Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Traffic, cost per click, conversions. Comparison of various sources, copy and offers.

The ultimate goal, of course, is long-term profitability, so it's important to know the lifetime value of a customer and to have good control of operations and overhead.

Consider too the landing path experience. It can have as much impact on conversions as the amount of traffic -- and perhaps even more.

Business goals should define the web metrics you're using to assess performance/progress (vs. the other way around). You need the macro business objectives to determine the "web" strategies and goals. Those, in turn, would determine what web metrics should be monitored.

It might help if you defined "web metrics" more specifically: Are you referring to measuring: A website? Display advertising? SEM/SEO? Social media? All of the above?

Thanks
-Steve

All of the above....the current key debate is how important Web activities are to build your brand. The most sophisticated large firms I am working with have quantified the ROI of each web activity, and found that:

1) the ROI of web activities is much higher on average than that of 'offline' activities such as TV,print, radio,...
2) but their overall impact on the business is much smaller

In other words, web activities are very profit efficient, but not very effective. Part of the reason is that these companies are still only spending 1-5% of their budget online. But another reason may be that web activities mostly close the deal with prospects that have been guided through the purchase funnel thanks to offline activities....