Turning your corporate website into a success: formulating effective KPIs

In previous articles Jungle Rating introduced the internet scorecard methodology, claiming that a sound strategy forms the basis of success. From this strategy one can derive success factors and key performance indicators. These can be determined within four perspectives: financial, stakeholder, website and organisation perspective. Get inspired by 16 success factors for corporate websites.

In this issue:

Three conditions for success
1. Clear and specific goals
2. Strategy of the corporate website is recognized within the organisation
3. KPIs are measurable and actionable
Possible goals for a corporate website and accompanying success factors and KPIs

First condition for success: clear and specific goals
Successful websites have a clear purpose and a vision. As corporate websites usually serve multiple goals and stakeholders, it is very important to distinguish exact goals and ambitions and to prioritise these. Otherwise it is simply impossible to formulate relevant and realistic performance indicators. If you want to use your corporate website as a primary recruitment channel, you have to offer more than just your financial results, for example. A job seeker wants to know more about the company culture, the education and development possibilities and his future colleagues.

Second condition for success: the corporate website strategy is recognized
Everyone who is involved in your website must be aware of its online strategy and endeavour to achieve the underlying goals. Involve several disciplines of your organisation in the process of formulating the online strategy, success factors and KPIs: IR, Press, CSR, recruitment, marketing and the IT department. Don’t forget the management to get commitment at the top.

Third condition for success: KPIs are measurable, realistic and actionable
KPI’s help to define and measure progress.

The KPIs need to allow quantification and specific targets, though: e.g. ‘30% increase of visits to the online annual report’ or ‘a satisfaction rate of 90% on content and user-friendliness’ provide exact and specific insight in the website’s performance. Then you can formulate appropriate actions to achieve your targets too. Make sure your targets are realistic though: KPIs establish expectations for performance. Maybe you should spread your ambitions of the 30% increase of your annual report over two years. Use web analytics as a point of reference. Don’t set the satisfaction rate on 90% if it is 60% now and you don’t have the staff to improve the content of your website.

Formulating KPIs per success factor

Suppose, you have the following goals for corporate website to work on:
1. Provide complete and transparent information on the company
2. Demonstrate the company’s leading position within the industry
3. Realise cost reduction
4. Enhance brand experience
5. Generate new business for the company or for business websites (this is becoming a more and more important goal of corporate websites

You need to define your success factors and KPIs from your own unique online strategy. See possible success factors below:

Once you have identified the success factors and indicators you want to monitor, you can describe the appropriate methodology and frequency to measure and establish the targets. Don’t forget to appoint the responsible department / officer. See the following examples:

Example: KPI, target and measurement of success factor Cost Savings

Example: KPI, target and measurement of success factor Quality of content

Undertaking the right actions
The ultimate goal is to formulate appropriate actions to make sure you achieve your goals. Depending on the cycle of measurement, e.g. quarterly or yearly, you can formulate actions for improvement:

Example of action plan based on the Internet Scorecard methodology