Analytics embraces other channels’ data, transforming itself into Customer Analytics.
You should worry today about where your Web Analyst should sit!
Will Marcom foster the required accountability mind set? Has BI or CRM type projects delivered on their promises?
Web Analytics is about discrete process optimization.
You can start today. Google Analytics is free.
Aurélie
OX2 Web Analytics Blog 