For many people, the most commonly and closely measured thing is their website or blog. And, of course, for many businesses, this is a hyper-critical area. Optimizing the performance of their websites has a direct impact on the top and bottom lines. We’ve seen many enterprise dashboard techniques applied to web analytics. In fact, many avid Dashboard Spy readers belong to the web measurement world.
I wanted to bring to your attention the KPI selection chapter of the book, Website Measurement Hacks: Tips & Tools to Help Optimize your Online Business. O’Reilly offers this free download of the chapter. It’s well worth the quick read. Here are a few screenshots I took from the KPI hacks. The tips offered apply to all KPI selection, not just for web analytics dashboards.
Here are a few suggested KPIs for web measurement:
This is a sample web measurement KPI worksheet. The suggested Key Performance Indicators include: Percent New Visitors, Percent Returning Visitors, Ratio of New to Returning, Conversion Rates, Average Order Value, Sales per Visitor, Customer Retention Rate, and my favorite, Percent of Visits Under 90 Seconds. (That’s a KPI that tells a lot!)
And here is a screenshot of a web measurement enterprise dashboard:
Homework: Do be sure to check out the free download and read it carefully. If you are looking for more background on web measurement, check these books on web analytics.
So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books on business dashboards.
Anyone interested in Web Analytics Demystified, Web Measurement Hacks, or the Big Book of KPIs should check out the author’s site: http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/
Eric is a well-respected leader in the web analytics space and has lot’s of tidbits of wisdom to offer via his blog.
Comment by Clint — July 27, 2006 @ 11:09 am
Thanks Dashboard spy for the props! I’ve been a big fan of yours for some time now and routinely draw on examples you’ve provided. While I write about a variety of subjects, you and your readers can keep up on web metrics KPIs via my weblog at:
http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog
Thanks again,
Eric T. Peterson
Author, The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators
Comment by Eric T. Peterson — July 27, 2006 @ 4:43 pm
[...] pointed this out before I even saw it but the Dashboard Spy cites my work in Web Site Measurement Hacks in a post today. It’s nice to know that the Spy sees the value [...]
Pingback by Web Analytics Demystified » Blog Archive » The Dashboard Spy talks about my books — February 19, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
Hello Dashboard Spy. I enjoy your blog about business dashboards. It is good to see such information. I have been studying this topic for many months now and am glad to see so many examples. I will visit your site often.
I was very interested in seeing your post about “KPI Requirements for Dashboard Projects – Using the KPI Wheel”. Thank you for the information about this dashboard topic. There is a dashboard project at work about this subject.
The wheel graphic is very nice. I like the colors and the questions are very interesting – What Question? Who’s Asking, Why is it Important, etc. I think it is very good. I also like the layout of the screen. I have a question about the boxes on the right side. Is the user supposed to type the answers to the questions into the boxes?
Comment by saibaba — November 22, 2007 @ 1:32 am
This topic is quite trendy in the net right now. What do you pay the most attention to when choosing what to write about?
Comment by How to Get Six Pack Fast — April 15, 2009 @ 10:05 am