Throughout this book, we’re going to look at a maturity model for web visibility. The first of these models is web analytics, shown in Table 5-3. It borrows heavily from work by Bill Gassman of Gartner and Stephane Hamel of Immeria, and shows how companies progress through various levels of maturity with their web analytics.
Table 5-3. The Web Analytics Maturity Model (adapted from Stephane Hamel and Bill Gassman)
Maturity level | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Level 4 | Level 5 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Focus? | Technology: make sure things are alive | Local site: make sure people on my site do what I want them to | Visitor acquisition: make sure the Internet sends people to my site | Systematic engagement: Make sure my relationship with my visitors and the Internet continues to grow | Web strategy: Make sure my business is aligned with the Internet age |
Who? | Operations | Merchandising manager | Campaign manager/SEO | Product manager | CEO/GM |
Analytics | Page views, visits, visitors, top ten lists, demographics, technographics | Path analysis, funnel reports, A/B testing, KPIs, dashboards | Merchandising, segmentation, SEO, community referrals, campaign optimization, personas, KPI alerts | Multichannel aggregation, cost-shifting analysis, lifetime visitor value, personalization, dynamic content serving | Multichannel sales reporting, activity-based costing, balanced scorecards, strategic planning, predictive analytics, integrated user experience |
Most organizations begin by looking only at traffic. They then turn their efforts inward, trying to get their own sites in order and defining KPIs that should guide their improvements. Once the site is converting its visitors and encouraging them toward the goals you want, organizations focus outward to increase the amount of traffic that’s coming in. As the site grows, they incorporate additional data from other sources, such as performance, call center traffic, visitor lifetime value, user feedback, and so on.
Truly mature organizations move beyond even this level of integration, making web analytics a part of their strategic planning process and running their businesses through KPIs. Web metrics become a part of performance reviews and business unit goal-setting, and companies start to use analytical tools to look forward as well as back.
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