Web analytics help you measure and understand how users work their way around your website, and why they do so. You can use your web analytics data to understand what kind of content to produce more of, what to avoid wasting time on, and how to arrange your site content to help users achieve their goals (and yours!)
Avinash Kaushik is a prolific writer and speaker about web analytics. Here’s a quick summary of some of the key lessons he teaches in two great videos that we’ve watched recently here at ONE/Northwest, “Successful Web Analytics Approaches by Avinash Kaushik [YouTube]” and “Authors@Google: Avinash Kaushik [YouTube].”
1) Web analytics should produce action
The cliché says that knowledge is power, but in the case of web analytics, action is power. Information, in a classical sense, is something that helps your understanding of a particular topic. In analytics, your data (knowledge) is providing you information to understand how to best engage your audience. Use it! If your site needs a change in structure to help users reach key pages on your site, make those changes. Don’t be afraid to use two metrics together to find data. The key in non-profit marketing isn’t to make your site as user-friendly as possible; it is to help visitors get to the “goal” content they (and you) want them to get to. Make sure that you can convert as many visits into goals as you can.
2) Allocate resources using “the rules.”
It’s hard to know how to allocate limited resources to web analytics. Here are two quick rules of thumb:
- 10% of resources for tools; 90% of resources for people. Web analytics require a human to figure out what the numbers mean. Google Analytics is free, and provides all the tool power that most nonprofits need.
- 80% of time for analysis, 20% for reporting. Reporting is an important aspect of analytics, but reports won’t get you useful data. Analysis is required to actually understand your data. Reports provide numbers, analysis provides meaning.
3) Don’t let HiPPOs make your decisions
Avinash contends that the majority of decisions are made by HiPPOs (highest paid person’s opinion). Don’t allow this if you have data to that supports an alternative! While the highest paid person is important in a business (usually because they do have good opinions), data is king. Web analytics allow you to use facts to make decisions, instead of using hunches.
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