Click here to see and also listen to my presentation of how Rightmove are using in this particular case tealeaf to understand their customer experience better and replay exactly what their visitors did and see it in their eyes (I’ve saved the presentation using Jing Project which is absolutely fab).
The presentation is just under 5 minutes long, includes all my slides, my voice (audio) and also a video of where a visitor’s journey went wrong using tealeaf’s session replay. It opens up in a new window, press play and you can listen to all 5 minutes (if you have the time that is). http://screencast.com/t/SadLainUI3
It was really great (not trying to be cheesy I promise) to meet and see everyone yesterday. 
You may be able me make out in the photo.
This Thursday 8th Nov I’ll be presenting at the London Stock Exchange and next wednesday 14th Nov at Web Analytics Wednesday in London’s covent garden. As we move beyond pure web analytics, to trying to get into our customer’s head to understand their experience on our website, how can customer experience management tools help us.
There are tools available now such as tealeaf and speedtrap that allow us to replay exactly what our customers did on our site, a bit like a video player of exactly what they did on your website. Very cool. I also had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours with Robert Wenig, CTO and founder of tealeaf yesterday.
What customers actually need compared to what they actually get
Sometimes an image says more than a thousand words… Have you come across this scenarion before?
Click on the image to make it bigger / readable
Why do we need to understand our customer’s experience and how can tools help us?
1. The unique session replay functionality would allow the company to hone in on live technical and customer orientated issues to achieve a fix with a quick turnaround on their website.
2. Help customer services teams work with customers where they were having a problem on the website doing what they wanted to do - so the customer services team can replay the customer’s session and tell them where they missed a step or alternatively where the website didn’t deliver.
3. Identify poor customer experience in our customer journey on the website e.g look up sessions where a page or image had a problem loading, 404 errors etc, couldn’t find address, couldn’t find product etc.
4. Identify fraud or unexpected activity on financial services websites and look at the fraudster’s activity.
5. Weekly meetings to go through problem sessions, come up with ideas and identify solutions.
6. Compare click activity on a page to mouse movements on a page to eg identify elements on a page that are encouraging a high number of mouse movements but that are non-clickable (and hence should be clickable).
7. Real time data.
8. With a snippet of javascript, the ability to see which fields in a form were filled out even though the form was never sent.
Are there others that I haven’t thought of? Are you getting inside your customer’s heads with pure web analytics tools so don’t use these customer experience management tools?
But there are alot of challenges associated with these tools:
1. The cost - they are extremely expensive.
2. Actually getting people internally within the company to use them, for example creating a culture where tech support and or customer services actively use these tools in their daily role.
3. Lots of training and learning and time on how to use the product and to configure the events required from scratch.
4. Set up and configuration of the product across all hosting sites and servers, tealeaf uses http requests for example.
5. Getting to grips with the “customer experience method of thinking” in terms of the perceived traditional web analytics definitions of items such as visits and page impressions versus “sessions”.
Have you found challenges delivering value using customer experience management tools?
This web analytics wednesday is a discussion on how we all think that these tools could or should drive or delivervalue to drive commercial benefit and of course better customer experience.
How do you get inside the head of your customers?
I will also be drawing on my experience at Rightmove (26 million visits a month and tenth most popular website in the UK) where we have started using tealeaf to help.
Any thoughts, ideas - do you use customer experience tools, do you wish you did, do you think that we don’t need them and we can get into our customer’s heads with traditional Voice of customer, surveys, polls, web analytics solutions, engagement metrics etc?
Thanks so much for reading and if you are coming to either of the upcoming events, see you soon
As web analysts, at times to fully get to the heart of an business issue we need to bring together web analytics metrics with empathy of the customer experience.
This is where customer experience management tools, which are not cheap, such as tealeaf and speedtrap have created a niche, and include a browser replay feature of individual Web sessions, including the specific pages a customer viewed and how he or she interacted with them, with or without mouse movements as well. Companies on a significantly smaller budget can use other tools to a certain extent such as Techsmith’s Morae, a usability lab on a CD Rom and Crazy Egg, free or almost, heatmapping of click and mouse movement over time.
Why we wish to understand the experience our users/customers in greater detail:
The unique session replay functionality would allow the company to hone in on live technical and customer orientated issues to achieve a fix with a quick turnaround on their website.
Help customer services teams work with customers where they were having a problem on the website doing what they wanted to do - so the customer services team can replay the customer’s session and tell them where they missed a step or alternatively where the website didn’t deliver.
Identify problems in our customer journey on the website e.g look up sessions where a page or image had a problem loading, 404 errors etc.
Identify fraud or unexpected activity on financial services websites
Compare click activity on a page to mouse movements on a page to eg identify elements on a page that are encouraging a high number of mouse movements but that are non-clickable (and hence should be clickable).
B2B customer issues: Identify issues that our B2B customers are having on the site. Allows customer services to replay customer sessions.
B2C customer issues: Identify issues that B2C customers, visitors to the site are having on the site. Allows customer services us to replay customer sessions.
Usability testing: B2B and B2C usability testing, where our test audience journeys on the website can be replayed to identify issues, be that on a form process or product. For usability testing, tools developed specifically for usability testing such as Morae will allow metrics such as “time on task”, “error rate”, satisfaction, mouse movement over time, mouse clicks, web page changes and survey results.
However, these customer experience tools will allow almost video recording replay of visitor sessions which can be used as part of a website usability process.
Mouse click and mouse movement activity, if that is all is wanted initially is offered either free or very reasonably by crazy egg - but that is all one is getting. On a page by page basis (each page needs to be tracked individually), a heat map of that one page where one can breakdown mouse click and movements is shown. However, there is no ability to replay sessions.
The ultimate aim is to drive improvements in the customer experience of the website you provide, small improvements to conversion rates can lead to significant increases in leads.
Successful capture of end-user sessions and session data.
Visual replay of end user sessions.
Successful search for sessions based on free-text and event constraints.
Click versus mouse movement activity.
Challenges associated with these tools:
Getting to grips with the “customer experience method of thinking” in terms of the perceived traditional web analytics definitions of items such as visits and page impressions versus “sessions”.
Either trawling through the source code of the website to identify unique code that can be used to set up the relevant metrics in the case of tealeaf (Tealeaf can implement site tracking without adding javascript to the source code, tealeaf uses http requests), or adding tracking tags throughout the website, in the case of Speedtrap.
Learning how to use the product and to configure the events required from scratch.
Set up and configuration of the product across all hosting sites and servers.
The ability to configure the customer experience tool to your exact requirements, rather than accept a standard “off the shelf” approach or black box approach, can be a blessing or curse depending on the processes in-house at your organisation. As they are completely flexible so reliant on good processes internally to set them up to maximise their return on investment.
Customer experience management tools with their ability to replay sessions are a window to better customer experience understanding. I hasten to add, I say a window - as it is up to the web analytics manager / user experience manager to drive value and understanding from these tools, to drive a better understanding of the customer experience.
Emetrics has come to a close after a few hectic days in DC, interspersed with seeing the Dalai Lama in George Town, the solar powered homes exhibition on the mall, the White House, hours chatting in the omni shoreham lobby bar and swimming in the invigorating heated outdoor pool at sunrise.
That asides, what has been going on? Or as my American counterparts would say, what are some of the key takeaways in terms of consumer understanding and behaviour. I’ll do another post about Google Analytics and Microsoft’s Gatineau this weekend.
Jim Novo of Drilling Down fame, spoke about speaking the “exec level” language that CEO/CFOs understand. If we think about our sales pipeline, it is the predictive/future likelihood to happen that execs are interested in when it comes to understanding our online data, sales and consumer behaviour so you can focus your efforts, marketing spend and optimisation efforts where they will have the most impact. Which are your dreck customers, your former best customer, new customers and best customers - map them out on a two dimensional value map with an XY slope.
Use recency, frequency and latency (you can even begin looking at these with Google Analytics) to understand your best and worst customers and grow your best customers. And importantly, build your predictive customer performance pipeline with your CEO/CFO so that they understand it, help you build it - which helps significantly with buy-in. Buy-in let’s face it, can be the biggest obstacle to taking action in any company.
Joseph Carrabis, the web analytics association new anthropologist and neuro-behaviourist on the scene, spoke about really taking advantage of our hard wiring to make our audience do and think what we want them to think or do. As human beings we all apply our own stereotypical and prejudiced frame of reference to everything into which we come into contact. For example in the context of images on a webpage, which image and at what position and angle will trigger what emotions or thoughts at a subconscious level. If an image is positioned at an angle, it implies motion. A photo of a couple, an elderly man, a teenager and early thirties woman will also, all provoke different inferences from one’s audience. To illustrate this, Carrabis engaged 50 of us in a persona exercise where we had to sit down after he namecalled six photos to tell him which one we thought was the Economics professor in Beijing. Interestingly, most of us thought the middle-aged conservative looking white man, was that character - and we were right. The key thing being the inferences that we draw.
In terms of multi-variate testing, the weather channel, used a variety of different images, a couple, then a man and also a woman to see which image was working more successfully in terms of optimising the page for it’s audience and hence having the highest conversion rate. Interestingly, the web page version withe the image of a woman on her own had a much higher conversion rate than other versions tested. This can be linked back to Carrabis point about the power of assocations, inferences and our pysche hard wiring on what we think about images, positioning and sound on a webpage.
Neil Mason, a fellow Londoner, talked about segmenting one consumer segments into tribes (richly developed personas in other words), using datamining to provide statistically robust anomalies, patterns, associations that stand out from a business commercial perspective and use these to identify key drivers for purchase and identify the most valuable consumer segment. For example, with a case study on the Royal Mail, segments included price finders (10%), cottage industrialists (2%) and regular posters (1%) - which were the most valuable segment. They also indentified that visitors who “saved a quote” on their first visit were signifantly more likely to become and continue to buy from the website and be the website’ most commercially valuable segment (worth most money). They used these consumer segments to drive email marketing segmentation and discovered that emails sent 4 to 5 days after their last visit were most likely to convert. Less than 4 days was too soon (the visitor was still thinking about it) and more than 5 days and the conversion rate began to drop. It’s all about the timing - oh - it’s recency again.
”Where are most valuable customers, how should I optimise my site?”
Thanks for an interesting emetrics everyone and I look forward to meeting those I met again soon
I am a huge fan of management and marketing theory (not for the sake of it of course), but applying and finding ways to make the continuous job of improving overall marketing performance (web analytics of course) a little easier. I developed my Activity Based Scorecard (ABS) after working with the balanced scorecard - traditional management theory. In my “web analytics scorecard”, see image below, define KPIs, I identify relationships, I bench mark these relationships (with trends) against themselves: and ask the question how effective is my website and marketing performance? This is my correlation between effectiveness of my website under review and the web analyst’s approach to continuous improvement, of said company performance.
(Click image for higher resolution)
My ABS scorecard, large image above, measures the relationship(s) between:
1. Usability, multi-variate A/B testing, market research.
2. Management information and web analyst reports.
3. Web data and statistics.
4. Actionable insights and decisions.
These can all be classified as flows of information and should have separate agenda and metrics. Each component should be weighted according to its importance and the overall metric for assessment. In other words providing weighted scores for different components to provide a more accurate picture of their value to the overall picture, from the company perspective which would be aligned to their commercial objectives.
At the outset one should understand the objective, content, and overall aim of the website, in other words if everything went kaput, as Avinash often tells us, what is the most important thing for your business. My Activity Based Scorecard, analysis and decisions then flow from this. My analytics scorecard is a very similar assessment to the cash flow forecast of a company (finance people will love this) it takes basic inflows of information (whether product or service based) and links these inflows to outflows. A relationship Forms. Also, a cross relationship forms between the numbers of statistics and the reports generated and not to forget the decisions that flow from these relationships.
Separate metrics or cross relationships develop and can be assessed alongside the overall assessment. Usability can in some cases prevail over say the numbers leading straight through to decision flows which influences both the statistics and the reports generated. Through timely assessment of my ABS report trends (and metrics) can be established through each component and the overall assessment.
Actions can have a corrective or test feedback straight through to the inputs or changes of the core components. But, for me the most important factor is that the activities of the analyst have direct influence to the drivers of the website. This ultimately impacts the assessment.
Strategic objectives can be best described as the common ground between what we focus on, what we do best and ultimately what our passion is. We are however constrained by our financial drivers. Our marketing plan directly links with our strategic objectives. So when senior management ask: how is our website performing? - we have a context and a weighted activity based scorecard within which we can measure our true performance and ongoing actions and decisions.
The reality is that for any of this to work at all requires alot of hard work, perseverance and at the outset defining the key business objective(s) for the company. There are some tools on the market to help develop one’s scorecard, for example with Balanced Scorecard Designer you can create a set of KPIS and group, categorise and weight them.
Do let me know if you have any questions or if you agree or completely disagree. Thanks so much for reading.
Consumer Generated Media (“CGM”) is the term that encompasses all social media content on the Internet authored by consumers. This content ranges from blogs, to social networks, consumer review sites, message boards, and videos.
Social networking and connecting with customers is all the buzz, for example yesterday Forrester Research did a webcast on “Know your Customers’ Social Technographics and Craft the Right Social Marketing Strategy” with Charlene Li from Forrester. She shared her insights on understanding ones target audience attitudes and behaviors towards social technologies in order to craft the right social marketing strategy. These are great calls for marketers to learn more about getting their arms around social media, listening to the voice of the customer and engagement with consumers in social media.
Jeremiah, a fellow web analytics association social media committee member, is a social media stategist and gives us outlines of how to approach positioning one’s company in the wider social media ecosystem. From a web analytics perspective, how does one even begin to gauge the influence of these conversations on one’s brand?
Social media technographics report by Forrester research.
Some other stats, from Pew Internet and Jupiter research:
One blog is created every minute
27% (32M) read blogs
22% (27M) post reviews/ comments
44% (53m) are content creators(running own blogs/sites, posting messages).
There are more than 1.5 billion comments per day, the collective voice of the consumer to influence brands and buying strategy has never been stronger and will continue to be strong.
There have recently appeared in the market, applications, such as Visible Technologies TruCast that enable companies to monitor social media conversations, gain valuable insights, and even engage with consumers in order to better allow companies to manage their brands online on social media sites. For companies, these online conversations represent a new opportunity and challenge for brand monitoring, reputation management, word-of-mouth marketing, and consumer engagement.
This is pretty powerful stuff, the ability to segment one’s potential customers by feeling and tone and message from the enormous pool of social media sites.
I wonder how scalable this tool or any tool is, because eventually with the increase of the blogosphere appearing to be exponential how much data will their databases be able to handle?
But assuming all social media data on the Internet, posts and comments are collected in a database with multi-tiered querying - there would be some pretty powerful information.
Influence engagement metrics and advanced analytics:
Identifies the most influential consumers for a particular topic or issue
Determines the sub-topics of conversations
Interactive dashboard allows clients to determine specific sites and authors wielding the most influence in conversations.
What are they talking about (sentiment) scores:
For example, their intelligent sentiment technology evaluates the positive and negative sentiment and tone of conversations. Users establish sentiment criteria by scoring a sample of data, and TruCast automatically scores the rest. I’d like to put this to the test.
There are others such as Pythia which give trended social media data for free, so even for SMEs there are tools which can help.
I personally think the idea of engagement metrics within the context of the broader social media ecosystem and putting it to use to be able to positively impact on managing one’s company’s brand, social media reputation management, is something that we will all be doing in the not too distant future.
Any thoughts or questions or disagreements, please let the web analytics princess know.
Last weekend I went to the inaugural Podcamp UK and co-presented a session with Lucie Follett on the monetisation of podcasting and podcasting measurement using engagement metrics, in the auspicious surrounding of Birmingham’s NTI (new technology institute). It was fast paced and innovative. You may be able to spot us in one of the photos? There were a whole bunch of people there including all the top UK podcasters, Twitter guys (I twitter, do you?), bloggers, journalists and new media folk in general.
In the social media ecosystem, in which I would include podcasting, there is so much potential for businesses to use podcasting to generate brand awareness and interest in their product or service from a niche audience. At the same time, there is an increased awareness of the potential monetisation of podcasting, if it is done effectively. I am still a big believer in “Content is King” - ie create podcasts that genuinely interest and compel your target audience. And have seen examples where “view movie” (ie watch podcast) with the right kind of engaging content has resulted in a tripling of lead generation on a particular car company’s website, such as brochure requests. So podcasting can and does work for business when done in the right way - you need a good story, and definitely not my boss told me to do a podcast!
However, how do you begin to measure a podcast’s effectiveness?
Due to the nature of downloadable media, there are a number of difficulties when it comes to getting accurate metrics from podcasting and issues to consider which impede the efficient implementation of big marketing or advertising campaigns across multiple website.
-How many podcast downloads are there - if the podcast is embedded in the website, is it still considered to e a podcast?
-How many viewers actually watch or listen to the podcast once it is downloaded?
-What degree of the podcast is listened to, for example if you have ad in the podcast towards the end, how many people actually listen to it?
-What true influence or buzz is actually generated by the podcast, because link content (popularity) does not equate to influence.
The key things is to look at podcasting in the same way one does other social media.
Engagement metrics are key. Things to consider include (and please feel free to add any more via comments):
1. Visitor reviews of your podcast (for example on itunes).
2. Visitor comments - where a podcast:comment ratio is the most helpful one as it strips it down to pure engagement on a podcast, by podcast basis.
3. Social capital/Visitor influence - if an established reviewer ie top podcaster or specialist within the industry writes a review/comment etc, this will have a lot more influence than if Sam from Dunkirk did (sorry Sam).
4. Ranking on established podcasting platforms, such as podcasting news top 25 or podcast alley top 10.
5. Wisdom from the rest of the web, such as the reaction on the blogosphere, twitter-sphere, facebook-sphere, general search engine results etc.
The monetisation of podcasting, is not about corporates trying to strangle the life out of a vibrant, independent podcasting community - which will definitely continue to thrive, but a marketing journey where businesses who understand social media will use it to their advantage. Businesses that podcast will be able to measure those tangible or intangible (hence engagement metrics) benefits to their business, and where eventually marketers and advertisers will be able to efficiently implement advertising across multiple podcasts, similar principle (but very different at the same time) to the way google adwords has their content network advertising - where you can run campaigns on a keyword/sector basis, having illustrated the value of advertising on podcasts or websites running podcasts.
Thanks so much for reading and do let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas, or if you completely disagree.
I’m not going to presume to give the entire or perfect answer to the difference between reporting and analytics. But, here is a lovely start. Reporting could include creation of KPI dashboards, preparing results/reports to multiple data source integration. But analytics goes much deeper. Web analytics as a means to improve your site and company’s conversion rate and improve profitability and the use of web analytics to create action : ie, real strong sense of forward movement (ie, not just about ‘reporting’). Analytics services may include multi-variate testing, customer experience analysis, conversion analysis but the key is the actionable insights that emerge from these analyses.
The problem is that alot of the time, most people/companies/even some analytics consultancies (!) don’t differentiate clearly enough between reporting services and analytics services and in some cases don’t even see the difference between the two or assume that a KPI fashboard will give the insights as to why the site’s performance/conversion rate etc has changed. With web analytics we really need to get our hands dirty to find out why things are happening, come up with insights that are all about making things happen, taking action, testing and making things work better (increased conversion rate/other website holy grails such as increased engagement).
However here is an absolutely lovely analogy (courtesy of James Dutton): “So every day I get in my car and I drive to work; I have defined KPI”s for fuel, engine speed, speed (a dynamic metric), I have measures of success (for example averaging a certain mpg) and warning triggers (eg battery charge). In other words I have a dashboard, or in an analytics metaphor I have my site dashboard.
My car is sick - what do I do?
Now in the event that something goes wrong I may get an alert to tell me what has happened (eg “ABS failure, see technician”) but most of the time something will happen without warning – for example: overheating. Overheating is an awful problem; it happens very quickly, is disabling and has no direct signs of impending problems. Just like our site dashboard – if our conversion rate falls from 8.4% to 2.1% over the course of a month we may not realise until the next dashboard is due. The fix requires the diagnosis to proceed to rule out causator events, such as blocked radiator pipes.
Just as with web analytics the diagnosis process needs to be figured so that elements are ruled out as being a causator. The process may be simple, or may be a complex study, however it is still a process. Hence, our reporting services and our analysis services should be complementary, but without careful alignment in both process and definition will not be.”
I do love the idea of being website mechanic (not very glamourous but it’s actually quite exciting - you sort out the problem (overheating) and then you add on some bigger wheels, turbo-charge the engine and voila increase your car’s speed (website conversion rate). Oh wait, I am getting carried away.
If you agree or disagree or have any ideas then please do share.
In the path to web analytical enlightenment (heaven), there is no one answer or even one path - a bit of a misnomer really. However, since we have to start somewhere here is a 5 step web analytics plan that I have developed after working with a number of clients that really helps me to get the perspective I need to really improve their marketing effectiveness and as a result conversion rate. First, look at your actual website (it’s design and layout etc) and then get started.
Here is my 5 step web analytics plan
1. Map out your websites’ goals
2. Assess clickstream data
3. Take ownership of your site’s goals
4. Ask your customers - surveys/testing
5. Benchmark against your competitors
1. What are the site’s goals?
Map out your websites’ goals and what is currently available to make these a reality - it is so important for key stakeholders to be involved at this stage to make sure you really nail your KPIs. At the end of the day, everything else that you find out about your site and your ultimate conversion rate are all completely dependent on making sure you know exactly what your goals are and what is currently available online to make them a reality. If you cannot decide the one important reason why your site exists, you have a big problem - it’s that classic “build it and they will come” which unfortunately does not work. Once your goals are firmly in place, brainstorm and drill-down into inordinate amounts of detail as whether the website supports these goals as successfully as it possibly could (there is no such thing as perfection but whatever you think is as perfect it could get). Already, a long list of action points (actionable insights) are jumping out where the site is not supporting it’s goals as completely as it could.
2. Assess clickstream data
Assess clickstream data with site overlay tools, which can also show which clicks are for example generating most goal conversions and also with heatmaps which give a wonderful visual perspective of what is actually happening on your site. Google Analytics or Clicktracks site overlay tools both can show total clicks and clicks generating conversions. Crazy Egg has a great heat map and it is so easy to set up. However, clickstream data is often missing the context, in that absence we overlay our own opinions / perspectives to make sense of it all – which is why it is only one part of the analytical process. For example, looking at a conversion funnel on your website will not always be as meaningful as we think it should - in most cases your visitors will have so many paths to a your site’s goal that a linear funnel is not helpful. Instead if we have more of a flow chart with the most popular pages in each step of the process grouped together a much more evocative illustration is depicted. As another example, it may be that over 20% of the clicks on your homepage are on non-clickable items which is telling you that your content is not as intuitively displayed as it could be. In any case, this new generation of heatmapping and overlay is a very visual way of understanding what people are actually doing.
Crazy Egg’s Heat Map
Google Analytics’s site overlay tool
3. Taking ownership of goals for the site
Make sure that the relevant/right person at your company takes ownership of their goal for the site, such as Increase site engagement rate by posting relevant articles and blog posts and highlights them on the home page. If each goal owner has a KPI (key performance indicator) card they are answerable and responsible for improving on that particular goal - it has become part of their job description. This is a very simple idea that has been around for ages, I saw Nokia doing KPI cards recently but this really goes back to Kaplan’s balanced scorecard.
4. Ask your customers and listen- testing different page versions, online surveys, old fashioned questionnaires
Add a short “free text” 3 question survey to the site:
Definitely an Avinash ism but also a fundamental/traditional part of marketing as well. Ask questions such as: Why are you here today? Were you able to do what you wanted? How can we improve the site to make it easier for you to do what you want to do? One client consistently has 50% response rate to their survey on the confirmation page. And this is the quickest, cheapest and one of the best ways to find out what your customers/site visitors want. Let the customer/visitor talk (no drop menu choices), give them a chance to tell you in their own voice the reasons and let them provide you with suggestions. It works better than guessing what the answers might be and suggesting those. Categorise the responses into common themes and then rate the % of times each theme is occurring for those who are not able to complete their task. This is a simple and direct to-do list of issues directly from the horse’s mouth about what you should work on in order to improve your website experience for your customers and as a result increase your site’s effectiveness (marketing effectiveness dare I say it).
Test different versions of the home page/key conversion page:
Change specific parts of the page to assess the impact on defined goals, and assess which version is most effective - change the images, change the tone and messaging of copy from salesy to informative, change the layout - for example place only your two most popular products/services on a page versus in addition having all your significant products or services but without too much detail. The key is to test 2 page variants that are significantly different from the original with underlying marketing premise/understanding. Version 1 generates more short-term sales of product X, version 2 generates visitors with a better site experience, version 3 generates less sales of product X than version 1 but more sales overall via a better displayed overall product/service range.
Market questionnaires - old-fashioned but they work
These can be a goldmine of valuable customer preferences to one’s marketing. However, they can take longer to organise, are usually more expensive if one involves an agency and due to their qualititative nature take longer (than online surveys) to generate the same quantity of responses.
5. Expansive benchmarking against your competitors
Try comparing yourself/site against other successful online marketing resources. What can you learn from them and apply? How can we be better than them? Define where the benchmarks are (eg how often do other sites update their homepages with relevant content)? Who are the competitors we see ourselves competing against. N.B Remember that significant time and resources are required to achieve benchmarking successfully - this is not just an add-on.Benchmarking is not always easily quantifiable – but insights will begin to jump out at you once carried out. For example, if you work for a magazine - what is the customer subscription process delivering, how often is content updated in key areas and what is it’s quality, what level of services are offered to visitors versus registered users versus subscribers, how is the magazine presenting it’s brand/itself etc. Some of this is subjective and qualititative and best carried out if you have experience in usability for example. Others such as site popularity, seo presence etc can be easily found out either through Alexa the poor man’s competitive intelligence tool or paid-for services such as Comscore and Hitwise.
A list of areas (not definitive) to benchmark your company against your main competitors:
Usability: Navigation and tools, Content categorisation and quality.
Audience needs: Currency and relevancy to audience, Depth of services for subscribers.
Self representation: Brand communication, Innovation.
Content areas: Visitor interaction, Frequency of updated content.
Traffic: Incoming links, Site traffic.
To conclude:
It can be a bit daunting when faced with this 5 step plan to contemplate carrying out the whole thing within a short time frame (2 months), but it is achievable and the results can be unimaginably insightful and really can and will transform your site’s performance and marketing effectiveness overall.Each step in the analytics plan will have generated conclusions, action points and actionable insights and when placed in a categorised matrix by conclusion theme and in proximity to the site goals (betweenness), a natural order in which to carry out and deliver the action points and insights delivered by this plan will develop. I will write a thorough post on delivering change and insights as a follow-up to this 5 step analytics plan post. Hope that you enjoyed reading and please do comment whether you agree or completely disagree!
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