Web Analytics Association

WAA Base Camp: Seattle

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:38:59 GMT

WAA Base Camp: Seattle
Start Date: 4-Dec-08 9:00 AM
End Time: 4-Dec-08 4:00 PM
Speaker: WAA Faculty

WAA Base Camp: Atlanta

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:42:56 GMT

WAA Base Camp: Atlanta
Start Date: 2-Dec-08 9:00 AM
End Time: 2-Dec-08 4:00 PM
Speaker: WAA Faculty

Vancouver WAA Base Camp and Regional Meeting

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:57:25 GMT

Vancouver WAA Base Camp and Regional Meeting
Start Date: 1-Dec-08 8:30 AM
End Time: 1-Dec-08 4:30 PM
Location: Terminal City Club, Vancouver, BC
Speaker:

Terminal City Club

837 W. Hastings Street

Vancouver, BC Canada

Internet Marketing Conference

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:27:15 GMT

Internet Marketing Conference
Start Date: 26-Nov-08 8:00 AM
End Time: 27-Nov-08 5:30 PM
Location: World Trade Center
Speaker:

Event Details:

Join us for an event about web analytics, search marketing, testing, targeting, Internet marketing, and more.

Internet Marketing Conference (IMC) is produced by experts, for experts, and for all of you who'd like to become experts. IMC is the longest running conference about marketing on the Internet produced by Europeans.

For the past nine years, it has been held in four European cities as well as in USA and Canada. Together we have experience from working as practitioners, vendor representatives, consultants, and event producers. That gives us the background needed to put together a program based on all those different approaches.

Learn how to:
• use scientific tests to decrease visitor friction and increase conversions
• leverage social media to attract new visitors and make them want to come back for more
• find the most profitable advertising opportunities
• analyze web site visits to gain new insights, and more.

http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=197038

World Trade Center

WAA Base Camp: Washington DC

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:35:28 GMT

WAA Base Camp: Washington DC
Start Date: 20-Oct-08 9:00 AM
End Time: 20-Oct-08 4:00 PM
Location: Hilton Alexandria Mark Center, Alexandria, VA 22311
Speaker: WAA Faculty

Event Details:

Hilton Alexandria Mark Center

5000 Seminary Road

Alexandria, VA US 22311

WAA Base Camp: Las Vegas NV

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:15:15 GMT

WAA Base Camp: Las Vegas NV
Start Date: 12-Oct-08 9:00 AM
End Time: 12-Oct-08 4:30 PM
Location: Las Vegas Hilton Ballroom, Las Vegas, NV
Speaker:

Event Details:

For the most up-to-date information on this event, please see: WAA Base Camp: Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Hilton Ballroom

3000 Paradise Road

Las Vegas, NV USA

WAA Base Camp: Chicago IL

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:13:10 GMT

WAA Base Camp: Chicago IL
Start Date: 24-Sep-08 9:00 AM
End Time: 25-Sep-08 4:30 PM
Location: To be confirmed.
Speaker:

Event Details:

For the most up-to-date information on this event, please see: WAA Base Camp: Chicago.

To be confirmed.

WAA Base Camp: Los Angeles CA

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:09:25 GMT

WAA Base Camp: Los Angeles CA
Start Date: 24-Sep-08 9:00 AM
End Time: 25-Sep-08 4:30 PM
Location: To be confirmed.
Speaker:

Event Details:

For the most up-to-date information on this event, please see: WAA Base Camp: Los Angeles.

To be confirmed.

WAA Base Camp: Boston MA

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:07:41 GMT

WAA Base Camp: Boston MA
Start Date: 18-Sep-08 9:00 AM
End Time: 18-Sep-08 4:30 PM
Location: To be confirmed.
Speaker:

Event Details:

For the most up-to-date information on this event, please see: WAA Base Camp: Boston.

To be confirmed.

WAA Base Camp: New York NY

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:03:05 GMT

WAA Base Camp: New York NY
Start Date: 10-Sep-08 9:00 AM
End Time: 10-Sep-08 4:30 PM
Location: To be confirmed.
Speaker:

Event Details:

For the most up-to-date information on this event, please see: WAA Base Camp: New York.

To be confirmed.

How can I recognize visitors if they use multiple computers?

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT

A common question in web analytics, since most tools use a cookie to identify returning visitors. Some tools fall back to IP-address and browser agent, but that will not help either when multiple computers are used.

In some cases website visitors have to login which is a great alternative to increase the recognition of returning visitors. But what to do when you do not require users to login and you feel that they might use multiple computers more than average?

A real-world example from an online insurance website shows you one of the solutions. Based on the conversion per marketing channel the people responsible for online advertising were sure that a lot of visitors hit one of their banners or links before converting. During the order process people have to fill in a specific registration number for a car insurance (legal requirement, many people don’t know this number), which increases the chance that they abort the order process. By proving an email link the visitor can choose to receive an email with a link to resume the order process. Unfortunately it is quite likely that this will be done on a computer at home, while the order process started on a computer at work. No cookie, no similar IP and thus no way to match a conversion with a previous marketing campaign response. As a result the reported ROI on campaigns is too low, because many orders cannot be matched with a campaign.

The solution is to use an identifier which is available in both parts of the order process. For this car insurance it is the license plate number. Before visitors have to fill in the code (which they can only find on their car registration papers) they always fill in their license plate number which shows the premium for their car. The license plate number is matched with all marketing campaigns they have responsed to (Google Adwords, MSN banner, etc.). When they complete the order process the license plate will be stored in the web analytics tool on the order confirmation page. By combining this information with the list of license plate numbers and corresponding marketing campaigns almost 50% of the orders without any campaign information could be allocated to one or more campaigns.

Disclaimer:

Sometimes a little out-of-the-box thinking is required to get valuable insights out of your web analytics tool. Adversitement is a premier European partner of Omniture and is specialized in advanced web analytics projects.

Met vriendelijke groet,

Mirte Romanillos

10-Jun-08 8:00 AM

Using Web Analytics for SEO

noemail@webanalyticsassociation.org — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Earlier this year, a previous post addressed using web analytics to optimize a paid search campaign. This drew some attention, as web analytics (WA) are one of those things that everyone knows they need, but not always sure exactly what actions are called for in a given set of data. I suppose some of this can be blamed on the usability of the dashes as it’s pretty easy for them to get unwieldy…which can lead to a full blown case of "analysis paralysis."

It’s time to share some direction on using WA to optimize natural search campaigns. The following reports can be found in almost every web analytics package and are fairly consistent, but depending on campaign goals, the insights and actions taken may vary:

Top Referring keywords. Look at the long tail here; 25% of the queries performed are ones Google has never seen. The referring keywords to the site will show themes and patterns that are otherwise difficult to discern. More than once we've changed directions on a campaign because we're seeing volume around a type of query we've never seen. Many times the impetus for a decision like that is born here.
Referring Domains. This metric is essentially telling you who your biggest traffic drivers are. Search engines and sister sites tend to occupy the top of the list. However, we see some interesting things happening in the middle to end of this referral list. This is a great way to: A. Measure the effectiveness of a link building campaign (if we're seeing visitors from sites we built linking relationships with that we haven't before that's a good thing right?) and B. Find site themes and verticals that you may be able to generate buzz with (e.g. if we've got a particular blogger reviewing a product or service, this can inform the type of content on the page which could lead to greater link bait).
Click paths. This metric is more or less telling you how people navigate through the site. There are a lot of things to be determined here but a big one is the effectiveness of your site layout. If we're seeing a lot of people having to go through a few clicks and all ending up on the same page, it would indicate that there's an opportunity to engage people more effectively by improving that click path.
Paid vs. Natural. This is an excellent metric for identifying gaps. With paid search, we can quickly target the high volume terms and use ROI/conversion rate data to inform our decisions on where we want to compete organically. Likewise, the places where we're seeing a lot of activity in organic terms where we don't have paid coverage can help us expand a paid campaign.
Geographic referrals. The more targeted and niche the web becomes, the more important geography is (and no, the irony of this isn’t lost on me). Nevertheless, we've had instances where a flurry of offline promotions leads to a surge in a particular geo-specific market. Certainly the offline team will want to know that the radio blast in Philly led to an $X lift in revenue. We'll use geo data to develop new content, launch targeted landing pages, and in some cases, even modify service offerings to better target geo revenue sources.
Visiting trends. Almost every analytics package puts this metric on the forefront of their dashboard so you can see how many visitors you have this month verses last month and so on. Resolution Media uses this to evaluate seasonality and optimize accordingly. Correlations between seasonality and referring keywords are also helpful in determine where linking opportunities could be.
Top Landing Pages. Lots of useful action items come from here. This metric essentially tells you where your buzz is. Keep these pages fresh and make sure your users can access them easily. Seeing where human visitors land is a good indicator for what spiders are crawling in on as well. From there, this data can be used to optimize the structure and internal linking scheme of the site. For example, if we note that Page A is a much more popular landing page than Page B, C or D, we should make sure B, C and D are linking to A with optimal anchor text (based on what themes and keywords are on page A).
Conversion Rates. This is the million dollar metric right here! When visitors come to the site, are they doing what we want them to ultimately do? How often? More than they were? Conversions are what answer these questions. From there, we may have a number of action items we need to take based on what the data is telling us. Don’t take brash actions if conversions suddenly drop (or spike). However, KNOWING when those spikes or drops occur, and looking at what other things happened around it (see almost any other metric listed here) as soon as possible is absolutely essential to taking the right actions. It could lead to campaign spending changes, landing page optimization, re-targeting keywords, building new link bait and a host of other scenarios.
Bounce Rate. This is one of those metrics that I think varies quite a bit from project to project. One bounce rate may be great for one kind of site and a total failure for another. It's essentially telling you how many people happened upon a single page on your site and didn't bother to go elsewhere. We generally chalk that up to them not finding the information they were looking for. If we've got pages targeted specifically around one or two keywords, we may be looking for a lower bounce rate than a page that casts a wider net. Measuring bounce rate according to page type is essential to evaluating the effectiveness of our content and the messaging.
Browser type. It's weird how this was a metric that fell out of favor for awhile and is starting to make a comeback. I'm talking about mobile here people! If we've got a project that is a multi-media extravaganza with elements that aren't visible to a spider or a mobile browser, and our browser type metrics are telling us a significant amount of traffic comes to us from this type of user, then this should absolutely impact how we present that information.

There are a host of additional web analytics reports that lead to the optimization of a natural search campaign. Reading back over the list, much emphasis was put on site usability, which supports that driving traffic to the website is half the battle, and having a website that drives the traffic to take a desired action can be just as important.

22-May-08 2:00 PM

7 Web Analytics B2B Metrics Mistakes

noemail@webanalyticsassociation.org — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:00:00 GMT

Many times, statistics from web analysis can be misleading. It is all too easy to end up doing the wrong thing based on analysis of website statistic. Here are some pitfalls for the following metrics:

Number of Leads by Keyword
It is very important to measure conversions by keyword. This lets you know where to focus your marketing efforts. However, many B2B sites and especially those with high cost items have a relatively small number of conversions. In addition, the conversion may occur:
- During the 2nd, or later visits when the original keyword used is now lost (due to cookie erasing, subsequent search using product name, etc)
- By a coworker of the original searcher who lands directly on site since the URL is now known
Since the numbers are small and may not be traceable to the original search, in many cases it is statistically invalid to decide on actionable items based on the number of leads by keyword. In those cases it is best to find proxies for conversions. Possible proxy candidates are time-on-site or engaging actions.
Percentage of Leads
The percentage of leads from total visitors or any other segment is not always relevant. In many cases the profit from a B2B sale is big enough so that a good lead can justify the cost of a campaign even though the percentage of leads is small. The absolute number of leads is more important in this case. If you see that the percentage of leads from traffic is going down but the absolute number is going up--you can should go out and celebrate your success.
Absolute Number of Leads
Measuring the absolute number of leads can mislead you. Yes, I know I just contradicted the previous point. Unfortunately you may sometimes notice the number of leads is decreasing. Before you panic, it is useful to measure the percentage of conversions. This is because there are many times when seasonal or other time-based factors impact total traffic.

If we just measure absolute numbers and we see a 50% drop in leads we start to panic. But if you see that the percentage of leads is consistent over the last few months you know that the reduction in number of leads is due to a drop in traffic.

You should then analyze to see if the reason is seasonal or other factors we have no control over. If it is seasonal, we can relax--although we should still try and improve the percentages. If it is a factor we do have control over, we can then start to panic and work to rectify the situation.

It is useful to measure percentage of conversions to use as an early warning sign, however our main goal should be to increase absolute conversions until the expense of increasing them outweighs the profit.
ROI
This important metric has great PR but it is undeserved. As long as you are profiting from a campaign, the return on investment should not be use to eliminate ad campaigns. You can use it:
- If you need to reduce your advertising budget this metric then becomes necessary in order to guide you to which areas it is best to reduce the budget.
- To measure your optimization efforts
If you are selling on your web site, make sure to measure the revenue for each conversion and not just the number of leads. Not all conversions are created equal.
Number of Downloads
Not all downloads are created equal. Whitepapers are typically downloaded earlier in the sales cycle. In addition, you may get many non-qualified people downloading the white paper who are interested in the subject.

Data sheets, on the other hand are usually downloaded by people later in the sales process and who want to see detailed specifications of your product. By measuring downloads you are lumping these and other different segments together. Best to measure whitepaper downloads separately from data sheet downloads.

An upsurge in white paper downloads in October may be because students are studying the subject described in your white paper. On the other hand, an upsurge in data sheet downloads is usually great news--unless you find out that it is your competitors doing all the downloading.
Using Numbers that are Statistically Valid
In many cases metrics do not have enough information to be statistically valid. Unfortunately there is a tendency to want to come to conclusions fast. This could be because:
- You want to prove something and are over eager to bring the testing (with the results you wanted) to a conclusion
- There is pressure to present actionable items to others
Avoid the pressure. I have seen many tests where the results flip flop once or twice before the numbers are valid.
Experience and Knowledge.
Numbers are great and no one loves them more than me. However, they are just numbers and have many disadvantages:
- There is still a lot of information they don't include. For example they don't explain why people do things
- There may be mistakes in the data
- The conclusions may not make sense and by being stubborn and digging deeper you can usually find the reason
- In addition, they can be manipulated to prove preconceived ideas-sometimes uncounsiously. As my seventh grade math teacher said: Figures don't lie, but liars figure

These are some of the web analytics pitfalls and mistakes we have come across. I am sure there are many more. If you have any, I would love to hear from you.

1-May-08 5:00 AM

Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Web Analytics #3

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Continuing our Things I Wish I Knew... series, Daniel Shields offers his Top 10:

1. Not Everyone Knows What You are Saying

The ecommerce workplace is made up of very diverse areas of expertise. Where a few folks here and there might get what you are saying with little effort, most of the people whom you work with are not steeped in statistical understanding, much less its vernacular. For the good of the company, and the sanity of the analyst, it might be advisable to find an in-house reader who gets most of it, but can point out where language might be an issue.

2. Customer Support Exists for a Reason

A major impulse to try to overcome is the same which keeps a person from asking for directions in Culpepper, Virginia. You might know you are lost, and you have a pretty good idea that people know how to help you, but for some reason, it means more if you turn the map around and fold it different ways a dozen times to see if it makes a difference. Taking this ego-shot and allowing it to remain an open window for progress is a key item to reaping greater rewards from vendor solutions and the myriad applications which complement them. Shave a couple hours off your time and simply ask for directions.

3. Experts Have Expertise

Early about in my freshman year of analytics, I made assumptions about the vast cache of experts in the field of 'web analytics'. Mistakenly, some of those were that each was a virtual encyclopedia of best practices and skill in every facet of the world of online measurement. Luckily, with the guidance of some gracious consultants and my boss, I was able to understand the landscape in terms of where each expert rooted their strengths. Knowing that made each a much more valuable source of information in terms of topics which applied to specific parts of my obligatory reporting.

4. Management Needs Analytics

In order to make critical decisions in an online retailer, it is an absolute necessity to understand the ways in which numbers impact functions of the business. Managers make decisions on a daily basis which require output from measurement. This is as true for marketing as IT, Sales, Advertising, or Development. Making reports available to managers to align business goals is a major step in driving a web analytics process into a company. Getting that point across to management and administration will facilitate resource allocation as well as recurring discussion on points of impact.

5. Analytics Needs Management

Much like respect, analytics is a two way street. It is clearly an input/output function. There needs to be 'Follow-Up' and 'Feedback'. An analyst, or internal owner of data, needs to see the results in order to balance improvement across the goals and initiatives which are helping the business grow. Not getting the discussion to start around web analytics data internally is, in my estimation, probably the most detrimental to installation of useful analysis.

6. Prepare to Stand Your Ground

The first lesson of quantitative analysis is that numbers are not emotional. Math exists outside of the human psyche. Therefore, it should not have representation or meaning attached to it outside of the definitions of the operations. This part of the memo is not extended to the rest of the people whom analytics affects. People, their work, the graphics which make up a site, and the world in general cannot extract emotion from their decisions. The lesson here is to know well in advance that if you live by the numbers, prepare to survive by the numbers.

7. Who Knew Experimentation Could Be So Much Fun

I guess I get a little excited when it comes to building and executing complex experiments. For me, stepping into the world of multivariate testing and usability was almost a fulfillment of a vocation. When I was interviewed for my position, Mildred the GM at CableOrganizer.com, explained that the job consisted of tedious math and required certain stepping stones to maturity. Learning to perform on page A/B and multivariate experiments was a minimum. With some training provided by the WAA's own Robbin Steif, I found myself neck deep in possibilities. It was a mix between graphic design, marketing, and science which appealed to every part of my thirst for fulfillment.

8. Analytics Needs Regular, Consistent, and Objective Validation

Take nothing for granted. At every turn, little pieces of HTML code and applications being worked on or edited by some party have potential impacts on the data which we hold so dear for decisions. These should be perceived as threats and guarded against accordingly. There were three occasions where our major analytics vendor code was completely eliminated from important pieces of our site template in 2007. Each resulted in loss of data. In other instances, data was artificially inflated in terms of traffic due to scripts and crawls which were being run for one purpose or another; again, data rendered problematic until the good stats were boiled out. While every failure was not attributed to analytics, its ultimately the confidence of the data which suffered. The lesson: keep up with your data and know when things look funny...then, explain away the happenings.

9. Live and Die By Measurement

As an analyst, eventually there is an epiphany that a world of measurement is easy to manage as a vertex of both tasks and value over time. By taking on certain actions or initiatives based on analysis, you champion causes for improvement. When the figures from the work come back in a statistically relevant state, some ought to clearly be wearing your signature. Be they good or bad, they are results associated with changes based on your suggestions. So, over time, your suggestions gain merit based on your experience, and the returns, in earnest, should be appropriately attributed and the rewards shared. A good employer will recognize your contribution and construct a system whereby your achievements will be based on your skill, ambition, experience and initiative in helping the company achieve its goals. When those goals converge is the sweet spot for income, bonuses, and benefits.

10. Follow Your Data: Analysis is Not the End of Analytics

Being able to produce reports and materials to place monitors on is wonderful, but making sure the data is being used for the right purposes is a job beyond the analysis. When work in analytics began for me, I had scheduled deadlines on which to deliver my take on the previous week's performance versus some comparable information. Over time, I started to realize things were slow to change based on the insights which I extracted and outlined in my papers. After a couple weeks I started basically shouting out about certain points trying to drive them home, until I began to feel like it was becoming useless to produce reports. By the end of the 3rd quarter, I was approached by Paul, the VP and COO from CableOrganizer, who noticed my cries, to move my actions from only reporting into managing major facets of resources to get the jobs done based on the analysis I was providing. With that, the growth started to produce value which was much more desired than mounting paper columns.

Daniel Shields is a talented young web analyst working for CableOrganizer.com, Inc. and focusing his efforts on conducting highest-quality research on web visitor behavior.

Daniel and the team at CableOrganizer.com are also developing Wicked Business Sciences, which has created patent-pending ecommerce technologies geared toward business improvement through measurement and personalization.

7-Apr-08 1:00 PM

The Pursuit of Measurement: The Customer's Experience

noemail@webanalyticsassociation.org — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:45:00 GMT

We’ve all heard the classic conundrum of businesses today – “Half of our Marketing efforts are working, we just don’t know which half”. Site Analytics strives to answer that statement by gathering data to allow business to align their message, media, offer and channel with their desired audience to optimize the results and return for the company.

However, in online business today, the conundrum has gotten much more complicated. Where does the analytics of the website end and analysis of the customer begin? While we construct our KPIs and dashboards to capture the successes of our campaigns, ad placement, engagement and conversions to measure the success of our company objectives, in the end isn’t the end goal really about the customer and the measurement their experiences and successes (or lack of them)?

Spending Growth on Customer Experience

In a recently published report ‘Customer Experience Spending Intensifies in 2008, by Megan Burns’, Forrester Research identified areas where North American business leaders are looking to focus their attention for 2008. In comparison to the previous year Forrester found some significant spending and planning increases, notably:

84% total increase in efforts to improve online usability
78% total increase to improve cross-channel interactions
80% total increase to make online interactions more enjoyable

While the research points to the continued growth of the analytics industry and covers increasing size of the customer experience budgets, another trend identified by Forrester drives the end focus of all the measurement back to the customer and their interpretation of success.

“We expect these trends to lead to more customer-centric cultures and processes by enabling firms to be more disciplined in their approach to customer experience…”

Why focus measurement on the Customer’s Experience?

The Internet channel is becoming a (if not the) primary channel for most businesses today and Ecommerce continues to grow with online growth rates significantly outpacing the offline growth rates in most industries. So why is Customer Experience a top spending focus for 2008 and why did almost all (91%) of executives surveyed in the Forrester research report say customer experience will be either very important or critical to their 2008 efforts?

Simple really… your customers are trying to complete their transactions, your site is letting them down, and they are switching to a competitor. And by the way, the results are getting worse instead of better.

Harris Interactive conducted the third annual survey of online consumer behavior, sponsored by Tealeaf®, and the findings were alarming:

9 out of 10 consumers experienced an issue that caused them to abandon a transaction
53% of users who experience website issues contact the company’s call/contact center to resolve but 49% of users who contact a company after experiencing a web-related issue were still unable to have that issue resolved.

The result of this poor customer experience translated into two immediate waves of online abandonment:

42% of users say they abandon or switch to a competitor when they experience even one online site issue
52% say they stop doing business with the company entirely, and 76% either stopped doing business entirely, decrease the amount of business they do, or lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

The third wave is even more risky. This is the threat to your brand loyalty and long-term customer value as a result of the poor customer experience and inability to complete an online transaction. With continued growth in blogging, social networks and viral content, your site failures are broadcast to an increasingly receptive audience actively seeking unmitigated third party reviews.

Indicators of a poor customer experiences are not limited the obvious but still prevalent today: site errors messages, performance issues and broken links – but include functional and business process challenges, and issues centered on usability and site-design. Collectively, however, they all have one commonality— they all forced the consumer to abandon the transaction.

For the third year running, nearly 90% of users responded that they had experienced an issue that caused them to abandon a transaction. This rate of “failure” is extremely high and is not improving—in fact, it’s actually getting worse. Considering there are significantly more users and transactions every year, with a consistent rate of failure, the number of individuals and transactions adversely affected by issues each year is actually increasing.

The first threat (the “first wave” of abandonment) is very real, with 42% of users saying they abandon or switch when they experience even one issue. These users have little tolerance for failure today and that tolerance will only continue to decrease until leading ebusinesses focus their attention and budgets on improving the customer experience on the website and in the online support centers. Consumers expect the online channel to work as well as offline channels such as storefronts, branches, catalogs and agents with 82% saying they expected the online experience to be the same as the offline.

The second threat (the “second wave” of abandonment) is significant and is newly identified by the 2007 Harris Survey. The heightened rate of churn for online customers – with 52% saying they stop doing business with the company entirely and a full 76% who either stopped doing business entirely, decreased the amount of business they do with the company, or lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau is a serious threat to online businesses that demands that call/contact centers be equipped to handle the needs of online consumers, or risk losing them to competition permanently, since the tolerance for poor customer service after web-related issues is extremely low.

The third threat is just as challenging, and perhaps even more risky. This is the threat to your brand loyalty. One interesting example the survey identified is that the single most important factor to consumers in doing business online was website security. However, the survey also found site issues to seriously undermine consumer confidence, specifically relative to online security and privacy concerns.

While businesses today tighten belts and budgets for tough times ahead, Forrester expects metrics and executive attention to the customer’s experience to rise to top of mind, and budget. Forrester addressed these identified gaps in the true understanding of the customer.

“Most firms today struggle to measure the quality of their customer experience. To establish a framework for measuring customer experience quality, firms should identify key customers, the most important moments of truth in the customer experience continuum, the criteria customers use to evaluate those critical interactions, and metrics — both subjective and objective — that capture how well the organization met customer expectations in each area.”

Effective understanding of the customer does not stop with well designed and built site analytics dashboards and Key Performance Indicator reports; that is just the beginning of visibility into the complete online experience and your customer’s behavior and experiences.

It would be incredulous to believe an online business today could operate without detailed website analytics to gather the bits and bytes to measure the website’s effectiveness, In light of that:

Why is there a gap in extenuating site analysis into the success of the customer?
Why are customers continuing to experience issues completing online transactions?
Why are online conversion rates stagnant across so many industries?

Web Analytics alone can’t provide all necessary measurement and optimization data to improve the customer’s experience.

Eric Peterson, from WebAnalytics Demystifed Inc. discussed these thoughts in a recent paper ‘Customer Experience Management and Web Analytics, From KPIs to Customer Transactions’ covering the foundational needs to combine multiple measurement disciplines for e-businesses today to understand true user behavior and allow companies to improve their customer’ experience.

“In today’s e-business environment, both Web Analytics and Customer Experience Management systems together should be considered foundational to website measurement and optimization. These similar-yet-distinct systems each contribute to a site owner’s ability to recognize, react, and respond to the ongoing challenges they face. Used together, these two technologies are collectively able to resolve the “What, Where, When, and “Why” of visitor interactions on the Internet.

The most forward-thinking companies have already recognized the value of investing in solutions beyond Web Analytics in order to measure and optimize their web channel. By understanding the true strengths and weaknesses of Web Analytics products and how Customer Experience Management systems can best be leveraged, web site owners will be able to extend their web measurement and optimization processes to achieve far greater levels of success – ultimately by improving the site, serving customers better, and increasing site revenue.”

Measure the Customer not the Website

The strongest companies today are taking action to align internal processes and measurement with cross-channel experiences like the website and call-center teams to improve measurement beyond the browser and making their customer experience their top-priority. Not surprisingly this translates to firms that put customer experience on the radar screen at the executive level are best positioned to improve the success of their customer’s experience across the entire enterprise.

While it’s debated today in site forums, user groups and blogs whether “Web Analytics is Hard” or “Web Analytics is Easy”, the recognized need to improving the customer’s experience is universally accepted by analysts, practitioners, experts, pundits and of course by the real end-focus of all these efforts, the customers themselves.

Learn more about how you can leverage Site Analytics using Customer Experience Management
Download all referenced reports from this article along with a Tealeaf customer case study

References

Forrester Research, an Independent Research firm in February 2008, “Customer Experience Spending Intensifies In 2008” by Megan Burns with Harley Manning, Olga Melnikova, and Steven Geller.

The Two Waves of Online Abandonment: The 2007 Harris Interactive Survey of Online Customer Behavior, Sponsored by Tealeaf®

Forrester recently surveyed 287 customer experience decision-makers from large US firms about their 2008 plans. Almost all — 91% — said customer experience will be either very important or critical to their 2008 efforts. See the February 7, 2008, “Obstacles To Customer Experience Success, 2008” report.

The Two Waves of Online Abandonment: The 2007 Harris Interactive Survey of Online Customer Behavior, Sponsored by Tealeaf®

Eric Peterson, WebAnalytics Demystifed Inc, 2007 ‘CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT AND WEB ANALYTICS, From KPIs to Customer Transactions’

7-Apr-08 10:45 AM

Top 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Web Analytics #2

noemail@webanalyticsassociation.org — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Continuing our Things I Wish I Knew... series, Alex Cohen offers his Top 10:

You are Not the First Web Analyst - You do not need to invent web analytics. Somebody has encountered the problem you have. Establish a great base of knowledge by buying books like Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, joining the Yahoo Web Analytics Forum and subscribing to every measurement blog you can find.
Go to Emetrics NOW - Your world view is likely to be very myopic: all about your tool, your website, your business. You need perspective. The eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit will open your eyes, especially if you're just starting.
Your Tool Can Do More Than You Think - Most people assume that what you get out of the box is the limit of your tool. This is usually wrong 99% of the time. You must not be afraid to ask your vendor about what else it can do.
Start a Blog or Business - If you don't really, really own the numbers you're responsible for, you'll never really, really learn the data. Pick some side project, a blog or a business, and measure the hell out of it. Trust me, you will learn a ton.
Automate Your Life - I'm repeating June here, but you simply must automate as much as possible. You will be stuck in Excel hell unless you can use technology better.
Test! Survey! - Repeat after me: not everything you need to know is inside of your conventional web analytics tool. Say it again. Now, do it. There is NO excuse not to start gaining experience. If you listened to #4, then you don't need anyone's permission.
Learn Other Disciplines (like SEO and Paid Search) - You will be better at your job if you understand what you're measuring. Start dabbling in paid search, SEO, affiliates, email, WHATEVER. Just stop focusing on measuring and start focusing on doing the things you measure.
Communication is the #1 Skill You Need - Measurement without action is failure. If you cannot communicate your findings and persuade people to act, you will not be effective. Learn to present. Master the executive summary. Be one with PowerPoint.
Be Not Afraid of Technological Terms - I'm not a technically oriented person. But, the very nature of internet marketing requires that you at least grasp the basics. The nature of web measurement requires that you grasp a step above the basics. Like it or not, you need to tackle this sooner rather than later.
Teach Early and Often - It is very easy for people to start relying on you to measure. Unfortunately, this can quickly become limiting to your career growth. Measure for manager and he'll optimize for a day, teach him to measure and he'll optimize for life!

Alex Cohen writes Digital Alex, a marketing strategy blog. He handles Strategic Account Management, web analytics and multivariate testing at Commerce360, a search marketing software company based outside of Philadelphia.

10-Mar-08 12:00 PM

Analyzing Online Advertising using Dart

noemail@webanalyticsassociation.org — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:00:00 GMT

When analyzing online advertising begin by looking at impressions. Delivered impressions tell you how many people were exposed to your ad. Impressions are passive. When an online ad is served up and someone views it, it is counted as an impression.

The purpose of someone seeing your ad is to entice them to visit your website. In order to visit your website, a customer interaction such as a click is needed. The click sends a customer to a company website. Once a customer arrives at the designated website - that is considered delivered traffic. Delivered traffic can be defined as user clicks and website visits after exposure to an ad.

How is your ad performing? Is the ad getting customers to visit your site? A quick metric to use is delivered traffic rate (DTR). DTR is total delivered traffic divided by impressions served. If your DTR is 2% or more you have efficiently accomplished your goal of getting people to your website. A two percent DTR indicates the robustness of your ad, and is a general rule of thumb. I don't think there are case studies on DTR yet.

Once customers reach your site what are they doing? Good metrics to measure that are actions and leads. An action is a way a customer can express interest in a product or service on your website. A lead is usually a customer whose interest in a product or service is expressed by electronically submitting personal contact information.

The unofficial relationship between actions and leads is 6:1. In other words every six actions should net you one lead.

Action rate and lead rate determine how well customers are interacting with a website. Action rate is defined as total actions divided by total delivered traffic rate (DTR). The action rate speaks to the robustness of a site. The higher your action rate, the more people interact with your site.

The lead rate can be defined as leads divided by delivered traffic rate (DTR). The lead rate allows you to see the relationship between leads and delivered traffic. It is a funnel effect. A customer can not submit a lead unless they are at a website. A customer arrives at a website as delivered traffic.

The final metrics to look at are cost per action, and cost per lead. Cost per action is total cost divided by total actions. Cost per lead is total cost divided by total leads. These metrics let you know how much each action and lead cost. CPA and CPL vary depending on industry.

By analyzing metrics such as impressions, delivered traffic rate, action rate, and lead rate you can determine how well your advertising had done.

8-Mar-08 9:00 AM

Using Web Analytics to Optimize PPC Campaigns

noemail@webanalyticsassociation.org — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Successful insights and optimizations from Web Analytics (WA) data hinges on analyzing timely, consistent, and accurate/clean data; all online advertising should be tagged with WA URL tracking parameters to provide a complete and centralized view of site activity and conversions. Now that disclaimer is out of the way, here are 10 quick and simple ways to use WA data to optimize Paid Search (PPC) Campaigns:

Traffic Volume & Conversion Rate Comparisons – Comparing performance between Paid and Natural traffic, paid engine to paid engine, and Paid keyword to Natural keyword offers a great opportunity to set goals and find new and missed opportunities. If keyword ABC has an 11% conversion rate from Google Natural, but 2% on Google Adwords (paid), a PPC optimizer should be making comparisons between landing pages, copy, etc. to make drastic changes versus minimal ‘tweaking’. Without the WA/Natural performance data to benchmark against, an optimizer would have been content (and quite happy) with doubling the conversion rate to 4%.
New Keyword Opportunities – Looking at keyword level performance data from both the natural search engine reports and the internal search box queries is important to do monthly to find new paid search keyword opportunities. Look for new misspellings, high volume converters, or run a vlookup to identify missing paid search keywords. Add new keywords, increase appropriate paid ranks/bids where gaps exist, and focus budget on top converters to find instant gains.
New Traffic Source Opportunities – Domain referral reports show where visitors are coming from the associated volume and conversion rates. Look deeper than the big search engines, what do the converting sites have in common? Is there a way to increase exposure to this audience with Display ads or Contextual Ads? Do you notice a lot of mobile traffic converting? Do you see an increased average order size from non-US visitors? Is it time to think about getting budget for PPC mobile ads or international search engines?
Budget Forecasting – Flat month-to-month PPC budgets seem to be the standard, yet I have never seen a single business where conversion rates or volume doesn’t change month-to-month. Seasonality is evident in WA data and monthly ad budgets should reflect those ebbs and flows, down to the engine and campaign levels. Just because certain search engines get more press doesn’t mean they should get more budget, unless conversion rates dictate it.
Segmenting User Behavior – Using click path tools, do you notice similarities in Ask.com paid traffic that is different from Yahoo? What about people who search on brand keywords? Visitors who have been to the site previously? You bet – there is no average user, why give them a single website experience? Personalize user experience based on what you already know…or are seeing unfold that visit.
Identifying “Influencer Keywords” – A 2005 DoubleClick study showed consumers search anywhere from 2.5 to 6 times before making a purchase and refine those searches from generic keywords to brand or product names prior to conversion. When judging the success of your generic keywords like “mortgage”, “computer”, “car rental”, etc., it’s important to use WA data to find out if they do indeed bring converting users, even if it’s for that initial introduction to the site.
Identifying Conversion Latency – As previously mentioned, not everyone converts immediately. What is your same-session conversion rate? How many days pass before a visitor returns to convert? How many sessions does it take before conversion? Page views? Time on site? Don’t judge PPC success until the latency period has passed. Know your audience’s sales cycle and build that into campaign expectations and testing windows.
Finding Day-Part Opportunities – Sundays and Mondays will vary in conversion volume and rates, as will 9am and 9pm or MSN to Google. Turn your PPC spend dials up and down to maximize ad exposure; keep in mind “AdScores” penalize excessive bid/budget changes. We’ll save predictive modeling for a future post.
Hot Products, Top Converters – With a limited budget and possibly thousands of Product URLs, which product pages get the attention (detailed keyword lists, customized copy, page-level optimizations, budget share)? WA tools typically have a product analysis/comparison report to view quantity of orders, product page visits, revenue/order size, profit margin, conversion rates and more, by product. For most e-commerce companies, the 80/20 rule holds true; see what moves the needle (or doesn’t) with WA data and focus your limited resources where appropriate.
Landing Page Analysis/Bounce Rates – There are typically multiple landing page choices for your PPC destination URLs – home pages, category, sub-category, product pages, geo, seasonal promo pages, and more. Bounce rates and entry to conversion stats are immediate indicators of what is or isn’t working. Use A/B or multivariate tests to improve both page ‘stickyness’ and conversion rates.

Having WA access is major advantage for Paid Search optimizers – use it if you got it and keep in mind that these 10 tips are only the tip of the iceberg. The real challenge to using WA data to optimize our campaigns is gaining access. I’ll save that diatribe for another article, but a quick quote from Andy Beal sums it up well: “Too many clients guard their web data as if it’s the secret recipe to KFC. For us search marketers, it’s like navigating a plane through a thunderstorm without instruments.”

28-Feb-08 9:00 AM