> Are there any HEAVY users of the revenue per visitor model of analytics?
> I'm curious to hear about ADVANCED techniques, and some pros and cons to
> using this model in optimization.

"Per visitor" is unclear in this context...To clarify, do you mean "per
visit" or "per unique visitor"?

If you're referring to the earlier discussion, the reason I prefer visits
as a base for KPI's is simply this: in my experience, decisions I make
using visit-based KPI's are more often "right" than decisions I make based
on the same KPI using a unique visitors base. This I attribute to the
"volatility" of a unique visitor base. Also, since I'm using a lot of
different analytics packages, basing KPI's on visits allows me not to worry
(as much) about tool-related differences in how events are tabulated.

That doesn't mean you should not use uniques as a base for any number of
metrics, especially campaign metrics. But the discussion was about KPI's,
and I wouldn't consider campaign metrics a KPI. Important, absolutely, but
not a KPI, since a single campaign or even a flight of them is but one
metric driving the business. The KPI walks on a higher plane and takes
into account many areas of the business at the same time. This is why they
are so useful as an "alerting" mechanism, the original topic of the thread.

My grandfather had a KPI for his business - pounds shipped, which came from
the loading dock. It was the only number he really needed to know. If
pounds shipped was within a certain range each day, everything was OK. If
it was above or below, he would find out why.

That's what a KPI is to me, a metric that can be affected by every / any
part of the business that is super-reliable under all conditions. Your
mileage may vary.

Jim
jim@...
http://www.jimnovo.com