Measuring Success

Why use a paid-for tool? A client considering GA Premium (the paid-for version of Google Analytics) asked me the following question recently:

“One thing that would be great to cover in our meeting, is the value of the Premium product for us. How will it save us money by spending $150k a year instead of simply adjusting our approach and using the free product?”

That’s a great question – getting right to the point of value for money. And this was my two-point response that can be applied to any paid-for vendor….

I was quite surprised to find the booking engine for EasyJet flights (the UK’s most popular airline website) will not work when I access it via my Chrome browser – either on PC or Mac. So I began to wonder how much that oversight/mistake is costing them…? Here’s my calculation…

It never ceases to amaze me how much emphasis organisations still put on measuring website volume – “How many visits (or conversions) did our last campaign generate?” It surprises me because volume metrics are a very useful guide to failure – but not success. That is, low traffic and conversion numbers tell you that something went wrong. For example, wrong message, wrong audience, wrong timing, or a landing page error – but they are a very blunt metric for success. A key meaning for measuring success is knowing which visits and conversions are your high value ones. In other words, which visitors are the most profitable to acquire. This can be measured directly if you are a transactional site, or indirectly as new leads/contacts/advocates. That is the principal behind optimisation – focusing your efforts on attracting/converting your most valuable visitors and pages. Dave Chaffey is a SEO expert, distinguished author, active blogger, Google Analytics [...]