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B2B Approaches for Different Economic Cycles 137

The Internet/Web extends these nontraditional approaches
to measurements distinctly directed at online environments.
These measures are constantly evolving and maturing with
new advanced forms of web analytics, e.g. Sales, Leads,
Conversions, Subscribers, Usability metrics, Returning
visitors, Pageviews per visit, Time on page, Time on site,
Bounce rate, Form/shopping cart abandonment rate, Next
pages, Links clicked (heat maps), Eyetracking, Internal
searches, SEO metrics, Number of backlinks, Quality of
backlinks, Google cache date, Google bot (robot) visit fre-
quency, Last time Google bot visited, Pages indexed,
PageRank “pass rate”, Alexa Rank, Compete Rank, Social
Media metrics, Bookmarks on delicious, Bookmarks else-
where, Social news submissions, Tweets (Twitter mentions),
Niche social site sites votes, Number of “thumbs up” on
StumbleUpon, StumbleUpon reviews feedback, Technorati
Blog mentions, Google BlogSearch Links.

Building the right business case to buy
in tough times

In tough economic times, the importance of the measures
shifts depending on the stage of the economy. In general,
the importance of revenue generation gives way to
revenue protection. There also is a movement from revenue-
related business metrics to cost displacement and
avoidance.

Big impact versus fast impact

In a troubled economy, the emphasis is also directed toward
fast and tactical versus big and strategic gains. While this is
a movement within the dimensions of traditional approaches,
there also is a predominant focus on this category relative
to nontraditional measures. This migration happens even