Understanding Website Complexity, Assessment Example

Websites are an integral marketing tool for the modern day business or organization. As such, it is paramount to success that this tool be constantly evaluated for performance and usefulness as a tool, relative to the investment committed. In analyzing the performance of websites, businesses employ a two types of metrics; (1) website efficiency metrics and (2) website effectiveness metrics. Taking into consideration an ecommerce website, Amazon, this paper will highlight metrics that can be employed in analyzing website performance.

Website Efficiency Metrics

Website efficiency measures the how much resources and/or time employed in completing a process. They include;

1. Pages per visit
2. Bounce rate
3. Cost of acquisition
4. Click-through rates on Ads or Adwords
5. Activity of customers on email lists or followers on social sites
6. Repeat conversion rate
7. Checkout conversion rate
8. Conversion rate to lead or sale(Clifton, 2012)

Website Effectiveness Metrics

1. Number of items per order
2. Average order value
3. Hurdle rate of percentage active online customers, subscribers or followers
4. Customer satisfaction experience across whole site
5. Customer lifetime value
6. Audience share compared to competitors
7. Revenue or goal value per visit
8. gap analysis of total search demand
9. Customer satisfaction with site experience
10. Margin(Clifton, 2012)

Website efficiency metrics are much easier to measure when compared to website effectiveness metrics. This is also due to the fact that website efficiency metrics are predominantly subjective. They fail to measure variables against set goals. Website effectiveness metrics are objective and measure performance against set goals and objectives.

Website effectiveness metrics have more business value as they offer information that is objective. furthermore, this information can be measured against set goals and objectives, providing a more accurate picture of the performance of the website as a marketing tool. The metrics would be ordered in the following manner, starting from the most important to the least important.

1. Margin
2. Average order value
3. Number of items per order
4. Revenue or goal value per visit
5. Customer lifetime value
6. gap analysis of total search demand
7. Hurdle rate of percentage active online customers, subscribers or followers
8. Customer satisfaction experience across whole site
9. Audience share compared to competitors
10. Customer satisfaction with site experience

References

Butkiewicz, M., Madhyastha, H. V., & Sekar, V. (2012). Understanding website complexity: Measurements, metrics, and implications. the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC (pp. 313-328). Berlin: Elsevier B.V. Retrieved June 14, 2015, from http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~harshavm/papers/imc11.pdf

Clifton, B. (2012). Advanced Web metrics with Google Analytics (3rd ed.). Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons.