In 2005, Forrester Research asked web professionals what they found to be the hardest part of using analytics in their organizations. Surprisingly, only 24 percent replied “pulling together the data.” By contrast, 53 percent said “acting on the findings.”

This is a big problem. An organization that fails to act on its analytics findings is like a marathon runner who completes 25 miles in record time and then walks home without completing the race. By itself, compiling information won’t help your organization.
The surest way to achieve a 0 percent ROI on web analytics is to look at the data you collect and then do nothing with it.
To get the most out of analytics, you should plan to dedicate about 5 percent of your overall web budget to optimization. That should be enough to take advantage of the opportunities your analytics effort identifies without depriving your organization of the funds it needs for ongoing operations.

Of course, setting aside even such a small percentage of the overall budget to a new line item will raise objections. But any opposition you encounter should be easy to overcome. To justify the expenditure, pick two or three of your top KPIs, and look at their performance over the past 12 months. Next, model the financial impact that would result if you improved their performance by a small amount. Present the benefits of this change, and you should have little difficulty convincing others in your organization to provide the resources needed for optimization.

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