To interpret website traffic metrics into practical and more strategic actions need you need to link marketing to business outcomes.

You need metrics that are more linked to business outcomes.  The focus needs to be to identify movements in these areas, product opportunities, product positioning, what builds market traction against the competition, and cultivates customer loyalty. To name a few.

I think most look at activity based and operational metrics and I don’t think they achieve strategic effectiveness.  The focus needs to be on outcome based metrics. Outcome based metrics focuses on market share, customer value, brand equity, etc.  You will need to identify indicators to help determine an outcome and then create a model to predict outcomes.  The indicators  are very important and will need to be perfected.  Here are some metrics to consider;  market growth, customer value, product innovation channel, opportunity channel, market value and other that can be identified for the a specific company.

Measuring traffic metrics to turn into strategic actions is very different than seeing reports on campaigns and Web traffic.  You need to choose metrics and establish a way to monitor them.   How you monitor then will help understand performance, decision making, and align strategy with implementation.

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