Digital.gov Guide
Web analytics playbook
This guide provides actionable strategies for effectively using web analytics to improve federal websites and digital services.
Create a foundation
Before starting, be sure to define your mission, goals, and key performance indicators.
Reading time: 1 minute
Build a solid foundation for your team by defining your website mission, goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs). Then your team can focus on reporting that matters. Don’t rely on pageviews alone; shift your team’s analytics framework to discover rich and meaningful insights that make a difference.
Checklist:
- Meet with your stakeholders and website management team to discuss the site’s overarching purpose
- Define your target audience(s)
- Define online objectives for your target audience(s)
- Determine which goals your analytics tool can measure
- Create KPIs
Key Questions:
- Who are our users?
- What are the most important things for our users to achieve?
- How does our site contribute to the organizational mission?
- Which KPIs would denote success at-a-glance?
- Can we capture those KPIs with our tool?
- How can we capture other important metrics?
- What can’t this tool tell us?
