Mobile banking – there’s an app for that?
While preparing for a presentation later this month in Singapore about the impact of mobile devices on the banking sector, I came about the following opening line a a recent report by eMarketer (1)
“By failing to make more advanced mobile apps available, UK banks are missing out on chances to add value to their customers’ banking experience, acquire new customers and repair trust damaged since the 2008 financial crisis.”
Coincidentally, today is also the day that Absa, one of the four major retail banks in South Africa announced the launch of their mobile banking app (2), some 18 months after FNB and the last one of the big four retail banks to do so. Sure, FNB, being named the most innovative bank in the world in 2012 (3) might be a tough act to follow but I was wondering if it would be possible to somehow assess the impact on Absa of not having a competitive online offering for such a long time.
One of the best places to find out about the interests of the digital consumer is google trends so that’s where I compared brand share between Absa and FNB for the last 26 months (see fig 1)
Absa and FNB search interest in South Africa
Basically what this graphs tells us is that gradually, in recent months, FNB has managed to overtake Absa in number of searches for their brand on Google South Africa. But given the advertising drive FNB embarked on during that period it is only to be expected that their brand interest would grow. What blew me away though was my next comparison, of ‘FNB online’ vs. ‘Absa online’ (fig 2)
Absa online vs FNB online
During the period under review, FNB has managed to completely dominate the mind of the digital banking customer. In fact, ‘FNB online ‘generates more searches than the generic term ‘online banking’. Absa on the other hand performs way below what their brand strength would lead to believe. The bank is obviously not perceived by their customers as an online banking platform.
Google trends only shows relative data so it is impossible to say from these graphs how big the gap in absolute numbers is between these two banks. Nor can one tell if FNB has established a lasting online advantage in the retail banking sector in South Africa. What should be clear from this though is that if you don’t have your eye on the ball when it comes to online, someone else will stake their claim.
(disclosure: I am an FNB customer but would like to think this has not influenced my observations in this post in any way)
1 – UK banks and mobile. eMarketer, March 2013.
2. http://www.techcentral.co.za/absa-banking-app-launched/39494/
3 -http://www.fin24.com/Companies/Financial-Services/FNB-scoops-global-banking-award-20121010
8 Tasty Takeaways from the Google Day @ Clicks2Customers
The head honchos of Google South Africa hosted a Google Day at the Clicks2Customers offices on 27 March 2013. The purpose of the event was to put names-to-faces, talk tech and share ideas between the three organisms of the SEM ecosystem:
- Online businesses (advertisers)
- Clicks2Customers (digital agency)
- The local Google team (global advertising network)
I’ve attended various Google Engage events, where literally hundreds of geeks and online marketers gather for two days learning about Google’s new product offerings. I’ve enjoyed these mass-appeal events, but last week’s intimate half-day session at Clicks2Customers’ new offices in Cape Town CBD (below) delivered plenty of actionable insights.
View from Clicks2Customers’ new office in the Cape Town CBD
Here’s what I took away from the session:
#1 Universal analytics is coming
Google’s Universal Analytics is essentially an “upgrade” to Google’s popular free analytics tool, which will allow website owners to track users’ actions on their website across multiple devices.
In the past, if a person first visits a website on their phone, then visits on their work computer, and then visits on their home computer – those three sessions would be considered three different visitors to the website.
With Google’s Universal Analytics, if that same person accesses a website using different devices — provided Google is able to associate the user to a unique Google account — the user’s multiple sessions will be grouped together and treated as one universal engagement with the website.
Google’s Universal Analytics utilises a user-centric approach to aggregate all interactions,
both online and offline
A user can be identified to Google’s Universal Analytics by using the Chrome browser, using an Android phone, or by using any of Google’s services while logged in (Gmail, YouTube, Google+, Picasa and dozens more).
The biggest impact of universal analytics’ user-centric approach — from an SEM perspective — is:
- The ability to attribute your traffic to the originating source/s better.
- The ability to get a better understanding of your visitors’ browsing habits across multiple devices.
#2 Google+ is now at 500m active users
Self-proclaimed cheese-master Brett StClair from Google ZA’s head office blew me away with the latest stats about the size of Google’s social network, Google+.
Not even 24-months old and they’re at a staggering half a billion “30-day active” users worldwide.
This is how Google+ stacks up against the other big social networks, in number of active monthly users:
Facebook: ±1 billion
Google+: ±500 million
Twitter: ±300 million
According to StClair, the beauty of the G+ network is that once you’re signed up, you don’t necessary need to go to you “G+ wall” to benefit from your Googlified social network.
Google will intelligently inject or overlay useful content from your social network into the other Google properties that you’ve been using and loving for years already. It may be a personalised search result, a YouTube video your friends watched and enjoyed, or a social share on your news site.
Bottom line: Google’s long-game, is fast becoming their NOW-game. It’s high time that online brands claim their stake in the Google+ landscape. Like all previous major Google rollouts — Search, Adwords, Local, Video — early adopters will score.
#3 Bidding on your own brand is still controversial
Without a doubt, the greatest debate of the afternoon was sparked by Google’s Declan Hollywood. During his presentation about Google AdWords strategies, Hollywood stated that it is still important to bid on your own brand terms as part of your paid search strategy.
One particular member in the audience, representing a well-established South Africa online retail brand, opposed this view vehemently, citing internal research, which demonstrates that by bidding on your own terms, you are paying unnecessarily for traffic you would have received anyway without a cost, via the first organic result in the SERP.
Some agreed. Some disagreed.
However, by end of the day, when the dust was far from settled, these fair points were raised:
- If you don’t bid, one of your competitors could try poach your traffic (especially if you’re not able to trademark protect your brand)
- Bidding on your own brand should be relatively cheap
- Bidding on your brand, could push one of your competitors off the first pages
- Bidding on your brand, allows you to present seasonal messaging, campaigns and specials to searchers
- Bidding on your own brand, with sitelinks, allows you to show a greater number of deep links to your site
- You can potentially monopolise the entire space above the fold
This screenshot of a search for the brand “Yuppiechef” illustrates how a brand can monopolise all real estate above the fold in the SERPs:
Yuppiechef has monopolised 90% of the area above the fold using Google AdWords, Google Search, Google+ Business listings and regular posts to their Google+ Page
#4 Where will online brands spend their money in 2013?
Tom Van den Berckt, head of strategy at Clicks2Customers, shared some of the digital agency’s insights and predictions for the year ahead.
Two slides I found most interesting illustrated likely shifts in digital investment for 2013.
Slide 1: Digital marketing technologies that UK companies will increase investment in this year
Slide 2: Digital marketing channels that UK companies will invest in this year
Source: Econsultancy/Responsys Marketing Budgets 2013 Report – which researched how UK brands will allocate their online and offline marketing budgets in 2013.
This data was reassuring. It matches almost exactly where we — an online travel retailer — are directing our marketing budget for 2013.
#5 E-commerce is becoming commerce
“E-commerce is going to be a thing of the past. In the future it’s just going to be commerce.”
This was one of Luke McKend’s strongest messages of the afternoon. In the past, buying from a bricks-and-mortar shop and buying online were distinctly different activities. He asserts that in the future, almost all commerce is going to have an online component.
Consider this scenario:
- You search “dishwasher” in Google
- You click on an advert or listing that takes you to the Makro / Walmart website
- You read, research, and narrow your choice down to two models you like
- To make your final decision, you go into Makro / Walmart to chat to a sales assistant and kick the tyres of your wife’s new best friend
- Of your two choices, you decide on the slightly more expensive, but more eco-friendly model
- You pay, and they deliver the next day
The question to us marketers: how do we join the dots between online research and offline sales?
The answer: Google’s Universal Analytics.
Provided Makro is able to associate your purchase with your Google account (e.g. via your unique gmail address), Google’s Universal Analytics will be able to attribute the in-store sale back to the tiny text advert you clicked, after your very first Google search a few weeks earlier.
But wait, there’s more…
Lloyd Thomas, head of client services at Clicks2Customers, shared a video later in the afternoon that demonstrates how it’s possible to track and record real-world (i.e. “analog”) actions as “page views” in Google Analytics.
(Skip to 0:47 if you’re the impatient type…)
Anyone else feel the cold shivers?
So what’s next?
IMHO, once NFC technology is a standard smart phone feature, identifying a user is going to be relatively easy.
If you — or more importantly your phone — enter a NFC-monitored area (strategically placed near a physical product / store / area), any number of actions can be triggered. These actions could trigger in-store immediately or at a later stage online.
Two scenarios:
In-store:
You walk into a sports store. The NFC sensor you’ve just walked past identifies you, looks up your recent online browsing habits relating to sports (general interests or product specific). Bingo! The system picks up that you’re a keen runner and have been searching and researching Adidas’ latest range of trail running shoes.
The system passes this info to an in-store sales assistant, who now has an insight to your desired purchase, before you’ve even made it to the shoes section.
Or perhaps…
Online (after in-store “browsing”):
You pop into your local sports store. While in the store, a NFC sensor identifies you and tracks that you’ve spent more than 10 minutes trying on various trail running shoes.
That evening, you go online and start researching “trail running shoes”. If the store you went into, are advertisers on Google’s network, they could be alerted of your online activity and their adverts could be triggered and tailor made for you, based on the models / prices you saw in-store earlier that day.
Yessiree… Things are going to get interesting for marketers in the next couple of years.
#6 How to set up social extensions for your Google PPC Ads
Social extensions within AdWords is Google’s way of including your Google+ follower count to your PPC ads. Here’s an example:
Example of Google AdWords Social Extension
Why bother setting this up?
On average, PPC ads with annotations see a 5-10% uplift in click-through rate. The AdWords Social Extension helps you show more of them (other annotations include map, site-links, phone number, product and customer ratings).
In order to get social extensions working, you need to do the following:
- Set up social extensions in your AdWords account
- Set up a Google+ page for your business
- Link to your website from your Google+ page (this is step 1 in verifying your page is associated with your website)
- Add the Google+ badge to your website (this completes the verification – i.e. your site is indeed linked to your AdWords account)
Bonus tip: if you post something to your Google+ page every 24 hours, your business details will appear on the RHS of the SERP (see #3 above).
#7 Find YouTube trends
For years I’ve wondered where all my “cool friends” hear about the latest viral YouTube clips before I do. Now I know:
http://www.youtube.com/trendsdashboard
This nifty tool by Google helps you uncover trending videos. The best feature of this tool is the ability to filter by country, age and gender. You can also compare results across three different demographics, side by side:
YouTube Trends tool allows you to compare and discover trending videos by demographics – country, age, gender
#8 Find out how Google categorises you, the advertiser’s target market
Most of us probably know that Google uses cookies to store certain information about us. They store info, which they can use to customise adverts to our age, gender and interests.
But do you know that you can actually view and edit these interests? In other words, remove the guessing and tell Google exactly what you would, and would not like to see in your adverts.
To view or edit your Google Ads Preferences visit:
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
This page will list all the information Google knows about you, based on browsing / search patterns on the particular browser and computer you’re currently using.
Remember, your Ads Preferences are linked to the cookie on the machine you’re using (not your Google account), so the preferences only apply to a particular browser on a particular machine. The preferences are reset if you delete or clear your browser’s cookies.
If you want to remove or add new preferences, you can do this on the Ads Preferences page. There is also an option to opt out.
It can be quite revealing / funny / shocking to see what Google knows about you. Here’s what Google knows about me… on this machine at least 
Find out how Google view you, using the Google Ads Preferences Tool
With Google’s recent shift to a single, product-wide set of T&Cs, its single login approach, and the recent release of Google Universal Analytics, there hasn’t been any official announcements about whether Ads Preferences will continue to be linked to cookies on a browser/computer basis, or whether these preferences will be linked to our Google accounts in the future.
It seems inevitable that the shift will happen, so keep an eye on this space.
It will influence advertisers and consumers in a big way.
In summary
The Google ecosystem is constantly evolving.
As marketers and business owners, it’s vital to read, research and talk to people that are operating at the coalface of this evolution. Events like the Google Day @ Clicks2Customers is a great place to do just that – whilst picking up a few useful tips along the way.
Easy Social Media Segmentation
With the growing influence of social media as a traffic source to websites, Google has introduced a new set of social reports to Google Analytics which can help marketers understand the social impact on their website. While these reports do offer some new metrics like social interaction, they are somewhat silo’d from other Google Analytics reports which still use the standard mediums of cpc, referral, organic and direct. That means that unless you are tagging all your social links properly (which you should be endeavoring to do, see our post on link tagging here) you won’t be able to compare your social traffic in the other Google Analytics reports….or will you?
This is where advanced segments come in. Fortunately, untagged social links will generally fall into referral traffic which has a recorded source (this is unlike email which will either go to direct or referral traffic making it critical to tag effectively). This means that we can create advanced segments which group all the most common social sources (and correctly tagged medium=social/social-media) into a segment.
With this segment you will now be able to segment and compare channels in your non-social reports as shown below in the traffic sources report. One thing to bear in mind though is that comparing your new social media segment with the standard referral segment will in effect be double counting, as your social segment will overlap with the untagged social referrals. Hence you will need to have another advanced segment to show all referral traffic excluding social sources.
You might be thinking this seems like a lot of work, and wondering where you should begin. Don’t worry we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you and created the two segments which you can simply just click and paste into your account. All you have to do is click on the links below while logged into your Google Analytics account and when you are prompted to, select a profile to add it to (you can always share it later among all your profiles in the segment settings).
Click to Copy the Social Media Segment
Click to Copy the Referral Excluding Social Media Segment
The above segments are based on the most common social networks, social tools and link sharing services we could find, which you can add to or remove from (to segment just one or two social networks) as you see fit. If you would like some more help on setting up advanced segments you can always contact us for some expert assistance.
Please note while these segments have been tried and tested, it is your responsibility to verify they are working correctly in your account.
Keyword Count With Advanced Segments
In addition to your standard keyword reports, it is often very useful to segment into groups by keyword phrase length. This will not only allow you to gauge how much of you traffic is short/medium/long tail but also the comparable performance between each group. The purpose of this post is just to share with you (with a little help from Avinash Kaushik) some premade Google Analytics custom segments which you can easily add to your own account.
To copy these segments into your account simply log into your account and click on the links below, you will then be prompted to save the segments to the profiles you would like to use them in. Once saved you can use these segments to compare different keyword phrase groups by the amount of words in each phrase:
If there are any other advanced segments you are trying to setup but just can’t get the results you’re looking for why not contact us for some expert help.
Please note while these segments have been tried and tested, it is your responsibility to verify they are working correctly in your account.
Visitor Intent With Internal Site Search
Want to know what your users are looking for once they get onto your site? Want to know if they actually find what they are looking for? The Site Search reports in Google Analytics are a good place to look to help answer these questions.
You can find these reports in the Content reports section on the right of your GA interface:
These reports will show you a range of useful metrics specific to the Site Search reports, such as:
- Number of people using your site search facility vs those who didn’t
- The interaction, visitor type and conversion rates of people who searched vs those who didn’t
- The keywords and search categories they used to search on your site (make sure these are incorporated into your search engine strategy)
- The number of times they refined their search query in a session (which helps show if they found what they were looking for first time)
- The length of time they spent on the time after they searched
- The percentage of ‘searchers’ which exited the site just after searching, indicating they didn’t find what they were looking for.
Apart from the Site Search metrics in these reports, by applying custom segments to other reports in your Analytics account you can gain even more perspectives and comparisons of your web data. Below are two links to copy some basic Site Search related custom segments into your account, which will help you segment your analytics data based on whether visitors used your site search facility or not:
Visits which used site search
Visits without site search
Setting Up Site Search Reports
If you open your Site Search reports and there is no data there, you would most likely need to still set up your Site Search (if Site Search is set up in your account and still not tracking you can always contact us for some expert assistance). This can be quite simple if your site uses parameters in the search results URL like below:
www.mysite.com/searchresults?keyword=new iphone&search_category=apple products
What you would need to do to set up the internal search features for your profile is to go to the profile settings in your Admin panel:
Scroll down to the site search settings and enter the relevant parameter names, which using the above URL example would be:
If your site search results don’t have the search details in the URL with parameters, there is a workaround for this using virtual page views to artificially insert the parameters in the page URL which is sent to Google Analytics (see below the code using our example). This would mean that while the displayed URL of the search results doesn’t hold any information of the search made, the data sent to your analytics profile does. This is however trickier to setup so if you need some expert help contact us and we will be glad to assist.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXX-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/searchresults?keyword=new iphone&search_category=apple products' ]);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);
(function() {var ga = document.createElement(’script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (’https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(’script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();
</script>
Digital Strategy: Keep The Wheel Turning
What is Digital Strategy?
If you go to Wikipedia the answer you will get is this:
“Digital strategy is the process of specifying an organization’s vision, goals, opportunities and initiatives in order to maximize the business benefits, digital investments and efforts provide to the organization.”
While this definition may seem very abstract it contains a few key points which allows us to greatly simplify it into something much more digestible:
At the core of this definition is the fundamental assumption that every organisation and digital investment has a goal. Moreover, that the goal of a digital investment is inextricably linked to the goals of the organisation.
THE PROCESS
Despite focusing on the digital assets of an organisation, at the end of the day digital strategy is still just a strategy. As such the process thereof can be broken up into four steps of strategy development:
One mustn’t however forget the fundamental building block of measurement, which is critical for each step of the way. This is especially relevant due to the measurable nature of the digital world, which is also one of its key strengths.
You might think this a very broad theoretical outline, which is hard to keep focused of in day to day activities. That may be true, especially since each phase will have its own sub processes which more often than not, incorporates elements from other phases. That said, I still think it is very important to have an ongoing and structured strategic outlook which incorporates these different phases, and most importantly the relation between them.
This means for instance, making sure that in the planning phase, a framework is properly outlined, to be effectively developed in the implementation phase, so that when the organisation has to react (possibly months or even years from now), it has a solid framework which allows it to be agile. A classic example would be how Amazon was able to completely change their ‘store front’ only hours after Steve Job passed away to accommodate the expected surge in interest in Steve and Apple in general.
At the end of the day my point is: Agility is arguably one of the most common elements which distinguish industry leaders. Moreover, it is only with a holistic and ongoing view of the strategic process that this agility can be achieved, especially in the digital space where things are moving so quickly.
Provide your visitors with sufficient scent
This post discusses the importance of scent and trigger words on a landing page.
In order to have a successful landing page, it’s important to provide your visitors with sufficient scent. This will lure them to complete the desired action.
Think about a mouse trap: the cheese provides scent, while the mouse performs the desired action. In this case, the mouse is trapped (not the best example). You don’t want to harm your potential customers, but you do want to provide them with strong scent to increase the possibility of completing an action – an action that you identify as a conversion.
What is scent?
Scent is made up of the parts of your website that attract visitors; the parts that stand out for them. These could be images, links or headings that “speak” to the visitor and quickly reassure them that they are browsing a relevant webpage.
It’s important to remember that all website visitors are different and have unique needs. Marketers create groups of visitors and define personas.
Wikipedia defines persona (marketing) as: (In marketing and user-centered design, personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way.)
When designing or optimising your landing page, think about the type of visitors (personas) visiting your landing page. What will your visitors be looking for? Does your landing page immediately address their needs? Are there sufficient links for the visitor to continue their session? Including sufficient links ensures that the visitor remains in a state of belief – belief that your website will provide them with an answer. Visitors need to believe that they will find this answer, even if they don’t find exactly what they’re looking for on the initial landing page.
A simple example:
You own a jewellery store that’s been operating for 75 years, specialising in the finest engagement rings.
You have a website, and the search phrase providing the majority of visitors is “diamond engagement rings”.
A gentleman may be doing research in order to find the perfect engagement ring. Alternatively, a lady may be trying to find her ultimate engagement ring, so that she can indicate to her boyfriend the ring she desires.
Ideally, the scent you want to include on your landing page should appeal to both personas.
By including the below content on your landing page, you will address the requirements of both personas.
This may appeal to men browsing your site:
“Give her the perfect engagement ring”
“Ensure she is thrilled with this worthy and precious engagement ring”
While this may appeal to women browsing your site:
“Show him your ultimate engagement ring”
The following may speak to both ladies and gents:
“How our diamonds are crafted”
“View our state-of-the-art Range”
“Over 75 years’ experience in jewellery”
“Our Store History”
This copy may also appeal to people who are meticulous or require a lot of reassurance – people who like to make decisions based on facts.
Checklist
Included below is a simple checklist you can use to evaluate your landing page content and/or relevancy.
*While going through this checklist to evaluate the effectiveness of your landing page content, it is extremely important to remember the top search phrases that are driving visitors to your landing page.
- Is the content (answer to search phrase) immediately available to your website visitors?
- How much related and persuasive content is provided to entice your visitor?
- Do your links contain trigger words that prompt visitors to obtain more information?
- Does the landing page address the following:
- Why the visitor should take further action;
- What the offer is;
- How to get started / what to do next.
Of course, there are also many design-related components that contribute to a successful landing page. Such components might include: navigation structure; headers and sub-headers call-to-action; search facility and more.
So next time you evaluate the effectiveness of your landing page, ask yourself – “Is there sufficient scent for the different types of persona that enter my landing page via my top keywords?”
Optimising the content of your landing page, and gearing it towards your visitors’ interests – based on the top search phrases – will have a positive impact.
If You Build It They Will Come. But Will They Stay?
An important part of a solid digital strategy is effective budget planning. Of that budget the main ongoing talking point is generally traffic generation, or in other words “how much and where should we invest in order to get people into our website”. In fact many digital strategies are completely based around budget allocation for traffic channels. These strategies resemble a process as follows:
The goal of this post is to focus on one of the most overlooked and beneficial areas to invest in: Conversion Optimisation. More specifically, the cost benefit of budgeting for and executing Conversion Optimisation projects.
You may ask what Conversion Optimisation is. The broad answer would be “anything which could increases conversion rates”. For the purpose of this post let’s just focus on site changes, where examples would include testing different landing page layouts, testing different call to action copy or even just testing the colour of a button.
Now before we continue, I would like to highlight the underlying principle for this post: Successful Optimisation projects have ongoing benefits. While increasing conversions purely through increasing traffic is an ongoing cost increase and with little effect on ROI. In other words: successful optimisation project = once off cost = extended benefit.
Let’s use a practical example to really show the principle:
- You have a website.
- It sells widgets at R100 each.
- For every 1000 visits to your site you sell 20 widgets. In other words your conversion rate is 2%.
- You get an average of 40000 visits to your site every month.
- You’re paid traffic brings in 30000 of your monthly visits and costs R60 000. That’s R2 for every visit.
So assuming you don’t invest in conversion optimisation and all other things held constant your forecast over the next four quarters will look something like this:
Now let’s say you take 10% of your traffic budget in the first 2 Quarters and invest in conversion optimisation testing. The first quarter you start with a landing page test and increase your conversion rate to 2.1% the second quarter you hit it ‘big’ and increase it again to 2.30% with more effective copy. Then in the final quarters you put all your budget back into just traffic generation. Your forecast will look like this:
Through no budget increases you have managed to increase your ROI and yearly revenue by R80 400.
This is of course a huge simplification, but the principle I am trying to drive home is not that conversion optimisation will always produce rewards (the first quarter actually had less ROI and revenue) or in what ratios you should allocate budget. Rather what I want to drive home it that optimisation efforts do cost money and require an ongoing commitment of testing and implementing to really reap the extended benefits.
So if need be, start small, but make sure to start at all. The chances are the more you practice and test the better your organization will become at running and implementing successful tests, which means even lower marginal costs for optimisation and more potential wins.
Simple Analysis Starting Points Using Google Analytics
Site Search
If you have a search facility on your website, you should setup “Site Search”. Site search will allow you to view the search terms that visitors are entering into your search facility.
Some Site Search outcomes you may wish to check:
- Are there any relatively high-volume search phrases that bounce? I.e. Visitors use your search facility, enter a particular search phrase and thereafter immediately leave your website, perhaps due to irrelevant results?
(This metric is called % Exit) These high volume search terms will require better search results, to improve the user experience and retain the visitor.
- You may want to promote high volume search terms, especially in the case where these search terms result in revenue – which Google Analytics also measures.
- Do visits to your website that include the search functionality have a higher conversion rate? If so, this could mean that your search facility is working well and you may want to lead more visitors down this path.
- What Percentage of visitors utilise the search facility on your website? There is no clear “right” or “wrong” here, but if you are making changes to your navigation or website structure, this is certainly a metric you would like to check, especially in the case where visits that include site search, yield a better conversion rate.
Revenue & Transactions
- Which marketing channels do most of your high value transactions come from? Transactions with a high sales value might originate from a particular campaign. By promoting these campaigns further you will increase the likelihood of receiving more high value transactions. You will also be able to segment the products that provide the biggest net profit and thereafter, look to see which campaigns contributed to these product sales.
- Other obvious metrics include Revenue and Conversion Rate per Marketing Channel (Paid Search, Organic Traffic, Direct Traffic, Referral Traffic and Email Marketing)
Where do visitors exit your site?
- “% Exit” is the metric that you need to observe to find this information. “% Exit” will indicate the percentage of site exits that occurred from a particular page, or set of pages. If there is a high % exit on your Store Locator page, this is understandable, as the visitors may have “found” what they are looking for – your physical location. If there are pages that have an “odd” high % Exit, these pages may need to be optimised. Of course, visitors have to end their session sometime and eventually leave your website, so interpreting this metric in context is very important.
Top Landing Page Bounce Rate
- Your Top Landing pages (the first page a visitor sees) and Bounce Rate (Single page visits) are a great combination. Usually only a few pages make up the bulk (> 50%) of top landing pages. Monitoring their bounce rate is important. Also, these pages could be considered ‘low hanging fruit’, as improving their efficiency would have a positive effect on the bulk of visitors.
Segmenting your data
Segmenting your data is very important and helps you understand how different “types” of visitors interact with your website. Here are some Segments you may wish to create in Google Analytics:
International Visitors
This will show you how visits from international countries interact with your website. Perhaps there are some good organic keywords with high conversion rates and sales. You can then start a Paid Search campaign targeting these keywords and location to maximise revenue.
Social Media and Email Marketing
Segment all your Marketing Channels. In order to segment Social Media and Email marketing campaigns, you will need to ensure that these channels are properly tagged. This post will help you do this. With proper tagging of these marketing channels, you can view how visits from these channels perform. (Perhaps average page views is a lot less for these marketing channels, prompting you to create more specific landing pages for these channels) Also, with Email marketing correctly tagged, you will be able to see, with Multi-Channel Funnels how Email Marketing ‘fits’ into your Conversion paths.
Brand and Non-Brand Keywords
Segmenting your Non-Brand keywords is always a good idea, it will depict your conversion rate for the more competitive and generic search phrases. Also, you can understand what sort of keyword diversity constitutes to the Non-Brand keyword mix.
Other segments you may want to experiment with include:
Visits that started checkout process;
Store Locator Visits – What Percent of Traffic is looking for your offline stores?;
New vs. Returning Visitors – How do they interact differently; how do conversion rates differ?
With the “new” version of Google Analytics, your custom reports can include Filters, where you can segment your data. In other words, you can extract only the metrics you want, based on specific marketing channels or types of visitors!
The Benefits Of A KPI Dashboard
One of the components of web analytics is ensuring that your web analytics tool is properly setup. Measurement and analysis of accurate data enables you to make effective strategic decisions.
Once you have a web analytics tool setup, you will need an effective dashboard.
Included below are a few notes on dashboards.
Measuring and Reporting:
Defining the KPIs that point towards your business and website goals is extremely important and, by creating a dashboard that contains marketing channel and Site Optimisation KPIs, it will clearly show you how performance is trending. This is something you need to watch closely.
Your KPIs will be dependent on your business objectives and thus will be different from business to business. The key is to ensure that they point towards your business goals and enable you to take action to improve performance.
Some example KPIs might include:
Visitor Conversion Rate
Paid Search Conversion Rate
Checkout Completion Rate
Other KPIs may include “Percentage of High Recency visitors”, where recency is defined as visitors that visited your site within the last 5 days, in this case: the higher the percentage the better. In other cases, like “Home Page Bounce Rate” the key is to keep the percentage as low as possible.
Standardised Reporting – Once you have an effective Dashboard, you are able to view all your critical KPIs at a glance. Perhaps you require a weekly dashboard, a monthly dashboard, or both.
Make faster and smarter decisions – An effective Dashboard will enable you to make quicker decisions. You will clearly know whether the critical few KPIs are trending up or down. If there’s a large performance change for the reporting period, you should investigate why the metric is yielding the performance, and in turn it should give you great insight.
Communication and Accountability – With standardised reporting on one dashboard, internal teams and agencies will be more accountable on measured performance. This will have a direct impact on your bottom line. Setting realistic goals and milestones becomes easier too.
Greater Profits – Once you start entrenching a sound web analytics strategy, you will improve your decision making, which should ultimately have a positive effect on your bottom line. Ensuring you have an effective dashboard to measure the critical KPIs is just the beginning.
