Fall 2010 Release Send Feedback Acquisition Metrics Nearly every web site shares three fundamental web analytics objectives: acquire more qualified visitors for the lowest cost, convert these visitors into customers, and retain these customers for repeat business. • Acquire more qualified visitors From online marketing to offline marketing, the first step in winning new customers today is driving new traffic to your web site. But all traffic is not equal. You need to drive the most qualified visitors for the lowest cost. With WebTrends you can get a complete picture of campaign response, campaign conversion and overall return on investment (ROI). As a result, you can pinpoint exactly which campaigns are working and which aren’t. This chapter discusses acquisition in more detail. • Convert more visitors by analyzing click-by-click behavior Whether your web site goal is for visitors to register, make a purchase, or get technical support, conversion rate is a critical measure of your site’s success. WebTrends provides the most comprehensive navigation analysis in the industry, allowing you to track visitors click-by-click, identify confusing navigation and minimize abandonment. Isolating problem areas in your site and experimenting with improvements can have a big payoff. For more information about conversion, see . • Retain more visitors by segmenting those most likely to return Once you have persuaded visitors to become customers, you need to retain them as loyal, returning customers. It typically costs 5-10 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. WebTrends allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your loyalty campaigns such as customer newsletters by how recently and how frequently visitors are coming back and engaging in repeat business. Now you can measure whether or not you are increasing the average lifetime value of your visitors. For more information about retention, see . What the Business Person Wants to See Business people need to optimize the effectiveness of their marketing expenditures. They need to run campaigns that drive qualified traffic to their web sites. They make decisions regarding spending more money on tactics that work and reducing the amount on less-efficient areas. The decisions regarding the acquisition of visitors are some of the most important decisions that business people make because the process of acquiring visitors (such as creating ad campaigns, using marketing resources, outsourcing some areas) is expensive.
Acquisition MetricsNearly every web site shares three
fundamental web analytics objectives: acquire more qualified
visitorsfor the lowest cost, convert these visitors into customers,
and retain these customers for repeat business. Acquire more
qualified visitorsFrom online marketing to offline marketing, the
first step in winning new customers today is driving newtraffic to
your web site. But all traffic is not equal. You need to drive the
most qualified visitors for thelowest cost. With WebTrends you can
get a complete picture of campaign response, campaign conversionand
overall return on investment (ROI). As a result, you can pinpoint
exactly which campaigns are workingand which arent.This chapter
discusses acquisition in more detail. Convert more visitors by
analyzing click-by-click behaviorWhether your web site goal is for
visitors to register, make a purchase, or get technical support,
conversionrate is a critical measure of your sites success.
WebTrends provides the most comprehensive navigationanalysis in the
industry, allowing you to track visitors click-by-click, identify
confusing navigation andminimize abandonment. Isolating problem
areas in your site and experimenting with improvements canhave a
big payoff.For more information about conversion, see . Retain more
visitors by segmenting those most likely to returnOnce you have
persuaded visitors to become customers, you need to retain them as
loyal, returningcustomers. It typically costs 5-10 times more to
acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.WebTrends
allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your loyalty campaigns
such as customernewsletters by how recently and how frequently
visitors are coming back and engaging in repeat business.Now you
can measure whether or not you are increasing the average lifetime
value of your visitors.For more information about retention, see
.What the Business Person Wants to SeeBusiness people need to
optimize the effectiveness of their marketing expenditures. They
need to runcampaigns that drive qualified traffic to their web
sites. They make decisions regarding spending moremoney on tactics
that work and reducing the amount on less-efficient areas. The
decisions regarding theacquisition of visitors are some of the most
important decisions that business people make because theprocess of
acquiring visitors (such as creating ad campaigns, using marketing
resources, outsourcing someareas) is expensive. Send Feedback Fall
2010 Release
What the Business Person Wants to See Acquisition
MetricsAcquisition data can help you determine if your marketing
tactics are successful. With WebTrends you caneasily get reports on
valuable metrics that reveal how many visitors came to your web
site, whether theyconverted to registering or paying customers and
how much value they brought to your organization.Acquisition data
can also tell you how comparisons perform over time and which
customers have thehighest lifetime value.Performance
DashboardsWebTrends provides performance dashboards that lets you
benchmark your acquisition campaigns, as isshown in the following
graphic.The Campaign Performance Dashboard allows campaign managers
to view how every level of theircampaign performs across their
acquisition and revenue KPIs. Campaign managers can easily see
ifcustomers are responding to specific offers better than others
and can make instant decisions based upontheir agreed-upon goals
for that particular campaign.Entry/Landing PageThe first page that
a visitor sees on your web site is called the entry or landing
page. This is the mostimportant page in your web site, because it
provides the initial impression for your visitors and
influenceswhether they will continue to look at other pages of your
site.2 Send Feedback Fall 2010 Release
Acquisition Metrics What the Business Person Wants to SeeEntry
pages can tell you whether people more often start at your home
page or jump to a specific page onyour siteusually from a bookmark
or link. Consider also that at the entry point to your site,
visitors havenot yet begun to navigate the pages of your site. This
is an opportune time to guide them in the directionyou want them to
go. From these pages, you can promote areas of your site that you
want them to see byputting noticeable links to those areas. In
addition, entry pages usually provide good advertising real
estateif you sell ad space on your site or promote your own
products or services.Basic Entry Page UsageThe Entry Pages report
is the lowest-level report, because you dont know exactly how
visitors got there.That is, your visitors could have used an ad
campaign, a search engine, or some other mechanism to get toyour
page. Yet this page may help you to pinpoint the pages on your site
to improve. Based on this report,you can find your leading entry
pages and improve them in order to represent your company in the
bestway possible and direct visitors to other pertinent pages of
your web site.The following graphic shows a sample report that
identifies the first page view of a visitor at a site.In this
sample report, Pages refers to any document, dynamic page, or form.
Different types of profileshave different default settings for
which file extensions qualify a file as a page. Visits refers to
thenumber of visits where the specified page was the entry page. A
visit is a series of actions that begins whena visitor views the
first page from the server, and ends when the visitor leaves the
site or remains idlebeyond the idle-time limit.Also, in this sample
Entry Pages report, the home page or Welcome Information page is
the top entrypage. However, many visitors entered first through the
products and store pages. Perhaps many of thesevisitors entered
because of an ad campaign. If so, this ad campaign may deserve more
scrutiny, because thecompany may have spent quite a bit of money on
attracting customers via that campaign. 3 Send Feedback Fall 2010
Release
Collecting the Right Data Acquisition MetricsThe information in
the Entry Pages report can indicate how you might want to optimize
the architecture ofyour web site based on where your visitors are
entering. It can also help you determine which externallinks are
most effective. You may want to consider updating META tags and
links.Advanced Entry Page UsageYou can make your entry pages useful
by creating specific landing pages for each campaign and makingsure
that each landing page is not linked to anything except the
specified campaign. That is, only theintended campaign should link
to the landing pagenothing else on your web site should link to it.
Thenthe landing page redirects the visitor to the page that you
want them to view.By themselves, entry pages are not that
interesting, but if you can design them into your web site
foranalysis, then you can determine who came to your web site
because of a particular campaign.Collecting the Right DataWeb sites
can employ a variety of mechanisms to drive traffic to a specific
web site and track its success. Ingeneral, visitors will find your
site through: Ads (banner, email, traditional media) Searches Links
Directly through bookmarksThe following subsections discuss the
mechanisms that help visitors find your site. These mechanisms
arereferrers, ad campaigns, search engines, and email marketing
efforts (such as newsletters).ReferrersJust as a doctor receives
new patients from a referring sourcesuch as another doctor or a
currentpatienta referrer, or referring URL, is the page on another
web site that linked visitors to your site.Referring URLs tell you
where your visitors came from to get to your site. You can use this
information todetermine which external sites are the best ones to
place links on, or ads for, your site. This information canalso
convince you to develop or maintain positive relationships with
these sites so that they will continueto offer a link to your
site.How do you determine what the referrer is? The record in the
data file contains the page that was visitedbefore the page
represented by a particular entry. So you can ascertain the
referrer for each page from therecord in the data file. But more
interesting is what initiated a visit to the site. How do you
determine thereferrer for the visit? This is done by taking the
first hit in the visit, looking at that hits referrer, and
callingthat the visits referrer. Therefore, all of the referrers
URLs come from the first hit of the visit.4 Send Feedback Fall 2010
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Acquisition Metrics Collecting the Right DataThe following
graphic shows the domain names of sites that refer visitors to your
site.From this sample report, you can get basic information.
However, if you have several different adcampaigns on Yahoo, this
report doesnt reveal which one is working best. Consequently, the
referrerreports provide general, low-level feedback on your
efforts. For more specific information, you will needreports on ad
campaigns, search engines and email marketing.Referring Site,
Domain, or URLSome web sites may have multiple links to your site.
If you only want to know what site referred thevisitornot the
individual pages on the site that contained a link to your siteyou
would need to strip outall parts of the URL except the site or
domain name. Doing so allows you to discover which sites ordomains
refer visitors to your web site the most.For example, a site, such
as www.referrer.com may have several domains, such
assearch.referrer.com, your-referrer.com, my_referrer.com,
ourreferrer.com, and referrer.com.All of these domains are
referring work for the main site www.referrer.com.Each domain name
may have several IP address. For example, 217.194.141.67,
205.186.88.66,66.67.2.10, 66.231.3.73, 199.221.98.4, 65.56.41.37
might all be used by the www.referrer.comdomain.So your reports can
give you the site name, the domain name, or the URL information. It
depends on thelevel of information that you want. 5 Send Feedback
Fall 2010 Release
Collecting the Right Data Acquisition MetricsThe Self-Referrer
IssueUsing the referring URL to determine how your visitors came to
your site has one major drawback: yourown site can appear to be the
referring URL. This self-referring circumstance occurs when a
visitor beginsa visit, leaves your site open in the browser window,
stays inactive beyond the 30-minute visitor sessionwindow, and then
becomes active again. Once the 30-minute threshold is crossed,
WebTrends considersthis to be a new session; however, this new
session will register your site as being the referrer. For
thisreason, instead of using the referrer page or URL, you may be
better off using other means of tracking howvisitors come to your
site. One useful method is by tracking visits from ad campaigns.No
Referrer - Direct TrafficNo Referrer or Direct Traffic represents
direct traffic to the web site as the result of one of
thefollowing: Visitors who type the domain name directly into the
browser Visitors who bookmark the site Visistors who have the page
set as their home page Visitors who click on an email link,
shortcut, or other direct linkAd CampaignsAdvertisements can come
in many forms, including ads on other sites, popup ads that are
triggered, andlinks embedded in email campaigns.Here are some broad
definitions of ads that are frequently used:Web-based ads These ads
include banner ads that appear on the web pages of sites that your
best prospects are likely to visit. Web-based ads have many forms
such as text, moving graphics, a call to action (Click here to
download ), Flash or streaming banners, pop-ups, and
pop-unders.Newsletter-based ads These ads are directed at
publications that your prospects are most likely to be reading.
With newsletter ads, you can often choose from among sponsoring the
newsletter, sponsoring a column or feature in the newsletter, or
placing an ad that will appear among other ads, usually as a text
ad.Campaign IDs and Translation TablesYou can manage your campaigns
by using campaign IDs and translation tables to convert the
campaign IDinto meaningful information. For example, you may see a
campaign ID in your data files such ascampaign=721.WebTrends allows
you to have a text file that (at analysis time) can translate all
of your campaign IDs intotheir corresponding campaign names.6 Send
Feedback Fall 2010 Release
Acquisition Metrics Collecting the Right DataRedirect PagesMany
ads are designed to initially route the user through a redirect
page before they can view the adcontent. This redirect page quickly
and imperceptibly bounces the visitor to the actual page with the
adcontent, recording the redirect page as the entry page for the
session because it was selected first. (Here,the first hit
recognized as an ad campaign in the visitor session is counted.) If
each redirect page for eachplacement is distinct from the others,
you can track which version of the ad most often took the visitor
tothe ads content.Lets say you have two online ads for your
product, one on Yahoo, and one on AOL. In addition, you sentan
email to potential customers with a link that takes them to the
content. If you wish to track them allseparately, you would create
a separate redirect page for each one. In this scenario, you might
have thefollowing pages:Yahoo Ad: /redirect/yahoo_ad.htmAOL Ad:
/redirect/aol_ad.htmEmail Ad: /redirect/email_ad.htmBy tracking
visits to each of these redirect pages in the top entry pages, you
can see which ad placementsmost effectively bring people to your
site. The following graphic illustrates the redirect process
forWebTrends using the web server data collection method. Remember
that client-side tagging will not giveyou this information unless
the redirect page has the proper script. For more information, see
.Using this illustration, if you looked in the web data activity
file you will see a two-step process:The first web data activity
file entry: GET YahooAd.htm - 302 - yahoo.comThis took the visitor
from the Yahoo.com to the Yahoo redirect page (YahooAd.htm). Status
code 302means that you were redirected. 7 Send Feedback Fall 2010
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Collecting the Right Data Acquisition MetricsThe second web
data activity file entry: GET PromoAd.htm - 200 - YahooAd.htmThis
took the visitor from the Yahoo redirect page (YahooAd.htm) to the
promotion ad (PromoAd.htm).Status code 200 means that you were
successful.The following graphic shows a sample report showing the
top referring pages.In this sample report, Page refers to any
document, dynamic page, or form. Keep in mind that differenttypes
of profiles have different default settings for which file
extensions qualify a file as a page. Any URLcontaining a question
mark is considered a dynamic page.If Direct Traffic is 100% of all
your traffic, then your web server is probably not logging the
referrerfield in your data files.You can use WebTrends to create a
campaign profile and track either entry or referring pages.
However,some ads have several possible referring pages with long,
complicated URLs. As a result, it can be moredifficult to look up
and define a referrer when you set up a campaign profile.Tracking
Multiple CampaignsRe-direct pages are great for handling a handful
of campaigns, but if youre doing hundreds or thousandsof campaigns,
this method is impractical. Instead you should use a parameter
field containing a parameterID. The ID can be used to identify all
of the attributes that make up the campaign, such as site name
(forexample, MSN, Yahoo), program (3rd quarter ProductName
upgrade), offer (25% off), creative type(120x120 GIF banner),
creative (race car image), and so forth. You can then use a
translation file (viaWebTrends script or custom table lookups) to
create reports on which attributes are most effective (forexample,
did the race car image do better than the Flash movie of a tornado,
or was the 25% off offer moreeffective then the free year of
support).8 Send Feedback Fall 2010 Release
Acquisition Metrics Collecting the Right DataOffline
Acquisition TechniquesEntry and redirect pages are handy for
off-line acquisition techniques. For instance, if you place an ad
in anewspaper or magazine telling people to go to your site, you
might get them to typewww.YourCompany.com/UpgradeOffer, but you are
unlikely to get them to typewww.YourCompany.com?CID=C42-61AF.Search
EnginesSearch engines play a large role in acquiring visitors.
Whenever someone uses a search engine, there is thechance that they
will use a keyword that triggers links to your web site.Search
engines typically come in two flavors:Paid Search Engine You pay a
fee for every person who clicks through to your site, and you have
to monitor which keyword phrases are bringing you the best
visitors. With Paid Search Engines, you need to evaluate the
effectiveness of money spent.Organic Search Engine You pay nothing
for visitors who come to your site. You monitor which keyword
phrases are bringing you the best visitors. With Organic Search
Engines, you evaluate the effectiveness of time spent.People use
search engines when they dont know the name of your site or have no
other direct link to clickor distinct URL to type in their address
box. Web site designers go to great pains to figure out how to
getrecognized by these search engines and appear in the top 10 list
that appears when a search is performed.Research consistently shows
that more than 80% of web visitors use search engines to find what
they need.The longer users are online, the more likely they will
use search engines and make purchases. Since mostweb users believe
that those sites that show up in the top of the listings are the
most important sites, youmust take every reasonable measure to make
sure your site ranks highly with search engines for the
searchkeywords and phrases that your most valuable prospects use.
If you cant get good rankings by optimizing,you can always try
pay-per-click advertising options, which most of the search engines
offer.But search engine technology constantly changes. What you did
to get a search engine to effectivelyrecognize your site or page
today can have marginal results only a few months later. And each
searchengine has its own proprietary method of creating a result
list based on the search phrases or keywords aweb user enters.
These lists use the search keywords and phrases to create a list of
what they interpret asbeing the most relevant sites. Search engines
also use a host of other factors, including how often visitorsclick
on the link to your site from within their list, and how many of
the more popular sites containingrelated content have hyperlinks to
your site. Most search engines also let you register with them, and
bypaying them to place your site in their index, you can get more
exposure than if youd left it up to chance toget noticed. 9 Send
Feedback Fall 2010 Release
Collecting the Right Data Acquisition MetricsThe element that
you have direct control over in this mix is making sure that the
keywords you planned forvisitors to use to get to your site
actually make your site appear in the search results. By reviewing
the topkeywords or search phrases entered by visitors, you can find
out if those keywords are driving people toyour site. If not, you
can modify your web page content to promote your site with search
enginesbasedon those keywords. Some common ways to modify that
content involve including the keyword or phrase inthe description
and keyword meta tags, and increasing the frequency with which you
use the word orphrase in the HTML title, a headline, and first few
paragraphs of the page. These methods will improveyour chances of
being found and promoted by a search engine. Note Search engine
optimization is not the focus of this guide. Please consider
WebPosition (www.webposition.com) for a complete discussion of this
constantly changing topic.You can use WebTrends to find the search
engines that are used most often by visitors to arrive at your
site.You might want to register with search engines if you find
that your site is not being noticed.With WebTrends you can generate
reports on organic search engines (non-paid search engines) and
paidsearch engines. The following graphic shows a sample report
about most recent search engines.10 Send Feedback Fall 2010
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Acquisition Metrics Collecting the Right DataWebTrends allows
you to compare this information with information from a report on
the most popularphrases for your site. The following graphic shows
a Most Recent Search Phrases (All) report.Using the information
from this report and the previous report you can compare search
engine rankingswith the popularity and competitiveness of phrases
to get a complete picture of how the web site isperforming. Search
engine rankings allow you to understand where your site shows up in
the list of searchresults for certain phrases; for example, if you
have a phrase that performs particularly well in terms
ofconversion, but your search engine ranking is low, you may want
to try for more highly qualified traffic byboosting your
ranking.WebTrends can also analyze paid and organic search engine
usage and generate reports that show the totaleffectiveness of your
search engine marketing and optimization strategies based on
activity, depth andduration of visit. You can receive separate
reports on paid search engine, or organic search engine, or
both.Email MarketingWhen you want to reach prospects directly,
consider using direct email and either your own customerdatabase or
a purchase marketing list. You can also email to your in-house list
of registered visitors, whohave opted-in to receive
communications.By using email marketing, the recipient can click on
a link to your web site, and this visit is automaticallyrecorded
and catalogued by WebTrends. 11 Send Feedback Fall 2010
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Collecting the Right Data Acquisition MetricsYou can use
WebTrends to track email campaign results using entry/landing pages
as a primary orcomplimentary metric to the other measures produced
by email solutions. WebTrends can help you todetermine how far
recipients get into the conversion process, as well as what they do
once theyvecompleted the process and on subsequent visits.Advanced
email solutions will track clickthroughs to the site, campaign
conversions and revenueand insome cases visitors
clickstreams/pathsbut this is where the overlap with web analytics
solutions ends.Unless the visitors activities are tied directly to
the campaign, meaning the visitor entered your sitethrough the link
contained in your email, viewed campaign details/pages, and
converted on the campaignoffer, most email solutions will not
measure it.You can make your entry pages useful by creating
specific landing pages for each email marketingcampaign and make
sure that each landing page is not linked to anything except the
specified campaign.That is, only the intended email marketing
campaign should link to the pagenothing else on your website should
link to it. Then the landing page redirects the visitor to the page
that you want them to view.To analyze the detailed interactions
your email visitors have with your site beyond summary
campaigninformation such as the number of responses and
conversions, you will need a WebTrends solution. Ifvisitors left
campaign-centric pages, where did they go? What content groups or
products (beyond the onefeatured) most interested them? Did email
recipients purchase products that werent featured in thecampaign?
All of these questions can be answered by using WebTrends.The
following graphic shows a report that provides information about
all types of campaigns, includingemail marketing.12 Send Feedback
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Acquisition Metrics SummaryThis report lets you compare
different kinds of campaign types to see which are the most
effective. Ofcourse, the effectiveness is related to how much money
you are spending on each campaign.Tracking Multiple Email
CampaignsYou can use re-direct pages for handling a handful of
email campaigns, but if youre doing hundreds orthousands of
campaigns, this method is impractical. Instead you should use a
parameter field containing aparameter ID. The ID can be used to
identify all of the attributes that make up the campaign, such as
sitename (for example, MSN, Yahoo), program (3rd quarter
ProductName upgrade), offer (25% off), creativetype (120x120 GIF
banner), creative (race car image), and so forth. You can then use
a translation file (viaWebTrends script or custom table lookups) to
create reports on which attributes are most effective (forexample,
did the race car image do better than the Flash movie of a tornado,
or was the 25% off offer moreeffective then the free year of
support).SummaryAcquisition is the most expensive step in getting
visitors to your web site. Monetary expenditures onadvertising,
search engines, newsletters, and similar campaign efforts often
make up the largest share of acompanys budget. But without
visitorsespecially qualified visitorsyour web site is meaningless.
Onceyou have customers, you can work on converting and retaining
them. Fortunately, conversion and retentionare far less
expensive.Finding the Features in WebTrends ProductsThe following
paths will help you to find the topics discussed in this chapter in
WebTrends.Entry Pages and Referrers Click Web Analysis > Report
Configuration > Campaigns > New CampaignAd Campaigns Click
Web Analysis > Report Configuration > Campaigns To create a
report about ad campaigns, Edit a sample profile and click Visitor
History. Make sure that Campaign History is checked. 13 Send
Feedback Fall 2010 Release
Acquisition Metrics Worksheet Acquisition MetricsSearch Engines
Click Web Analysis > Report Configuration > Custom Reports
> Reports or Dimensions To create a report about search engines,
Edit a sample profile and click Visitor History. Be sure to check
Search Engine History.Acquisition Metrics WorksheetUse the
following worksheet to help understand how you want to acquire
visitors. Consideration Yes No Comments Will you be using ad
campaigns to drive traffic to your site? How many of these
campaigns do you need to track? Do you complete test campaigns
before you begin the real ones? Note: Test campaigns can help you
understand which campaigns work the best. Will you use redirect
pages? Do you intend to outsource the creation of your ads and the
serving of your ads? Will you track referrers? Are you relying on
statistics from organic search engines? Are you using paid search
engines? Will you use a email newsletter campaign?14 Send Feedback
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