Hurol Inan: Web Analytics Consultant & Author

Measuring the Success of Your Website: A Customer-Centric Approach to Website Measurement

Book by Hurol Inan
ISBN: 1-74009-648-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1 A customer-centric framework

Chapter 1 Measuring success establishes the need for, and the importance of, being able to say that your website is working; discusses the dangers of using basic metrics (often provided by standard reports from website-traffic analytical tools) as a measurement tool; and introduces the concept of measurement by systematic tracking and analysis of the performance of a website.

Chapter 2 Defining a framework builds a common framework that sets the scope and focus of measurement activity; demonstrates that customer-centricity is the key to a successful eBusiness venture (and thus is paramount to measurement practices); discusses the importance of understanding customers and what this means in the eBusiness arena; provides a set of generic stages for engaging with customers as the basis of the framework; completes the framework by introducing and discussing the implications of possible dropouts from different stages of engagement (and the factors that are likely to cause these dropouts); and verifies the suitability of the framework by providing case studies from four distinct (fictitious) websites.

Chapter 3 Applying the framework describes how to apply the measurement framework to various situations; argues that an organisation’s eBusiness initiative is now an integral part of the entire business strategy, and that it should integrate with, or at least influence, the offline processes and channels; and demonstrates how the framework operates in these more complex situations.

Part 2 Metrics, analysis, and interpretation

Chapter 4 Engaging customers discusses each stage of customer engagement (reach, acquire, convert, and retain); provides generic metrics to measure the effectiveness of online and offline initiatives to enhance the engagement; and introduces analytical techniques to explain the underlying reasons for performance and to identify items for practical action to improve performance.

Chapter 5 Explaining dropouts discusses dropouts from normal customer engagement (leakage, abandonment, attrition), and provides generic metrics; and introduces analytical techniques to explain the underlying reasons for dropouts and to identify items for practical action to improve performance.

Chapter 6 Containing dropouts discusses the major factors that influence dropouts (content appropriateness, design effectiveness, and website-performance efficiency), and provides generic metrics for these factors; and introduces analytical techniques to explain these factors further and to identify items for practical action to improve performance.

Chapter 7 Choosing metrics and analytical techniques discusses the importance of selecting the appropriate metrics and analytical techniques for a particular website; defines the factors that influence this selection process; discusses the importance of setting targets; and explains that some metrics might have a limited lifespan and interdependencies.

Part 3 Data collection, cleansing, and integration

Chapter 8 Understanding the data introduces the data required to calculate metric results and to perform further analysis; discusses new measurement units introduced by the Internet, and the lack of standard definitions for these measurement units; presents different layers of technology that can be used in websites, and the data that can be collected from these layers; and discusses the importance of how webpages are served as a foundation for understanding collected data about user activities on a website.

Chapter 9 Collecting the data introduces user identification as the primary mechanism for linking measurement data; discusses the different techniques used to identify the users of a website and illustrates situations in which each technique is suitable; defines the data-collection points for user-activity data, discussing data elements that can be collected, and the implications of choosing each collection point; and discusses the privacy implications of data collection.

Chapter 10 Preparing the data for analysis stresses the importance of using quality and consistent data to produce meaningful results; advocates the removal of various types of non-qualifying user-activity data; defines the data elements (from offline sources and other online sources) that might be required to integrate and consolidate with user-activity data, providing a checklist for conducting this task; and advises on how to deal with large volumes of data.

Part 4 Implementation of web measurement

Chapter 11 Resourcing web measurement defines human-resource requirements for web-measurement practices; and argues that this is a formal role that should be conducted by web analysts.

Chapter 12 Selecting tools and vendors specifies the requirements for technology solutions; provides guidelines for selecting tools and vendors; and provides reasons for different solutions providing different figures.

Chapter 13 Implementing measurement practices provides an iterative approach for implementing web-measurement practices within an organisation.

Chapter 14 Predicting the future makes predictions for the future of web measurement.