Clive “the Coupon Clipper” doesn’t just want value for money; he wants to know he did everything possible to get the best deal. He will come to your site because of online or email promotions, and every page needs to reinforce the concept of getting more and paying less. Create a series of documents around what makes Clive tick, and how that effects how he shops and surfs. Draw a big picture of what you think Clive looks like and put it in your office. Bring that picture to marketing meetings, and make sure Clive is represented on every page in your site.

Umm what?

In a typical eMarketing team, headcount is low, and each one of those heads is wearing five hats. Email, search (paid and natural), merchandising, promotions, copy, design……all these things are owned by, and need to be executed properly by – 3 people in many cases, 1 person in many more.

Note that I didn’t put analyze data in the job description above. This is for two reasons:

Reason one: Most eMarketing groups barely scratch the surface of their respective analytics package.

Reason two: eMarketers don’t use analytics because they are super busy and analytics has no direct perceived value.

In my last blog I ranted a little about how there are too many “What” and “Why” bloggers in eCommerce and very few who focus on “How”. Here are a few thoughts on how to take the concept of personas and make it worth your while to squeeze them into your already full day.

Step One: Find a traffic segment

Don’t worry about building Lucy “the Listmaker” or Stevie “Gen. ‘Y’” level personas. Open up your analytics, blow the dust off, and play around in the reports. Take the last six months or year of data, and start looking for segments of your traffic that are:

· Larger than 10% of your total traffic

· Converting lower than your site average for the time period

A great example is the “First Time Visitor” segment of your traffic. Every analytics product can give you the conversion rate of your first time visitors, and they tend to represent 60-80% of your traffic, and convert anywhere from .5%-1.5% lower than your site average.

Step Two: Use some persona marketing best practices on your segment

Use some of the persona building techniques for this basic type of visitor (for more info click here. You can even give the segment a cool name “Fernando First Timer”. You are quickly going to see a lot of things that you can add or change on your site (messaging, design and layout) that would have a positive impact on this segment.

Now if I was a member of an overworked 3 person marketing team, I would see a ton of value in altering my site to speak to a large and underperforming segment… the analytics package has already showed that money is being left on the table. Building a strategy to go and get it, providing it doesn’t become a full time job, is nothing but goodness.

More best practices to follow in a subsequent blog on first time visitors. In the meantime, feel free to post comments on Persona building in general, or segments you have identified and optimized in the past.

Cheers,

Jim

PS. Happy St. Patricks day!

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