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There are a lot of
blogs and books out there that can tell you how to do good web
analytics. Unfortunately, I am currently writing my version
so I cannot tell you to go and buy
it just yet - but do watch this space.
So.....
The truth of the matter
is - you want to measure the web site's success. You want to
see many people come in and then interact with your site in
which ever way is most appropriate. By the I mean if you are
a consultancy then the "conversion" will most likely
be the completion of an enquiry form, the downloading of a white
paper, registering for a newsletter or signing up for podcasts
and rss feeds.
A commerce site is
concerned more about selling products. At the end of the day
their critical success factor is how much to the company's bottom
line has the e-channel contributed against the cost element.
"Ah" I hear you say "but, what about the customers?"
Without customers
any website is doomed for failure. Customers generate brand
interest, revenue, product awareness and looking at the whole
picture - improve relationships with suppliers because you are
selling more of their products. Customers also have the "returnability
and cross-sellability factor".
Amazon has a fantastic
business model in grouping together products and when you purchase
one book the sequal comes up under your "recommendations".
Thus fulfilling the "cross selling factor"; they encourage
returnability through engaging their customers in recommendations
(and more).
Play.com have done
a fantastic job of building a brand with doing the obvious things
very right. They have outstanding customer service - my father
returned a DVD which was scratched. They not only replaced the
DVD but refunded the postage (admittadly to my account as it
was a present from me). My friend recently asked to be added
to a mailing list for when a particular DVD was being released.
They were then given the choice of pre-ordering.
In financial services,
products are a necessity and tend to be unsexy. However, financial
services companies can excel in a number of areas - brand, customer
service, security and assurance and finally, innovation. I'll
expand on all these topics later on.
Financial services
companies have a strong element of servicing the bank account,
servicing the credit card and they do this via the ebanking
tools. It is a rapidly growing channel (in comparison to branch
and telephone channels - but remains largely un-incentivised.)
This gives opportunities to analyse the customer behaviour,
engage your customers via a seperate campaign.
Web Analytics can
also help with fraud but, I'll go more into that later.
Web Analytics is the
process of measurement of success and failure. "Failure!"
you say. Yes without knowing what is wrong - why people aren't
converting or aren't interacting sufficiently on the site (i.e.
single page visits are high, time spent on site is low and form
abandoment is high) we will never be able to see where to improve
the site. It could be something as major as including rich media
content, a blog, fewer questions on registration/application
forms or even a total redesign; to something as simple as changing
the colour of the buttons.
Successes will only
tell you what is working right at that particular moment in
time - perhaps a campaign that has elements which may work again,
perhaps an SEO strategy that has produced a fantastic return
on investment that has given you faith in an agency.
Web Analytics combined
with management information (see next article) provide businesses
with the tools to make informed decisions about their next move
whether that be a small change, a brand change, brand policing,
improved SEO etc etc... However, now comes the even harder part
of resourcing.. click on contact us.
:-)
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