It all starts with a plan. Without it you can quickly find yourself careening down the rabbit hole with no bread crumb trail to help find your way out. Through my experience, I’m still amazed to see the number of companies that don’t value, or maybe appreciate, the power of well thought out and monitored analytics. With all of the different types of B2B campaigns from direct to banner and print ads to tracking Social Media presence, everyone is sitting on a treasure trove of data just waiting to be mined and analyzed.  To get there though, you need a well conceived road map to identify what you want from your site.

One thing that businesses need to avoid is the “I want to measure everything” train of thought, attempting to measure every little detail of their site. That thinking can quickly lead to analysis paralysis, or the inability to make any decisions because there is no true plan for what success actually looks like.  The end result of this path usually leads to the numbers being ignored for fear of making the wrong decision or worse not knowing what they mean. To get going in the right direction, you need to clearly define what you want to measure based off of your business goals and objectives, which then help you establish Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). These KPI’s will be your road map to measuring the effectiveness of your site.  By having a strong foundation of what you're measuring, you'll be able to navigate your way through a sea of data to make actionable business decisions.

Having this focused mentality towards your website allows you to track and measure it just like you would any other business unit.  Successful products or services along with their associated marketing campaigns dictate the measurement of past performance and future projections. So why not take that same attitude towards your website?