Web Site Measures

Everyone wants to use HITS as a way of measuring site performance. Understandable, after all, it was a buzz word used in the mid 1990's!

However, HITS does not mean a great deal when it comes to measuring web site performance. HITS has become an acronym; H.I.T.S = How Idiots Track Success. How very appropriate, for HITS mean nothing more than the number of files that have loaded on your web site. These 'files' could be graphics, downloads (pdf's, zip files and more) and pages. So, comparing site performance using HITS means nothing more than measuring the number of files downloaded, it doesn't mean how many orders, how much revenue, how many subscriptions, registered users and more. In other words, HITS is a rubbish way of measuring site performance, or is it? HITS has its place and can be useful but only if the business understands how it should be used. From experience, it is just best avoided.

So, how do you measure site performance? Well, there are other 'Industry Standard' metrics you could use. How about Visits? How about Page Impressions? Length of Visit? They're all good starting blocks but ultimately the best measure to use is one that has not yet been created. This is something SPIWEB covers in its KPI workshops; allowing business professionals to work out what their KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) should be. Typically, business users come up with a list as long as their arm once they have done this workshop but what it allows users to do is get those indicators which work best for their business model.

So, in closing, HITS is best left alone, let it sit on the fence and watch in awe as far as a KPI is concerned. Use HITS to measure site performance at your peril. There are better ones to be had, they just need discovering!

The State of Analytics for Today and Tomorrow

The Web today is vastly different to what it was 10years ago when I first ventured into this 'Big Brother' space. I remember thinking "Wow, they can tell what web browser I was using and pages I looked at...". This was of course around the time of the dotCom bubble bubbling and at that time, Web Analytics and Web Sites in general were very much considered 'nice-to-haves'. No one really cared about what visitors were doing on a web site, everyone cared about how many HITS they got but that was about it. You know, the funniest thing I remember when I started in the WA space was that a customer logfile was considered huge if it got to 10MB - 20MB (you know what a logfile is right? it's a file which stores all visitor data and contains information like your IP address, date, time and more - not very interesting really). That was huge! Nowadays, typical logfile sizes are in the magnitude of 1GB - 2GB, easily. That's getting on to quite a bit of data!

Any way, the main reason for discussing the past is how we have moved to where we are now and perhaps what the future will hold, so please read on if interested...

I came across an interesting article in dotNET magazine the other week; it quoted HITS as an acronym H.I.T.S, standing for 'How Idiots Track Success' - how apt! Measuring site performance by hits is as good as saying how many pictures, downloads, pages and more you have on your site. It doesn't mean an iota to measuring how many people (visitors) you may have had visit.
In today's ever increasing marketing efforts, businesses and individuals alike are having to prove expenditure. This means handing something to the markering manager/director to justify your actions.
Reliable Web Analytic tools can help in providing this insight. Top line vendors like Omniture, WebTrends, Web Side Story, Google Analytics and more can all provide information on how well a site might be performing. The problem? Is they all use jargon to ultimately give you what you want. Businesses and individuals need more conclusive results (i.e. What was our online revenue, what is our average order size/value, how many subscriptions did we get, downloads, clickthhroughs and more).

The best method for collection visitor data is using a small piece of tracking code which gets embedded in each and every web page you want to track visitor activity to. If the page isn't tagged, you don't get any results. With the arrival of Client Side Data Collection (this is the method we are discussing at the moment), collecting visitor data can be far surpassed by any stretch of the imagination. Now knowing whether Men or Women, An Accountant or Mechanic, A Blogger or Reader is visiting your site is achievable. Think about how you might promote your site content if you know who you are receiving the most. Why promote a holiday to Spain on your site when most people who visit are interested in holidays in the Carribean. How about knowing most people who come to your site are Female and not Male, would you change your marketing messages?
This is where Web Analytics has evolved to today and the top vendors mentioned above can all do this; some better than others!

What the future holds is anyones guess. I do have a sneaky suspicion that what is online at epic.makingithappen.co.uk (what the web might look like by 2015) could well be accurate (if not a frightening thought). Google and Amazon combining? Who knows. The name is catchy though... Googlezon! Check out the video, it is only 8minutes long but it does cover some interesting articles.

Thanks for reading my first blog (will be the first of many, I'm sure) and please do get in touch if you have any questions about what I have written or some additional comments you might like to add.

Until next time, take care.

Iain

Retention and Conversion Rates Online

RETENTION RATES (RR)

Do you know what your rention rate is of your visitors? Very few site owners care about this. In my experience, the cost goes into acquring the visitor, in many cases 'hoping' they engage in the process the site wants them to engage in and if not.. Well, who is actively chasing those failed conversions? Who is ensuring those who did convert are being looked after?

In the USA, it is a known fact that US companies lose approximately 50% of their customer base every 5 years; yet if they kept 1% of their customer base happy and loyal every year, they could see profits increase from anywhere between 20% - 95%. Pretty significant huh!

I think back to the web sites I have bought from over the years and I can honestly say, not many of them have given me much reason to remain loyal; no incentive. I have not received a discount coupon on my next purchase neither. Surely having a program like this is a sure way for a customer who knows and trusts your business to remain loyal by coming back and buying from you again and again?? But then again, perhaps not...

CONVERSION RATES (CR)

Do you know what your funnels conversion rate is? Your sites ability to convert a visitor into a customer? Whether it be buying something from your web site, downloading something from your web site, clicking on something (usually called Calls To Action by the way), registering or anything else that has a step by step process, these can all be tracked by top Web Analytic web site performance monitoring tools.

In an eCommerce web site, the 'ideal' conversion rate is in the range of 5%-7%. That is a staggering reduction for many customers we work with who believe their conversion rate to be much higher. Lets take 5% for example (nice round number); of 10,000 visits made to your web site (of which 7,500 visits might be made by repeat visitors, only 5% (approximately 500) visits actually do something you want them to do.

Now, equate 5% into real value (money - after all, this is an eCommerce example) and say of that 5%, approximately £10,000of revenue is generated. What if your companies target was to make £15,000; would you know what to do next? Lots of people I know 'think' the best way to improve their conversion rate is to drive a higher rate of visitors to the web site through various marketing activities. Now, whilst this might appear to be a good idea, those extra visitors you are trying to reach out to may not necessarily engage into your 'funnel'. Therefore you have to balance the acquisition cost to the business value.

Of those visitors you are 'reaching' out to, try and improve your engagement rate first of all (these are the visitors that actually participate in an action you want your visitors to actually do); you might need to do some research here to figure out what 'Calls to Action' get the most interest from your visitors; are they discounts, promotional offers, personalised to the individual (more about personalisation another day) or something else? You want to encourage the visitors as much as possible to 'click' that ad!

That is the harder part; getting someone to do something they might otherwise not want to do or maybe more importantly don't know why they should.

Getting a higher engagement rate is a good start to improving your conversion rate but it's not the only thing you should be worried about. The next question is 'Where Am I Losing my Visitors?'; where in the funnel are they being distracted, is the distraction something I'm promoting (therefore a re-structure to the funnel is required to remove distracting pointers) or are they getting a little lost or stuck and don't know where to go next?

More and more companies are now promoting email campaigns (as well as TV adverts, Print media like newspapers and so on) where the visitors are being driven to step 2 of a 5 step funnel (which is the optimum by the way for an eCommerce site - the fewer the steps the more likely the conversion rate will either remain or become higher). This clever marketing idea is helping more and more companies achieve in their online business goals.

Other ways of 'optimising' or 'improving' funnels is by adding a simple progress indicator bar so you know how many steps you have completed so far and how many more you have to go until you finish (if only I knew after 7 pages for an online survey I would receive that free cuddly teddy bear...).

At the end of the day though, to optmimise a conversion funnel there are some very simple rules that can be applied to all types of sites.

1) Clear, articulate and well placed CTA's (calls to action)

2) Easy to use process

3) Well laid out, not too compacted

The 3 tips mentioned above can really make a difference if beared in mind when designing a 'process'.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, take care.

Iain