Web analytics key performance indicators (KPI) are a mean to measure how successful your website is at reaching your goals. Google analytics KPIs can be specified by answering the question, “What is really important to different users on the site?”. Some users are after great content (length of visit and pages per visit KPIS) and some are after great products (conversion rate, basket value and days to purchase KPIs).
Now days however there are more KPIs which your online business should start paying attention to, track and improve. Here are just a few KPIs which I recently started tracking for some clients.
- Website Comments KPI
Provides an indication of the level of site content, its relevancy and interest. Especially great for online retailers offering blog functionality as a mean to engage with more customers.
Measuring the KPI – Using Google Analytics goals, you’ll need to track two main actions, ’submit your comment’ and ‘post your comment’. In order to set the goal, you’ll need to trackonclick events by setting up a virtual page view (a page that doesn’t actually exist – such as the ‘post your comment’ button) and link this virtual page view to a goal in Analytics. Google has an excellent explanation on tracking onclick events.
- Website User Reviews KPI
User generated content is truly king when it comes to reviews. I have seen reviews helping to increase a product conversion rate over and over, and together with the fact that it is possible to act on a negative review to retain the customer, it’s clear why it should be considered a KPI.
Measuring the KPI – If you are enticing reviews via email, then simple tag the URL using Google URL Builder and measure the campaign ‘conversion rate’.
- Social Bookmarking KPI
An indication of the viral nature of the site content. If you’re offering some sort of social bookmarking buttons on your site, wouldn’t be great to know if it’s working and whether users are actually clicking on the widget and sharing your content.
Measuring the KPI – Using Google Analytics goals, tracking clicks on outbound links is quite easy to achieve. First you’ll need to tag the link itself by tweaking the GA tracking code and adding /outgoing/ then set the goal page as /outgoing/.* using regex match. I use Addtoany.com for Conversion Counts and have set my goal using head match to /addtoany.com/services/. Here’s more from Google on tracking outbound links.
- New RSS Feed Subscribers KPI
Another indication of the site content relevancy, offer and the ability to attract more returning users (which of course is great).
Measuring the KPI – You’ll need to assign another Google Analytics goal using the trackPageview tag again and update the feed link on the blog or website. The goal page should look something like onclick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/page/rss.html’);” Once the tag is up to date and assigned to the RSS link create a goal using head match.
- Social Networking ROI
Similar to social bookmarking KPI, use this one as an indication of the viral nature of the site content and how well your online agency is nudging your content in the right direction.
Measuring the KPI – To make life just a bit easier, you’ll need to create another profile in Google Analytics and an advanced segment for the social networks.
Before you start tracking, you’ll notice that Google Analytics allows tracking of up to four goals in one profile so don’t start deleting your normal sales goals 
. To track more goals simply set a duplicate profile and you might also find it useful to add a date next to the goal name. If you are interested in more information on KPIs we are now covering this subject in our Google Analytics Training Course so do get in touch.
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Other great resources:
Google Conversion Room key performance indicators