Developing a Web Analytics Plan and Using Key Performance Indicators
- Develop a strategic plan. Establish goals.
- Goals should be for specific audiences or content sections, not website elements like video or user-generated content.
- Define the actions that you think will lead to each goal.
- Ideally, your plan should be for both print and online. Editors are responsible for both, and making a decision for one often affects the other. Similarly, print and online research should be designed concurrently so you can understand reader behavior and attitudes across all experiences.
- Define the Key Performance Indicators for each goal. KPIs are the metrics by which you define progress.
- Define the actions you will take if a KPI goes up, and which to take if it goes down.
- Benchmark the KPIs. In other words, decide on a starting point so you’ll know how to interpret increases and decreases.
- Ensure your software can measure the KPIs, and that your site is coded correctly.
- Set a goal for each KPI, and establish a time period by which you expect to reach it. Establish short-term (e.g., weekly, monthly) goals in addition to goals for each key point in the plan (e.g., after an event).
- Implement.
- Monitor each KPI. Address problems, and leverage successes.
Defining Newsroom Key Performance Indicators
- Use KPIs for strategic planning, not for day-to-day decisions about coverage.
However, track major news events or other factors that will skew a KPI temporarily but not reflect a change in the long run. - A KPI is the most useful if one person is held accountable for it.
A significant increase or decrease in a KPI should immediately lead to an action led by one person.
For a newsroom, this means:- An editor or news director should assign one person (e.g., executive producer, section editor or senior reporter) to each section of a site.
- The person assigned to a section and its KPIs must have the authority, resources and tools to make and implement changes.
- KPIs are only useful if they’re actually used.
Not all of the KPIs apply to each section or initiative. Select only those KPIs where it’s clear what question will be answered (and what action should be taken) if the KPI increases or decreases. Conversely, stop tracking a KPI if it’s no longer useful.
Set the time periods based on how you’re going really use the information. News sites have new content daily, so you should review KPIs on a weekly basis at the minimum. However, a thorough monthly review that leads to decision-making is better than a hurried, cursory weekly review that leads to nothing. - It’s better to base a decision on good data than to guess. However, it’s better to guess than to use bad data.
Know the limitations of both behavioral and attitudinal research. If you have good data, you can be confident in your decision-making. If you have bad data, you might proceed the wrong way and commit more resources than you should. If you guess instead, you’ll proceed more cautiously and have more evaluation points.
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