Web Metrics ... Weather Vane for the CMO

By Jim Sterne

 

Once upon a time, a report crossed your desk that surfaced from deep within the bowels of your Web department. It was filled with stats about click-throughs, page views, unique sessions, and hits. You found it all very interesting at first glance, but not useful. These reports are generated and used by the webheads in your organization — that strange breed who live in the Twilight Zone between marketing and IS.

But if you took the time to study the report, you would discover customer information and data that you may not find anywhere else within your company — a window into the hearts and minds of your market. And you would realize that Web activity reports are the collective electrocardiogram of your prospects and customers.

 

Welcome to the world of Web analytics for CMOs: It's a world of Internet-based marketing and sales opportunities; a world of online trend and customer surveillance; and a world of eye-opening customer-generated data.

Mapping the Message to the Medium
Wouldn't it be nice if you had a definitive indicator of which promotional methods garnered the best results? As the Web becomes the research method of choice for considered purchases and a bellwether for brand allegiance, it also becomes an instructive indicator of where one's marketing dollar is reaping the most return.

The tendency to look online for product information is only going to increase. Whether we're talking about consumer or business purchases, when the inclination strikes, the Web is the first source for discovery, comparison, and acquisition decision making.

Marketing is tasked with bringing qualified people to the table. For some products, direct mail pulls more people to the Web; for others, radio ads bring people to the site. In some cases, television brings in a flood of Web browsers, while print ads do the trick more efficiently in other cases.

Managing the Message
Click-throughs aren't just a measure of how well your advertising, promotions, and PR people are doing their jobs. Click-throughs reveal which messages are working. Far more accurate and swifter than television audience studies, focus groups, or surveys, Web analytics divulge the response rates from all of your electronic outbound promotions. Which generates the most interest? "Tastes Great" or "Less Filling." What brings in more qualified leads? "Quality is Job 1" or "The Ultimate Driving Machine."

The Web offers A/B split testing like no other medium. Figures on how many people respond and how deeply they connect to the brand, all the way to purchase, are yours for the asking.

What's Popular at the Moment?
Page views are nature's way of telling you what people care about. Tabulate advertising dollars spent over time next to page-view activity, and look for the anomalies. Are commodity items getting a lot more fashionable than high-priced merchandise? Are home entertainment systems gaining in prominence while portable electronics remain flat? What might that trend look like six months out? A year?

Web audience segmentation can also be informative. How do advertising methods or prospect location impact levels of interest in different products? Are Europeans more likely to respond to a price reduction than Asians? Are Australians more interested in one product line over another? This information is vital for decision making about global marketing budget allocation, not to mention product development and distribution.

Competitive Review
A company Web site offers a more intimate brand experience than you probably imagined. So be aware that a customer who has a trying experience on your Web site will not think too highly of your company. However, a site that conveys an understanding of the customer's problems and is customer-centric will bode well for the overall impression the customer has of the site — and also earns good will for the company.

Comparing customer experiences on Web sites has become an additional measurement method for going head-to-head with the competition. There are three types of assessment, all of which work from the outside looking in: What do the Web sites look like to the customer? How do customers respond to the Web sites? And what impression do customers take away from the Web sites?

The first is a programmatic snapshot of the competition. How quickly do the pages load? How quickly can content be found? How functional is the site from a utilitarian perspective? How well do they show up in the search engines? Too detailed for the likes of the CMO? Wait for the roll-up.

Next comes the panel ploy. Identify a task and ask a few hundred people to perform it on your site and on your competitors' sites. Several services have corralled the subjects you need to run this sort of comparative experience experiment. How much did they like or dislike the experience? How hard was it to accomplish the goal on a variety of sites? How did their experience differ based on age, income, education, and personal interests?

The final arrow in your competitive comparison quiver is the focus group/usability test. Rather than the anonymous panel above, bring in customers and prospects you know, and listen very closely to what they have to say. What features does the competition have on their site that you should have as well? What areas of your site were built to keep internal politics from blowing up in your face, but are a complete waste of time to your customers?

While these elements may seem minute and inconsequential, taken together they create a relative picture of the whole experience. Just how well do you fare in a nose-to-nose comparison? Do you need to boost your Web spending to keep up with the guys across the street? Or is your Web site sufficiently superior that you should focus more resources on attracting attention or customer service?

Predict the Future
With any luck at all, your best and brightest product managers, your R&D team members, and maybe even your CEO have a dream. They have a vision of the way things should be and have figured out a way to get there.

Get your corporate philosophers to engage in some thought leadership. Have them write up their visions of tomorrow and see which are embraced by your Web visitors. Keep your eye on how the marketplace reacts to those trial balloons. The Board is looking to you to predict which way the wind is blowing. Direct feedback from customers and prospects is a wonderful tool for keeping your finger on the pulse of the planet.

So the next time a report of Web analytics crosses your desk, think of it in terms of the weather vane that can help identify the winds of change.

 

Jim Sterne is a 20-year veteran of marketing technical products. Since 1994, he has devoted his attention to the Internet as a marketing medium. He conducts two annual conferences on the subject of web analytics, is a frequent speaker, and has authored five books on Web-related marketing issues. Jim can be reached at www.targeting.com.

Read the MarketingNPV review of Jim Sterne's book, Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success .