Use Offline Research to Improve the Online World

Web traffic reports and other Web analytics tools such as online testing are excellent for finding out what visitors are doing on a Web site and how frequently the actions occur.

When it comes to finding out why Web site visitors are behaving as they are, you have to interact with real people. To understand why, watch what they do, how they behave, and talk to them.

This can be done through field studies (more on uie.com), or using a similar research techique, ethnographic research. In "Offline Research for the Online World", Dave Friedman of Avenue A Razorfish, talks specifically about how ethnographic research can provide information essential to successful design:

"...By understanding how consumers perform a task in the offline or “real” world, you can design more-appropriate online tools or site navigation structures to help consumers perform the same task online in a manner that feels natural to them. It seems like a simple concept, yet many marketers expect to find answers to online problems through analytics—which fails to provide the much-needed behavioral or motivational perspective..."

To capture the motivational and behavioural learnings from field studies or ethnographic research, create personas. Then use these personas to construct the scenarios and conversion funnels that you'll analyze using Web analytics tools.

June Li
ClickInsight

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Managing Conflict: Usability vs Visual Branding - Auto Industry

For potential car buyers, a good web experience can raise the buyer's intent to test drive a car. Such is the finding in a J.D. Power & Associates survey, reported in the recent Globe and Mail article Web traffic leads to showroom: survey.

Some content-heavy luxury car sites (Mercedes-Benz and Lexus) were assessed by visitors to be slower. Compared to so-called budget brands Kia and Hyundai, these sites were found to deliver a relatively poor visitor experience, one below expectations for prestige brands. Here's what Rohan Lobo, manager of automotive syndicated research at J.D. Power's Toronto office was quoted as saying about the best and highest rated sites compared to the poorer sites...

The most highly rated sites had some common design elements, he said, such as easy access to the home page, the ability to readily browse all models, comprehensible menus, fast-loading pages and interactive 360-degree views of vehicles.

Poorer-performing web sites were too cluttered and busy, had small print, were too slow to load, carried too much information that required too much movement and refreshing images, had too many links and no continuous direct view of the model lineup.

These findings are not surprising at all. But I wouldn't be surprised if this report causes heated visual branding content versus usability discussions in some marketing groups! How can this conflict be resolved to the benefit of both customers and the business?

Web analytics can help. Run some online split tests on design options with varying degrees of "less". Craft a campaign that will allow you to measure the impact of these variations on showroom visits, and perhaps the number of car test drives.

Comments?

June Li
ClickInsight

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Web Analysts don't have to be Tech Experts. Just Tech Savvy.

How deep does a Web analyst have to dive into Web analytics tool technology to be effective? In my opinion, they don't have to be an expert. They need to know enough about the differences in technology to understand how technology affects data collection. They need to understand why good tagging, good data clensing, and cookie management are important. And they need to be able to simplify all this complexity and explain this to Web site owners or project managers, so that when Web site builds, content changes or re-designs are in the works, there's time and money alloted for this work.

This post was triggered by a question on the Web Analytics Forum. Kristen Lindsey of Apokrisis asked...

"...Does anyone have some advice on a) what technological expertise would be partcularly good to acquire for analytics consulting...

Also, what do you think are limitations for non-technically trained web analytics consultant without gaining this sort of knowledge?..."
> Read Kristen's full post.

I replied...

"Web analysts should focus on interpreting results for business and communicating them rather than implementing tagging. Therefore, IMHO, Web analysts don't have to be javascript experts. They won't have the bandwidth to do both anyway! Web analysts should be *accountable* for ensuring the tagging is done properly, but they don't personally have to be *responsible* for doing the work.

So what should a Web analyst know about javascript? Know enough to do a quick spot check for gross errors (comes in handy at times when troubleshooting). Know that the implementation process varies for different vendors. Know what the common pitfalls are for the tool you're working with. Know where the extra effort needs to be spent tagging, and then know enough to make sure someone gets the needed tagging done right."
>Read my full post on the Web Analytics Forum

More thoughts on this subject...Successful Web analytics is more than tools & coding. A business-focused Web analyst will deliver more returns to the business faster. And since business savvy analysis and communication are hard to come by, my vote is to have analysts focus on improving the business.

Some Web analytsts are both business-savvy and tech experts. But they are few and far between. And if we set the bar that high, it'll be hard for the practice of Web analytics to grow. So strive for businsess-savvy and tech-savvy but not tech expert. What does being tech-savvy look like?

• Know the differences, benefits and limitations between server log file and page tagging technologies. Understand the idiosyncrasies of the tool you're working with. Understand how cookies work.
• Know enough to value precise tagging, plan for adequate project resources to tag, and spec the quality outcome you need.
  
• Hire the tech expertise. Partner closely with a tech expert.
• Know how to detect problems. Pass in-depth investigation to your tech expert. (Using a home-owner analogy... you'll know when your plumbing's leaking but you might not want to fix it yourself!)
  
• Train (or contract) someone else to implement the detailed tagging. All vendors provide training support if you want to build this expertise in-house.

What do you think?

June Li
ClickInsight

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Plan to Measure Your Web Site Sooner Rather Than Later

Anyone who's built a home or renovated one knows not having a thorough plan can lead to major cost overruns or compromises later. Let's say you're planning to add a suite for your in-laws. Not thought about adding an extra bathroom closeby? If you haven't roughed in the plumbing, slotting this extra bathroom in at the latter stages of the project will be expensive or impossible.

Although no walls or floors are involved on the Web, if the first time you walk through your analysis process is post-launch, you could run into walls of impenetrable data or compromised insight when you finally sit down to measure and assess your Web site or campaigns after implementation. It's best to think through what you need to measure and analyze when you design your Web site. Build measurement capabilities into the site the first time, not as an afterthought.

To make this conundrum clearer, here are three examples describing potholes that one might fall into if measurement and analysis aren't considered during design:

1. Analyzing Web site traffic after launching your Web site.

• Scenario: Your Web site has been launched, on time and on budget. You've used a content management tool that conveniently dynamically generates page names. Your site has a very flat file structure. Your page TITLE metatags have been optimized for search engines (as they should be) rather than uniquely describing page content.
  
• You look at your first set of Web analytics reports. They're utter gibberish! The page titles don't describe the content and because the page names are generated by the content tool, it's not clear without calling up each page what's on that page. Other than total page views and visitors, how are you going to analyze the site?
  
• What's the solution? Tag each page distinctly using an extra page id tag (if your Web analytics tool allows this) or override the content tool page names manually (may not be easily done, depending on the content tool).
  
• What about historical data? If you're using a logfile analysis tool, you may be able to reprocess the data. If you're using a page tagging script, you'll probably have to download and cross reference historical data offline.
  
• How could this have been avoided? Before you build your site, think through how you're going to analyze your site and make sure you'll be able to do so. During the site architecture stage, bucket your content into content groups. Try to integrate grouping into the file structure. Tag the pages as you build. See if you can override or supplement the dynamically generated page names with logical names, logical to business people at a glance.
  

2. Tracking search engine marketing campaigns, for lead generation.

• Scenario: Visitors click on paid/sponsored search engine ads featuring specials. There's more than one search marketing ad campaign, each with a different keyword basket but visitors are directed to the same landing page. The landing page has more information about the products and contains a call to action to download a discount coupon and take it to a physical store.
• In-store redemptions for the discount coupon are high. But which ads triggered the most redemptions? Which search engines? How soon after the campaign launched were these coupons first printed? The opportunity to measure and collect this information is lost and cannot be re-created. You can't find out which referral source was most effective, which special created the strongest pull or which creative was most compelling.
• What's the solution? Creating separate landing pages for each source and campaign. Create downloadable coupons with a different reference code for each product specials. More work is needed to make things measurable, but granularity will allow you link redemptions with ads, attribute success appropriately, and optimize your ad placement next time around. Spend money on the things that are working best.
  

3. Tracking and troubleshooting shopping cart conversion.

• Scenario: Shoppers add items to a cart and checkout. The checkout process is a single long page containing billing and shipping data entry boxes, including an email confirmation id field. All terms and conditions, such as product guarantees, return policy, credit card privacy and email privacy are included on another single large separate pop-up Web page.
  
• Once the page is submitted, a thank-you page confirms checkout is complete. Yes, you can measure the start of checkout and the end, but if abandonment is high, such a design makes it difficult to pinpoint the problem.
  
• What's the solution? Chunking allows usability problems to be pinpointed sooner. Split shipping and billing data entry onto two separate pages.
  
• Split the terms and conditions into four separate pop-ups, with hyperlinks closer to each activity. Label each pop-up uniquely, so that your Web analytics tool will differentiate each easily. Viewing frequency will show you which terms shoppers are more concerned with. Also, if more shoppers abandoned their carts after viewing a particular policy (eg. returns), this quickly raises a flag that there might be something unclear or unsatisfactory about the policy. You'll be able to target the problem quickly and decisively execute a solution.
  
• Indeed, you can fix problems like the one described after the shopping cart is up and running. But by then, you've probably exhausted your initial budget, and you'll need to fund an "enhancement", which is often more difficult to justify. If your cart is experiencing a very high abandonment rate, you might have lost credibility internally. Even worse, you've annoyed the many shoppers who abandoned their shopping carts, likely damaging your brand and painting your company as one that's difficult to deal with.
  

You might find the following articles on the ClickInsight Web site useful:
> 7-step process for effective Web analytics
> Web site pre-production: Foundation for success

Comments?

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June Li
ClickInsight..
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