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Archive for the ‘ Customer Experience ’ Category

May 15th, 2008 by Jim Cain

If you talk to ten different eCommerce sites that are using Analytics, the odds are good that at least five of them are using Google Analytics. If you talk to ten different Google Analytics (GA) users, probably only one of them is using their Goal tracking for anything other than cart conversions. Long story short, an awfully large percentage of retailers aren’t getting a lot of value out of Google analytics.

This is in part due to the fact that most companies using GA don’t tend to have a full time analyst asking specific questions of the website data, and also due to the fact that while GA is great free software, there is no vendor support in terms of best practices for tool usage. (If you want an analytics vendor with a top-notch customer support/analysis team, look no farther than our friends at Coremetrics)

Here are two alternate goals, and one new way to look at them using Google Analytics. They are easy to set up and monitor, they will give you a lot more visibility into website outcomes, and will help you start asking the right questions about what you can be doing to optimize your website for increased conversions.

For additional information about how to set up goals in Google Analytics, click here.

Goal 1: ‘About Us’ page visitor conversion

If a visitor cares enough to want to learn about your business, they are that much closer to converting. Set up a goal funnel with the first page being the About Us page URL, and the last page being the transaction completed page. You now have an report that shows you the conversion rates of people who visit your ‘about us’ page as part of a session. Once you have the results in, you can start applying changes to this page in an attempt to increase conversion outcomes.

Goal 2: Micro Conversion Points

A micro conversion point is a non shopping cart transaction. Examples include newsletter signup, catalog request or wish list signup. Better understanding of how many visitors choose these micro-conversions will give a better understanding of what a visitor really wants from your site. Also if any of these micro-conversion points has multiple steps, you can build a goal funnel and look at step abandonment, just like for your shopping cart.

Goal Tip: Use filters to segment your goal results

By filtering your Google results based on different traffic source segments, you can get a much better understanding of how visitors from different sources convert for different goals. For example, what does the cart abandonment funnel look like for direct type in visitors vs. paid search traffic? Setting up funnels is also fairly straightforward, and you can see a more detailed posting from the team at Lunametrics on how to accomplish this by clicking here.

A better understanding of site outcomes equals an ability to optimize them over time. Taking the steps above will add invaluable marketing insight to your analytics tool.

Cheers,

Jim

Posted in Optimization, Customer Experience, Conversion, Jim Cain, eCommerce, Web Analytics, Personalization | 1 Comment »

May Webinar: Expert Jason Burby Talks Personalization with Sitebrand

May 14th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

As part of Sitebrand’s monthly webinar series, I’m very excited to tell you about our upcoming webinar because the very insightful Jason Burby from ZAAZ is my co-presenter…

Our topic is ~ Web Personalization: Putting the “Cha-Ching” Before and After the Check-Out. Isn’t that intriguing? If you’re like amost people I’ve told, it’s the cha-ching after the check-out that has you screaming for more.

So do yourself a favour and register today.

As added incentive, be one of the first 25 people to register and you’ll win yourself a free copy of the book “Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smarter Business Decisions” by Jason Burby and Shane Atchinson.

Posted in Optimization, Customer Experience, Conversion, Carolyn Gardner, eCommerce, Web Analytics, Personalization | No Comments »

Put your money where your mouse is…

May 13th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

Online sales are continuing to outpace catalog sales. Consider the recent announcement by the marketers at Bloomingdales (parent company being Macy’s Inc) who have just called it quits for the catalog side of business and you can start predicting the future with relative ease. That is…if marketers dare to think differently. Tried and true may no longer apply…

I call it putting your money where the mouse is.

Not just where it starts (as in search and email) but where it travels (which is the entire click-stream process, not to mention visits that might happen over a period of time pre- and post-conversion). And this new emphasis on travel can really be related to improving the overall online experience which is exactly the plan for the Bloomingdales.com web site.

Bye-bye catalogs will also mean bye-bye direct mail to some degree. I’m sure not every retailer will completely abandon the catalog, but there will be fewer and fewer printed every year. So it’s not a matter of if they will abandon catalogs, it’s more a question of when and by how much? For the catalogs that don’t get fully axed, I believe the distribution won’t be automatic - rather, it will be very much an active request by the consumer.

But over time, with more emphasis being placed on positive online experiences, who will even request a catalog? I mean seriously, the catalog will be archaic. As today’s youth move into consumer-hood, they’re already in tune with online shopping. Hell, they’ve been buying in the onlines stores of webkinz world, club penguin and numerous others since they were 3!!! And trust me, these sites don’t offer print catalogs.

On top of consumer demand for positive online experiences, there’s also the green thing / the environment thing. This is like the cherry on top for any marketer looking to phase out the catalog. Save some trees. Gain some customers. It’s all good.

Two questions:

1. Have you noticed fewer and fewer retail catalogs?

2. Are you a retailer considering the fate of your catalog?

I’m curious for comments on this topic…so share your thoughts and let’s start a conversation.

Posted in Conversion, Optimization, Customer Experience, Carolyn Gardner, eCommerce, Search Marketing, Personalization, Email marketing | No Comments »

MarketingSherpa visiting Ottawa

May 7th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

It’s not everyday Ottawa marketers have the opportunity to see and hear a MarketingSherpa thought leader and influencer in person. But thanks to OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation) and its popular Zone5ive series, that’s about to change.

At tomorrow’s event which is still open for registrations, the guest speaker is Stefan Tornquist, Research Director at MarketingSherpa, and you can bet there will be plenty to learn. With a focus on B2B marketing, he’s promised to share 7 proven tactics for success in 2008. The usual suspects like email and search are a given – but business technology marketing is also listed as a point of discussion and this is open to lots of direction.

Of course, Sherpa does publish a “Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide” and from what I can see it offers “practical data on: search, email, PR, direct mail, lead generation, trade shows, podcasting, telemarketing and budgeting.”

Since B2B marketing is very web-centric, I’m really hoping there will be some mention of persuasion tactics like web personalization because this is the technology that is truly capable of heavily influencing online engagement and conversion. BTW Conversion for a B2B marketer might not mean an immediate “close” especially depending on the value of typical B2B deals. Meaningful conversion on a B2B site might be more of a relationship/credibility builder – maybe a whitepaper download or a demo request or a newsletter sign-up. Something to keep a prospect engaged at their liberty without feeling the pressure of a sales person. Something that can keep you front of mind with that prospect.

Sitebrand works with some B2B companies including CableOrganizer.com and they use our web personalization technology to do tons of cool things. To give you a sense of what I mean, here’s an excerpt from our case study:

“CableOrganizer.com has also had great success with key customer campaigns where Sitebrand is used to personalize the site based on the organization’s domain. “It surprises them [our customers] when they show up and see creative that is associated with their logo. I am sure they ask, ‘how did they know that?’” says Shields. Many of these campaigns improved CableOrganizer.com’s conversion rates by almost 10% against control groups that did not see Sitebrand enabled targeted content.”

It’s a great example of savvy B2B marketing so if you want a head start on business technology that’s changing the online landscape, you should read the full case study.

Posted in Optimization, Customer Experience, Conversion, Carolyn Gardner, Personalization, eCommerce, Search Marketing | No Comments »

Customer experiences, social media and your corporate reputation

May 2nd, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

I had an interview earlier this week for Contact Magazine and the topic was corporate reputation management…especially in an age where consumer voices can really SCREAM thanks to social media and Web 2.0 realities.

Create a bad customer experience for someone today and you can almost bet that person will end of blogging, emailing, online chatting or youtubing about it. Never mind the just talking about it! And just as quickly they post and forward those emails, you can bet there will be a trail of media waiting to pounce.

But if you play your cards right and keep your head above the sand, you can use the good and the bad comments to your benefit. After all - it’s not just what you know, it’s what you do with what you know. It’s kind of like web analytics. It’s not just what the data reports, it’s what you do in terms of actioning the data.

To help tackle the beast and better manage corporate reputation, ClickZ just reported that Neilsen Online is about to launch a new services group to help marketers manage their reputations online. Part of the management process includes how to appropriately engage with social media. They’re not the first to step up, but the fact they’re doing it speaks to the significance of paying attention to what’s being said about your brand online.

Taking a step backwards this means really managing customer expectations - with exceptional service, quality, etc. And this applies to both online and offline. Do a good job here and you’ll minimize the bad comments while maximizing the good comments.

After all is said and done, you need to think about taking that step forward. And by this I mean, it’s impossible to please everyone all the time. So be ready for the bad comments. Anticipate them and have a plan. Be proactive vs reactive. Turn negatives into positives.

One of my favourite stories is told in a post I did on the return-o-meter over at shoeline.com. It’s easy to think that lots of returns are a bad thing…but not in this case. Take a read and you’ll see the power of turning negatives into positives.

Posted in Customer Experience, Carolyn Gardner, Social Media, Viral Marketing | No Comments »

2007 Stats Canada Report Reveals Canadian e-Commerce Trends

April 28th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

Stats Canada

Finding e-commerce trend reports for Canada isn’t easy and since Sitebrand happens to be based in Canada, I feel it’s my moral obligation to share some current trends I just discovered courtesy of Statistics Canada. You can read the full report, but allow me to pull some of the more interesting stuff into an at-a-glance post for immediate consumption along with some actionable ideas to wrap it up:

Total Canadian Internet sales for 2007 grew 26% over 2006 hitting almost $63 billion
Of the almost $63B in sales, about $58B are private sector and $5B are public sector
Four verticals are responsible for the majority of online sales: wholesale trade (17%), transportation and warehousing (16%), manufacturing (15%), retail trade (10%).

While impressive, here’s the reality. Internet sales in Canada still only represent about 2% of total sales revenue. Considering this was reported to be at the 1% mark five years ago, we’re seeing a slow but steady climb. No need to fasten your seatbelt here.

To put this in perspective, let’s compare % of total sales revenue in Canada to the US. According to a Q4 2007 e-commerce report from the US Census Bureau, Internet sales in the US accounted for 3.4% of total sales revenue in 2007. One year earlier, it was at 2.9% which means it went up a full half a percent in just one year…compared to Canada where it’s taken five years to go up one percent.

Rather than saying it over again, I’ll refer to a previous post I did on this topic of e-commerce in Canada. In a nutshell, I think the online experience for Canadians still has a way to go because expectations are not being fulfilled:

Choices are still quite limited
Information on web sites isn’t personalized/relevant
Shipping is still a headache
And so on…

To win in the race (lol - it’s hardly a “race”) for online market share from Canadian shoppers, the smart e-commerce marketer will address each of these very approachable issues from a Canadian perspective. Here are some little things that go a long way:

Offer CDN pricing.
For US sites, it’s smart to personalize the Canadian shoppers visit by showing the CDN flag and saying “we ship to Canada”.
For CDN sites, don’t hide the fact you are Canadian - leverage it to the max and alleviate the “Do you ship to Canada?” question at the same time.
Offer shipping options - land, air, foot etc.
While 85% of the Canadian population speaks English, Canada is a bilingual country so offering English and French is a nice touch…offer every language that makes sense for your global market.
Canadian spelling of the English language follows the British rules. Some commonly used words that are different include:
- - Comes in many flavors - in Canada it would be ”flavours”…
  - Payable by check - in Canada it would be “cheque” …
  - Visit our online resource center - in Canada it would be “centre” …

So there you have it, e-commerce trends are always evolving. What are you going to do to influence them? Hopefully this post offers some inspiration to the keeners.

Posted in Optimization, Customer Experience, Conversion, Carolyn Gardner, eCommerce, Personalization | 3 Comments »

Internet Retailer Focus on Web Personalization

April 25th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

Internet Retailer Logo

If you check out the home page of Internet Retailer today, you can’t help but notice all the attention on web personalization. In addition to one story featuring Danskin and how they boosted online conversion rates by 56% using Sitebrand’s Retail Marketing Suite, it also lists other awesome success stories. With headlines like these, it’s hard to wonder why only 17% of best-in-breed companies are doing personalization (And I’m not making that number up, request a copy of the Aberdeen Group Report on Personalization for tons of great stats regarding the impact of personalization).

Here are the headlines I’m talking about:

Danskin.com makes sales jump with personalization tool

Crutchfield gets personal with shoppers to lift sales and click-throughs

Personalization lifts average order value for Austat’s Golf

Posted in Optimization, Customer Experience, Carolyn Gardner, Web Analytics, eCommerce, Personalization | No Comments »

Earth Day and Greener Shipping Options for eTailers

April 22nd, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

Being Earth Day, we’re all extra sensitive to the environment and what we’re doing / not doing for it. So I did a little extra googling on the topic and came across a company called ShipGreen.net.

Apparently a few smarties have stepped up to “offer a web-based program that integrates with retailers’ online shopping carts, enabling consumers to easily – and accurately – offset the carbon produced from product life-cycle shipping emissions.” Sheer genius, I say. My curiosity had me pick up the phone and I was lucky enough to get a call back from the ShipGreen.net CEO, Jason Sperling. He told me the trial period was a huge success and that they are currently developing the full software release which should be out in some months. We’ll have to keep our eyes on these guys. I can see this market really taking off!

Reducing carbon footprints is already very important to many retailers including one of our very own Sitebrand clients, Roots. This past fall, as part of its commitment to the environment, Roots Canada installed a very cool interactive window display (touchscreen) at its flagship store in downtown Toronto.

Passerbys who used the touchscreen to browse the Roots website were also invited to sign up for the “Roots Insider” e-newsletter (avoiding paper is very green you know). For each and every new Roots Insider subscription, and as additional incentive to environmentally conscious consumers, Roots committed to purchasing carbon offset credit equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide released in a 50-kilometre car trip (the average distance shoppers drive to get to a Roots store).

This brilliantly green promotion is now over but Roots continues to offer greener shipping options as part of their commitment to the environment - not just today on Earth Day, but every day. And they do it with a company called Zerofootprint.

And last but not least, have you heard about eco-friendly clothes? Well guess what, Roots has a new line of apparel fittingly called ROOTS GREEN. Made with organic cotton and other sustainable fabrics such as bamboo, hemp and soy, these sound pretty green to me. But don’t worry, they come in colours other than just green!

Roots Green

Posted in Optimization, Customer Experience, Conversion, Carolyn Gardner, Personalization, eCommerce, Email marketing | No Comments »

Should Site Optimization fall into your keyword budget?

April 22nd, 2008 by Jim Cain

The blogosphere right now is abuzz with discussions about the current economic downturn and what impact it will have on eCommerce sales, and the associated budgets that eMarketers will be given.

Forrester research sees eCommerce bucking the downturn trend, with online spending actually going up by a predicted 17% in 2008. That said there will still be a tightening of belts as far as spending is concerned, with most of the spending freezes taking place against in-site technologies. Search will continue to grow, as it is both vital to online sales and the most easily provable from a tactical ROI perspective.

According to our friends at Marketing Sherpa, while “38% of marketers are spending more on online tactics, such as paid search, natural search, email marketing and online events” this growth is happening at the expense of in-site technologies as “B-to-B and B-to-C marketers are conserving budget dollars by renegotiating contracts with vendors and agencies”

So let me get this straight. Online stores are spending more money on getting people to walk in the front door of the store, and less money on making sure they walk out of the store with a product in hand. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, especially when you listen to an online brand that has a keen grasp of the big picture.

I listened to a great speech at Shop.org by Patrick Byrne, COO of Overstock.com. It would take a series of blog posts to detail all the interesting things that have been done/are being done by the Overstock.com team, but two major points stood out:

While they came late to the party regarding natural search optimization for Google, they have made search a number one priority over the last few years.
They are in the process of rebuilding their marketing programs, customer service programs and website experience around 5 pre-defined visitor segments.

They recognize that while increased eyeballs on website equals increased revenue, the only way to break the vicious cycle of search reliance is though optimization.

I know that most of the people reading this don’t have Overstock.com budgets, but try a simple exercise.

Pull up an analytics report on the conversion rate for one of the product categories that has received budget for keyword buys and search optimization.
Look at the percentage of traffic and conversion rate for the traffic segment.
Compare the conversion rate of this type of traffic to your site average and if it is lower, calculate your potential revenue opportunity.

There is a lot of money that gets left on the table by making traffic generation of any type your primary marketing mechanism. You should be budgeting time and money to optimize visits within your site as a logical component of your search marketing initiatives, especially if you want to take advantage of the 17% growth of the only growing retail market.

Cheers,

Jim

Posted in Conversion, Optimization, Customer Experience, Jim Cain, Web Analytics, Personalization, eCommerce, Search Marketing | No Comments »

Home Depot Digs Earth Day

April 22nd, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

I’m impressed by all the buzz about Earth Day - TV, radio, newspaper, Google. And it made me wonder how eTailers are responding…

Turns out the Home Depot is all over it. Smack dab on their home page is this:

Earth Day

Then when you click-through, they’ve got plenty of ways we can shop (online or in-store) and feel good about doing our part for the environment. Apparently Home Depot has over 3,300 products to help you save money and energy while reducing environmental stress at the same time. That’s damn impressive. And if you visit the Home Depot today, you can participate in the free tote giveaway, which will reduce 136,411,024 pounds of CO2 per year. That’s equal to taking 13,451 cars off the road permanently! Of course, to do this right, you need to walk or bike to the Home Depot nearest you. Otherwise - gasp - you are not respecting the environment.

It will be interesting to find out the revenue / traffic impact of this Earth Day blitz at Home Depot. I really see all this environmental awareness being such a positive thing for eTailers large and small. On top of fears around a recession and sky-rocketing gas prices, the appeal of shopping online continues to grow. It simply makes a ton of sense.

BTW - thanks to a recent co-presentation I did with Simon Rodrigue at the eMetrics Summit in Toronto, I should be able to track down some numbers for you. Simon just happens to be Senior Manager of eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, at Home Depot (Canada). Stay tuned!

Posted in Optimization, Customer Experience, Conversion, Carolyn Gardner, eCommerce, Social Media, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

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