1. A Step by Step Approach to Actionable KPIs

2. Overview
 Leading provider of Digital Analytics service since 2001
 800+ customers across North America
 450+ consulting engagements
 Technology to automate and improve reporting and analytics

3.  What are KPIs?
 KPI Karta®
 A Case Study
 A New Discussion
 Pointers
 Q&A

4. What Are KPIs?

5.  A KPI is a number that rapidly and succinctly shows the
progress of an organization’s efforts toward a specific
goal with little or no interpretation or cross-
referencing.
 KPIs are almost always rates, averages, percentages, or
ratios

6. Upper Management
Goals & High-Level Business Goals & Objectives
Objectives
Critical Middle Management
Items that are vital for a strategy to be
Success Factors successful
Analytics Team
KPIs Special Metrics that tell you how you are
doing
Analytics reports and information
Metrics Relationship of Measures - Ratios, averages,
rates, or percentages
Measures Analytics data
Raw numbers and data
(web analytics data, off-line touch-points,
customer databases, email marketing)

7. We see many organizations hold numerous meetings,
day after day, to define KPIs that seem to lack impact or
clarity. Too often they result in dashboards with:
 Top pages, or other “most frequent” reports
 Non-contextual visitor, visit, and page view reports
 Numbers that no one understands, or knows the
source and history of
 Numbers that have “been there for a long time” and
no one knows why they are there, who or how they
are used, or even what they relate to.

8. Avoid the slog!
 A formal methodology helps focus teams in a situation that
can often:
◦ Come from vast amounts of information
◦ Have a variety of personal viewpoints or interests
◦ Have a number of possible ways to “win”
◦ Involve data that is subject to interpretation
 A formal methodology is not intended to force everyone to
line up with a particular philosophy in numeric
interpretation. There are few “universal” truths in KPIs.
 A formal methodology should derive “best of breed”
information that represents all the required viewpoints: IT,
business end users, web analytics, etc.

9. KPI Karta®

10.  KPI Karta is a framework for deriving KPIs based on
years of working with clients.
 The framework is universally applicable regardless of
industry, type of website, organization, etc.
 Bridges the communication divide that tends to exist
between business teams, technology teams, and the
web analytics team.

11. Goals & Objectives
Critical Success KPIs are driven by
Factors business Goals
KPIs BUT…
Metrics
KPIs are constructed from
Measures
Measures

12. Goals & Objectives • Increase sales
In 2012
Critical Success • Increase leads by 25%
Factors • Identify, and increase by 50%, high quality lead
sources
• Conversion ratio of visitors to leads
KPIs • Leads per referrer
• Lead source quality
• Conversion ratio of visitors to leads
Metrics • PDF downloads by registered visitor
• Leads per referrer
• Visitors • Registrations
Measures • Leads • Referrers
• PDF downloads • Lead score

13. Goals & Objectives • Decrease support services cost
In 2012
Critical Success • Decrease calls by 20%
Factors • Reduce per-call cost by 75%
• Ratio of call center calls to online support
KPIs • Self-service registration per visitor
• Cost per call
• Ratio of call center calls to online support
Metrics • Self-service registrations per visitor
• PDF downloads by visitor
• Visitors • Registrations
• Call center calls • Referrers
Measures • Page views • Total call center cost
• PDF downloads • Calls handled

14. A Case Study

15.  BG&O: Increase revenue
◦ Goal set by executive management during annual review of
current website strategies addressing decreasing print
demand.

16. Goals & Objectives • Increase revenue
Critical Success
Factors
KPIs
Metrics
Measures

17.  BG&O: Increase revenue
◦ Goal set by executive management during annual review of
current website strategies addressing decreasing print
demand.
 CSF: Increase revenue generated by “online only”
content website by 15% during 2012 calendar year.

18. Goals & Objectives • Increase revenue
• Increase revenue generated by “online only” content
Critical Success website by 15% during 2012 calendar year.
Factors
KPIs
Metrics
Measures

19. How do we get from here?
 CSF: Increase revenue generated by “online only”
content website by 15% during 2012 calendar year.
To here?
 KPI: Avg. Click-Throughs per Campaign
 KPI: Avg. ‘Bumps’ per Article
 KPI: Avg. Article Rating
 KPI: Ratings per Visitor
 KPI: Avg. Forwards per Visitor
 KPI: % of Visits by Audience

20. How do we logically “jump” from the CSF to the very
useful KPIs we just saw?

21. A New Discussion

22.  Break the “jump” between CSF and KPI down into
smaller steps that are easier to follow.
 Add three new discussion points to the conversation:
◦ Marketing Phase
◦ Audience
◦ Strategy & Tactics

23. Consider the customer/marketing lifecycle and target your action
to it:
 Acquire - Get your persuasive, introductory message out to as
many of your prospective clients and customers as possible.
 Engage - Deliver a targeted, meaningful, introductory message
to the potential customers that attracts them to you for more
detailed information.
 Convert - Provide enough incentive, and a simplified process,
and cause the potential customer to execute your preferred
action.
 Retain - Ensure you delivered value as promised and your
product/service has long-term value so they keep coming back.

24.  Also known as “Segmentation” - The process of
grouping your customers together into logical groups
of similar characteristics or behaviours.
 Each of those logical groups of customers is called an
“audience”.
 Why do we segment our KPIs?
◦ Your most persuasive and eloquent arguments to get a visitor
to perform a particular action do not work equally well with
all types of visitors.
◦ Certain basic traits of your customers will provide hints on
how best to approach them in nudging them toward
conversion.

25. "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." - Sun
Tzu
Strategy: Decisions made to achieve the greatest overall
value irrespective of immediate return. A plan of action
designed to achieve a long-term vision for your
organization.
Tactic: Decisions made to achieve greatest immediate
value. These are the day-to-day activities that are
repeatable in your business and relatively clear-cut.

28.  Phase: Awareness
◦ Audience: US visitors
 Strategy: Optimize existing campaign efforts
 Tactic: Implement detailed hierarchy tracking of campaign activities.
 Phase: Engagement
◦ Audience: US visitors
 Strategy: Expose high-value (targeted) content
 Tactic: Implement activity-based content serving
 Strategy: Increase impressions
 Tactic: Increase ad inventory
 Tactic: Increase number of visits per Broker visitor.

31. Some Pointers

32.  Be suitable for the specific business, industry, and
organization
 Be related to business goals and objectives
 Make it possible to influence the business
 Make the KPI easy to quantify
 Link to other relevant data
 Be comparable over time
 Have a dedicated, committed owner

33.  Define SMART KPIs
 Consume your KPIs using RADAR

34.  Specific – Clear, unambiguous, and understandable
without vagaries and platitudes;
 Measurable – Concrete criteria for measuring progress
toward the attainment of the goal;
 Attainable – Realistic and achievable;
 Relevant – Choose goals that matter;
 Timely – Ground goals within a time frame;

35.  Report – Extract data from your web analytics;
 Analyze – Review the reports to identify patterns
based on a predetermined hypothesis;
 Decide – Make a determination on whether the data
proves or disproves the hypothesis;
 Act – Create and implement a plan for refining the
initial hypothesis;
 Repeat – Continuously improve the process by
repeating the investigation of the hypothesis

36. 1. What is the primary business objective of our site?
(Some examples include: drive revenue, drive leads,
contain costs.)
2. What are the valuable actions or behaviors I’m trying
to get my site visitors to do? (Some examples
include: purchase, register, consume content)
3. What adjustments can I make to change how many
visitors are performing these valuable actions?
4. What is the value to my company each time
someone performs one of these actions?

37. 1. How often does each individual visitor perform this
action?
2. What tactics do we use to encourage visitors to perform
these actions?
3. Do those tactics cost us money?
4. Do we need to show a return on the investments we’re
making in those tactics?
5. What business metrics am I held accountable for by my
boss?
6. What business metrics are my boss held accountable for?

38.  Blogs
◦ The End of Anecdotal Analytics
http://bit.ly/wD6SAS
◦ How To Build Trust in Analytics
http://bit.ly/s4fpmR
◦ How An Organization Defines and Measures Progress Toward Its
Goals
http://bit.ly/KpWVmk
 Other Services
◦ KPI Library: A KPI discovery service based on industry and interest
http://bit.ly/JMeZ7o

39.  Unilytics Services
◦ KPI Karta® – Measures and Metrics that Matter
http://bit.ly/KpKV3Y
◦ Montage – Dashboard Automation Software
http://bit.ly/shtSRh
◦ Do you use SharePoint and need analytics?
http://bit.ly/JKUc8M

40. Q&A