I’m wonder why some people starts a measurement project from the end, the implementation of a measurement tool. So, let’s talk a little bit about the previous step of a measurement project.
The measurement Object: First of all it is vital to define what are you gonna measure, in every case you will measure a system so you have to understand how that system looks like. So if you have system, the main thing you have to understand is the main objetive of it, in this case let’s say earned money, benefits, not just quantity of sales.
In this step I suggest you to grab a sheet of paper (I normally use the other side of a wrong printed one) and start the drafting process. Important! This is a draft, forget about being perfectionist.
In the draft draw every part of the system you need to measure. Let’s say an Online Shop (eCommerce), a content website, an online product site for an offline commerce, etc.
Take a look to an example I did just for this post:
As you can see, first I defined the demand generation actions (traffic channels?), so I defined a responsable (marketing) and the objective of each channel is between parenthesis. Each channel, or even campaign, will drive demand to a particular landing page. The quantity of landing pages will depend on the quantity of different targets and/or messages communicated, the idea is that each person lands on a page that is relevant to the previous message received. Then each landing page will have a set of interactions that will drive the landed browser to a particular content or process. It’s important that you have in mind the process you wanted the user to do so you will be able to plan the few required interactions to do that and not adding dozens of interactions that will compete each other and can finally drive the user out of the conversion process.
Parenthesis: Each interaction compete with the rest of them, so if you think that adding a download, or a product simulator is a good idea, first analyze which other interactions do you have in the same page and how they compete each other.
Returning to the main topic, each landing page will drive traffic to a set of content and each content will also be responsable of a particular goal. In this case each content will take users in different stages of their buying process and will try to convert them into clients. Actually, customer support will have the goal of providing a great service and turn that in a new sale (up sale or cross sale).
Once the conversion is done (a new sale) you have information about that new client to improve his Life Time Value. In this case I highly recommend you to go from ROI (Return on Investment) to ROCI (Return on Customer Investment), because no matter if you are getting a high ROI you can be investing money in non rentable clients…but this topic worth, at least, a full new post.
Define the “interactions to conversion”: In the above image you see each part of the system and its role in it. The main objetive is to generate benefits from online sales, meaning increasing the gap between cost and price. Then you have to find sets of actions that will bring the company closer to its objetive. Let’s say “Awareness”, “Buy intention”, “Conversion” and “Upsale / Cross Sale”. Each of the above “Categories” will have a sets of measurable actions, let’s say for awareness could be “Download Catalog”, “View Product”, etc. Then try the same with each categorie. Get a value for everything, a registration is a lead conversion and should have a value for you. All those interactions related to the main objetive must be tracked, whether with page tracking or action tracking.
Information system: Once you now all the required information you have to define all the information sources you need. Website Analytics, HeatMaps, Surveys and Polls, eMail Marketing, Ad Servers, etc.
After this you have to define the implementation structure for each platform and just then do the implementation, but that is for another post.
Juan