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Rajat
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11 months ago
in omg I'm just a startup, I can't do those fancy analytics! on Futuristic Play
To put things into perspective, I have tried to give examples of the granularity to which you can go for measuring your performance + size of the company (at which it is realistic to expect).
Disclaimer - This is my personal experience, so it may differ greatly for you.
For startup, highest level metric is -
Revenue, Expense, Money in bank left.
2nd level is - This is required for most startups (>2 employees)
Revenue -> 1-3 major revenue sources and what they are doing WOW, MOM (if your revenue is directly tied to traffic coming to your site, then you must have a number for traffic)
Expense -> Break it into 1 to 3 major costs - hopefully, tied directly to revenue lines (may not be from an accounting perspective but from a team setup, it is ideal).
3rd level -> Companies with 10-200 people (pick an area that is the focal point for your company)
Assuming that revenue is directly proportional to traffic to your website (e.g. CPM/CPC advertising etc) -
Break traffic into channels -
1) Free Search
2) Sponsored Links
3) Email
4) Inbound Links - Affiliate, Datafeed, Referral
5) Direct
Measure WOW, MOM trends by each channel, measure overall Cost per visit, leads ($) per visit.
4th level - This is mostly for bigger companies.
Now at this level, you can analyze each channel in detail to decide where to invest your time and money + which ones have the highest potential to growth.
Lets pick a traffic channel say, Sponsored Links. Now, you can measure -
1) Life Time value for a channel - Most important metric in my view
If you don't have a mechanism or sufficient history to calculate life time value, measure the following (its better not to measure it then have it wrong).
2) Page Views per visit for the channel
3) Cost per visit for the channel
4) Revenue per visit for the channel
5th Level - Be a guru
Start looking at each channel DOD and determine user's click behavior, past and post activity etc to determine what you can do to keep and grow the customer base.
Bets of luck.
Disclaimer - This is my personal experience, so it may differ greatly for you.
For startup, highest level metric is -
Revenue, Expense, Money in bank left.
2nd level is - This is required for most startups (>2 employees)
Revenue -> 1-3 major revenue sources and what they are doing WOW, MOM (if your revenue is directly tied to traffic coming to your site, then you must have a number for traffic)
Expense -> Break it into 1 to 3 major costs - hopefully, tied directly to revenue lines (may not be from an accounting perspective but from a team setup, it is ideal).
3rd level -> Companies with 10-200 people (pick an area that is the focal point for your company)
Assuming that revenue is directly proportional to traffic to your website (e.g. CPM/CPC advertising etc) -
Break traffic into channels -
1) Free Search
2) Sponsored Links
3) Email
4) Inbound Links - Affiliate, Datafeed, Referral
5) Direct
Measure WOW, MOM trends by each channel, measure overall Cost per visit, leads ($) per visit.
4th level - This is mostly for bigger companies.
Now at this level, you can analyze each channel in detail to decide where to invest your time and money + which ones have the highest potential to growth.
Lets pick a traffic channel say, Sponsored Links. Now, you can measure -
1) Life Time value for a channel - Most important metric in my view
If you don't have a mechanism or sufficient history to calculate life time value, measure the following (its better not to measure it then have it wrong).
2) Page Views per visit for the channel
3) Cost per visit for the channel
4) Revenue per visit for the channel
5th Level - Be a guru
Start looking at each channel DOD and determine user's click behavior, past and post activity etc to determine what you can do to keep and grow the customer base.
Bets of luck.
1 reply
Andrew Chen
I want to add that Rajat's advice is great, particularly for ecommerce. Anyone looking at stats would be well-served to read the above comment and apply it to their particular industry. Obviously some social media metrics would be different, but I agree with the general premise.
