swansea university presentation

Vicky Brock [email protected]

Working with invisible customers:

Understand and improve your online effectiveness

Swansea University Presentation


eMarketing & web value course developer for UHI

Associate lecturer in web analytics, UBC Canada

Workshop leader for the WAA, MRS, Internet

Marketing Conference and the eMetrics Summit

Board Director of WAA

Digital marketer for a decade

Rabid blogger at TrackingTourism.com

Who am I?Working with invisible customers


Part 1: Why bother?

Part 2: Web analytics.

What the heck are we talking about?

Part 3: Tools and techniques.

How will you see your invisible customers online?

Part 4: Getting to something useful.

What can you do with this information?

Customers in 3d technicolour!

What we're going to cover...Working with invisible customers


Your website is here

Why bother with eMarketing?Working with invisible customers


Part 1 – why bother?

Consumers flock online in their millions

UK has more than 40 million internet users.

March 2008, the indexed web contains 50 billion pages.

Average UK Internet users now spend 164 minutes online each day, compared to 148 minutes spent watching TV.

There are also 7.4 million mobile web users in the UK


Part 1 – why bother?

So where are all your website visitors?

The competition is only beginning...

Spend on Internet ads will overtake TV in next year.

UK is the world’s most developed Internet advertising market, worth $5.6 billion in 2007.

Do you know how well you're doing?


Don't worry about the jargon

Part 2 – What the heck are we talking about?

Web analytics and all the other forms of web customer research are simply:

the study of the online experience in order to improve it


Improvements with a purpose

Part 2 – What the heck are we talking about?

Customer experienceUnderstanding visitor behaviourDriving website optimisation

Marketing campaign performanceMeasuring online campaigns and SEOAdvertising and marketing optimisation

Overall business strategy & performanceMost valuable customer segments/servicesMoney saved offlineCompetitor and predictive activity


Part 3: Tools and techniques

Tagging web pages with a snippet of code

Google Analytics, ClickTracks, Omniture

Analysing web server logs

Webalizer, Unica, Webtrends

Conduct observation/research with real users

User testing, online surveys, customer satisfaction scoring

Session replay

Tealeaf, Coradiant

Tools and processes to help


Traffic Source – Where did they come from? What is the user’s primary intent?

Entry Page – What page was the first page they saw when they arrived at the site?

Visitor Path – What is the sequence of pages the visitor views during the visit?

Exit Page – What was the last page the visitor was looking at before they left the site?

Understanding Visitor BehaviourPart 3: Tools and techniques


Understanding on-site searchPart 3: Tools and techniques

Visitor intent

Needs identification

Vocabulary & voice of customer

Satisfaction prediction

Pain points


Fall-Out or Funnel analysis and reporting:

Consider the steps to your "success event."

Pick the entry page for the process you want to analyze.

Pick the intermediate steps along the way.

Include the final success page or event.

Part 3: Tools and techniquesOptimising your key success events


Graphic copyright Jim Sterne of Target Marketing

Part 3: Tools and techniquesOptimising your key success events



Usability testing you can do now

Take 5 people (individually)

Take 3 “tasks” related to how a genuine visitor might use your site

Ask the person to undertake the tasks

Observe silently and note when they do not achieve and cannot find

No flashy equipment req!

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Optimising your way to number 1

Find the phrases and words people actually search and assess their relative importance:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal


Part 4: Getting to something useful

See how people actually use your site

"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience"

"I do not think sites appreciate that yet ..... They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them."

Jakob Nielsen, BBC 24th May 2008

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Part 4 - Getting to something useful

Can people do what they came for?

Users typically read no more than 20% of the text on a page

They are stumped by the smallest usability problems when they visit a new site for the first time.

First-time visitors to a site struggle to correctly interpret menu options and navigate to the appropriate place.

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You are not the customer

Don't build for the HIPPO

Is your online activity for the benefit of you (or your boss) or the customer?

Understanding your customer means you can focus the targeting of your site and marketing, meaning better results.

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Improve by boosting relevance

Most people using the Internet will never come to your site – so focus on making it relevant to that small segment that will

Life is short, so is time spent on websites

Great marketing is wasted if doesn't drive people to the most relevant landing page

Test and improve based on evidence

You are not the customer


Thanks!

Vicky Brockwww.HighlandBusinessResearch.com

www.TrackingTourism.com

Slides from today can be found here:

http://www.slideshare.net/VickyBrock

(there's a few extras for Google Analytics Users)


Get more from Google AnalyticsConfigure your set up to boost your value


Get more from Google Analytics

1) Set up your goals

Online success is not about how many people come to your site in total, its about those people that come to your site and then do what you want them to do (or not!)

Set up the 4 goals in Google Analytics (they could be newsletter sign-ups, views of pdfs etc).

Assign a monetary value to your goals to see just how hard the site is working.


Get more from Google AnalyticsSet up your goals


Get more from Google Analytics

2) Set up on-site search

Understand the purpose of visit and the main pain points. See what ratio of searches have to be refined in order to produce results, how many searches lead to site abandonment and of course what specific words are used.

What will you be able to measure once search tracking is activated?

Ultimately, the voice of your customer, because internal search is how users talk to you.

Set up on site search


Get more from Google AnalyticsSet up on site search


3) Filters are your friends

Filters work like gates. They either allow you to specify which bits of website data can pass through into your reporting (includes) or which bits of data must be excluded.

Filter out yourself!

Filter out your designers & developers

Get more from Google AnalyticsSet up filters