Essential Measurement Metrics Show the Way

analytics notes in notebook++

Validate that your investments can actually move the needle.

You can invest a lot of time and energy, and dollars, and people into one of these channels to try and move the needle on something, and get what look like good results in the channel itself. Like, "Oh, search is driving lots of traffic." Or, "We have high rankings." Or, "We are spending a lot on this display channel, and we're seeing lots of people visit."

If possible, two of the earliest investments I recommend are A.) automated, easy-to-access metrics,building up a culture of metrics and a way to get those metrics easily so that every time you launch something new it doesn't take you an inordinate amount of time to go get the metrics. Every week or month or quarter, however your reporting cycle goes, it doesn't take you tons and tons of time to collect and report on those metrics. Automated metrics, especially for SEO, but all kinds of metrics are hugely valuable.

How will we capture metrics, measure if it's working, and ID potential problems early?

Finally, last question I'll ask in this prioritization is: How are we going to capture the right metrics around this, measure it, see that it's working, and identify potential problems early on? One of the things that happens with SEO is sometimes something goes wrong — either in the planning phase or the implementation or the launch itself — or something unexpected happens. We update the user profiles to be way more SEO friendly and realize that in the new profile pages we no longer link to this very important piece of internal content that users had uploaded or had created, and so now we've lost a bunch of internal links to that and our indexation is dropping out. The user profile pages may be doing great, but that user-generated content is shrinking fast, and so we need to correct that immediately.

We have to be on the watch for those. That requires validation of design, some form of test if you can (sometimes it's not needed but many times it is), some launch metrics so you can watch and see how it's doing, and then ongoing metrics to tell you was that a good change and did it map well to what we predicted it was going to do.
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Let take a short jaunt into technology issues.

The technology of tracking conversions and calls is complex to set up and takes a lot of careful thought to design the micro-conversions so they actually create more business and not just more tracking activity. All conversion tracking must also be tracked to the final results- more and better results from our estimate writing processes. Estimates and following up on estimates is discussed separately in the top document and elsewhere.

We have powerful new tracking and analysis tools from Google

Google wants us to do really well with Google Ads. All Google can do is help us get more clicks, but the provide the tools for testing and improving conversions, because good knows that is what is critical to their customers.

Google Tag Manager allows setting tags and tracking custom events we create- as micro conversions. The events show up in custom tracking goals which we can set up in Google Analytics. Google analytics will provide our basic data providing an initial baseline and then stats as they change in relations to our testing and website changes.

Custom events can be configured to fill a dashboard with key data and on a month to month basis show progress or points of opportunity.

We also have click to call options with Google Adwords and call conversion technology within the Adwords system. We have the potential to not only track actual calls from an ad, ( we have not implemented this but need to consider it carefully as part of a broader plan for conversion tracking) and know the duration of the call, but also track the ad click when they just visit and review the site. The ad cookie stays active for 90 days or more, and allows us to tie our conversions to the original ad click. This is much more useful information that available in the past- particular when matched to the search query used.

Call tracking is not perfect because the number is visible on the site on PCs and our web visitor can pick up the phone and just dial, and good things are happening without leaving a trace; in fact, the trace could look like a bounce. But these are the people who know us, who have a direct referral to us and are not perusing the site where they would be exposed to our micro-conversions...

But we are more interested in our impact on people who have never met us- the over 83%- first time visitors to our site, who are looking us over before they call us, and these people will have an opportunity to run across a micro-conversion or even a conversion that we are tracking as we work to influence them into trusting Brick Doctor. This cultivation process is where we want to test and measure our ability to improve conversions.

(we have other options with phone calls but that level of conversation does not fit at this basic overview of the technology)

The click to call technology is particularly well suited to smart phones, and more and more of our calls are coming through smart phones all the time. People on smart phones, according to stats, want definitive answers and we we can create a call us button right in the ad, and have it ring our phones during business hours only.

The right technology and how to utilize it will be an iterative process and can be built as we modify the site. There is a natural order to progress and a working survey system to create interactivity and a useful conversion tracking system will take time, but it will be

a powerful tool to improve the effectiveness of the site to convert visitors,

and a power tool for stakeholders to assess how business development is improving and productivity growing.

Monthly reports around specific goal tracking would be useful and even year on year reports would help us figure out our best marketing approach across the seasons of the year. Queries change and interests wax and wane. We need data from conversions.