Visitor Insights

Ever come across reports that make you scratch your head and wonder “what can I possibly do with the data”?

Apparently, this is not just isolated to web analytics. An analysis of the VP debate by a language monitoring service shows that the phenomenon also applies to the world of politics. Here’s a link to the story.

Highlight KPIs from the VP debate:

Sentences per paragraph: 2.7 for Biden and 2.6 for Palin.

Letters per word: tied at 4.4.

Ease of reading: Biden, 66.7 (with 100 being the easiest to read or hear), versus 62.4 for Palin.

Number of words spoken: 5,492 for Biden and5,235 for Palin.

There is definitely entertainment value in the data, but not much value beyond that.

Why do we bring this up? Because we’ve seen many web analytics practitioners fall into the same trap. Yes, you can measure just about everything online: detailed user interactions, mouse movements, etc. But just because you can measure it doesn’t mean you should. Rather, you should always start with the question “what would I do with the data”.

One of the most popular KPIs for lead generation sites is “Cost per Lead”. It lets marketers know whether they’re spending the right amount on marketing campaigns. However, a better KPI for such customers is “Cost Per Qualified Lead”. It provides a more accurate picture of the campaign performance.

The following is what a customer has recently shared with us regarding their use of WebToCRM.

Note: the numbers have been revised in this post.

After running a number of online campaigns, they were able to use their web analytics solution to determine high-level performance metrics such as campaign clickthroughs, conversion rates and cost per lead. The sample data is shown in the first graph below.

The campaign conversion rates are mostly within the same range. However, because of the higher conversion rates and lower cost per click (CPC), newsletters end up generating a much better cost per lead (CPL). Based on this data, it would make sense to take some budget away from search engines, which have the highest cost per lead and put that money towards more newsletter sponsorships.

However, the customer did not stop there. Thanks to WebToCRM, they integrated their online campaign data into their salesforce.com implementation and decided to break down their leads into two classifications:

• Qualified leads: these are defined as leads with complete and accurate information, including the person’s full contact information, job title and decision making timeline.
• Unqualified leads: these are leads with incomplete or inaccurate information such as fake email addresses, etc.

How do the numbers hold up when you look at qualified leads instead of just the raw number of leads? The picture turned out to be quite different and is shown below.

With a simple “Cost per Lead” KPI model which is what many web analytics practitioners use, the company would have diverted money from search engines into newsletters. However, the more relevant “Cost Per Qualified Lead” KPI shows that the customer would be well served doing the exact opposite. Although search engines provided fewer leads per click than newsletters, they also provided a far higher percentage of qualified leads. The client is therefore going to continue its investment in search engine marketing.

Still wondering about the value of cross-channel analytics? Think it’s expensive? Take another look at WebToCRM. It lets you integrate your online campaign data into your CRM application, regardless of what web analytics or CRM tool you use. Best of all, the Free edition give you the same level of data that you see in this example.

This is the third and final post of a three-part series on top reports for your site search. As a reminder, they are:

1. Search Usage
2. Searches per Search Visit
3. Top Search Terms
4. Top Failed Terms
5. Visitor Segmentation
6. Top Pages Driving Search
7. Search Groupings
8. Success Rate
9. Micro Step Success Rate

In this post, we’re going to cover the last three items.

7. Search Groupings

This practice refers to grouping of search terms into categories that make business sense. These groupings ought to be done by business people and not necessarily managed by the capabilities of your site search tool or content management solution.

For example, an electronics reseller may want to categorize the terms “ipod” and “zune” as the category “MP3 players” and treat “ipod case”, “ipod speaker” and “ipod armband” as the category “MP3 Accessories”. We find this practice to be manageable when done in a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel and using the vlookup function.

Why go through this exercise? The answer is because it reveals information about which categories or groupings are most popular among searchers. The information can be used to build a better navigation menu – one that supports your visitors’ interests. So for example, if you find the category “MP3 Accessories” to represent a large enough portion of your site search traffic, then you can add the category into your navigation menu.

8. Success Rate

Let’s face it. The whole point of implementing a site search is to enhance the user experience towards your business objectives. So if your business objectives is online sales, then site search performance should be assessed using this objective. And if your site goal is to generate leads, then your site search results should be assessed using that objective. Most web analytics tools today will account for this type of reporting. The goal is simply to understand what search terms are converting best so that you can improve your site-wide promotional offerings. Consider the table shown below.

Simply looking at the search conversion report reveals what products have the better success rate and therefore will provide a higher return when being promoted on your site. So if you’re considering promoting a gaming device on your home page, you can see from the above data that Playstation 3 provides the biggest bang for the buck. Even though its conversion rate is less than Xbox 360, because of its higher price it provides more revenue per search than other products.

The search conversion report will provide you information on what works best – in terms of conversions and dollar values. However when it comes to providing more insight about the reasons, it can come short. This is why we use micro-conversions so that we gain a deeper understanding into the sales funnel. This is covered in the next point.

9. Micro Step Success Rate

Lets face it. Your visitors don’t buy or fill out a form straight from your search pages. The goal of your site search is not to sell an item, but to help you find it. There is a sales cycle that visitors have to go through. First they have to find the product (this is what your site search is designed to do). Then, they have to add the product to cart, and they’ll have to go through the checkout steps on your site. At each stage, various things have to be accomplished to get the visitor to the next stage.

Let’s go back to the conversion table from the previous example, where the conversion rate for each search term is shown. We can see from the table that the terms “wii” and “wii sports bundle” are really underperforming compared to others in their category. Does this means that your visitors are not interested in Wii products? Not necessarily. The best way to find out is to look at the micro conversions for these same search terms. This is shown in the table below.

The micro conversions reveal a very different picture. It shows that in fact the click-throughs from search to product pages for the terms “wii” and “wii sports bundle” are higher than those of “playstation 3” and “xbox 360”. It is however at the product pages that the Wii products underperform. We therefore need to revisit these product pages, at which point we come across the following scenario, shown below.

These products enjoy a high click-through, but once visitors get to the product page, they’re presented with an “out of stock” message that stops their progress.

Micro conversions let you see the progress at each step and therefore let you diagnose your site at each step of the way. They make it easier to understand where in your site you should concentrate in order to streamline the site conversion.

Conclusion

Of course, based on your site objectives and site search deployment, you will find some reports more valuable than others, but you should be able to select from the list provided in this series to better optimize your site search. Also, if you need help getting the right reporting dashboard in place, we’re here to help.

This is the second post of a three-post series on top reports for optimizing your site search. In our last post, we covered the first three of the list below. Again, the top reports are:

1. Search Usage
2. Searches per Search Visit
3. Top Search Terms
4. Top Failed Terms
5. Visitor Segmentation
6. Top Pages Driving Search
7. Search Groupings
8. Success Rate
9. Micro Step Success Rate

In this post, we’re going to cover the remaining items.

4. Top Failed Terms

Failed terms are defined as search terms that provide no results to the user. Why is this important? Because it reveals gaps in your site search deployment. You can use this information in a number of ways:

• If a product that you carry is showing up as a failed search, then you clearly need to reindex your site to make sure that those products are displayed in your search results.
• Products you should carry? You may find a series of products that you currently don’t carry but should be in your inventory. The failed terms report will let you know how much money you’re leaving on the table by not carrying these items.
• Misspellings – Let’s face it. Visitors don’t always correctly spell every word. You should use this report to detect such misspellings and optimize your site search tool for such occasions. For an example of good implementation, go to Overstock.com and do a search for “bedding” and “beding” (screen shot below). You’ll see the same results in both cases.

5. Visitor Segmentation

Not all visitors are created equal. Visitors of different segments will behave differently and therefore will search differently. Two segments of interest are “new visitors” and “returning visitors”. By understanding the difference in search behavior between these two segments, you’ll be able to see your site navigation’s effectiveness between these two groups. Typically, you want to look for abnormalities in ratios between new and returning visitors.

Consider the example in the above screen shot. What you see is the top search terms and the breakdown of search between first time and returning visitors. Overall on the site, returning visitors constitute 19.80% of site visitors and we can see that this ratio also holds for most of the search terms. However, you can see that the terms “vaio battery” and “macbook battery” both get a greater share of search from returning visitors. Why is it that a larger share of returning visitors are searching for battery products compared to other products? Perhaps it’s because your battery inventory is not well promoted on the site and as a result a smaller share of first time visitors is aware of their existence on your site. Whatever the reason, this high discrepancy in ratios should alert you about an investigation that ought to be made between your navigation and the battery products.

6. Top Pages Driving Search

This report provides a listing of pages that the visitors were on prior to conducting a search. In most web analytics applications, you can simply look at the navigation reports or previous pages to get this data. It reveals what pages did your visitors get stuck before resorting to search. For many people, this may simply be the home page or the landing page, which is not a cause for concern since some people simply resort to site search as their first option. However, if the search originated on a product page, then it could be cause for concern since the product that the visitor was browsing may not have been what they were searching for. In this case, you’re looking for those oddities that could give you insight onto the navigation flow and visitor interest.

In our next and final post, we’ll cover the remaining reports that you should be looking at for site search analysis.

What is the most valuable report that you can get from your Web analytics package? Arguably, it’s the site search report – also referred to as internal search.

Why? Because most of what web analytics gives you is quantitative data – what your visitors do on your site - and it leaves it to you to figure out from the volumes of data what your visitors are looking for. Site search on the other hand is user-entered data – your visitors are actually telling you what they’re after.

In this three-part series, we’re going to provide information on the top reports or data points to look for when analyzing site search. The top reports are:

1. Search Usage
2. Searches per Search Visit
3. Top Search Terms
4. Top Failed Terms
5. Visitor Segmentation
6. Top Pages Driving Search
7. Search Groupings
8. Success Rate
9. Micro Step Success Rate

1. Search Usage

This metric is measured as the ratio of visits (or sessions) conducting site search to overall site visits. For example, if your site had 1,000 sessions and 65 of them conducted a site search (hit the search results page), then your search usage (as a visitor ratio) is 6.5%.

Why is this important? Because the search usage could be an indicator of navigation shortcomings. Site search is a navigation feature and is meant to complement your site navigation design. In cases where your navigation fails, then your visitors resort to site search. This isn’t always the case, as we’ll discuss in ensuing points, but if you have a high search usage, then it is an indicator that your visitors are bypassing your navigation and therefore you should be revisiting your navigation design.

Like all KPIs, search usage should be trended so that you can see the impact of site changes to the ratio. In our studies of top e-commerce sites, the site search usage is between 5% to 10%.

2. Searches per Search Visit

This KPI is measured as the ratio of the total number of searches conducted divided by the number search visits (or sessions). Going back to the previous example, say the 65 sessions or users of site search conducted a total of 260 searches. This means that the average search user conducts 4 searches.

Obviously you want your site search results to be accurate and to the point. This means that the higher this number, the more cause for concern you have that your site search is not providing the necessary information to users, forcing them to refine their searches. Realistically, you want the average user to search for no more than two searches per session. Obviously, based on the complexity of the product or service, this number may vary.

3. Top Search Terms

This is the core of site search reporting. What are your visitors searching for? What are they telling you? For example, if your top search terms are “Wii”, “Xbox” and “PlayStation”, then it will be a good idea to have a gaming related promotion or banner on your home page and other main landing pages, since a large number of your visitors are interested in this category. Additionally, because site search complements your navigation, you can use the information to conduct gap analysis on your navigation menus. This means that you can look at your navigation menu and if the category “Gaming” is not being presented in there, then you should consider adding it to the menu. The end goal is to create a navigation menu that reflects your visitors’ intent.

In our next posts, we’ll cover the other reports and KPIs that you should be looking at for site search analysis.