From the What to the Why: Understanding Web Analytics on a More Cerebral Level
Most Web analytic tools available today -- both paid (Omniture, Core Metrics etc) and free (Google Analytics) -- provide functionality to let you see what customers are doing on your site. These tools allow you to understand how customers are getting to your site (referral reports), where customers are roaming on your site (next page or previous page flows), and even where you are losing customers (fallout reports).
All of these products are great at telling you "what" the customer is doing on your site. However, it’s up to the marketer to figure out "why" they are doing it. Sometimes it’s easy. Just by looking at fallout (where the customer abandoned their path), you can begin to hypothesize the usability improvements that might be required. Unfortunately, after a few iterations, you may still be left guessing..
To understand the "why", marketers in all areas of business have traditionally employed focus groups as a key way to learn more about consumer behaviour and test new ideas. In my opinion, this has limited value for Web marketers looking to optimize their sites. While it is always interesting to watch consumers perform tasks and answer questions, the results of a focus group can be skewed due to the small audience that is interviewed, and also by the quality and impartiality of the script for the test itself.
In the past year, it seems more and more sites are measuring the "satisfaction" of the Web experience. I’m talking about those invitations to “answer a few questions” that are showing up on top sites. While it might be seen as an intrusion, the acceptance rate is remarkably high. Fact is, these marketers are taking advantage of a tremendous opportunity: They have an engaged online audience that is willing to talk about their site experience, isolate hot spots in need of remedy, and as a result, put the business’s own assumptions to the test.
Online customer satisfaction mechanisms provides the ability to:
1: Measure if your Web experience meets consumer needs.
2: Provide insights into "why" customers might be dropping off.
3: Understand future behaviours. Will the customer come back or recommend the site to other prospective customers? It’s bedrock stuff; the whole raison d’etre for any Web site.
The top online customer satisfaction companies, and their tools, are quite sophisticated. They go well beyond capturing customer verbatim insights. They have the ability to generate satisfaction scores across numerous site characteristics, benchmark against other sites, and pinpoint exactly where the most meaningful ROI opportunities exist for improvements. How? You can do so by asking customers to score their experience, and then cross-tabulating those scores with verbatim comments. It’s a rich vein of voice-of-the-customer intelligence, and in combination with more quantitative data from an Omniture or a Google analytics, can take the guess work out of understanding if your navigation, or content, or site performance, or task-related steps, or (pick one!) are passing muster with your visitors. You would be surprised how many customers are prepared to take the time to respond and provide constructive insights. Needless to say, this information is gold!
Measuring the satisfaction of your website adds perspective, some of the intangible value that your Website offers. Let’s say you’re not an e-commerce site, but you are heavily used by prospects seeking product research information. Customer satisfaction tools can help you understand if you were successful, if you are making a positive impact on brand, and if you are bringing the visitor closer to a purchase decision. Of course, if you are e-commerce enabled, you may also learn whether customers are running into barriers when trying to complete a purchase.
A satisfaction score doesn’t have to be isolated to the Website itself. It is also impacted by the overall satisfaction the customer has with your brand, your call centre or bricks and mortar operations. Learning and differentiating the specific activities offline that are impacting satisfaction will bring valuable information back into the organization. In one case in my own company, we discovered that customers were unclear how to reach us. By doing some research and partnering across channels, we created an online solution with more detail about business hours, key phone numbers and email addresses, these complaints dropped significantly.
I encourage you to investigate the tools on the market, ranging from free (4Q), to commercial (Foresee Results) and find the right fit for you. In my own experience, the “why” has taken on extra importance this year as we strive to improve our site. The information we have gathered from our customers has influenced our agenda, and led to improvements. It can for you too.
Other Reference posts on Web Analytics:
Your Website’s Success—Beyond Online
3 simple steps to analyzing any online campaign
If you are already using satisfaction as a measurement, comment on this post--- how do you use it and what other ways it has helped you?
