Written by Nils R. | Oct 19, 2020 7:00:00 AM
What is
a
Website Efficiency Report
? Website efficiency reports are considered web analytics tools and are often used by marketing executives to determine the cost per website vistor that converts into a lead. Some of the key functionality in this type of report is that it uses data from e.g. Google Analytics and combines it with expense data from the company's ERP system. On the top of the report, it displays the number of unique website visitors for the past 12 months compared with the 12 months prior to that. In other words, based on the month the user runs the report for, it uses a rolling twelve month functionality to produce these figures. The second row from the top shows the number of people that filled out a form on the web-site. These are referred to as "conversions". And, the key metric is the third row where it takes the web-site marketing expenses for the same 12 month period and divides it by the number of conversions. In other words, this helps a marketing manager to see how well the investments in search engine optimization (SEO) and other web-site related expenses are providing a return on investment (ROI) as it relates to lead generation for the sales team. The bottom of the report (not seen in the image below) provides other popular web metrics like top referral sites, vistors by country, etc.. You find an example of this type of report below.
Purpose of
Website Analytics Reports Companies and organizations use Website Analytics Reports to decide how much money and time to allocate to website-related activities based on the ROI it provides in terms of leads and potential sales. When used as part of good business practices in a Marketing department, a company can improve its sales by showing executives the ROI on web-site investments and thus help budget requests and improve marketing decisions. This also helps reduce the chances that lack of web-site ROI information results in sub-optimized marketing and funding decisions and ultimately reduces sales.
Website Analytics Report
Example Here is an example of Web-site Efficiency Report that highlights top website and marketing expense metrics. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Website Efficiency Report Example[/caption] You can find hundreds of additional examples
here
Who Uses This Type of
Report
? The typical users of this type of report are: Marketing and Sales Executives.
Other
Report
s Often Used in Conjunction with
Website Analytics Reports Progressive Marketing Departments sometimes use several different Website Analytics Reports, along with campaign analysis reports, annual marketing expense budgets, sales funnel analytics, marketing dashboards and other management and control tools.
Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From? The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others. In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.
What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards? Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:
- Native ERP report writers and query tools
- Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
- Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples
