faulker046

Web Analytics tools are great for providing a good view of one channel i.e. your website (ok, maybe slightly more than one channel e.g. some email, some social media, some offline). They worked great in silo for first few years of the internet because the only way for customers to interact with your brand online was on your site and websites were not an integral part of the business. Nowadays the story is different, customers interact with your brand in so many way, your website is just one small part of the whole "web" ecosystem and "web" is just one part of the whole "customer" experience and buying cycle ecosystem. Customer’s don’t think and operate in one channel i.e. your website. However, many "web analytics" tools do not even provide you full view of a customer journey and interactions online let alone the offline journey. To understand today's customer and performance of your marketing efforts, web analytics data has to move out of it...

I am sure you have heard of a story about a guy lost his ring in a dark alley. It was really dark and he could not see anything, so he went to a nearby lamppost and started searching for his ring underneath it. When asked why he was looking for ring under the lamppost, he said “because it is bright here”. That’s what most of the web analyst do. Even when the problem might exist somewhere other than what their web analytics data can show majority of the web analytics folks just look at “Web Data” for the answers. Why? Because that’s all the data they have easy access too. It is brighter there. Here are some other things which are in the “dark” areas. It is time for you to shine light on them: Ad Server – There are several factors that impact a performance of a campaign, many of them don’t show up in your web analytics tools, they reside within ad servers or with 3rd parties. Example: Which pages the ads was shown, what time was the ad shown etc. I will write more on this in a future ...

For past few years I have made several predictions about Web Analytics. This year I am going to make only one prediction but will provide five tips for 2012. Prediction This year the push will be towards “Multichannel Analytics”. Integration of various data sources, e.g. email, CRM, social media, call center etc. , with Web Analytics will take center stage. Five Tips for Web Analytics Expand your web analytics to consider other data sources We all know by now that no one channel exists in isolation. Web, email, mobile, social media, catalog, stores, call centers etc. all impact each other. Web is a just one part of the customer’s experience and journey towards purchase. To fully understand customer behavior and optimize your marketing you have to go beyond web analytics and look at data from other channels. Move from “How Many” to “Who” Majority of the web analyst today analyze “How Many” e.g. how many people landed, how many bounced, how many converted etc. “How many” is a great ...

Due to organizational structure, many marketers/analysts get a partial view of the customers’ conversion process data.  This result in them optimizing the wrong steps of the conversion funnel /channel. Read below about a shopping experience I recently had, it will make it clear how this narrow view can come in the way of an organization's ability to effectively optimize the right step/channel in the conversion path.  I was recently in the market to buy a laptop. I had a Lenovo laptop in past, which I really liked, so I decided to buy another Lenovo laptop. I went to their site, configured the laptop and chose various options. When I got to the last step, I decided to contact a live person because I was not sure of all the options that I had picked. I clicked on the little chat button on their site and connected with a sales guy. The person asked me to save my order (create an account etc.) so that he can find the order and help me with it. I did what he told me to but to my di...