How To Identify KPI For Your Website

Kris -

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a visual cue that communicates the amount of progress made toward a goal.  In this blog post, I’ll talk about how you can Identify KPI For Your Website.

First, you need to ask yourself:

  • What drives the success of your website?
  • To whom are you addressing the success (it is possible that there are several stakeholders?

KPIs are quantitative measurements that help an organization measure progress towards goals and identify areas of improvement.

KPIs should be “Actionable”.  Consider data that are “good to know” as other metrics supportive to KPIs.

Here is a pyramid of data that I’d like to think.  KPIs are critical few metrics that everybody in the company should understand what it means, and that everyone should know that there is a goal tied to those numbers.

Every KPIs like revenue, units sold, # of active users would have unique strategies within different groups in a company to drive those KPIs.

That said, the S&T in that pyramid represents ‘Strategy’ and ‘Tactics’.  In marketing, you may have various campaigns and programs that drive certain numbers higher or lower like bounce rate, conversion rate, churn rates, etc.  Those measures would certainly contribute to moving the needle of a particular KPI.

To identify what KPIs to track and report on, I first recommend you map out your business model given that I’d assume you already know what that is.

Something like this…

Every dollar sign you see here or where you have your customer transact that is important to your business, you may want to consider that as a KPI candidate.  Revenue, active users, or profits, all of those are great metrics as well.

Mapping out your business and how users will go through your service, that’ll be the first step you should do if you have no clue on what to define as your KPI.

Even if you don’t own a transactional site like a site that sells goods, there will need to be a key success measure that you should be shooting for and defined as a KPI.  Perhaps, building a brand and building your email list is something you’ll need to measure as a KPI for the next 1~2 years.  That’s totally valid as well.  It doesn’t always have to have a dollar sign to the metric.

Think about it and let me know if you have any questions.