5 things you need to note in your year-end reporting

Take a multi-channel funnel approach

Your customers research, compare, and make purchase decisions at different times and in different places, so measuring return solely based on the last click gives an incomplete picture.

Measuring multi-channel funnels let you look at interactions across different digital media and show how these channels work together to create sales and conversions.

Pay attention to the channels customers engage before they convert or purchase, and gain valuable insight about their buying behavior.

Move on from page views

Page views really just measure consumption, they tell you how many times your content has been seen.

However, have you stopped to ponder if a high Page View count per visit a good thing? Is it a matter of “the visitor loved our site!” or, rather, “our site is so bad customers need to go through 23 pages to find they are looking for?” After a 23-page hunt, did the visitor give up?

By measuring only page views, you will never know. It is better to find your site’s top content and hidden gems—how often people visit a particular page of your site, how long they stay, and how often they convert.

Call out your mobile readiness

Measure mobile websites, mobile apps and visits from web-enabled mobile devices. Measure ads that lead people to use your app and find out whether they prefer ads on their desktop or mobile.

You will then be able to ascertain if your marketing campaign is targeted and efficient enough to reach your visitors wherever they are. Understanding mobile traffic to your site tells you if it is optimized to accommodate both mobile and computer traffic, or whether the traffic justified a separate mobile site.

While mobile visits may represent only a few percent of your overall visitors, you might find that they convert at a higher rate and that the average value of mobile transactions is higher. In this case, if you had created a site devoted exclusively to mobile platforms, this is a great opportunity to call that out in your reporting.

Tie social to the bottom line

Social media clearly impact your business. So why not show it? Social reports help you measure the impact social media has on your business goals. Make sure you have a report that shows conversion rates and the monetary value of conversions that occurred due to visits from social networks.

Are you linking these visits to your goals and e-commerce transactions? From there, you can also identify what content drives conversions with social audiences and show the results to key stakeholders to  articulate the value of social.

Tap into the power of customer loyalty

Are you targeting and measuring repeat sales? Analytics can allow you to tap into valuable insights about your website visitors who show an interest in your products and services.

Are you following visitors who spend time viewing specific pages or who put items in their shopping cart? How effective are your campaigns in encouraging return visits and repeat purchase?

Such analysis allows you to report efforts in closing the deal for tentative comparison shoppers, highlight how you have brought back shoppers who placed items in their cart but did not buy, and call out retention efforts with customers who have made a purchase in the past.