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If time is money, web analytics are the currency by which engagement is measured and time is spent. The challenge, as with most investments is in realizing a return on investment and in a market where digital management roles are only now being addressed client side, analytics and analysis remain clouded in mystery with brand managers not fully versed in their use, value or merit and global agencies consistently reticent to tie performance to results.

Myriad web analytics packages exist, among the most popular, Google Analytics, Omniture (Adobe), WebTrends and Coremetrics, but all serve one specific role providing intelligent online business intelligence. Hiring a web analytics consultant or web analytics agency is a first step along the path to digital enlightment and is that much more important as display and search more closely align through real-time exchanges, DSPs and Google initiatives. It has been predicted that Facebook will be the digital market leader for display advertising, something we all know Yahoo, Bing and Google must be paying close attention to. Google cannot have purchased Doubleclick without a vision and a business case for it.

Analytics Certified

The role of analytics, as both Avinash Kaushik and the Google Analytics certification exam would have you know is not of absolutes but of identifying trends – the proverbial canary in the coal mine. But to trust in the numbers the process is paramount. Accordingly, an analytics agency or consultant’s first role if not one of implementation, should be an audit followed by an overview of goals, objectives and desired outcomes. Functionally, the role of web analytics is both reporting and intelligence in the measurement, collection, analysis of internet data as it relates to understanding and optimizing web habituation and usage in search of increased engagement with accountability to metrics, conversions and ultimately, transactions. At the end of the day, web analytics extend well beyond site usage as an intelligence and research tool for social media, mobile, entry and exit behaviours and with increasing frequency, offline indicators.

The challenge of web analytics within organizations is typically one of resource strain as data mining and reporting are time consuming at a minimum and associated costs are closely vetted by procurement officers. Analytics, however, can become a profit center if research and time spent lends itself to actionable insights which in turn can be tied back to budget line items. As some analytics programs are free, the only associated cost is in fact time and hours can be costed back on a project or FTE (Full-time employee basis).

The movement towards analytics as a profit center necessarily depends on success around implementation and the hands and eyes responsible for analytics outcomes, whether internal, a web analytics consultants or a web analytics agency:

• Understand the role analytics will play with your organization
• No metric lives in isolation; what will you measure; how?
• Create custom dashboards and communicate through the organization
• Measure consistently both in time and manner
• Test to a plan with defined hypotheses and benchmarks
• Factor analytics into project costs against marketing
• Align goals to conversions and vice versa

Peter Drucker famously said: What can be measured can be managed. And for digital presence the key element comes down to web analytics.

For analytics capabilities, we’re available at 1-800-994-4568 or info@searchtactix.com.

Have a good one.

~ Shane Wagg