We are in the middle of a large strategic alignment effort at our
university. A big part of that is developing KPIs (key performance
indicators) to use as a benchmark for self-assessment and budget
allocation. The goal is to develop "scorecards" of sorts to help us track
our success.

Our website and other web platforms are of vital importance to us, but I
really don't know what would make good KPIs to help us evaluate them. We
collect loads of website usage data, but I don't know what kind of metrics
could serve as a scorecard. Looking at raw sessions and pageviews is simple
but not particularly meaningful.

There are two ways to approach KPIs. There is a data-based approach that
correlates performance with data and then just tracks the data, like
pageviews. Then there is an outcomes-based approach that is more
qualitative in nature and simply states the outcome we want to achieve, and
then a variety of types of data are examined to determine whether we are
achieving the outcome.

Long story short, I am curious about how other libraries assess the success
or failure of their websites. I am not looking for usability testing
strategies. I am thinking more big picture. Any help is appreciated.

Josh Welker
Information Technology Librarian
James C. Kirkpatrick Library
University of Central Missouri
Warrensburg, MO 64093
JCKL 2260
660.543.8022