Omniture Takeaway: Website Analytics and What you Should Measure

I’m in Salt Lake City for the Adobe Omniture Summit 2011 for online marketing. This afternoon I had the opportunity to meet with Tim Elleston of Australia’s Murdoch University.

The attendees at this conference are crazy about data and numbers. Website analytics can bring you a ton of information, maybe too much to handle. So what exactly should you measure. Elleston manages a staggering 575 websites for the Murdoch University system. That’s a lot of data to handle. How does he do it? He says that you can measure everything, but you don’t need to. The important question to ask yourself is

“What are you going to do when you know ABC?”

He means you need to have a plan before you measure, and you should only measure what you plan to take action on. Some of the data you get from analytics may be nice to know, but will it cause you to take action on your website?

For example, at Murdoch University, they use their analytics reports to organize their site content based on searches. The most popular content was made the most accessible. They also implemented “search as you type.” The most popular search terms would pop up as you type.

Elleston says before you measure, know your objectives, then measure data based on those objectives. Then use those measurements to take action. You can see more of his thoughts on analytics and search at his blog: Elephants and Analytics

- Jay Ehret

See all marketing Omniture Takeaways

DISCLOSURE: Adobe sponsored my attendance at Adobe Omniture 2011

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