Know yourAudience:Web Analytics &Search Engine Marketing

Emakina Academy11 October 2006

Agenda

09.30 Welcome Coffee

10.00 Web Analyticsby David Rademaker (Emakina)

10.30 Why choosing WebTrendsby Maarten Sambre (WebTrends)

11.00 Coffee Break

11.15 Search Engine Marketing (SEM)by Michael Vandenhooft (Extenseo)

11.45 Optimize your website for indexation

by Laurent Goffin (Emakina)

12.15 SEM cases : Cora Direct & DVD Postby Michael Vandenhooft (Extenseo)

12:50 Conclusion - Q&A

13.00 Lunch14.00 End

Introduction

� How many surfers visit your website every day? What are their favorite sections? How can you turn a visitor into a lead, then in a client? Where are the hurdles to this conversion?

� During this fifth Academy, our WebTrends experts will explain how web analytics can significantly improve your website ROI and better profile your target group. In the second part of this session, our partner Extenseo will show the power of Search Engine Optimization and Keyword Buying to attract qualified audience through Google & friends.

� If you’re not interested in knowing your consumer, don’t stay.

About Emakina

Multi-channel approach

Competence Centre

Prestigious References

From visitor to customer

Web Analytics

David Rademaker, Emakina

Web Analytics > Agenda

� Inspirational anecdote

� Common mistakes

� Statistics ABC: from hits to visitors� Types of metrics

� Why managed statistics

� Interpreting numbers� Top metrics to watch for

� What Emakina can do for you

There are lies,damned lies,and statistics

Mark Twain1835-1910

Real life anecdote

Overheard at Fortune 100 company

� Person A:“I have got 10’000(something) on my website”

� Person B:“That’s all? I got 100’000 (something) on mine!”

The truth?

� Person A had 10’000 visitors� Person B had 100’000 hits

but only 1000 visitors

� What would you prefer?

Value

Web Statistics: Terms Used

� Hit – Any information requested from a site - this

includes HTML pages, pictures, forms, scripts and files downloaded

– Can be affected by redesign, robots, caching etc.

� Page Views (or requests/impressions)– The number of pages viewed

– Extensions such as .htm, .html, .asp etc.

� User Sessions– Series of requests from unique IP address within

a period of time (more accurate if registered users

– Issues with firewalls, institutional caches etc.

� Users, Visits, Actions, Interests, Acquisitions

Apples and pears

1 VISIT1 HIT

1 VISIT100 HITS

Interpretation Issues

� Profiling users - can we track users easily? – You can’t tell the exact identity of your users

– Using IP addresses, domain names of visitors

– Following paths – entering and exiting the site– Registration

� Caching– Browser caching and institutional/ISP caching

� Robots– Necessary enable your resources to be found

– Robots generate hits

� Quality??

Types of Metrics

Typical Solutions

Log file based solutions

� Works with standard log files� Often in-house

� Ideal for “classical” websites (“HTML”, …)

� Requires little setup

� Relatively development neutral

Log file based solutions

� Works with standard log files� Often in-house

� Ideal for “classical” websites (“HTML”, …)

� Requires little setup

� Relatively development neutral

Tagging based solutions

� Works with custom data logging� Typically 3rd party solution

� Better for non-HTML websites (Flash, …)

� Requires active setup

� Often needs development support

Tagging based solutions

� Works with custom data logging� Typically 3rd party solution

� Better for non-HTML websites (Flash, …)

� Requires active setup

� Often needs development support

Hybrid solutions

� Tries to marry best of both worlds

Hybrid solutions

� Tries to marry best of both worlds

Typical Solution > Log file based

Visitor Webserver

Logfile

Reportingserver

Administrator

(1) RequestPage

(2) WriteRequest

(3) ReadRequests

(4) Process log todata for reports

(6) Readreports

(5) CreateReports

Typical Solutions > Tagging based

Visitor Webserver

Reportingserver

Administrator

(1) RequestPage

(5) Read reports

2nd Webserver

(2) Customparameter

(3) Processcustom

parameter

(4) CreateReports

Solutions > Pro & contra

ROI

Processing

Log file based Tagging based

Often in-house

Retro-active: you can use it on past Forward only:

CachingProxy caching (ISP, Browser, …) can hide part of true activity

JavaScript is run every time page is loaded / shown

Data All web transactions are recorded Only specific transactions are logged

Disk space Raw data logs can be large Tend to more compact (typically 10:1)

Vendor lock inMore neutral because it respects industry standards

Vendor specific solutions:vendor lock-in

Web technologies HTML, ASP, JSP, … Flash, RIA,

Typically external

Accuracy Comparable (caching vs browser config)

Development effort Low to none Low to high

Detailed tracking Limited: requires URL parameters Can go very far (clicks, non clicks)

Search engine Referrer

Typical solutions

� Good starting point

� Good for simple websites for companies with low requirements

� Features are subject to change

� Example:Google Analytics

� Best long term solution

� Ideal for companies that want to have long-term solutions

� Supported software

� Example:WebTrends

“Free”Solutions

“Managed”Solutions

Managing numbers

Why do we need statistics?

� They indicate how popular your site is

� They show how successful your marketing strategy has been

� They can be used in management reports� They can identify gaps in service provision

� They predict and plan for future load patterns

� They allow you to monitor performance levels� They can be used in consideration of deployment

of new technologies� They can inform and motivate contributors

� They can show who your users are

Store management100 years of expertise

Fact:

� Management of stores and shelves is almost becoming an exact science with plenty of proven rules

Impact

� Well managed stores are a competitive advantage and can make or break a business

Main criteria

� Profitability per square meter(horizontal & vertical)

Site management:10 years, but still young industry

Most companies still ask:

� How many visitors did we have?

� How many visits this year?

Most are not up to questions like:

� How did sales or visits improveafter changing parameter A?

Real world example: Amazon

� Not the best looking site,but a professional managed sitethat is run like a supermarket

Criteria to introduce� Profitability per pixel

The Wheel of Management…

Do

Act

Plan

Check

… Applied to Website Management

Do

Act

Plan

Check

Plan site objectivesDefine KPIs

Update

Implement mechanics for statistics & reporting

Follow-upMonitoringInterpret

React to meet objectives

Find solutions

Website nirvana

� Reached through continuous quality improvement

Websitenirvana

The Coke Wars:Return on Number Management

• John Sculley, in the 80’s"The Nielsen ratings defined the ground rules of competition for everyone... top managers would carry little charts in their wallets with the latest key Nielsen figures. They became such an important part of my life that I could quote them on any product in the market. We would pore over the data to search for vulnerable points...It was the man at the top who made it this way. The challenge for the person at the top is to make sure everyone knows what he or she is watching. Then they can direct all the company's energy towards the same goals.

Questioningnumbers

Real life example

Reported figures over 1 year

� Large Belgian company

� >10K employees� 1M unique visitors

� 2M visitors

� 3M page views

Questions to ask

� Reasons to celebrate?� Or….

� Emakina did an analysis toassess the numbers and lookfor opportunities

Returning visitors

� Reported figures– More than 70% of the visitors never returned the same year

– Only 12% came back at least 2 times

– Only 5% came back 3 times

� Interpretation problems:– Search engines are not

excluded from these visits

– Internal people are notexcluded from these visits

� Conclusion:– The proof is in the pudding:

Visitors do not come backbecause the site offers NO relevant reason to come back

Duration visit

� Reported figures– 58% left the site within a single minute (!)

– Only 20% stayed longer than 5 minutes

� Business fact– Stickiness = the quality of a website

to retain visitors, by keeping themat the website and by gettingthem to return regularly.

– Here:Site has near-zero sticky value

� Conclusion:– The site offers NO relevant

reason to come backMore then 80% leaves within 5 minutes; almost 3 out of 5 leave within a minute

Number of pages seen per visit/visitor

� Reported figures:– More than 70% of visitors consults less than or 3 pages

– For normal sites, true visitors and a site of this kind, number of pages seen should be around 5 (home-news-search-find-read-contact)

� Conclusion– We can safely assume that, again, there is no incentive whatsoever to

motivate people to explore the site

More than 70%3 pages or less

Comments to key figures

� Average of 10K “visitors” per day

� Seems a good average but this includes all traffic, search engines, collaborators,

� 85% comes only once or twice per year� Too low = lack of reason to come back

� Site visits vs real consumption:� One visit for every 715 rides…

� Visit duration: 55% less than 1 minute� Too low = lack of stickiness / content

A site can appear to have quantity traffic at first sightbut upon detailed analysis, it can lack quality traffic.

Understanding numbers is more important than having numbers

Quality siteperformance:Metrics to watch

Web Analytics

Introduction > Making sense of numbers

� When it comes to web analytics, there is no shortage of measurements site managers can take to understand how their siteis performing: visitors, visits, sessions, page views, hits, …

� Sifting through such vast amounts of information can be mind numbing. Even more daunting is knowing how much weight to put behind each measurement and how to put the data into context.It’s easy to identify which performance characteristics to track, but not necessarily how to interpret the resulting data and know what to do with it.

� Site owners agree that knowing which metrics to track and how much weight to give each one comes down to a very simple premise:

Understand what you want to accomplish, like in real life. How to use that information to pinpoint problems, improve performance, identify customer priorities and generate more revenue or decrease costs

10 Metrics to watch

� Study Site Search Results - and Non-Results

� Optimize the Home Page

� Know What Works on Landing Pages� Analyze tool usage to profile and streamline tools

� Look at the Look-to-Act Ratio

� Know Banner and Search Engine Marketing ROI� Use Analytics to Make E-mail Marketing More Effective

� Inspect Customer Navigation & Maturity

� Find out why visitors abort their session� Correlate data, go beyond plain stats

1Study Site Search Results - and Non-Results

� Tracking what your customers and visitors search for is the bestway to learn about their expectations and problems: if they search for it, it means they didn’t find it at a first glance or even after a little click search s� This can be directly used for optimizing site navigation and structure

� You may think that people will search for “product X” but you may be surprised how many people will search for “service Y”

� Used metric: log submitted form data

Comparing list of searched for words with site structureconfirms if your site is addressing key customer expectations

2Optimize the Home Page

� The homepage is the most crucial piece of real estate available: knowing what information items and transactional tools to position above and below the scroll line is a crucial balancing task

� Used metric:click path from homepage

Check that people click on items in the sequence that you expect them to click. If not rearrange items accordingly or analyze why.

Without scrolling

Below the fold

HotZone

1

HotZone

2

NotHot?

3Know what works on landing pages

� It makes no sense for site owners to pay attention to optimizingtheir home pages if they won’t create custom landing pages. Morethan half of customers will land at a retailer’s site either through a search engine, banner ad, e-mail promotion or affiliate marketing partner.

� It makes sense then for site owners to create landing pages designed to appeal to these customer’s expectations for product and service presentation and branding based on the search words used to lead them to the site

� Used metric: search engines data vs secondary clicks

Google?search=my interest

http://www.yoursite.be/pageX.html

CONTACT/MORE/DETAILSCONTACT/MORE/DETAILSEXIT?EXIT?

SUCCESS: PEOPLE FOUND WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING FOR

SUCCESS: PEOPLE FOUND WHAT THEY WERE LOOKING FOR

FAILURE: CONTENT DOES NOT MATCH EXPECTATIONS

FAILURE: CONTENT DOES NOT MATCH EXPECTATIONS

4Analyze usage of information and tools

� Analyze how people use static information vs interactive tools on your site:

– Do they prefer static tables?

– Do they interactive tools?

– How many iterations do they do?– Do new visitors use tools differently then returning visitors?

– If forms permit free text input (from “A” to “B”) does what they type in match your expectations?

� Used metric: hits/iterations on page X and tool Y, time spent onpages

An analysis of tool usage may help you to decide where to invest in: more easy-to-print tables or a simpler, smarter planning tool?

5Look at the Look-to-Book Ratio

� Review periodic usage ratio for various periods of the year:

� Examples: seasonal promotions

� Data patterns are but one clue to improving look-to-book ratios. The number of times a consumer views a product before buying it, or not, can tell retailers such things as whether the item is over-priced compared to alternatives, whether the Add to Cart button is visible or whether the customer got distracted after linking to a related page. Items with high view rates, but low add-to-cart rates are in need of close scrutiny from all angles

� Used metric: scenario analysis between pages

An analysis of pre-buying usage may help you to decide how to price products / services and detect service overlaps

6Know Banner and Search Engine Marketing ROI

� Awareness and promotion campaigns have real costs:Calculate these marketing costs and returns

� That means accurately tracking how many times a customer comes to a site through the same affiliate or search engine and what they do once they gets there.

� Used metric: incoming traffic via referrer X / Y

The costs of communicating online can easily be 10% of traditional communication costs once reaching a certain volume.

7Analytics to Make E-mailing More Effective

� Emailing is the most cost efficient information delivery toolbut it is crucial to check if it is also appreciated

– How valid is your email database?

– What is the bounce rate on emails?

– How many emails get delivered?– How many get read?

– How many do get clicked?

– How many get forwarded?

� What works best:– Frequency: weekly, monthly, quarterly, …

– Delivery technique: table of content linking to site or full text?

� Used metric: statistics on landing pages, email sending reporting tools & click-troughs

Effective email campaigns can build customer loyaltyif part of larger citizen information program.

8Inspect Customer Navigation

� Identify information search patterns as customers move across categories, enabling site managers to more properly streamline navigational paths: >80% of content should be findable within 3 clicks

� Consult how returning visitors use site vs new visitors:if it returning always have to click 1-2-3 to get where they want, consider a direct link from homepage

� Make an abstraction of individual pages and group them in content type pages: analyze content hopping like (descriptions)�(prizes)�(shopping)

� Used metric: scenario analysis over grouped content pages

Knowing how customers vs prospects use your site can help you to minimize the total number of clicks to reach goals

9Find out why visitors abort their session

� Nothing is more frustrating to site owners than seeing that customers do not click beyond homepage or do not use their brandnew tool

� Analytics can pinpoint where the customer dropped out:Once all the pieces are known, the site owner can determine whether the process is too long, too cumbersome or does not provide enough data at the point the customer appears ready to proceed.

� Used metric: exit pages

Learning why and where abort your site can help you to make every page of your website more attractive and meaningful to visitor

10Correlate data, go beyond plain stats

� Avoid the one-dimensional: applying web site analytics can be a complex undertaking. Understanding the results can be even more daunting. But that understanding is essential to a web site’s success.

� The true value of analytics is understanding the insights provided by the numbers not the numbers themselves

� Multi-dimensional thinking is the key to keeping their web site performing at the highest level:

– Visitor behaviour vs customer profile– Buying behaviour vs price setting or incentives

– General site satisfaction results vs improvement cycles

� Used metric: any to any

Finding meaningful relationships between datasetsis the key to gaining valuable and useful insights

Emakinaservice offering

Web Analytics

Maturity in statistics

I have a site

I have some numbers

I have some numbers

I have objectivesI have objectives

I have insight in to what it means

I have insight in to what it means

I drive resultsI drive results

I have an action plan to reach my goals

I have an action plan to reach my goals

Currentlevel

Integrating web statistics in your company

webmaster

Big Company

I make yearly reports but no one seems to use or understand

them

Typical company

ITDepartment

ITDepartment

MarketingDepartmentMarketing

DepartmentOther

DepartmentsOther

Departments

ManagementManagement

ClassicalWeb

Agency

ClassicalWeb

Agency

Biggest mistake that can be made: business managers assuming that web reports are hard to make and understand

Biggest mistake that can be made: business managers assuming that web reports are hard to make and understand

Delivers website+logfiles

Well integrated companies

ITDepartment

ITDepartment

MarketingDepartmentMarketing

DepartmentOther

DepartmentsOther

Departments

ManagementManagement

ValueAddedWeb

Agency

ValueAddedWeb

Agency

e-Enabled business managers from all departments that can act and decide as soon as data comes in

e-Enabled business managers from all departments that can act and decide as soon as data comes in

Deliver logfiles, insights, know-how,

solutions, trends, the right tools, long-

term advice

Why You Need Web Analytics

� Goal settingExamples:

– Decrease costs by e-handling

– Site satisfaction at >80 percent…– Double your customer base…

� Challenge:– Determine what is desired,

what is realistic,what is achievable…and then plan

� Internet offers a unique trackeable and personalisable medium that, if properly managed and correctly interpreted can give youa fair and unbiased 24/24 view on your business

Measurement is the first towards management

Our expert recommendations

� Adapt metrics system so thatstatistics become meaningfuland easy to interprete by business

� Analyze not absolute numbersbut focus on trends

� Learn the meaning of definitionsand get insight in numbers

� Filter undesired traffic fromlogs that inflate numbers

� Start with a set of qualitymetrics to watch monitor andset realistic business objectives

Emakina Service Range on Statistics

Past TomorrowNow

Analyze

�Review historical log files and give second expert opinion

�Accuracy and reports�Review historical

objective-strategy mechanics

�Benchmark analysis: identify weakness & strengths

Analyze

�Review historical log files and give second expert opinion

�Accuracy and reports�Review historical

objective-strategy mechanics

�Benchmark analysis: identify weakness & strengths

Act

� Install business reporting solutions: dashboards and drilldown reports

�Setup appropriate filtering and definitions

�Help you to observe and understand trends

Act

� Install business reporting solutions: dashboards and drilldown reports

�Setup appropriate filtering and definitions

�Help you to observe and understand trends

Plan

�Define measurable and manageable key performance indicators

�Deliver strategies to meet and deliver on those KPIs

� Integrate KPIs in daily management

Plan

�Define measurable and manageable key performance indicators

�Deliver strategies to meet and deliver on those KPIs

� Integrate KPIs in daily management

Questions?