In their last book "Web Design for ROI - Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads", Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus give a perspective on the influence of design on the effectiveness of online properties in general and Web sites in particular.

There is one chapter that is an absolute must read for anyone who wants to discuss online metrics and certainly if you are interested in discussing the right metrics.

“How does your web site contribute to your organisation’s objectives? If your answer includes the word ‘hits’ take a moment to close this book and whack yourself in the head with it. There. Now remember that every time you are tempted to use the term again.”

This quote summarises what many in the web analytics community often see as a big warning light indicating that anyone asking about ‘hits’ most probably hasn’t got a clue what he or she is talking about. The quote sets the tone for the remainder of the book.

Metrics that matter

Loveday and Niehaus go on to discuss the difference between the metrics that matter and those that don’t. They argue that the metrics that matter are usually a combination of business metrics, site metrics and user metrics.

• Business metrics are the same that the organisation uses to measure success at a high level and are usually pulled from sales or lead management systems used by the whole company. Tim Ash calls these metrics the “outcomes” as they will often make up the ultimate numbers.
• Site metrics provide statistics on site usage and are usually sourced from a web analytics reporting tool like Google Analytics, Webtrends or Omniture.
• User metrics are derived from user feedback mechanisms, most commonly surveys, panels, focus groups and user testing. It is important to track all these metrics on a site-wide basis, but in our view it is equally important to include off-site metrics like newsletters, email campaigns, online store leakage data, and all other channels that may deliver traffic to the online properties or in any way help in converting visitors to clients.

Metrics that don’t matter as much

Loveday and Niehaus feel that metrics like traffic, time on site and average pageviews, hits, surveys, focus groups and industry average conversion rates are less important and go on to explain why.

• Traffic: focusing solely on traffic may cloud the fact that you may well succeed in driving eyeballs to your properties but unfortunately not all traffic is equally valuable. If an investment in traffic doesn’t convert in the end, you end up with a lot of expensive window shoppers and an empty till.
• Time on site and average page views: this may indicate positive engagement but may also be due to the fact that the site is difficult to navigate or information is hard to find. We notice that after an optimised re-designs many web site owners see these metrics go down, but this is often a good thing as in that case it often means the site has been tuned to the needs of visitors and does a much better job in navigate them to the conversion zone.
• Hits: many an investor has made the serious error in paying equity in online properties based on the “millions of hits” theory. Hits simply measure the number of objects downloaded from the web server and can easily be inflated by adding more objects (like pictures, text units, and other elements) to a web site.

These are just some of the examples used by the authors, but they are certainly some of the most important ones.

We would suggest this book for anyone involved in developing online properties, as it will make their design accountable and less prone to design-by-consensus disasters. It will also help you to understand how small changes in design can make a serious difference in results, no matter on how you define them. Also have a look at the book’s Web site as it offers some interesting bonus materials like web strategy templates and samples. For free.

How is that for ROI?