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MEASURE & INTEGRATE
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Before we think about digital data and tools to capture performance metrics, we work towards developing a well structured Digital Performance Measurement Model. This model tries to answer some very simple & straight forward questions
What are the business objectives of this engagement?
What are achievable & measurable goals against these objectives?
What are the KPIs against each goal?
Do we have tech infrastructure & tools to measure all important data points?
Set Clear, Measurable & Achievable Goals
Setting Goals sets the tone & direction to the engagement & majority of times it starts from base-lining performance metrics & set reasonable targets. In some cases where there is no sufficient base-line data we get into comprehensive opportunity analysis. Some examples:-
- A large CPG company asking us to improve conversion rate of their mobile web e-commerce system from 8.6% to 14% in 12 months.
- A one of the biggest Edu tech company setting doubling revenue as a goal, when they were on same numbers from last 30 months.
- A large university ranking & higher education platform aiming to double their lead intake from organic channels (they don’t do paid).
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Identify key digital performance influencers
Digital Performance Influencers vary significantly at micro level but at macro level nearly same set of rules apply for every digital business. This help us in identify KPIs and then in setting targets for them.
Outreach Conceptual Models & Platforms
What are the Methods (audience, creative & communication strategy) & Platforms (social, video, content etc) currently being used for reaching target audience. This covers Social Media Channels, Video Channels, Content Marketing Platforms & Display Campaigns. In conventional sense this step covers all brand outreach initiatives.
Outreach Engagement Efficiency
This step measures efficiency of brand outreach efforts. Key metrics we monitor are banner ads true views, banner ads true view per person per week, video minutes per user, video upvotes, rate of growth of subscribers, social media engagement parameters (shares, likes, follow) & many such.
Capturing right audience
This step covers all channels & methods used for capturing relevant audience with specific purpose. This covers Search Performance Campaigns (Paid Search, Organic Search), App download campaigns, Display performance campaigns, Social Media performance campaigns and others.
Micro & Macro Conversion
Success of this step depends on establishing micro level correlation between user actions & success. Every user action, which is likely to contribute positively to expected outcome, should be understood clearly.
Multiple micro conversions contribute to business conversions (quality lead, e-commerce order, subscription etc)
Multiple micro conversions contribute to business conversions (quality lead, e-commerce order, subscription etc)
User Behavior
How are users behaving on web properties (websites, web apps, pwa, mobile apps) by segments (traffic sources, landing page types, user types, device types & others). Most popular measurement models are user journeys, heat maps, scroll depth, page depth etc
Repeat Users & Customers Behavior
Efficiency of bringing quality user/customer again & again is fundamental to digital performance campaigns. In this step we focus on audience segmentation & message efficiency metrics.
User & Customer Advocacy
All user & customer actions pre or post purchase, which are likely to influence referral & repeat.
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Identify Key Performance Indicators
Key Performance Indicators a metric that helps us understand actual performance against business goals. There are large number of metrics in web analytics and it is critical to monitor few real ones closely. Some of KPIs we use very often in different engagements:-
Share of global search (visibility & capture)
This help us monitor efficiency of all search focused campaigns. This answers questions like “What is the % of times we are visible to high intent search users?”. Calculating this requires very deep understanding of universal search demand by location, by device, by day of the week & so on.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a very controversial metric firstly because of it’s definition & secondly because of multiple measurement issues. We use it only after resolving all such issues & sometime only because top management is interested to see it 🙂
Events/Visit
Measuring critical user events (video views, registration pop-ups, comparison, product photos views, “read more”, tabs etc) which are not creating independent user journeys need to be measured properly for getting true picture.
Visitor Loyalty
Visitor Loyalty (visiting web/mobile properties again in a defined period) is a complex metric, primarily because of user cookie settings & multi device usage. Key influencers of this metric are brand search, remarketing campaigns, email marketing & notifications.
Visitor Recency
Importance of recency of repeat visits vary case to case. This is one of the key metric for monitoring efficiency of remarketing & retarging initiatives.
Days/Visits to Outcome
No matter how strong a brand you are and loyal your customer base you have, very few users becomes customers in first visit/day.
Economic Value
True business value of a customer is not only order value he made but complete business impact he can have on overall business in longer time duration. Factors like repeat purchase, referral, advocacy (reviews/ratings, social engagement etc) should be considered while calculating this metric.
Checkout abandonment rate
We have observed Checkout abandonment rate between 98% to 23% range and it is still one of the easiest to influence. Key dimensions of this metric should be device, single/multiple product in cart, payment method & even browsers.
Avg Order Value
Order size as a metric gets influenced by pricing experiments, discount/offers campaigns & recommendation engine.
Cost per approved lead
In all growth initiatives which are deeply associated by volume & quality of leads, cost of qualified lead is an important metric. True picture comes out only when this is monitored for different kind of users (brand search visitors, repeat visitors etc) with true attribution. This becomes complicated when multiple lead capturing methods (forms, inbound call, chat & even offline lead) are being used.
Task Completion Rate
In business cases where conversion is not the expectation, it becomes important to define tasks which we want user to accomplish. Rate of completion of such tasks (& steps to complete that task) becomes critical metric in such cases.
% Assisted conversions
In the age of multiple marketing channels & devices, assisted conversion is the new normal. No channel, no matter how efficient it looks, takes a user to a complete journey on it’s own. It’s complexity can be understood by understanding brand search & direct traffic. Every analyst attribute success to brand search & direct traffic without telling how did he get to know about the brand in first place 🙂
Cost per customer acquisition
This is the most popular metric. It should always be monitored keeping different user types (brand search, repeat users, repeat customers etc) & assistance it got from different channels.
& Few More
We do use some other KPIs like churn rate, amplification rate, subscription rate & others for monitoring one or more then one performance influencers.
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Measurement Framework
After deep understanding of what need to be measured next obvious step is to ensure it gets measured with very high accuracy. In digital analytics accuracy & completeness is critical to success, as there is no way we can go back & correct it.
Knowing current framework
- What tools are being used currently
- What metrics & dimensions are being recorded
Digital Analytics Audit
Auditing digital data & it’s current interpretation for data accuracy is very critical to success.
- Audit current analytics tools on technical efficiency
- Audit digital data on accuracy, consistency & completeness
Data Capturing & Integration Framework
After clear understanding of important metrics & current implementation we create Data Capturing & Integration Framework which focuses on
- Issue resolution in existing technical implementation
- Upgrading existing tools to advance level implementation
- Implementing new tools for capturing new metrics & dimensions
- Integrating data from multiple sources (CRM, Loyalty, Search Console, Website Architecture etc)
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Digital Analytics Implementation & Upgrade
Identification of right Web Analytics tools & their implementation through Google Tag Manager. In majority of cases we upgrade existing implementations to higher level of maturity.
Web Analytics Implementation
- PageViews tracking
- Form Tracking
- User Events
- Social Engagements
- User Scroll Tracking
- Video Tracking
- Cross Domain Tracking
- Advanced Form Tracking
- Goal Setting
- In-system search implementation
Other Digital Data Sources
Various other digital data sources
- Google Search Console
- Conversion tracking from different paid channels
- Heat Map Tracking tool
Tag Management
We use Google Tag Manager for managing various tags & tracking codes. This helps efficient monitoring.