With over 13 years of experience troubleshooting eCommerce websites at 3 of the top 10 eCommerce sites, I put together 10 of my top Lessons Learned

1. Lessons Learned from my
13 year
eCommerce Journey
Vernon Wyatt
Founder / CEO
SiteConversion.net
http://www.linkedin.com/in/vernonwyatt

2. Why Norway?
- How did I get
from Boston,
Massachusetts to
Norway?
- Why not?

3. In the beginning....
What about the other 98%
Demand
Generation
BI
Input Output
Black box
100% traffic 2% place orders
Tech Ops
e-Commerce Engine
Blueprint of Customer Behavior

4. Understanding Customer Journeys...
(for a long time)
Here is a slide from a presentation I did over 12 years ago
on an overhead projector, where I told the "story" of a
customer journey by analyzing their web log entries

5. My Career, by the numbers....
● 12,000%
○ Revenue increase at hpshopping.com while I was there
● 10,000
○ Production issues investigated - eCommerce Detective
● $19 million
○ Single largest issue I uncovered
● 13 years
○ Working for 3 of the top 10 largest eCommerce sites in the world (HP,
Hotels.com and Walmart)
● 10th
○ Employee hired to HP's eCommerce division that grew to 500 people
● 8 hours
○ Testified as a "Computer Expert" in a HP Fraud Case
● 7 years
○ (1999 to 2006) I was the on call engineer for hpshopping.com
● 6 times
○ moved for job opportunities in 4 different countries (US, India, UK and
Norway)
● 3 seconds
○ frequency of transactions, so time matters
● 1TB
○ per day - typical client generates 1TB of analytical data
■ 35 languages, 70 points of sale; 3 checkout processes, mobile,
social, 50 concurrent MVT tests,....

6. Mission of SiteConversion.net
"Uncover site obstacles and ensure a frictionless
experience for your customers"

7. Challenge - Where to Start?
Real World
- Many people ask ( Too many haystacks of data to manually review )
many questions.
How is the site performing?
How was the release?
Any issues?
Should we rollback? ....
Challenge
- Where to start?
There are too many events,
dashboard, systems, tools to check.
It could take days. Our customers
want answers now.

8. Solution - Build Insight Magnets!
We focus
on building
magnets that
attract insight!
(Based on our 13 years experience
troubleshooting over 10,000
production eCommerce issues)

9. What we have today
Pops and Drops 3.0
- Access data set via web services
or stored procedure (Tealeaf,
Omniture, GA, Raw Logs
- Sophisticated Algorithm to surface
"customer struggle"
- Flex front-end
- Tableau front-end
Features
- Send automated emails
- Identifies new patterns
- Integrates multiple data sources
- Insight-As-A-Service

10. Custom Mashup Solutions
DW, Outage Reports, OL and Tealeaf
*

11. What we do
● We focus on uncovering customer
struggle on websites
● We constantly monitor your website's
traffic by leveraging your existing data
sets for anomalies (i.e. GA, Omniture,
Tealeaf, ClickTale, CoreMetrics,Log
Files, etc)
● We find key information for you -- so that
your team can focus on making strategic
decisions, instead of sifting through an
endless sea of data.

12. 10
10
Lessons Learned

13. Lessons Learned
4 Practical things you can
do today
Vernon Wyatt
Founder / CEO
SiteConversion.net
http://www.linkedin.com/in/vernonwyatt

14. Make it easy to report issues
Examples
● Kampyle allows screen
capture with feedback
● Booking.com reference
number on every page
● Add extra debugging to
a "hidden page"
● Embedded OpinionLab
on 500 errors

15. Micro Conversion -
Monitor Purchase Success Rate
● Quickly identify back-
end payment issues
● These are people
trying to give you their
money
● Criteria:
○ entered CC details
○ hit submit
○ % successful
orders

16. Garbage in = Garbage out
Lessons Learned
● Basic data validation
of multiple systems
○ Track your # of
orders in your web
analytics system to
your system of
record
● Properly track and
remove Bot traffic.
They can cause
reporting anomalies
● Don't underestimate
resources

17. Listening is Key
Lessons Learned
● Listen to call
center calls
● Listen to Release
conference call
● Replay Sessions

18. Lessons Learned
4 Process Improvements
Vernon Wyatt
Founder / CEO
SiteConversion.net
http://www.linkedin.com/in/vernonwyatt

19. Establish a Site Conversion Function
Lessons Learned
Analytics Division ● Focus on creating a
frictionless experience
● Reactive, Proactive,
Analytics Team
Innovative
- Macro KPIs Testing Team ● Keep track of wins
- Dashboards
● Collaborate with
cross-functional team
Site Conversion
Team ● Eliminates "unable to
Tools and Infra
- Investigate
- Find out Why?
Team reproduce" excuse
- Quantify

20. Scaling your Team
Lessons Learned
● Team Wiki / Sharepoint
● Training Materials
● How-to
● User Configuration
● Centralized Calendar
● List of Wins
● Troubleshooting Guide

21. Evangelize: Educate the Business
Lessons Learned
● You know your data
set better than
everyone
● You have to reach out
to each team and
show how it can
benefit them
● Find out their top pain
points and see how
you can help

22. Lesson: Stop Chasing Your Tail
Partner early with Project Team
● Does this sound familiar?
● You need to be part of the
project requirements not
chasing your tail after the
project is released

23. Lessons Learned
2 Creative
Vernon Wyatt
Founder / CEO
SiteConversion.net
http://www.linkedin.com/in/vernonwyatt

24. Unblocking the Log Jam:
Lessons Learned
● Print Out Long Form
● Attach a video or
audio of customer
● Specific Daily Report
● Impact Visualization

25. Focused Deep Dives Provide Results
Lessons Learned
● Allows you to focus your
tools
● Segment customers
● Listen to call center calls
● Challenges the status quo

26. If you need an
eCommerce Detective, contact us
Vernon Wyatt
Founder / CEO
Vernon@SiteConversion.net
twitter: @SiteConversion
www.linkedin.com/in/vernonwyatt