Maximizing Website Payback.... by MeasureQuest

Is your Social Media strategy missing a key element?

2010-05-10T20:58:00.008-06:00

More and more companies are awakening to the potential of social media networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The volume of media attendtion to social networking is growing exponentially, causing companies to leap before they look. Before you charge in, ask yourself the following questions:

why do you want to participate in social media websites?
what value do you want to achieve?
how will you measure or track whether you are gaining the value you are looking for?
what will your cost in time and resources to maintain your social media presence?

When you have answers to these questions, you will have some of the key elements your will need for your social media strategy. The old adage, you can't manage what you don't measure will always apply. Take the time to plan out your measurement strategy and you will be better positioned to achieve the success you are looking for with social media.

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Use context to give your web metrics real meaning

2009-04-26T20:43:00.006-06:00

The trouble with basic web traffic reports is that they deal in raw data and not information. If you get 100,000 visitors to your site in a month or day, would you consider that a good number? What if I told you that your 100,000 visitors represented less than 1% of your customer base? Or that it was a decline from 1.5% of your customer base. Not such a good result, is it?

What about if on another traffic report you saw you were getting 10,000 visits to your online customer care section? Are you happy with that? What if you found out that 40% of those visits resulted in a call to your call centre?

It’s not enough to just to choose the right web traffic numbers to measure. We need to do the right analysis or comparison that will give our numbers real meaning. It's context that helps turn raw data into actionable information. It's the relationship between numbers that give real value.

Here are three ways to create more context in your web analytics metrics:

Ignore month to month comparison. Since a month can have 30, 31, 28 or in leap years 29 days, the comparison is not valid. You're comparing apples and oranges. We suggest you adjusted your metrics to a daily average. That way the daily average for February can be compared to the daily average of March reliably.
Always look to longer term trends. Make comparisons with your current year to one or two previous years so you can observe long term implications. Some traffic metrics change slowly over time and you may not notice a shrinkage or incremental growth in your results unless you compare to sometime in a previous year.
If your business is concerned with channelling more of your customers from your Call Centres to your online customer care, many of your metrics need to be related back to your number of customers. For example, if you measure Visits per day we suggest you also measure % of visits as a ratio of your total number of customers. This will help you see whether your online customer care is achieving the customer adoption you desire.

80/20 Rule Updated for Inflation

2009-04-20T05:44:00.006-06:00

Ever wondered where the "80/20 rule" comes from? Well thanks to Wikipedia - now we know. Don’t you just love the Internet! You can find anything there.

Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who observed that 80% of income in Italy went to 20% of the population. So with all due respect to Misters Juran and Pareto, I’d like to share my spin on the Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) as it applies to managing websites, adjusted for inflation (ha-ha).

After years of working and managing several websites as well as consulting on getting more ROI out of websites, here is my 90/20 Rule as it applies to websites:

90% of our effort only impacts 10% (or less) of our business objectives

90% of our website content only impacts 10% (or way less) of our bottom line

10% of our website traffic (or less) will give us 90% of what we need to know to manage our websites

So despite our web analytics software providing hundreds and hundreds of reports, my bet is likely only 10 reports really tell you what you need to know. Maybe only 10-12 numbers really matter. Maybe only 5-10 webpages make a tangible difference to your company's bottom line.

If you are spending hours every month analyzing pages and pages of web traffic reports, maybe it's time to reconsider where you can get the best value. It's the old "can't see the forest for the trees" syndrome. Drowning in data is not going to make your websites better or make higher profits for your company.

If we measure and manage just the real important stuff, the better chance we have to make a tangible impact on our websites and for our customers.

Let's rethink where we spend our time, energy and dollars on managing websites and starting focusing on just what matters. Then our websites will make a real difference.

Observations on Alberta's use of web analytics

2007-09-10T20:01:00.000-06:00

Recently I had the privilege of being interviewed for an article on the WebAnalysts.info website from out of Sweden. It's amazing to see how global interest has grown. Companies around the world are learning how to achieve more website ROI from the use of Web Analytics.

Read how Alberta companies compare to the rest of Canada on their application of web analytics and why senior management and not just the Marketing department needs to drive Web Analytics at your company.

We'll post another article later in the month for you. As always, here my commercial message. Cheers, Kathy.

At MeasureQuest we believe that just as much time and effort needs to be spent on measuring your online customer relationship as you spend measuring your offline ones. We partner with you to define KPI's that will help you measure and manage your website to move customers from offline to online customer care.

Contact us to help you get started.

What's preventing your customers from using your online self-service?

2007-08-31T15:55:00.000-06:00

Lately I’ve been to a number of websites with exceedingly busy navigation. Finding my user login can at times be a challenge, if not an irritant. This led me to consider the impact of poor ease-of-use on customers using online customer care.

Online customer care has become so much a part of how we use the Internet. According to InternetWorldstats.com , nearly 70% of those living in North America have access to the Internet. This means your customers expect they can do business with you online, instead of by phone or in person. Yet, if your customers struggle to find the online self-service login, they may decide it’s just easier to pick up the phone. This does present a challenge, especially if you are spending time and money to convince customers to use online customer care instead of your Call Centre.

Let’s take a look at some of the leading American telecom company websites and how their customers access online customer care.

What is interesting is the choice of the predominately right side of the screen for the log-in location. This occurs for all the sites except for ATT. In their case, they put the login to their online customer care virtually in the middle of the screen. A questionable choice, however the web designer did use plenty of white space, which does make it somewhat easy to find.

The Bell South login is harder to spot as you have to scan for it below the search area. Comcast has a provided a clear location for its online customer care login, although the layout is a little cluttered. Vonage takes a similar approach as Comcast, but with slightly less clutter.

The clear winner for the easiest to locate on the home page is Verizon with a one button approach, nice use of white space and a bright color to draw the eye.

As English language readers, we scan the page from left to right. So there is merit in having the login on the right side, where the visitor’s eye will land. Although this login location is not the consistent choice for all website designers. I have visited sites where the login has been positioned on the left.

For Web Analytics professionals, the position of the customer login is ripe for A/B testing. Create two different versions of your home page with the login in different locations. Then measure which login results in:

greater number of customer logins
more repeat visits
more visits to the “contact us” area (where a Call Center call will likely result)

This exercise will provide your company valuable information on which home page layout will drive more customers to your online customer care and encourage customers to stay away from your Call Center.

If migrating calls from your Call Center to your online customer care is a key company objective, then having a clear, find at a glance location for your login will give you the best results.

At MeasureQuest we believe that just as much time and effort needs to be spent on measuring your online customer relationship as you spend measuring your offline ones. We partner with you to define KPI's that will help you measure and manage your website to move customers from offline to online customer care.

Contact us to help you get started.

3 Important KPI's for Customer Service websites

2007-08-09T21:50:00.000-06:00

There are dozen of metrics that can be used for managing your customer service websites on a day-to-day basis. Yet, not enough attention is given to the development and monitoring of strategic key performance indicators (KPIs)to measure whether the website is actually meeting the company's objectives.

Here are 3 key performance indicators to have in your back pocket when measuring the success of your online customer care website. These are trending metrics. They are used for comparing one time period to another (ie daily, weekly, quarterly or annually). I exclude monthly as the two months you are comparing may have a different number of days.

My preference is to use daily metrics as they are smaller, easier to remember and can be more meaningful to the reader. Large numbers often intimidate or lose their impact because of their size.

#1 Online to offline contacts ratio

This ratio is used to measure your success at driving calls from your Call Centre to your online customer care.

Calculation: Average # of visits to the customer care section of your website / Average # of calls to your call center

Example: 1,000 Visits / 2,500 Calls = 0.4 to 1

As the ratio increases, it shows an increase in customer activity taking place on the web, instead of at your Call Center.

#2 Customer Visits Ratio

As an alternative to measuring number of visits per visitor, why not consider visits as a ratio of your total customers. As your customer base increases, you can determine if your website visits are growing at a proportionate rate.

Calculation: # of total customers / # of visits to customer care section

Example: 2,500,000 Customers / 50,000 Visits = 50

If the ratio increases, more of your customers are visiting or they are visiting more frequently. If the number is decreasing than it is possible that your customers are becoming less satisfied with their online experience.

#3 Online customer penetration

Most organizations overlook the need to measure what percentage of their customers are actually doing business with them via the web. The purpose of this metric is to see how successful you are at increasing the volume of customers dealing with you online.

Calculation: # of total visitors in a year / # of total customers

Example: 50,000 Visitors / 1,500,000 Customers = 3%

As the KPI increases, the greater the percentage of your customers that are using your website or the more frequently they are visiting.

At MeasureQuest we believe that just as much time and effort needs to be spent on measuring your online customer relationship as you spend measuring your offline ones. We partner with you to define KPI's that will help you measure and manage your website to move customers from offline to online customer care.

Contact us to help you get started.

How do you spell success for your website?

2007-04-20T01:10:00.000-06:00

You have hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to your website. Does that spell success for you?

Often companies get fixated on monthly visits to measure their website success. As long as visits continue to rise, month to month, they assume they are coming out ahead. Let's look at that assumption. Here is an example to consider:

	Feb-07	Mar-07	Variance
Visits	750,000	800,000	6.7%

Looking at these results you might suppose that the website owner would be pleased. Actually, they shouldn't be. As February has only 28 days of activity versus March's 31 days, we have a classic case of comparing apples with oranges.

A more accurate method would be to calculate the average visits per day, so that the months can be put on a level playing field.

	Feb-07	Mar-07	Variance
Visits/day	26,786	25,806	-3.7%

Here we see that actually March visits are down nearly 4%. Yet even this information does not tell the whole story. Let's look at some sample sales numbers for the same time frame:

	Feb-07	Mar-07	Variance
Sales	804	845	5.2%
Sales/day	29	27	-5.0%

Here we see the company actually achieved 62 fewer sales for March, than it needed to match February's performance levels. Not quite a good news story.

By having this information the website manager can now focus his/her efforts on increasing their level of sales, rather than trying to generate more and more monthly visits. While generating more visits can cause more sales, it may not be the most cost-effective way to impact their bottom line. This website manager would be wise to focus on converting more of the visits they are already receiving.

Concentrating on high gross visits is not the most informative way to measure success. It's not visits you need to measure, but how effective you are at achieving your desired results. It's time to measure what matters!

Drowning in website traffic data?

2007-04-04T20:38:00.000-06:00

Hits, visitors, visits, referrers, domains - there is no limit to the literally hundreds of reports that you can produce with a mainstream web analytics application.

But how can you decide which are the few key reports that are critical to your business and website success?

There is a simple answer! Choose the reports that help you make key business decisions about your website. And how, might you ask, can you do that? Identify the key business objectives for your website:

obtaining leads for your business,
generating sales,
providing online customer service to reduce calls and costs for your Call Center etc.

For example if the key objective is to reduce calls, then identify the activities or content sections of the website that result in an avoided telephone call. Focus your optimization efforts on streamlining the path to those activities and improving the effectiveness of those transactions.

If you focus on the few rather than the many, you will be able to identify the key reports that will help you manage your website more effectively and are more likely to achieve more tangible results.