(^155) ■
W
EB A
NALYTICS
P Table 6.3 Web Analytics
Measurement Tools and Data Sources Details and Notes
Bounce Rate Webtrends, Google Analytics,
Omniture, similar measurement
platforms
Indicates the degree to which your land-
ing page pulls visitors into your site.
Unique Visits Webtrends, Google Analytics,
Omniture, similar measurement
platforms
Compare with membership (registered
visitors) levels.
Time Spent, Pages Viewed Webtrends, Google Analytics,
Omniture, similar measurement
platforms
Indicates the degree of engagement when
used in combination with other measures
of activity.
Referrer URL Webtrends, Google Analytics,
Omniture, similar measurement
platforms
Provides indication of which social chan-
nels are sending visitors to your site.
Beyond the Basics
What’s beyond the basics? Although simply “counting and reporting” is an important
first step, understanding what is driving the measurements you collect is essential to run-
ning your social media program and connecting what you learn to your business. The
application of web analytics to your business should provide insights into how your online
assets—your website, blog, or community site, for example—are driving your business
and contributing to the achievement of business objectives. In turn, understanding these
business drivers should inform or connect to your internal intelligence processes.
By connecting the measurements to business processes, and by understanding
how the process results drive the measurements themselves, you can use the trends you
observe to steer your business or organization in ways that ensure success with regard
to your business objectives. The necessary requirement here—especially as teams that
span functional areas of a business or organization are brought under the increasingly
large umbrella of social business and Social CRM—is a quantitatively based under-
standing of how processes translate into results. The measurements you observe are
indicators of results but are not themselves the results. By taking the steps to connect
the measures to the business objectives, you ensure that you are tying what you’ve
observed or learned through listening, for example, to the processes that create the
conversations in the first place. In this way the Social Web efforts—whether outreach,
listening, participation, or other forms of engagement—become measurably tied to the
ongoing operation of your business or organization.
Don’t Overcomplicate
Note here that “going beyond the basics” doesn’t necessarily mean moving to advanced
or exotic measurements, but instead combining core metrics in ways that provide deeper