Good objectives should be SMART. In other words they should be Specific, Measureable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-based.

So how do you move from business objectives to web metrics? First you need to determine which business objectives your site actually supports. You will come away from this process with your website objectives which will be your basis for what you should be measuring on the site. It is important to note that there can be several website objectives that support a single business objective or one website objective that is used for multiple business objectives. The next step is figuring out what metrics provide insight into if your website objectives are being met.

In some cases the metrics may be very clear, but in others where the objective is not specific it may require really thinking about what demonstrates achievement of the objective. In these cases you must determine what event or events on the site constitute success of the objective. When determining the success events, make sure that every one of them are measureable.

Now that you understand the events that lead to your site objectives it is time to determine the specific metrics that will be used. For each event there are usually multiple metrics that can be used to track success or failure. You need to determine which ones are more relevant and should be used for reporting purposes. For example if a success event is an email signup, the metric could include the number of new signups per week, the percent of unique visits who sign up per week, or the percent of unique visitors who viewed the newsletter on the site and then signed up. In most cases it is a good idea to use multiple success events as the metric.

You should then define a monetary value to each success event or metric. It is not always easy to do, but it provides great insight into how each is performing in relation to the overall site objectives.

Lastly, there should be targets established so that the analyst knows what they are trying to accomplish. In addition the analyst needs to be empowered with the resources required to meet those objectives. The last step is putting all the data for the various site objectives into easy to read reports. For more check out my recent post on web analytics reporting that’s easy to understand.