Track and analyze key performance indicators

You can set performance goals for your Web site just as you do for any area of your business. For example, you may want to increase the number of repeat visitors to your site or increase the number of customer inquiries generated from your site. But how can you measure your progress and work toward ensuring that your efforts are an effective part of your overall business strategy?

When you are tracking progress toward any business goal, key performance indicators (KPIs) are those factors that provide the most important information about the success of your efforts. The site reports available in Microsoft Office Live Small Business can tell you exactly what you need to know about the KPIs that you identify for your online goals.

 Note   You must activate the Reports feature before Office Live begins to collect the data to be reported, such as page views and keyword usage. To activate Reports, on the Office Live Small Business Home page, at the top, click More, and then click Reports. On the Reports page, click Activate for FREE.

---

• Identify KPIs

• Define a tracking strategy

• Interpret report data

---

Identify KPIs

After you determine the strategy that you want to use to work toward your goal, identify KPIs that can help you measure your progress. For example, if you want to cultivate online resources (such as industry forums or search engines) to attract repeat visitors to your site, you might use the Referring Sources report to track which sources result in the most conversions.

 Note   A conversion occurs when a site visitor reaches a page that indicates growth in customer relationships, such as the page visitors see after they submit a newsletter sign-up form. Pages that measure conversions are called conversion points and can be any page on your site that you designate. You can track conversions in the Referring Sources, Keywords, and Visitors reports. For help creating and using conversion points, see Add change or delete a conversion point.

The following four scenarios provide examples of common online business goals and related KPIs. For more information about each of these scenarios, including how to develop a strategy to reach the indicated goal and how to identify KPIs for that goal, follow the links provided.

• If your goal is to increase repeat visitors to your Web site, you may want to track the number of clicks to your site from the e-mail marketing messages you send or explore which referring sources draw the most visitors to your site.
• If your goal is to build your newsletter subscriber database, consider tracking your newsletter sign-up pages to see which pages result in the most subscribers. Or, look for an increase in page views for the pages you link to from the e-mail newsletters you send.
• If your goal is to improve attendance at local events, you might look at which referring sources provide the most traffic to event pages on your site. Or examine the exit page count for event pages to see where you may need to revise your efforts.
• If your goal is to increase customer inquiries, explore which keywords draw the most customers to your site or which of your Contact Us forms results in the most conversions.

 Top of Page

Define a tracking strategy

As you explore business goals and related strategies for your Web site, you will see that the same KPIs may be appropriate to help you track your progress toward multiple goals.

The site reports available in Office Live Small Business can tell you exactly what you need to know about the KPIs that you identify. In fact, you can customize the Web Site Usage Overview report to provide a dashboard that shows you exactly the performance indicators you most want to see.

To customize your Web site usage overview:

1. On the Office Live Small Business Home page, at the top, click More, and then click Reports.
2. On the blue title bar of the Web site usage overview chart, click the wrench icon to open the Options dialog box.



3. Select the performance indicators that you want to see at a glance in the Web site usage overview chart, specify the time period for which you want to display results in the chart, and then click OK.

The Web site usage overview also automatically tracks site activity around events, such as when you send an e-mail newsletter. Notice, on the Web site usage overview shown here, that you can also click Add an event to add markers to the chart for your offline events.

In addition to the overview, you can use the Visitors report, Site Usage and Page Usage reports, Referring Sources report, and Keywords reports to track the KPIs that you identify.

 Top of Page

Interpret report data

Whichever reports you use, think about how best to interpret and use the information that reports provide. Some of the information in reports is straightforward. For example, if you set a conversion point to track as a KPI, an increase in the number and rate of conversions as shown here is clearly positive.

Other types of data may require more information. For example, the second page listed in the Page Usage report that you see in the following image shows a high number of views relative to many other pages on your site. However, more than half of those views resulted in the visitor exiting your Web site.

When you think about how to track KPIs in addition to your overall progress toward your goal, be sure that you consider all of the information in determining a strategy that can help you effectively track your success.

For help getting started with Office Live Small Business reports, see the articles Understand reports and Use reports.

 Top of Page