How the performance of a web site is monitored and ultimately used is an indicator of the strategic view of the web in your organisation. Crude numbers don’t say anything particularly useful about the site and if decisions are being made based on these then the organisation is probably flying blind. Worse still these numbers can not be matched in a meaningful way to strategic business objectives so it is difficult to gauge if the organisation’s web activities are adding value.
Good
‘Web Stats’ are analysed and reports are reviewed in finer detail. This could include examining reports such as; entry/exit pages, most popular pages, 404 errors and bad request, path analyses, search engine terms, referring pages, etc. These are generally used by the operational team to ‘tune’ the site. The stats are also used in some way in the decision making and goal setting for the web activities.
Better
Key stakeholders engaged with the analytics, ask questions about their services and content. Simple numbers are questioned and there is more interested how the web presence is meeting user’s needs. To understand if this is happening more complex indicators begin to be used such as user behaviour, engagement level and satisfaction. These are inturn used in some way to help inform request for improvements and plan new developments.
Best
The organisation uses a detailed, comprehensive and multifaceted approach to performance measurements. This starts with identifying strategic objectives and defining how to measure these. A combination of qualitative and quantitative measures are use, for example; web stats ‘analytics’, market research, focus group testing, user surveys, benchmarking, etc. Critically, these are reported to those involved in making strategic decisions and are used as part of an assessment of the cost and value of the web presence, perhaps using a methodology such as ROI.
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One thing I've found amazingly common is organisations with no clear goals in mind for their website. That is... they've got a website, but could not clearly articulate *why* they have a website nor what they want to achieve by having a website. It doesn't need to be complex, it can be as simple as "we need a small brochure website so people can find us and contact us" - but if that's the goal, you can measure success. eg. if the prime goal is to contact the company, is it easy to do? Is there a contact form or do you just give out an email address? etc
ReplyDeleteThis is a great point! And I’m going to try and weave this theme into this first area. I think this needs to be expressed more clearly in the first para and the ‘good’ sections. So I’m going to add something along these lines:
ReplyDeleteMeasuring performance is pointless without clearly defined objectives, even if they are very simple ones.
Good
The organisation has some clearly stated goals for the web activities. This can be expressed in straightforward terms, for examples: "we need a small brochure website so people can find us and contact us". Using these goals some equally simple measures of performance, such as “Is the contact information easy to find? Are users following the link to the ‘contact us’ page”.
I agree that the "Why" is often missing from these sites. Large Gov organisations seem to have sites that have grown from simple information repositories to large, complex eBusiness enabled areas, keeping the original "information" focus, with ebusiness bits being "tacked-on" and usually buried or nearly inaccessible. The answer to "Why" keeps getting more complex so the site tends to reflect that complexity. It depends on "Who" answers the "Why" question.
ReplyDelete