Are you looking to set up a data project in your company to monitor your daily performance and optimise your ROI? Not sure where to start? We have some key tips on how to begin setting up a step-by-step data-driven strategy for your business that include: definition of objectives and KPIs; configuration of the analytics solution with implementation of the tagging plan; and analysis, democratisation and monitoring of data.
1. Define precise objectives to drive your data project
You have recently launched your online business and have one or more digital platforms (a website or a mobile application). You might also be running digital marketing campaigns. To better understand your users’ behaviour, needs and expectations, you need to collect and analyse your traffic data.
Before diving into a data analysis project, start by building your general strategic plan and determining the issues you may face in your business sector, your value proposition, the nature of your products and/or services, your target, your competitive environment, etc.
Carrying out a positioning audit using a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) will allow you to effectively set your main goals. Next, set targeted and measurable tactical and operational objectives following the SMART method (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound). These objectives will allow you to evaluate if your site or application is achieving its results in line with the company’s overall strategy.
Here are some examples of goals you could follow:
- Use data to improve your subscription funnel
- Re-engage “abandoning” users in the conversion funnel to improve your sales
- Track user retention to find the best ways to keep them coming back
Good to know: Obviously, it is possible to follow several different objectives at the same time, but we advise you to work on prioritising your needs.
2. Determine your North Star Metric and associated secondary KPIs
Tracking your objectives allows you to estimate how well your actions are contributing to the success of a business. Your “conversions”, i.e. the percentage of visitors seeing a paid offer who convert, can take several forms and can be macro or micro, depending on the level of priority of the given objective. For example, a macro-conversion is a purchase, a request for a demo or a quote; a micro-conversion is subscription to a newsletter, the creation of an account or the download of a tool or a white paper.
Once your objectives have been broken down into conversions, you can identify the associated performance indicators. To start with, we advise you to select only a few that will be used as a reference for all the company’s employees. We recommend that you start by determining your North Star Metric, a concept defined by Sean Ellis, founder of the GrowthHackers community. This is the main KPI that allows you to measure the value of your product or service for your users in the most objective way possible. It is a unique metric for each company and one that the entire workforce must focus on to ensure long-term growth. This metric cannot be a volume of page views or a number of subscriptions because it must truly illustrate the benefits to the user. For example, for Facebook, the NSM is the “number of daily active users” on the social network, for Spotify, it is “listening time” and for AirBnB, it is “number of nights booked.”
Beyond the North Star Metric, you still need to pinpoint other indicators to track to cover all of your objectives but also to go further in understanding and analysing your NSM. If your NSM is dropping, you should be able to determine why with the help of your other KPIs.
With an NSM set on “new user subscription rate,” here are some examples of additional KPIs you could track:
- The number of entries into the subscription funnel
- The number of exits during the subscription funnel and whether they left or stayed on the site
- The items generating the most subscriptions
- The times of the subscriptions sign-ups
3. Set up your analytics solution to collect relevant data
Once you’ve selected your strategic goals and KPIs, it’s time to create your tagging plan to identify all the elements needed to achieve your metrics. Keen to track the performance of your subscription funnel? You’ll need to measure all the events necessary to collect all the data from each stage of the funnel. Beyond events, are you looking to track whether users are logged in? You’ll need to collect the user ID. Want to monitor which articles are generating the most subscriptions? Then you’ll need to tag the title of the article, but maybe also its category, its publication date or any other qualifying feature.
Now, from a technical point of view, to integrate the tagging plan, either you go through a Tag Management System (TMS) or do it directly. If you use a TMS, ask yourself if it is already in place on your site or if you have to start from scratch. The answer will determine the level of effort needed to integrate the tagging plan and what resources you will need to use. For example, if a TMS is already integrated, it is very likely that you will be able to do the entire implementation on your own. On the other hand, if you have to install a TMS or do without one, you will need your technical teams to carry out these steps.
Important: Remember to test the integration several times to make sure everything works properly! A well-implemented system from the start will save you countless days of maintenance later on.
4. Share data with your colleagues in suitable formats
Generally, an analytics project will serve a number of different company roles: web analysts, product managers, marketing teams, sales reps, company managers and more. Remember to identify all the stakeholders and users involved in the data upstream, and in demand, to meet all the needs of employees. As well as the implementation of the tags seen above, don’t forget to set up a configuration including the creation of segments or metrics specific to your activity.
Then, for each profile, think about the right format for retrieving the data and the nature of the information you want to convey:
- An SEO project manager will need traffic sources and maybe conversions, but pre-built analytics will probably be good enough.
- A product manager will want to track the precise sales generated by their product or product line, and have all the technical information on the items, all with a very fine level of granularity.
- Management will want to have an overview of the main business KPIs in a simple and user-friendly format in order to quickly make the right strategic decisions.
5. Analyse and monitor the performance of your analytics project on an ongoing basis
That’s it. Everything is in place, and all you have to do is make sure your analytics project becomes a daily activity. And don’t think of it as a simple one-shot mission. A data strategy will evolve over time, in line with changes in the company’s circumstances, the launch of new products or services, a shift in the economic context or competitive environment or the emergence of new consumer behaviours.
Here are some valuable tips:
- Analyse your data and track your KPIs thoroughly and accurately to effectively manage all your business activities and detect the keys to optimising your ROI.
- Detect anomalies or predict future trends to react to incidents or anticipate the rise or drop of certain performance indicators.
- Make sure you adapt the tagging plan if the site evolves with, for example, the addition of new features. You will have to implement these new features and monitor them carefully to avoid any setbacks.
- Stay tuned to the changing needs of the business. You may need to create new resources (segments, metrics, dashboards, etc.) or update the tagging.
