A widely accepted
practice in organizations is that what gets measured gets done. Critically
reflect on the metrics learned this week to measure the effectiveness of
internet marketing programs. Were those metrics really capturing the
performance results that marketers essentially need for achieving tactical and
strategic business goals?
This has been an interesting week in my internet marketing
class. We learned about Search Engine
Marketing and Metrics. This journal post
will critically reflect over the latter.
In our text that is written by Roberts and Zahay, we learned
that the best way to evaluate a website’s effectiveness is to see it first from
the customer’s perspective which is the usability factor. If the site doesn’t work properly and all the
links, tabs and buttons don’t lead where they are supposed, this can stop the
game before it’s even started because if a visitor to the website can’t use it
effectively they will most likely leave pretty quickly. Usability is determined by either the
marketer or some other tester using the site before it is published publicly on
the web. It is a very important step
because without visitors willing to stay and explore your website you can’t
collect the data that internet marketers term metrics.
Metrics can be collected from three different categories
which are traffic, audience and campaign measurement. The metrics collected from these three
categories can be through hit counters which are usually added into the site
program language (usually HTML). The
other way to collect metrics is purchasing services that can let the market
review server request logs which is detailed user activity on individual pages
of the website and tagged web pages which allow the marketer to collect more
detail metrics about how the user navigates the site from start to finish.
The last type of metrics is collected on site
performance. This can be done directly
by implementing software and/or code onto your website or purchasing services
that allow the marketer to review the server error logs. Error logs let the market collect metrics on
coding error that is causing the site to not work properly.
Some of the most useful metrics are collect from the
audience category. In this category you
can collect behavior of visitors to your site.
This includes:
·
Number of page views
·
Session time
·
Path through the site
·
Shopping cart abandonment
·
Entry page (Roberts et al, 2013, p 390)
These metrics can tell a very clear story about how visitors
interact with our site. Most importantly
it can let us know if our site is effective because we can cross reference this
metrics with conversion and sales and see how they correlate. For example, let’s say we record the average
session time as 12 minutes and a bounce rate of 39% for a particular page. Let’s say we sell cell phone accessories and
this particular page on the website is about a new iPhone cover. Now let’s compare that with all the other
pages and find that the average session time for the other pages is 4 minutes
and a bounce rate of 67%. Lastly, the
webpage with the iPhone cover leads to a sale of the cover 72% of the time,
whereas on all other pages a sale results only 12% of the time. We can now deduce from all these metrics that
either the iPhone cell cover page is set up in a way that gets customers to
buy, or that that is a popular item right now or a combination of both. Conversely we can deduce that on all other
webpages our cell phone accessories are either not popular, the pages don’t do
a good enough job of selling, there are usability and navigation issues or a
combination of all the above. Why? Because
a bounce rate of 67% means that 67% of visitors to the other pages leave
without wanting to navigate to any other part of the website and they only
spend 4 minutes in total as opposed 12 minute session times with the iPhone
cover visitors!
The point here is that metrics, as we can start to see, can
really tell us a lot about our website and how visitors interact with it. We can figure out where we need to make
changes to encourage visitors to stay longer and possibly purchase something
and also where to stick with what we’ve done because it is converting or
increasing sales on our website!
Do you see the need
for developing new sets of metrics that will be more relevant with this
evolving marketing channel? Explain your reasoning.
There is a definite need for a new set of metrics with our
evolving market channel. The market is
now moving towards mobile devices and tablets and computers that are generally
more portable in nature. The reason this
is significant is because the way that websites are formatted on Android and
iOS devices is totally different. The
programming language is different, basically everything is different and
therefore you cannot apply the tools to collect metrics from these devices that
you use with regular websites. Why this
even relevant?
Well, the data shows that as earlier as 2012, shopping on
mobile devices increased by 81% (Musil, 2013, np). That is huge.
That means that a website such as Amazon that was formerly receiving
most of its conversions from the traditional internet are now receiving a large
majority from mobile devices.
Fortunately, Amazon had the foresight to create a mobile version of their
website as well as a tablet version etc.
And it is probably safe to assume that they’ve already starting
collecting what metrics they can from these sites as well. Though for many companies that do business
online, this is not the case.
Many companies are still lagging behind in analytics for
mobile devices. If they have even
created a mobile version of their website (many have not), they still might not
be collecting the proper metrics. It has
only been in the last couple of years that companies that offer analytic
services for websites even had a way to collect mobile metrics. In 2013 Inman said that Experian finally
started collecting basic mobile metrics (2013, np). Obviously since then more services have popped
up such as KISSmetrics and others that offer metrics on mobile visitors,
visitor behavior, app usage etc.
With this trend it is important that metrics for mobile
devices need to become super streamlined because surfing the internet on a
mobile device is usually a different experience for most users. If they don’t create a good mobile version of
their website and/or accompanying app, then they won’t even keep users around
long enough to collect any meaningful metrics! Plus mobile internet users
usually are more focused about why there are visiting a site because surfing a
web page on a phone can sometimes be a little more difficult and therefore a
visitor needs to have a reason to want to stay on a webpage or app. Proper mobile metrics can get the necessary data
to ensure that marketers build the most effective and user friendly mobile
sites/apps possible.
Well that is my two cents and would love to hear your
feedback on it!
References
Inman. (2013). website
visits from mobile devices New metrics show. Retrieved February 13,
2015 from http://www.inman.com/2013/03/04/new-metrics-show-website-visits-mobile-
devices/
Musil, S. (2013). Shopping
via mobile devices increased 81 percent in 2012. Retrieved February
13, 2015
from http://www.cnet.com/news/shopping-via-mobile-devices-increased-81-
percent-in-2012/
Robert, M. & Zahay, D. (2013). Internet Marekting:
Integrating Online & Offline Strategies.
Mason, OH:
Cengage Learning Ltd.
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