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companies, developing or introducing a more comprehensive measurement system and

enhancing analysis capabilities to establish what really drives business performance was

most important. For clicks-and-mortar, integrating new systems with legacy systems and

benchmarking against best practice were most important. Finally, dot-coms, as start-ups,

were concerned with improving clickstream analysis and customer tracking and profiling

and improving the entire company’s performance measurement system.

Although we have stated that measurement is an important part of maintaining a web

site, it is worth noting that the reality is that measurement is often neglected when a web

site is first created. Measurement is often highlighted as an issue once the first version of a

site has been ‘up and running’ for a few months, and employees start to ask questions

such as ‘How many customers are visiting our site, how many sales are we achieving as a

result of our site and how can we improve the site to achieve a return on investment?’ The

consequence of this is that performance measurement is something that is often built into

an online presence retrospectively. Of course, it is preferable if measurement is built into

site management from the start since then a more accurate approach can be developed

and it is more readily possible to apply a technique known as ‘design for analysis’(DFA).

Here, the site is designed so companies can better understand the types of audience and

their decision points. For example, for Dell (www.dell.com), the primary navigation on the

home page is by business type. This is a simple example of DFA since it enables Dell to esti-

mate the proportion of different audiences to their site and, at the same time, connect

them with relevant content. Other examples of DFA include:


Breaking up a long page or form into different parts, so you can see which parts

people are interested in.


A URL policy (see Chapter 8) used to recommend entry pages for printed material.


Group content by audience type or buying decision and setting up content groups of

related content within web analytics systems.


Measure attrition at different points in a customer journey, e.g. exit points on a five-

page buying cycle.


A single exit page to linked sites.

In this section, we will review approaches to performance management by examining

three key elements of an Internet marketing measurement system. These are, first, the

processfor improvement, secondly, the measurement framework which specifies groups of

relevant Internet marketing metricsand, finally, an assessment of the suitability of tools

and techniques for collecting, analysing, disseminating and actioning results. We will

review four stages of creating and implementing a performance management system.

Stage 1: Creating a performance management system

The essence of performance managementis suggested by the definition for performance

measurementused by Andy Neely and co-workers of Cranfield School of Management’s

Centre for Business Performance. They define performance measurement as

the process of quantifying the efficiency and effectiveness of past actions through acquisi-

tion, collation, sorting, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of appropriate data.

(Neely et al., 2002)

Performance management extends this definition to the process of analysis and

actioning change in order to drive business performance and returns. Online marketers

can apply many of the approaches of business performance management to Internet

marketing. As you can see from the definition, performance is measured primarily

CHAPTER 9· MAINTAINING AND MONITORING THE ONLINE PRESENCE

Design for analysis
(DFA)
The required measures
from a site are
considered during
design to better
understand the
audience of a site and
their decision points.

Internet marketing
metrics
Measures that indicate
the effectiveness of
Internet marketing
activities in meeting
customer, business
and marketing
objectives.