Fact-based web management
Graham Honeywill Amberbuzz Consulting Oy
12th January 2010 Version 1.0
The web is the only channel where you must manage through facts..........2 The virtuous web experience (Reach, Engage, Activate, Nurture) ..............3 So who cares? (Building the business case for the web) ...................................4 Quick “primer” for a business balanced scorecard ............................................5 Creating a Fact-based web framework.....................................................................6 About Amberbuzz Consulting Oy ................................................................................6
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Fact-based web management
The web is the only channel where you must manage through facts How many people visited your Internet site today? How long did they stay there? Did they get what they came for and leave with a positive experience? These are basic questions that any business web team can answer. But now ask about the relevance of these questions and answers to the business itself? That is a more complex topic that requires a deep understanding of the business, the value chain within which the business exists, and the role of digital channels in that value chain. Of course these questions don’t just apply to online marketing - they are equally relevant for other communications channels too. The difference with digital channels concerns the impact and influence these answers can have on channel effectiveness. The nature of digital channels means that: • • • •
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There will be many more visits here than to any other channel – you can interact with many people at a vastly lower cost than with other channels. The visits will be much shorter in duration – you have a very small time available to impact a visitor. The visitor is probably “multitasking” and with a short attention span and low tolerance for complications and delays – get it wrong and you lose the opportunity extremely quickly and possibly forever. The visits are unguided o there isn’t someone available to show you what you want – it is up to the visitor to find out for themselves o if the visitor had difficulties, there is nobody there to recognise this and compensate accordingly The visit starts somewhere away from your site (for example in a search query) and often ends away from the site (for example with a sale or a contact query) – meaning the KPIs have to cover the scope of the entire journey, from intent to delivery and feedback The visit will be influenced by content that has been created by others – outside your scope of control – meaning the KPIs need to integrate cocreated content with your own content in order to provide a complete view.
All of this leads to the obvious conclusion that this channel can only be managed by effective web metrics – KPIs, with targets, integrated with business metrics, that can be used to guide decisions of design, content, layout and capability, with an effective management process in place that will use these KPIs in tactical, operational and strategic decision making. The purpose of this document is to outline a method to identify these KPIs and develop the targets
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Fact-based web management
(Similar rules apply with intranets and extranets although there is a change in the balance between engagement (keeping the visitor on your site) and efficiency (getting the visitor to complete her task as quickly as possible) - in the case of the internet your visitor usually has a plethora of choice so you would tend to want to engage her for longer – whereas for these other digital channels you want them to get off the site and on with their real-world job as quickly as possible.)
The virtuous web experience (Reach, Engage, Activate, Nurture) Luckily for us, it is possible to define all successful web visits as 4 major activity areas: • • • •
Reach – helping the visitor find your content from the web, for example from web-based search, and successfully bring them to your web site Engage – delivering a positive, branded experience that will engage and delight the visitor when they arrive at your web site Activate – Ensuring that the visit ends with an action to further the goals of both the visitor and the business (for example a download, a contact, a sale, a comment, a referral etc) Nurture – encouraging the visitor to deepen the dialogue through registration to a “push channel”, such as mail or RSS, bookmarking and returning to the site, engaging in a discussion (co-created content) either on the site or elsewhere on the web. This last step is critical as it builds the basis and content for others to “Reach” to the site, leading to a virtuous cycle of web content development.
It is also possible to define a relatively standardised set of KPIs that you might want to use in each of these 4 phases – providing a common language for target setting and online channel management, that can be applied across industries and across different digital channels. Potential “Reach” KPIs • • • •
Traffic by source (earned, bought, own, offline) Organic search effectiveness (targeted keyword ranking) Social media effectiveness (clickthrough from social media sites) Online banner clickthrough rates
Potential “Engage” KPIs • • • • •
Visits, visitors and visit duration Bounce rate (visitors immediately leaving the site) Online brand image/impression (surveys) onsite search effectiveness content volume and accuracy (ranking of content views)
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Fact-based web management
Potential “Activate” KPIs • • • • • • •
Online sales (and abandonment rate) Qualified sales leads Contact requests Brand engagement activity success rate Online tool conversion (for example to job application tool) Self service (downloads etc) Content referrals, comments, votes
Potential “Nurture” KPIs • • • • • • •
Cross sales (sales to an existing registered visitor) Customer referrals on public web (unsolicited) Registration to receive “Push communication” such as newsletter, RSS or mobile Online community activity Extranet visit, visitor and duration KPIs Lead conversion KPIs(sales funnel) Knowledge sharing and collaboration
So, given the above, I would argue that measuring web performance is not complicated. What is complicated, though, is selecting the critical few KPIs for target setting, and then setting targets for them, integrating web performance with business metrics.
So who cares? (Building the business case for the web) Of course, every business has its own model for business KPIs. There will always be the obvious financial, customer, process and organizational metrics scattered through the organization – but you will be fortunate if these are somehow integrated to a standardized “scorecard” or even to a “Balanced Scorecard” as defined by Norton and Kaplan in the early 1990’s and refined over subsequent years – reference, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_scorecard). From a web perspective, however, you need to have some sort of framework of business KPIs in place in order to identify the targets for web metrics. This is because of the nature of the web itself – an effective web presence touches all aspects of your business from the HR, development and learning processes, across all processes and through to sales and cashflow management. However, even if a formal balanced scorecard framework has not been implemented into your organization, you can still use this as the basis for gathering the key indicators of the business and from this work towards a set of targets for the web.
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Quick “primer” for a business balanced scorecard The essence of a balanced scorecard is not just the metrics and targets, but also a focus on the “causal interrelationship” between the selected metrics. For example, a high staff turnover in the sales office is a lead indicator for problems in the selling process, which in turn can lead to problems in customer satisfaction which can then impact sales, margins and or cashflow. By understanding these relationships it is possible to focus on events at an early stage, before they impact the company’s performance The old adage, “You get what you measure” is also quite appropriate to consider here as there is also a strong interrelationship between the KPis measured and the corporate values of the organization. So, for example, a company with a top level KPI for team effectiveness is likely to have a strong emphasis on team development and matrix management integrated into their corporate value system. Following are a “default set” of scorecard KPIs for each of the 4 scorecard dimensions (Financial, Customer, Operational, Learning and growth). Potential Financial KPIs • • • • •
Potential Customer KPis
Shareholder value Increased Sales Improved Gross Margins Reduced costs Improved balance sheet
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Potential Operational KPIs • • • • • • •
Improved customer satisfaction More and better referrals Improved loyalty Improved return on marketing investment Reduced customer TCO Brand advocacy
Potential Learning and Growth KPIs
Communications process effectiveness Selling process effectiveness Development process effectiveness Delivery process effectiveness Product process effectiveness Service process effectiveness Partner management
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Employee brand and values engagement Team effectiveness Staff turnover New employee inductions Employee satisfaction Employee share ownership
Each of these dimensions will have an “owner” within your organization, for example finance, customer markets, business excellence and HR. Once you have found these people they should be able to guide you to the actual metrics that are represented here by generic names.
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Creating a Fact-based web framework By taking the above points into account: 1. The “default” set of metrics 2. The causal dependencies 3. The corporate value interdependencies … it is possible to construct a matrix between scorecard metrics and web KPIs, similar to the one shown below.
This can be used to facilitate a discussion within the organization concerning the value of the web towards each of these business metrics. This dialogue would then allow you to build a current state and target state – and gain the mandate for change!
About Amberbuzz Consulting Oy I am a small, independent consultant, based in Helsinki, Finland. I specialise in Project Management and Digital Channel Strategy development and execution activities including the activities described above. For more information please contact me, Graham Honeywill at graham@amberbuzz.fi.
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