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THIS ISSUE:
In the next issue
Measuring the immeasurable:
Woolly measurements and why you should knit them
into your e-business strategy
In Brief
The self-study language learning group, Linguaphone
(www.linguaphone.co.uk)
has appointed Site Intelligence to provide website
visitor intelligence.
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Website
visitor intelligence is a rapidly evolving area
and, as leaders in the collection, measurement and
analysis of visitor behaviour information, Site
Intelligence is holding a series of UK briefings
to demonstrate its real business benefits to e-business
teams and senior decision makers.
Following a highly successful briefing in Edinburgh at the end of September, which was attended by representatives from a diverse range of companies including Tesco Personal Finance, Scottish Widows and Bank of Scotland, another Executive Briefing has been scheduled for the morning of Tuesday October 29th at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, London.
Cutting through the jargon, the event is designed to introduce you to web site measurement and analysis, showing how advanced techniques and strategies can:
- provide concise, relevant management information on website performance
- deliver new insights into customer behaviour, improving returns from both online and offline marketing
- reduce the costs and improve the efficiency of website operations
- diagnose and fix problems in navigation and design
- track and optimise online advertising, email marketing and other promotional activities
If you would like to attend and find out more about how web site visitor intelligence techniques can improve your e-business activity, please click below for more details and to register free of charge.
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REGISTER
Visit www.site-intelligence.co.uk
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Feature Article: Wooly Website Measurements
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E-commerce sales figures often make the headlines, with many online retailers reporting 50% or better year-on-year growth in website revenues. For an e-commerce website, revenue numbers are certainly a key indicator of performance. But many of the business benefits of a website are less tangible. For example, a website providing customer information for a utility company may have a goal, in part, of 'increasing customer satisfaction'. How can the 'woolly' benefit of increased customer satisfaction be measured.
Regular readers of Visitor Intelligence News may remember our feature in February 2002 about assigning a financial value to non-revenue activities. Those same ideas can be applied to non-financial measurements.
Let's consider the example of 'customer satisfaction' in more detail. What difference does a website make to customer satisfaction? At first thought this seems to be a 'woolly' quantity that is difficult to measure. Primary market research, for instance using focus groups with a sample of website users, is one approach which would work well. But it is expensive and time consuming. Is there a way to use website measurement to quantify this aspect of website performance on a routine basis?
As with any measurement problem, it is critical to choose measurements which directly relate to the business problem at hand. A good starting point is to consider which type of visitor activity the site is intended to support, and then to think about how to measure whether these activities are successful. It will not be possible, in general, to determine whether every single visitor achieves their on-line goals. But it should be possible, with some thought, to determine in a statistical sense how often the site meets its goals.
For example: suppose that the website contains a 'frequently asked questions' section with a keyword search facility. There is also a 'call me' button allowing visitors to contact a customer service representative (intended for use if they cannot find an answer to their question online). How could we gauge the success of this FAQ section?
A simple, but misleading, approach would be to look at the number of online searches performed. The more searches, the more customers are finding the website useful - right? Not necessarily!
When a keyword search facility shows a large number of searches for each visitor, that is usually a sign that something is wrong - visitors are making several attempts to find the information that they need, and usually failing.
To get an accurate measurement we need to look at the number of successful searches. With many websites that can be hard to track, because successful and unsuccessful searches are difficult to distinguish using most website measurement software tools. How can we tackle this?
There are several possible approaches. A simple one is to look at a sample of search terms used by your visitors and to try them on the search engine yourself. This can be very illuminating! If you see common search terms which don't generate useful matches, there is probably something wrong.
Another approach, involving slightly more effort to set up, is to include a mini-survey at the end of each search. Asking the visitor "help us improve this section: did you find the information you need in this search?" will give you an idea of how successful the search engine is. Not every visitor will complete the survey, but you should get a sufficient sample to judge how effective the keyword search facility is.
A final measure in our example is to look at how many visitors use the 'call me' button after attempting an online search - the chances are these visitors did not find the information they were seeking!
So a good way to measure and track 'customer satisfaction' for this particular website would be to look at two measures:
1. the fraction of visitors who answer "yes" to the question "did you find the information you need in this search?" after two or fewer attempts with the keyword search engine; and
2. the fraction of visitors who use the 'call me' button after attempting an on-line search.
The website designer's goal should be to increase the first measurement and decrease the second each time there is a change to the content of the keyword search engine.
Of course, there are many other 'woolly' measurements that may be relevant to your website - brand awareness, audience satisfaction with online content and so on. With an appropriate strategy, website measurement can play a part in gauging these "intangible" factors and allow you to improve your site's performance over time.
Visit
www.site-intelligence.co.uk
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Putting your website at the top of the agenda |
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Site
Intelligence has this month launched version 2.1
of its successful web analytics software, VBIS (Visitor
Behaviour Information System).
VBIS 2.1 will enable even more flexible and sophisticated
analysis of user browsing patterns thanks to precise,
tailored reporting on web site visitors, but it
doesn't stop there!
Another major new feature is the Campaign Management
Module, which enables marketers to gain accurate
assessment of internet marketing campaigns, including
email and banner advertising. By integrating with
product catalogue systems, VBIS can gauge the success
of the campaign by product or product category,
as well as calculating overall return on investment.
VBIS 2.1 includes enhancements to the VBIS SiteViewer,
providing intuitive graphical maps of website navigation.
The combination of the SiteViewer and SiteReporter
ensures that anyone, regardless of technical understanding,
can obtain concise, relevant reports to support
improvements in online marketing, sales and website
design.
In a competitive market where there is a growing
demand to understand the real effectiveness of web
sites, web analysis is not just an IT issue. With
VBIS 2.1, Site Intelligence aims to provide the
whole e-business team with access to the management
information required to deliver dramatic improvements
in a site's business performance.
Visit www.site-intelligence.co.uk
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Boots the Chemist has enjoyed a substantial amount
of publicity regarding its decision to give its
web site, Wellbeing.com, a huge investment in order
to improve profitability.
The latest article appears in Practical Internet
('How we built Wellbeing.com') this month, and states
that by analysing visitor behaviour, Boots ensures
it is meeting users' needs exactly.
The feature looks at how, with several million transactions
every month, Boots is working with Site Intelligence
to ensure this data is captured and used effectively.
Thanks to VBIS, Boots has already tweaked its checkout
process to address problems identified by the software.
As a reflection of the evolving industry of web
measurement, Revolution this week reported how Site
Intelligence is running a series of high level,
executive and independent briefings. John Woods,
CEO of Site Intelligence was quoted saying, "Things
have changed a lot since clicks were the only thing
a marketer needed to measure online. By and large,
people are poorly informed about measurement… Two
years ago there were seminars on all subjects, but
now we have to create our own environment to educate
people."
Visit www.site-intelligence.co.uk
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