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Web Analytics 101: The Power of the Click

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Feb 20 2009

Consumers are turning to the internet more and more to browse, research, and purchase goods and services.  Setting up your website to capture consumer click data is a necessity in today's online marketplace.  The data consumers leave behind is ideal for measuring and shaping your marketing initiatives while gaining additional insight into the consumer.  Here are a few simple topics to help illustrate the power of the click.

Web site analysis.  Analyze your site's performance in the overall marketplace using aggregated click data.   Some key performance indicators which are typically tracked: number of visits, number of unique visitors, number of return visitors, average time on the page/site, bounce rate, and conversion rate.  At a macro level, this data illustrates the interest that exists for your site and how engaged the consumer is with your content. 

Web page optimization.  Monitor and tune your site by keeping an eye on the trends in the data.  Does your site have a high bounce rate?  Perhaps it's time to alter the desired navigation path to encourage visitors to stay on your site.  Is your site frequently triggering user level errors, especially within sign up forms (e.g. for missing required fields)?  It may make sense to revisit the form coding and make appropriate usability changes to eliminate these common errors.  Keeping track of these problems and acting quickly on them will maintain a high quality customer experience. 

Search engine optimization.  Measure the top performing paid keyword searches landing visitors to your site through top search engines such as Google and Yahoo.  Compare paid search terms to natural search results.  Evaluate the top performing natural keyword search results to further refine the paid keyword strategy.  This information will also facilitate key metrics such as cost per page visit and cost per acquisition.  Integrate this information and take a step towards improving your site's search engine presence.

Lead generation.  Identify the visitors who browse your site, spend sufficient time engaging with the content, but do not convert.  Segment this group as potential leads and add them to the lead nurturing process.  Track these lead's behavior over time to predict upcoming conversion opportunities.  Put forward a special offer to a hot lead to increase the likelihood of conversion.

Customer insight.  Deliver timely and direct marketing based on customer online activity.  If a customer has researched a particular product with increasing frequency, deliver a personalized coupon to encourage the sale.  In addition, translate customer click data to insightful customer profiles for use in future online and offline marketing.  For example, segment the top performing customers for upcoming high ticket offers.  Mine customer data to develop sophisticated behavioral triggers to drive cross sell opportunities and customer retention initiatives.  Use this data to prepare a marketing strategy to quickly act on a sudden customer deviation from their behavior profile.

Interactive online marketing.  Improve customer experience by dynamically tailoring web content based on the customer's profile and prior browsing history.  Over time, rich customer profiles can be derived from granular click data and integrated into website decision engines.  Real time targeted product offerings and suggestions on your site can lead to greater sales numbers and improve up sell opportunities.  Your site can effectively remember the customer and their interests to improve the personalized feel to the online experience.

These items are some of the typical uses of web click data to deliver sophisticated and targeted marketing.  Setting up a web site to capture click data and integrate with a web analytic software package is easier than you think.  Take advantage of these opportunities now to position your marketing strategy for the future.  Amazon claims the 2008 holiday season to be their best ever, despite the tough economy(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/technology/companies/30amazon.html?ref=technology).  How do I think they accomplished this feat?  Low prices and being best in class at web analytic based marketing.

 

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