4. Site search analytics. Tracking
site search is a very useful resource that
allows you to know what your visitors are
looking for in your website. Is the search
engine directing the customer to your website or redirecting them to the next best option in absence of the product? Keeping
tabs on this will help companies increase
customer loyalty and sales.
Another application of site search analytics allows you to understand what is
being searched on your website. By understanding this, marketers can influence the
site layout and design so that visitors are
able to easily locate answers to common
queries or the most searched products.
5. Marketing spend optimization.
HP’s online store uses a mix of marketing
vehicles to reach different customer segments with different communication and
buying preferences. Optimizing spend on
various marketing vehicles is critical to
optimizing demand generation efforts as
well. However, determining which marketing mix is most beneficial to the business
is not an easy process, requiring not only
a scientific approach to analyzing spend
and revenue, but also a test-learn-optimize culture. For example, ongoing analysis of the response to different types of
marketing vehicles helps in identifying the
best fit for a particular type of message.
Based on such analysis, one can decide
A NA L Y T I C S
if a banner would work best vis-à-vis a
customized landing page, or would an
e-mail campaign be the best option.
6. Connect marketing with warehousing. In large supply chain environments, an accurate forecast of orders
that get shipped out of the warehouse on
a daily basis can be tracked using predictive analytics methodologies to enable accurate warehouse space/staffing
allocation in order to meet the aggressive
shipping timeline.
In conclusion, marketers can apply
data mining and advanced analytical skills
to derive key insights to better understand
drivers of Web traffic and reasonably accurate traffic forecast for use in business
planning. We sense that if companies use
data accurately, they can easily exhibit
a three to five times growth of the online
business and will make analytics easily
replicable across different functions of the
organization.
Rohit Tandon is vice president of corporate strategy
and worldwide head of Global Analytics at HewlettPackard. As part of HP’s corporate strategy team, he
helps drive the analytics ecosystem to support HP’s
vision and priorities through delivery of cutting-edge
analytical capabilities across sales, marketing, supply
chain, finance and HR domains. He was recently
named one of the top-10 most influential analytics
leaders in India for 2014 by Analytics India Magazine.
Shruti Upadhyay is a manager with HP Global
Analytics.
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