How DirectGov should measure success
Two months ago Martha Lane Fox published her review of DirectGov proposing that it was currently failing at its job of providing the best resources to the UK population. One of the reasons that it is failing is that it doesn't understand what its purpose is and has no measures of success.
One of the recommendations that Martha Lane Fox gave in her review was that there should be a CEO of Digital. Now that Chris Chant has been appointed as an interim, the first job he should do is work out how to measure success and imprint this across all stakeholders.
Here I am giving him a hand by making some recommendations...
How to measure the success of a Government website
Measuring a government website is very much different from measuring a commercial one, since a government website’s job isn’t to make money for the Government (well not directly).
This lack of a bottom line often makes it difficult to justify changes to the website because of the lack of direct profit for the owner. One way to get over this is to ensure you have a robust measuring process for the website to monitor the changes over time and attribute them correctly.
Do walled gardens really make analytics more challenging?
Analytics isn't easy, but just about every marketer knows how important it is. That's why so many companies have invested significant sums in their analytics strategies.
Unfortunately, the rise of popular consumer hangouts that are walled gardens, namely Facebook, has created multiple 'internets', and according to AdAge, that poses a number of challenges for companies and their analytics strategies.
Making multichannel marketing meaningful
A friend of mine who is a marketer once remarked that multichannel marketing is a lot like sex: just about everybody wants to
do it, but until you really know what you're doing, it can be a bit of
a disappointment once it happens.
One of the most disappointing things about multichannel marketing campaigns is that, in retrospect, they turn out to be meaningless exercises. A lot of excitement gives way to confusion and the reality that what you expected isn't what you got. And that's assuming you expected something in the first place.
35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement
Social media measurement is something that I think should be undertaken with a sense of perspective, by standing back and looking at the big picture.
A widescreen approach to social media measurement ultimately looks at the things that really matter: sales, profits, customer satisfaction and loyalty. Besides, honing in on the detail might not be the best use of your time, given the obvious difficulties that arise, particularly with attribution.
But standing back and looking at the bigger picture is not going to be enough for your data-mad boss, is it? It’s a bit too soft focus, right? He or she is going to want to see proof that all this social optimisation is actually working.
If that’s the case, then don’t worry: there are lots of things you can measure...
