Kpi
Kpi
Kpi
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Himanshu has more than ten years’ experience in SEO, PPC and web analytics. He holds a
bachelors’ degree in Internet Science and is a certified web analyst. He is both Google
Analytics and Google AdWords certified. He was nominated for a Digital Analytics
Association award for excellence. The Digital Analytics Association is a world-renowned
not-for-profit association that helps organizations overcome the challenges of data
acquisition and application.
Himanshu runs a popular blog on OptimizeSmart.com which gets more than a quarter of a
million visits a month from over one hundred countries. He is the author of three bestselling
books on conversion optimization, attribution modelling, and email analytics:
A key performance indicator (or KPI) is a metric that is one of the most
Before you can identify KPIs, you must know your goals as an employee, as a
Your goals must align with your company’s core business objectives and you
Only then you will be in a position to find KPIs which align with your business
KPIs.
For example, for an individual like SEO, the goal may be, to increase the
But at the organization level, his goal is most likely to increase customer
optimization.
But at the organization level, their goal is most likely to improve customer
Whether you are an individual or a department, your goals must align with
goals. This is the only way to ensure maximum productivity and profitability.
Thus there can be two broad categories of goals for each employee or
department:
1. Internal goals
Internal goals
Internal goals are directly tied to achieving optimization objectives and may or
For example,
quality of your outreach emails so that you can earn more high-quality
backlinks for your website which in turn can increase the organic search traffic
on your website.
So if you work as an SEO then improving the quality of your outreach emails
This is because improving the quality of email outreach can never really be a
optimization.
Thus external goals are those core business objectives that you can achieve
goals and there needs to be an alignment between their internal and external
goals.
Only then they will be in a position to achieve their core business objectives
within the area of their responsibility and expertise and that too in the most
efficient manner.
Let us look at the internal and external goals of our SEO guy.
Which in turn can increase the organic search traffic of his website and which
Thus there is a clear alignment between the SEO’s internal and external goals.
Our SEO guy knows exactly how his day to day work activities impact the
'value' to the business bottom line and whether what they are currently doing,
you and your team can stay focused and productive and achieve the
The core business objectives are the results you want to achieve, improve or
maintain as an organization both in the short term and in the long run.
3. Increase profitability.
The core business objectives can vary from industry to industry and from
business to business.
Thus there are no predefined set of core business objectives which should be
adopted/copied.
business:
3. Increase sales.
Before you can set up KPIs for yourself and your team, you need to have well
But you can set up business KPIs only when your core business objectives are
crystal clear i.e. you know exactly what do you want to achieve as an
If the captain is not sure to which port his ship should sail then the sailors can’t
The key performance questions (or KPQs) are the business questions that help
● Can we acquire two times more customers than the last year? Is that
realistically possible?
Your ‘key performance questions must help you in setting up SMART goals.
Specific - Your goal needs to be clear and specific. It should target to achieve a
specific outcome.
You should be able to measure the progress or regress towards your goal.
For example, ‘Customers happiness’ can not be your goal unless you have a
mechanism in place through which you can quantify and differentiate between
You should be able to achieve your goal within the area of your responsibility
and expertise.
Relevant - Your goal must help you in achieving the desired outcome(s).
external goal.
Similarly, an ‘external goal’ is relevant when it aligns with one of the core
business objectives.
There is no urgency.
‘Time-bound’ goals bring urgency and help you in staying focused and
motivated.
Example of SMART goal - increase organic search traffic of the website by 100%
Strategies
Strategies are specific methods you use to achieve your SMART goals.
strategies.
These questions include why, what, who, where, when and how.
Creating and implementing any strategy requires time, cost, people, subject
‘Where’ denotes the ‘direction’ in which your strategy should move so that you
Your strategy should move in the direction where it helps you in achieving your
‘How’ denotes the 'process' you will use to execute your strategy.
Without setting up goals and strategies beforehand, you will have a hard time
coming up with KPIs which align with your internal/external goals and core
business objectives.
Types of KPIs
#1 Business KPIs
external KPIs
Since KPI is a metric and a metric can be a number or ratio, we can have KPIs in
Example of ratio KPIs: Conversion rate, average order value, task completion
rate, etc.
website:
This framework is the strategic roadmap for your business and provides the
big picture and the direction in which your company should move to get the
The ‘core business objectives’ and their corresponding business KPIs must be
This will help your employees and departments in setting up goals and KPIs
acquisition (CPA) can be the 'cost per conversion' or the average cost of
acquiring a customer.
The metric you choose as a business KPI must highly impact the corresponding
This is possible only when the metric has the ability to provide
recommendation(s) for action which can have a high impact on the business
bottom line.
In other words, your KPI must have the ability to provide recommendation(s)
for action which can highly impact the business bottom line.
If you are not sure whether or not a metric can be used as a business KPI then
and its corresponding core business objective i.e. as the value of your KPI
For example, if you sell 'display banner ad space' on your website and 'display
advertising' is the main source of revenue for you then ‘pageviews’ can be
The more page views you get, the more you can charge for every thousand
KPI and its corresponding core business objective i.e. as the value of your KPI
of an ecommerce website:
● Sales KPIs
● Marketing KPIs
● Financial KPIs
Internal KPIs are tied to internal goals and are used to measure optimization
efforts.
For example, the following KPIs can be used to measure your link building
outreach campaigns:
1. Delivery rate
2. Open rate
3. Response rate
5. ROI of outreach
clients/senior management.
For example, bounce rate is a good Internal KPI for optimizing landing pages.
management.
The metric you choose as an internal KPI must highly impact the corresponding
internal goal.
This is possible only when your chosen KPI has the ability to provide
recommendation(s) for action which can highly impact your internal goal.
corresponding positive or negative impact on the internal goal and this impact
should be significant.
For example, if one of your internal goals is to improve the quality of your
outreach emails, you can then choose 'response rate' as an internal KPI.
External KPIs are tied to external goals and are used to determine how you or
2. Conversion rate
3. Revenue
7. Goal conversions
Note: External KPIs can also be used as internal KPIs. There is no hard and fast
rule here.
The metric you choose as an external KPI must highly impact the corresponding
external goal.
recommendation(s) for action which can highly impact your external goal.
corresponding positive or negative impact on the external goal and this impact
should be significant.
For example, if one of your external goals is to improve website sales then you
can use 'average order value’ as an external KPI because it can highly impact
You can greatly increase website sales at the present conversion rate just by
You can use only those metrics as KPIs which are available to you in the first
place.
‘frustration level of customers who abandoned the shopping cart for the third
So when you are finding your KPIs, you need to be 100% sure that there is a
mechanism/tool available, to measure and report your KPI in the first place.
#2 Highly impacting
If a metric does not greatly impact its corresponding goal then it is not a good
KPI.
#3 Relevant
goal.
#4 Instantly useful
If your KPI is highly impacting then it is got to be instantly useful i.e. you can
quickly take actions on the basis of the insight you get from your KPI.
Your KPI should be available to you in a timely manner so that you can take
timely decisions.
For example, if you are using a compound metric (a metric which is made up of
several other metrics) as a KPI and it takes several months to compute it once
and then another several more months to compute it the second time then it is
not a good KPI, as you cannot make timely decisions on the basis of such KPI.
The direct cost can be something like the cost of manufacturing a product
Higher the gross profit margin, the more the money is left over for operating
#3 Operating profit
costs in control.
Higher the operating profit margin, the more the money is left over for net
profit.
Also known as net income, net earnings or bottom line. Net profit is the profit
Net profit = sales revenue – total cost (this includes any direct and indirect cost
+ interest + taxes)
Also known as profit margin, net margin, net profit ratio. It is used to
A low profit margin indicates a higher risk, that a decline in sales will erase the
Also known as sales growth rate. It is the measure of the percentage increase
bottom line.
Total economic value = total revenue + total value of the assisting conversions +
The total economic value also takes into account the role played by micro
It tells how likely it is that your customers will recommend your business to a
his lifetime. Different types of customers have different lifetime value (LTV).
Average customer life span means how long he/she remains your customer.
customers.
transactions.
*100
can measure how effective your upselling and cross-selling efforts are and
whether you are helping people in finding the product they are looking for.
It is the percentage of people who came to your website and answered ‘yes’ to
this survey question: “Were you able to complete the task for which you came
to the website?”
Task completion rate = (number of people said ‘yes’ to the survey question/
There is virtually no limit to the number of good KPIs you can find and use.
It all depends upon the nature of the business and the industry you work in
happen offline via phone calls then you can use ‘Phone Calls’ as your KPI.
So they are teaching GA and GTM in the name of teaching digital analytics.
It is about analyzing and interpreting data, setting up goals, strategies and KPIs.
Digital analytics is the core skill. Google Analytics is just a tool used
to implement digital analytics.
You can also implement digital analytics via other tools like Adobe Analytics,
Kissmetrics etc.
You are either likely to end up somewhere other than your destination or you get
involved in an accident.
The direction in which your analysis will move, will determine the direction in which
your marketing campaigns and eventually your company will move to get the highest
possible return on investment.
You get that direction from digital analytics and not from Google Analytics.
So if you are taking a course only on Google Analytics, you are learning to use one
of the tools of digital analytics. You are not learning digital analytics itself.
Since any person can learn to use Google Analytics in a couple of weeks, you do not
get any competitive advantage in the marketplace just by knowing GA.
So what I have done, if you are interested, is put together a completely free training
that will teach you exactly how I have been able to leverage digital analytics to
generate floods of news sales and customers and how you can literally copy what I
have done to get similar results.
#2 - The number 1 reason why most marketers are not able to scale
their advertising and maximize sales.
#3 - Why Google and Facebook ads don’t work for most businesses
& how to make them work.