Google Analytics KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) 

“Internal KPIs” are used to measure and optimize performance of your brand strategy and marketing. Google Analytics is a free tool that will be the foundation of your KPI insights.

For healthcare practices, internal KPIs will help guide creation of content that engages your audience. Specifically, your future patient audience…your prospective patients. In addition, internal KPIs help guide strategy and design. For example, ‘bounce rate’ is a good internal KPI for optimizing landing pages. It does not necessarily directly impact the bottom line. An ‘external KPI’ is one that is shared with senior management or clients; external KPIs always directly impact the bottom line.

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Why Google Analytics?

Simply put: What you can measure can be improved. The KPIs provided by Google Analytics will help your website achieve better rankings. It’s part of your SEO! It will help you grow your practice…simple as that.

Why Analytics? Because what you can measure you can improve! Click To Tweet

METRICS

A ‘metric’ can be a number or a ratio; that is, you can have ‘number metrics’ and ‘ratio metrics.’

Examples:
Visits, pageviews, and revenue, are all number metrics.
Bounce rate, conversion rate, etc. are ratio metrics.

Since KPIs are metrics, you can have ‘number KPIs’ and ‘ratio KPIs.’

Examples:
Days to purchase, visits to purchase, revenue, are number KPIs.
Conversion rate, average order value, etc. are ratio KPIs.

A ‘metric’ becomes a ‘KPI’ when it guides action that impacts the bottom line.

In other words, any metric that leads you to make a change that changes (hopefully, increases) your financial bottom line, is a good KPI.

Examples of other metrics that could be used as KPIs include:
Revenue per click; revenue per visit; cost per acquisition.

 

Determining your External KPIs (affecting revenue) requires these:

1. Excellent understanding or business objectives.
2. Translate business objectives into measurable goals.
3. Select KPIs for each of these goals.

Sounds simple?  It is simple.  But not easy.

 

Business Objectives and Goals

A KPI is a metric used to determine how you are performing against your “business objectives.”

Your “goals” are specific strategies to achieve those business objectives.

As an example:

Medical practices typically share this business objective: increase clinic appointments. In that context, your goals will be for visitors of your website to (1) click on the “click-to-call” link to your appointment desk; (2) use your online portal to book a clinic appointment; and (3) to opt-in to your email list for your digital newsletter. A related goal might be something like “increase appointments by 5% in the next 3 months by increasing calls through the website from X/week to 2X/week.”

Any metric that can directly impact cash flow (revenue, cost) and/or conversions in a big way can act as a good KPI.

Can you use Facebook ‘likes’ as a KPI?

The answer is ‘NO’ unless you can correlate the number of Facebook ‘likes’ with revenue, cost, and/or conversions. That is, as the number of Facebook ‘likes’ increases or decreases there is a corresponding increase or decrease in revenue, cost, and/or conversions.

Even if there is a correlation, for it to act as a good KPI, it must impact the bottom line significantly.

 

Google Analytics

As you are aware, Google provides the largest search engine, performing about 80% of all web searches. As of this writing – late December 2016 – Google Analytics is still free. Of course, things change pretty quickly in the digital world, so no telling how long “free” will last. Google isn’t even “Google” anymore…they’re now “Alphabet”?

 

Grow Your Practice

You must get a Google Analytics account, and get it onto your website. Once you achieve that (don’t be intimidated by the techie issues; get help if you need it), you will have access to information that will help you to better serve your patient community and grow your practice!

Google Analytics will give you the following:

• Number of unique visitors to your website (by day, week, or month)
• Number of repeat visitors…
• Where they are coming from: which websites are referring your traffic?
• How are they accessing your site: by smart phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop?
• What kind of system are they using: android/iOS? Mac/PC?
• Which browser are they using?
• How long are they remaining on your site? How engaging is your content?
• Which pages are your readers interested in?
• What keywords are people searching that bring them to your site?

Based on answers to these and other Analytics data, you will create more and better content to answer their health questions.

 

Does Google Analytics Provide ALL Relevant KPIs?

Not necessarily. For example, because phone calls result in a significant impact to the financial bottom line (since phone calls are still the primary means for people to book an appointment), then phone calls will provide a good KPI. But this information is outside of Google Aanalytics. Note that online appointment-scheduling features are an important addition to your website in this digital world! And that feature can be monitored by Google Analytics.

 

Call-Tracking Services

While on the subject of phone calls as KPIs outside of Goodle Analytics: I am often asked whether there are phone call-tracking apps that can provide information similar to Google Analytics for incoming calls. As noted above, Google Analytics can track appointments made through your online apps, but cannot track phone calls. Tracking incoming phone calls requires a special “call tracking service.”

There are now several of these services competing for your business, but keep in mind that if you choose to use one of these services, it must be HIPAA-compliant! Many of these services are not prepared to serve a healthcare practice that manages personal health information (PHI). Also note that those services that can provide HIPAA-compliance will charge extra for that.

Routine (non-medical) call-tracking service subscriptions start around $30, but a HIPAA-compliant service can easily charge 5-10-times that per month!

Attributes of a Good KPI

1. Available and measurable
2. Significantly impacts bottom line
3. Relevant to business objectives (true by definition from attribute #2)
4. Instantly useful – can guide quick action
5. Timely – a KPI that takes months to mature or calculate is less useful

 

Three Key Items for any Campaign:

1. How is the campaign performing?
2. How are people who come to the site consuming content?
3. How are people engaging with your content?

 

Internal KPIs to Track Campaign Performance:

1. Sessions / visits: how much traffic is coming from a source?
2. Goal completions: total number of goal conversions?
3. Revenue: which traffic source is generating revenue? (Are you selling products on your site – ecommerce?)
4. Goal Conversion Rate: the percentage of visits that results in Goal conversions.
5. E-Commerce Conversion Rate: percentage of visits that result in e-commerce transaction.

 

Internal KPIs to Track Content Consumption:

1. Pageviews
2. Average time on site / page
3. Bounce rate

 

Internal KPIs to Measure Visitor Engagement:

1. Pages / session
2. Total time on site
3. Unique social actions

Summary – Key Metrics from Google Analytics:

Again, the data provided by Google Analytics will help guide your creation of an optimal patient experience.

How?

By helping you to optimize the content that you post to your website – content that answers their health questions; content that establishes you as an expert in your area of practice; content that they want more of; content that engages your visitors and begins the long-term relationship, that establishes you as their go-to resource for trustworthy, accurate health information that answers their questions…and, as the trusted resource for their health care.

These are examples of the Relevant KPIs from Google Analytics:

1. # of visits
2. # Unique visitors (“uniques”)
3. Page views
4. Pages / session
5. Average time on site
6. Bounce rate
7. Goal completions
8. Goal conversion rate
9. Revenue
10. Ecommerce conversion rate
11. Unique social actions

 

Future articles (and videos) will expand on how to use Google Analytics: how to set up your GA Dashboard; how to use Conversions; and how to use GA Experiments (AB-testing).

Until then…keep chillin!