I am a huge fan of management and marketing theory (not for the sake of it of course), but applying and finding ways to make the continuous job of improving overall marketing performance (web analytics of course) a little easier. I developed my Activity Based Scorecard (ABS) after working with the balanced scorecard - traditional management theory. In my “web analytics scorecard”, see image below, define KPIs, I identify relationships, I bench mark these relationships (with trends) against themselves: and ask the question how effective is my website and marketing performance? This is my correlation between effectiveness of my website under review and the web analyst’s approach to continuous improvement, of said company performance.

              (Click image for higher resolution) 

My ABS scorecard, large image above, measures the relationship(s) between:
1. Usability, multi-variate A/B testing, market research.
2. Management information and web analyst reports.
3. Web data and statistics.
4. Actionable insights and decisions.

These can all be classified as flows of information and should have separate agenda and metrics. Each component should be weighted according to its importance and the overall metric for assessment. In other words providing weighted scores for different components to provide a more accurate picture of their value to the overall picture, from the company perspective which would be aligned to their commercial objectives.

At the outset one should understand the objective, content, and overall aim of the website, in other words if everything went kaput, as Avinash often tells us, what is the most important thing for your business. My Activity Based Scorecard, analysis and decisions then flow from this. My analytics scorecard is a very similar assessment to the cash flow forecast of a company (finance people will love this) it takes basic inflows of information (whether product or service based) and links these inflows to outflows. A relationship Forms. Also, a cross relationship forms between the numbers of statistics and the reports generated and not to forget the decisions that flow from these relationships.

Separate metrics or cross relationships develop and can be assessed alongside the overall assessment. Usability can in some cases prevail over say the numbers leading straight through to decision flows which influences both the statistics and the reports generated. Through timely assessment of my ABS report trends (and metrics) can be established through each component and the overall assessment.

Actions can have a corrective or test feedback straight through to the inputs or changes of the core components. But, for me the most important factor is that the activities of the analyst have direct influence to the drivers of the website. This ultimately impacts the assessment.

Strategic objectives can be best described as the common ground between what we focus on, what we do best and ultimately what our passion is. We are however constrained by our financial drivers. Our marketing plan directly links with our strategic objectives. So when senior management ask: how is our website performing? - we have a context and a weighted activity based scorecard within which we can measure our true performance and ongoing actions and decisions.

The reality is that for any of this to work at all requires alot of hard work, perseverance and at the outset defining the key business objective(s) for the company. There are some tools on the market to help develop one’s scorecard, for example with Balanced Scorecard Designer you can create a set of KPIS and group, categorise and weight them.

Do let me know if you have any questions or if you agree or completely disagree. Thanks so much for reading.