Three Roadblocks To Web Analytics Strategy Alignment

Brent Dykes Director of Industry Consulting Adobe Systems

While presenting at an online marketing conference, I was reflecting on the importance of strategy for analytics and optimization. At a high level, strategy can be defined as a plan of action or initiatives to achieve a set of business goals or objectives. Well-known strategy guru Michael Porter stated, “A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.” It’s the secret sauce. It’s what sets your company apart from its competitors.

As such, strategy should always influence the implementation or set-up of your analytics and testing tools. I know of very few “vanilla” or “cookie-cutter” companies that need generic implementations. In order to collect the right data that is relevant and complete (let’s not forget accurate), your metrics need to be based on the unique business goals of your organization.

As a result of working with several different global leaders, I’ve discovered outwardly similar companies needing different configurations in their implementations based on their unique strategies. Although one retailer may share many of same KPIs as other e-commerce sites (e.g., revenue, AOV, conversion rate, etc.), there are often unique requirements specific to each retailer. Differentiation can and should spill into the data.

Winston Churchill said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Having a Web measurement strategy in place ensures your company is able to monitor the success or failure of its online initiatives. It aligns different data dimensions, KPIs, and reports to your business objectives so that your company can effectively measure its online business performance. As you can imagine, it’s difficult to align your implementation to an unknown strategy. And yet I still find our consultants working with large, well-known companies that seemingly cannot clearly articulate their current online strategy or business goals.

Why is the strategy part so challenging for companies?

Both Web analytics consultants and practitioners alike would probably agree that aligning an implementation to a company’s business goals is one of the most important steps--and also one of the most difficult to accomplish. Why can it be so difficult? I’ve identified three roadblocks that can create problems.

1. Tactical Focus
Web teams are really busy handling the onslaught of daily tasks--launching new paid search campaigns, managing site updates, planning the next site redesign, creating new online surveys, building ad hoc reports, testing new landing pages, etc. Workforce reductions in the past couple of years may have burdened these teams with more responsibilities and fewer resources to complete them (let’s not forget smaller training budgets). They are essentially struggling to keep the online boat afloat--bailing water while trying to keep the sails up. However, I frequently find that not enough people have stopped to check whether the boat is heading in the right direction.

They might be meandering in a generally safe direction, about to hit the rocks, or already shipwrecked--and nobody even noticed. Even when an individual or team isn’t clear on the company’s online strategy or business goals, they will continue to diligently focus on accomplishing their day-to-day, tactical responsibilities. The default setting in most of us is to keep busy, keep our heads down, and get things done--not wait around for an online strategy to be provided or clarified. Good tactical execution is important, but strategy ensures that efforts are not wasted on the wrong activities or goals. As Sun Tzu stated, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

2. Organizational Dynamics
Too often the online part of the business is treated more like common land, which in feudal times was land shared by the community for grazing herds and gathering firewood. In large organizations, multiple divisions or teams share parts of the company’s online presence, but nobody oversees the overall online business. As a result, there is frequently no overarching online strategy or shared business goals that unify each group’s focus.

In some cases, the online parts of a business can turn into a political battleground with different groups wrestling for control. You don’t need 14 different business divisions and worldwide operations to experience politics because even small companies have run into the same conflicts. With each team interpreting the organizational goals independently, it becomes very difficult to prioritize and align a Web analytics implementation to vague or conflicting business objectives. Whether your company’s decision making is centralized or decentralized, having a clear online strategy is always a best practice and essential for creating a global view of a company’s online performance.

Next: One more roadblock, then the key to solving all three.