From Web Analytics to Marketing Value: A Digital Process Innovation Perspective
Keywords:
digital process innovation, marketing value, KPI, web analytics, digital marketing, value creationAbstract
This article reframes key performance indicators (KPI) and web analytics from being mere measurement devices into mechanisms of digital process innovation that generate marketing value. Whereas prior discussions have mainly positioned digital metrics as instruments for monitoring campaign effectiveness, this paper argues that KPI and web analytics also enable firms to redesign customer-facing processes, reduce process frictions, improve decision quality, and create superior value across acquisition, conversion, engagement, and retention activities. A systematic literature review was undertaken using the thematic domains of digital marketing and web analytics. The review protocol drew on the original database design reported in the source manuscript and screened records from Scopus, PubMed, PsycINFO, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science. An initial corpus of 378 records was reduced to 26 eligible studies through title-abstract screening, relevance assessment, and quality filtering. The findings indicate that quantitative indicators such as traffic, click-through rate, conversion rate, return on investment, leads, keyword ranking, and user source do not simply report results; they function as process signals that reveal bottlenecks in digital marketing systems. Likewise, qualitative indicators such as A/B testing, user flow analysis, user experience assessment, calls to action, surveys, and forms support iterative experimentation and continuous redesign. The article contributes an integrative framing in which digital analytics capabilities are linked to process intelligence, continuous optimization, and marketing value creation. The study concludes that firms derive the greatest value from KPI and web analytics when these tools are embedded in a broader architecture of digital process innovation rather than treated as isolated reporting outputs.
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