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 experience Understanding visitor behaviour Driving website optimisation Marketing campaign performance Measuring online campaigns and SEO Advertising and marketing optimisation Overall business strategy & performance Most valuable customer segments/services Money saved offline Competitor 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 Behaviour Part 3: Tools and techniques

Understanding on-site search Part 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 techniques Optimising your key success events

Graphic copyright Jim Sterne of Target Marketing Part 3: Tools and techniques Optimising your key success events

Part 3: Tools and techniques 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! Image removed

Part 3: Tools and techniques 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 24 th May 2008 Image removed

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. Image removed

Part 4: Getting to something useful 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. Image removed

Part 4: Getting to something useful 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 Brock www.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 Analytics Configure 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 Analytics Set 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 Analytics Set 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 Analytics Set up filters