Making Website Data Actionable: Using Analytics to Build Better Engagement

Editor's Notes

1. Introduction Short introduction on engagement Data Analysis We’ll talk a little about how you should look at the data you have Taking Action Next we’ll talk about how to prioritize your action and take a look at some real world examples Wrap Up After that we’ll wrap things up and get to some questions Q/A
2. So what exactly does “engagement” mean? At Marketo we think about it as connecting with people and building relationships Your building trust with your prospects and customers in a way that is convenient for them and provides value
3. At a high level you can measure this by customer loyalty and lifetime value or sentiment toward your brand or other metrics fairly disconnected from your website performance Set down your own goals for “engagement” It depends on your business and your website’s goals – to some extent Does this mean “conversion rate?” No, that is separate but tightly related Hard to convert a visitor that is bored by our site. But it does happen. Could convert on our product features, but never wants to return to our website If we engage them and build a relationship then they’ll always default to us For us “engagement” could mean trust in our brand, reading, our blog, etc. Different than requesting information. For an ecommerce site it could be providing a great user experience, providing and incentive to return It’s more about building trust and a relationship over time
4. But, we’re here to discuss website Set down your own goals for “engagement” It depends on your business and your website’s goals – to some extent Does this mean “conversion rate?” Sort of? No, that is separate but tightly related Hard to convert a visitor that is bored by our site. But it does happen. Could convert on our product features, but never wants to return to our website If we engage them and build a relationship then they’ll always default to us
5. Even if there are a million sites online that sell shoes, your site is different For most sites it will be a combination of website metrics, and hopefully offline metrics like the higher level customer loyalty and value or customer referred sales So you’ll want to determine your own most important metrics for engagement For a B2B business “engagement” could mean sales, subscriptions to our blog, etc. Different than requesting information. For an ecommerce site it could be providing a great user experience, providing and incentive to return It’s more about building trust and a relationship over time
6. Websites like this should only exist as examples of “what not to do” Is this site engaging? Only in a side-show, curiosity type of way. I don’t think any of us are aiming for that category.
7. As online marketers we typically have access to more data than we know what to do with Hopefully you all have access to website analytics, whether that’s Google Analytics, Adobe/Omniture, or something similar
8. At an even more basic level there are the actual server logs that record activity on your site. These are typically the domain of your web development or hosting teams, but they can be extremely valuable in identifying problems, and examining activity from certain IP addresses. Find someone in IT who has access to these and knows how to analyze them, buy them lunch and get really friendly.
9. Heat maps are another great source of data to visualize site usage.
10. Scroll maps as well present a very visual representation of site usage. Both heat maps and scroll maps are very valuable when presenting your case for a change or update to other groups within your company because the point is easily made without having to show charts and diagrams that may require a ton of explanation and aren’t readily understood.
11. User feedback testing – with humans though. OK, too much data
12. You may have an overwhelming amount of data, but really there is no such thing as “too much data” Review your website activity often – standard maintenance You need to be able to identify unusual activity, and explain why it’s happening If are running a test, check up on it often. You want to identify problems early. Learn it, live it, love it Dig Deep
13. Start by breaking up your analysis Monitoring Health You need to keep an eye on things to make sure everything is working as expected Don’t rely on IT or your hosting to do this Marketing health is different than technical health Although the technical performance can and does affect marketing health Updating and Optimizing Websites are living things and are continually changing Even if it ain’t broke, it’ll still change. How are users navigating your site? What are the most common paths after entry? Looks at each one of these from different angles. For example, are you bounce rates different by traffic source? By entry page?
14. Traffic looks good. Seasonal slump in the summer maybe? Let’s look at in a different way
15. Looking at a daily trend we see some odd spikes
16. What happened during that time? Big press coverage? Big campaign? Problem or Opportunity?
17. Let’s look at this in yet another way
18. Here is direct traffic. Looks like we found the source of the spikes. Is it real? Bot traffic? Something else? Either way it will probably sway your test numbers and goals obscuring the real data You need to be able to do this type of analysis if you want to make any kind of real progress
19. Build your hit list – here’s a few examples of areas that you can start looking at Don’t try to change too much at once. You won’t be able to tell what had a positive impact, or if anything did if they are competing changes You can’t do everything all at once… unless you’re starting with a site link Ling’s Navigation – use click tracking Popular content – opportunity to surface a top performing asset? Traffic sources – social traffic is highly mobile device centric
20. As an example, here are recent stats on the percentage of users on social media using a mobile device.
21. We think they want to learn about marketing They wan to learn about our product Once they get to our site do they see what expect? Are they engaged enough to let us tell a little more of our story?
22. Not a whole lot of analysis needed for that data point Confusion is not engaging.
23. This test showed our visitors were less confused, viewed more pages, and converted at a higher rate if they went through our product funnel first and learned what we did before jumping to educational resources or case studies It set the expectations and foundations for what we were talking about Results of this test informed our next test
24. Here we wanted to make the page more visual, give a high level summary and prompt them to view a demo We were in sabotaging the point of this page though, which is to lead them to our core products to learn about them They click “products” and want to see… what products we offer.
25. Again this change showed that visitors were now getting to the information that is most valuable, and expected, at this point in their journey. We are still gathering data on this test, but it is looking like this revision will be the winner.