As a Web Analyst this is How you Would Bring Value to the Business

We hope you have had the chance to download Jigsaw’s new Web Analytics eBook. The book has loads of valuable information especially for those setting out on their web analytics journey.

(If you haven’t you can download the eBook here NOW)

Today we would like to share another snippet from the eBook, a part of the second chapter that talks about how a web analyst can generate business metrics from a set of web metrics, so that they make good business sense and can be used by the functional managers to make decisions that impact the business positively.

Tying Business Structure with Web analytics

     Typically any organization has following functional areas:

• Marketing
• Sales
• Finance
• Operations

The executive leaders of these functional areas are more interested in the business metrics. A brand manager for example will be interested in a business metric such as “Brand Engagement”. A web analyst typically generates web metrics such as click through rates, bounce rates etc. In order to generate business metrics such as “brand engagement” the web analyst needs to combine the web metrics so that they make some business sense.

Let us take an example of how a web analyst can generate business metrics from a set of web metrics. Let us suppose that the brand manager for a new start up wants to know about the online “brand engagement “of the new start-up. Now we will say that people are engaged in a particular brand more, if:o make decesions that positively impact the business.

• A large number of visitors visiting the website of this start-up already know the URL of the company website and directly land on the home page of the company by simply typing in the URL in their browsers. (Direct Visits)
• A large number of people who land up on the company’s webpage through organic search engines such as google, yahoo or bing typically type the name of the company. (Organic brand term visits)

Now web analyst can come up with a “brand engagement” metric such as:

(Number of direct visits + Number of organic brand term visits)/ Total number of visits.

For a web analyst to provide any value to the organization, it is essential that the web analyst understands the business context and works together with the relevant functional manager. A web analyst alone can’t come up with business metrics, he needs to work together with the managers and understand the business context.  The table below displays in brief the common metrics that a web analyst generates and the questions brand manager usually wants an answer to:

As can be seen a Brand Manager is more interested in knowing an answer to business questions, web metrics alone will not provide that answer.

As one moves up the hierarchy in the organization, the need to report business metrics increases substantially. So, a web analyst creates value for the business by coming up with relevant business metrics in consultation with the functional managers.

For more information on the link between web analytics and business strategy please download the eBook.

Related reads:

5 Reasons Why Web Analytics is a Super Career Option

A Quick Guide to Choosing the Best Web Analytics Tool