© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Website Metrics and ROI Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts Avinash Kaushik, Author, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik There’s a Lot More to Measuring Online Success than Unique Visitors or “Hits”  Bounce rate  Shopping cart abandonment  Top failed searches  Goal funnels  Exit ratios  Life Time Value  Behavioral segmentation  Spam score  Ripple index  Page strength  Page yield  Keyword yield  Multi-dimensional outcomes analysis  …to name a few!

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Abandonment Metrics  For uncovering why visitors are leaving your site prematurely  Bounce rate –Referring websites –Landing pages  Funnel visualization –Exit ratios

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Abandonment Metrics  Shopping cart abandonment –Ratio of abandoned carts to completed purchases –Number of items per abandoned cart vs. completed purchases –Profile of items abandoned vs. purchased –Profile of a shopper vs. a buyer  Top failed searches

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik

Conversion Metrics  For insight into your acquisition funnel  Goals –Ecommerce / Non-ecommerce –Revenue / sales data analysis  Non-obvious metrics –Average time on site –% of new visitors

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik B2B vs. B2C  B2B: Longer lead time, more complex sale, more considered purchase, more technical keywords used, purchase often done offline, lead generation phase is crucially important  B2C: Easier to track and measure ROI, thus easier to justify expense with upper management, purchase on the first visit is common

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik 80* 1%* 50* 75* 90*70* Acquisition Funnel Click to Web site Download attempt Download success Regis- tration 4-wk user 12-wk user CPM = $100 CPU 0 =$30 CPV 0 = cost per new user CPV 84 = cost per user retained for 84 or more days CPU 84 =$53

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik

Getting to the Optimal Landing Page  Want to up your conversion rate? Optimize your landing pages for maximum conversion!  Eye tracking  Click tracking  Test everything! –A/B split test –Multivariate testing (e.g. Google Website Optimizer)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Sample heat map from eyetracking (MarketingSherpa Ecommerce Benchmark Guide)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Sample heat map from click tracking (using CrazyEgg.com)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Playback of user sessions, including mouse movements and form fill-out (using RobotReplay.com)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Retention Metrics  A look at the customer life cycle and customer lifetime value (LTV)  Behavioral segmentation –Demographics vs. psychographics  RFM analysis

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik The Customer Life Cycle  Reach stage – goal is awareness  Acquisition stage – goal is participation, failure is abandonment  Conversion stage – goal is turning them into a registered and/or paying customer, failure is attrition  Retention stage – goal is securing repeat purchases, failure is churn

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Life Cycle Failure Metrics  Attrition Rate – the number of customers who have ceased buying from you and have gone elsewhere during a given time period ÷ total number of existing, converted customers during that time period  Churn Rate – the number of customers who attrite during a given time period ÷ total number of customers at the end of the time period

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik The Life Cycle Funnel Illustration courtesy of Emetrics White Paper by Jim Sterne

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Best Customer Metrics  Target the most profitable customers  Behavioral Segmentation, i.e. segment based on value  Analyze demographics, psychographics, and clickographics (visiting behavior and transaction history) –The pattern of visits and orders becomes the pulse of the buyer/seller relationship.  Identify cross-selling opportunities

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Statistical Segmentation By using past behavior to predict future behavior, Personify software discovered five distinct audience segments for Virtual Vineyards. Slide courtesy of Steve Krause of Personify

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Customer/Prospect Value A single segment, Core Visitors, accounted for 82% of the people who ordered, even though the segment was only 8% of the overall audience. Slide courtesy of Steve Krause of Personify

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Marketing-Program ROI With Core Visitors identified as the best customers and prospects, Virtual Vineyards could now measure marketing-program ROI by the percent of Core Visitors each program delivered. Slide courtesy of Steve Krause of Personify

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Cross-Selling Virtual Vineyards could also analyze cross-selling effectiveness: Italian wine and pasta is obvious, but what about white wine and baked goods? Slide courtesy of Steve Krause of Personify

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik RFM Analysis  Recency  Frequency  Monetary Value Illustration courtesy of Emetrics White Paper by Jim Sterne

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Slide © Claritas Inc., All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Sheryl Gatto, Travelocity Rural, blue collar families  Smoke pipe tobacco  Drink Canadian whiskey  Read hunting magazines Sophistated urban couples  Go Sailing  Drink cordials and liqueurs  Read travel magazines Young, white collar suburban families  Rent 5+ videos monthly  Buy children’s frozen dinners  Read parenting magazines Small town blue collar families  Rent family videos  Own a gas grill  Read fishing magazines Psychographic Segmentation with Claritas/PRIZM

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Life Time Value  Calculate using retention rates, orders per year, average order size, total revenue, referrals, direct costs, acquisition costs, gross profits, discount rates, and net present value profit.  Affect customer’s LTV by up-selling; cross-selling; increasing buying frequency; and reducing cost of making the sale, training, and support  See

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Optimizing Customer Life Time Value Illustration courtesy of Emetrics White Paper by Jim Sterne

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Marketing Metrics  Opens –Unique opens vs. total opens –Requires HTML . Can’t track opens of plain text s –Uses “web bugs”  Clickthroughs  Clickers – new clickers vs. return clickers vs. total  Unsubscribes  Bounce rate – hard bounce / soft bounce

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik

Deliverability Blacklists, Whitelists, Filters Open-ability Subject, From, Frequency Readability Design, Content, Organization The Funnel

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Marketing Metrics  Spam score –According to SpamAssassin spam filter –Cross the threshold of what the recipient’s server admin has set, and your won’t get delivered –Tool is built in to most marketing solutions. Or use version available at –Aim for < 5 SpamAssassin points –Note: This tool is only indicative. Not everyone’s using SpamAssassin to filter spam. Other filters will interpret your campaign differently.

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik  Best rates OUCH! “Negotiate The Best Rates on Local Advertising Media”

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Blogging Metrics  Raw author contribution - posts per month & words per post –Consistency is key –Post recency vs. frequency –General Stats plugin –Joost’s Blog Metrics plugin  Audience growth – onsite & offsite, visitors and unique visitors  Conversion rate – comments per post

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Blogging Metrics  Citations – Blog inlinks, measured by Technorati rank  Ripple Index - # of unique blogs linking to your blog  Cost – time, technology (hardware/software), opportunity cost  Benefit / ROI –Comparative vs. Direct vs. “Non-traditional” vs. Unquantifiable –You are building an asset

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik RSS Metrics  Reads –Requires full text feed; Summary feed won’t work. –Uses “web bugs”  Clickthroughs  Subscribers –Many of the web-based aggregators (e.g. Bloglines, My.Yahoo) report subscribers with their User-Agent –Feedburner – tracks that + individuals; free; owned by Google

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik A Blog is an Asset My 16-year-old daughter, Blogger & SEO. $10 - $30 / day passive income Remember: A Blog is an Asset!

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik SEO Metrics  Search engine rankings – focus on Google rankings  Keyword popularity –Tools include KeywordDiscovery.com & WordTracker.com –KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) score? Not so much  Indexation – # of pages of your site indexed –Tool: URL Checker (

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik SEO Metrics  Link popularity –Tools include Yahoo Site Explorer (siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com), Google Webmaster Central ( Neat-o tool (  PageRank – Google-assigned importance score –Scores range from 0-10, logarithmic in scale –Each page has its own score –Scores reported are months out-of-date

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik SEO Metrics  “Page strength” – according to SEOMoz tool (  Traffic by engine; traffic by keyword  Sales by engine; sales by keyword  Page yield – % of unique pages yielding search engine- delivered traffic in a given month  Keyword yield – ratio of keywords to pages yielding search traffic

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik SEO Metrics  Brand-to-nonbrand ratio – % of search traffic coming from brand keywords vs. nonbrand keywords  Unique pages – non-duplicate pages crawled  Visitors per keyword – ratio of search engine delivered visitors to search terms  Index-to-crawl ratio – ratio of pages indexed to unique crawled pages  Engine yield – how much traffic the engine delivers for every page it crawls

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Rankings and search referrals – According to Google Webmaster Central

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Rankings and search referrals – According to Enquisite

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Rankings and search referrals – According to Enquisite

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Rankings in common – According to Thumbshots Ranking tool

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Keyword Popularity – According to WordTracker

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Keyword Popularity – According to KeywordDiscovery

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Keyword Popularity – According to Google AdWords Keyword Tool

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Keyword Popularity – According to Google Trends

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Indexation – According to Netconcepts URL Checker ( check)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Indexation – According to Netconcepts URL Checker ( check)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Google’s Toolbar – with handy PageRank Meter

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Link popularity – According to Yahoo Site Explorer

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik SEO for Firefox Link popularity – According to SEO for Firefox

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Conduct any Google query and get results organized by PageRank

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Link Text – mined using Neat-o tool

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Link text – mined using Google Webmaster Central

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik ROI – Sales by referrer

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik ROI – Sales by keyword

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik The Long Tail of Your Keyword Portfolio

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Where do searchers look? (Enquiro, Did-it, Eyetools Study)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Where do they look? And click? (Enquiro, Did-it, Eyetools Study)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Competitive Intelligence – Compete.com

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Competitive Intelligence – QuantCast.com

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Competitive Intelligence – Alexa.com

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Competitive Intelligence – Alexa.com

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Competitive Intelligence – Hitwise.com

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Sample KPIs Page Yield & Keyword Yield

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik “Page Strength” – According to SEOMoz Page Strength tool ( strength)

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Missed Opportunity Costs of Not Doing SEO  Calculate the missed opportunity cost of not ranking well for products and services that you offer: # of people searching for your keywords x engine share (Google = 60%) x expected click- through rate average conversion rate average transaction amount xx  E.g.10,000/day x 60% x 10% x 5% x $100 = $3,000/day

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Paid Search (PPC) Metrics  For obtaining the best returns on your PPC spend  Standard metrics –Impressions, visits, CTR, CPC, conversion  Traffic quality metrics –Time, new visits, bounce  Non-obvious metrics –Multi-dimensional Outcomes analysis

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik

Going Deeper  Book: Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik (  Occam’s Razor Blog:  WAA ( & WAA blog (waablog.webanalyticsassociation.org)  eMetrics Summit (  E-metrics whitepaper by Jim Sterne (  The Loyalty Effect by Frederick Reichheld

© 2008 Stephan Spencer and Avinash Kaushik Q&A!  For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO checklists & worksheets, and audio recording, executive summary & transcript of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, your request to  To contact Stephan:  To contact Avinash: