Measuring website metrics (stats) is not an easy task. It's also a science the very few can do. Unless you have someone who specializes in metrics, you are not going to get reliable data. Below are some steps that may help.
First, understand that you do need reliable data, and it is easy to end up with misleading data.
How, you may ask?
Here are some pointers (ignored by many as you will soon discover):
Kill your computer's identity.Every day you naturally visit your own website several times. So does your staff and others "who don't count". Hence, Rovner ligature eliminate your computers' identities (I.P. addresses) as visitors to your own website in your analytics. So, no matter how many times you or your staff "internally" visit your planned giving web pages, you will not be recorded as a visitor.
Do not count hits because hits do not count. If your current vendor or consultant has not informed you of this, then next time you see him, scream:
H. I. T. S. = How Idiots Track Success, and fire them on the spot.
Hits give one an artificially high "visitor" count, and yet these are not your true visitors. A hit is any number of small parts on a website (such as a pixel graphic, a split image, etc.) that is downloaded when someone reads your page. Hits were popular 10 years ago and are a good measure for webmasters, but not for today's planned giving officers.
What to use then? Consider sessions, visitors, and loyal visitors only.
Take "bounce" rates into account.
A bounce is someone who accidentally arrives to your page through a search engine, then decides he or she's on the wrong site, and leaves. Some websites can have bounce rates as high as 90%, easily.
So, if you have 100 people visit your website and your bounce rate is 90%, you effectively have 10 visitors. Discover your bounce rate.
Take search engine visits into account.
Another figure to eliminate from your visitors list would be automated web crawlers that go into your website to see what's there. These are important and welcomed, but should not be included in your internal analytics report.
Do not compare your organization to other non-profits in your reports.Common advice is: find a similar non-profit and compare your metrics. Bull.
Even if the "other non-profits" are organizations similar in size and scope, you cannot compare your metrics to theirs. At first it sounds logical to do so, and some vendors recommend this. In reality, organizations of the same size do not always generate the same traffic. Between loyalty, politics, geography, advertising budgets, and how much effort is behind "pushing" their overall website, there are many variables over which you simply have no control.
Such a comparison would be analogous to comparing one's wealth with a peer's just based on the same credentials and age. You have to take into account family issues and how early they began saving, and even tangibles such as weight and health issues that prevented them from work now and then, and so on.
The above will help you gather more realistic numbers to develop useful metrics. They are far better than some of the misguided "feel-good" approaches used by many, that give you inflated numbers, point you in the wrong direction and hold you back.
A Reality Check.
Planned giving is not Entertainment Weekly, and you will not get repeat visitors like you get on commercial sites, for two reasons:
You have less prospects than teenagers looking for Britney Spears
Planned giving is not on top of their list 24/7
Some planned giving vendors promise that your average page visit will last 30 minutes. It's not true. Perhaps, while Mr. Robinson was reading your page on charitable gift annuities, he was asked by Mrs. Robinson to take out the trash and that page remained open. Sorry, this does not count as a page visit.
The bottom line is, do not be unrealistically optimistic: planned giving does move slowly and patience, here, is definitely a virtue.
Viken Mikaelian is the Founder and President of , LLC and , Inc. VirtualGiving delivers cutting edge planned giving websites whereas PlannedGiving hosts planned giving documents such as solicitation letters for fundraisers to download. Clients include Yale, Caltech, Berkeley, Penn, Wharton, St. Jude's (Memphis, TN), Yellowstone, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, Red Cross National, and 450 others.
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