Web Analytics is Money

How do you convey the value of Web Analytics to an organization that has never used web analytics or has used it but at a very elementary level? This is one of the questions that I constantly get from students of my UBC Web Analytics classes, where I am an online tutor.

My answer to them is they should start the conversation with something like, “Web Analytics is Money” or “Web Analytics helps companies make more money” etc.

When you say those words, you are very likely to get audience who want to know more. Money invokes curiosity.

You should not tell the CEO how web analytics can help the company understand customer behavior, find bottlenecks in the site, improve bounce rates etc. You should show him/her the impact in terms of dollars (or Euros, Rupees etc.).

Every web site analysis can lead to actions that have an impact on the money. You can tie web analytics to:

• Additional revenue
• Cost Savings
• Profit
• Doing more with less money (particularly for non-profits)

Example:

Let’s take a simple example to illustrate this.

Reducing Bounce Rate

If you are not getting any traction, I assume your analysis might look something like:
“Home page is the top most landing page with 80% of the visits entering through this page. However, 60% of the visits bounce i.e. leave the site immediately, after landing on this page. 60% bounce rate is very high as compared to the industry average.* There is a huge opportunity for us to lower the bounce rate on this page by testing the page layout…..(you provide your reasoning on what should be changed and why).”
Great. As an analyst I can understand and you can understand it. But what about CEO of the company? Will he/she understand it? Why should he/she care about the bounce rate?

*Typical Bounce Rates by Anil Batra

Now, try the following:

Generating More Revenue

“Our analysis shows that there is an opportunity for us to increase our revenue by $300,000 for the year by optimizing our home page. Home page is the top most landing page with 80% of the visits entering through this page. However, 60% of the visits bounce i.e. leave the site immediately, after landing on this page. 60% bounce rate is a very high number compared to the industry average.* There is an opportunity for us to lower the bounce rate on this page by testing different page layouts. Lower bounce rate will help us drive more people to the purchase funnel and even if our funnel completion rate remains at 20%, by sending more people to the top of the funnel we will have additional 3000 sales leading to $300,000 in additional revenue for the year.”

Tying your analysis and recommendations to money makes it easier to understand the benefit of Web Analytics. Money will make it easier for you to overcome organization barriers and make you a hero.
Web Analytics is money!!!

What do you think?

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Landing Page Optimization Analyst, at Red Ventures (Fort Mill, SC)