Paddy Moogan kicks off proceedings… “It’s obvious, but only measure metrics that are actionable & only measure metrics that get shit done”
Metrics that are actionable
- Report on the customer voice
- % Visitors that view product pages (benchmark and improve over time) – These can be improved by internal navigation, site search and featured product widgets
- Average order value – Think ‘how can I get this site more revenue’, they rarely look at the traffic thats already there (but these are the easiest to win over!) – Add upsells wherever you can, look at keywords that get higher order value, look at traffic sources that get higher order value
- % People who search then exit – Use images and make sure results are clear, test your search results on site, include deals & discounts in results.
- Conversion Rate – Don’t look at ecommerce conversions for the whole website, it’s meaningless! Segment by relevant dimensions and highlight which are the best
Good Tip: Lots of CMS’s don’t include related keywords, consider singular and pluralized versions & ensure that your CMS caters for these!
Non Ecommerce Sites
- Page Load Speed – Track this using the new google site speed check, bug your developers
- Custom Variables FTW – Record rel=canonical, is the page inked to sitewide? (measure the traffic from Google and see what effect it has), tag ‘types’ of pages and see how they perform
- Beat Panda! Measure content such as reviews and see if they are effective
- 4q Surveys worthwhile to use
- Measure your share of search landscape – get a top 100 keywords and see what percentage each competitor (other website) owns – use this tool to do it
- Form Field Tracking – Check which fields confuse people, improve or remove them then track as events in analytics
- Measure Branded vs. Non-Branded traffic – “Helps you justify the SEO spend”
Good tips: Use Custom variables to measure/record changes and measure their success
Measure people copying text on a page (and make them internal links)
Metrics that get shit done
- Explain the value of content to the client – show them the growth of content against the past. And of course, if they are losing content (deleting content) ensure 301s are in place
- “Developers don’t like SEO tasks” – The way their mind works they can’t see the immediate result… So show them the increase (traffic, conversions etc) based upon changes
Notes from Paddy’s talk can be found here
Tom Betts is now going to show the examples from FT.com and how SEO & Analysis is being taken very seriously
Always ask yourself…
- ‘So what’ – What is the point of reporting this?
- What is the point reporting at all? Is anyone going to use it…?
Remember these things about your metrics:
- Customers aren’t all the same, don’t treat them that way!
- Segment your audience and understand your audience (95% of your site visitors may be passing visitors, try to capture these!)
Measure customers in the context of ‘the customer’ not the devices/browsers that they use or their cookies
- Cookies are unique to device/browser, deleted, blocked and generally unreliable (ComScore said that 2.4x cookies were present per user per site in one month)
- Consider instead using a (persistent) customer ID instead and conversion attribution – Provide context, combine with behavioural information, then tie this in to their lifecycle
- Then, add a layer of value over this – Consider the different devices that your customer uses. Is the new channel (app etc) actually making you more money OR is it just moving your existing users…?
Deal with emerging channels now!
- Use a single platform for cross-channel analysis
- Clear line of sight from app usage to revenue via customer
- Holistic view of customers and how the like to consumer their content (do your customers like to rea their news in the morning on their iPad then on their PC at lunchtime…?)
- Figure out how much to invest in mobile – And help you to identify new channel opportunity and upsells ;-p