Tealium’ s Mekler says analytics provide a peek into what people care about.
“ In the old days, a merchant could look for visual clues to see if a customer in the store was doing well( such as how many items they had in their shopping bag) or not( if they were lost in the aisle, or swearing at the generic brand alfoil, and who hasn’ t done that).
“ With analytics, we look for those clues to help us identify basic success, but also more nuanced opportunities that we should explore. If I’ m booking a flight and sort from lowest to highest fare every time, that’ s a piece of information about me as a person that should be known – I’ m likely price sensitive. That should drive how marketing interacts.
The sales imperative
If a website gets revenue from advertising, not customer sales, then it is important for them to have high customer traffic, says Kolyshkina.
“ A retailer selling appliances and electronic equipment, can get insight into what drives their sales volume by combining web data with internal non-web data on current sales, promotions and marketing campaigns.”
She also suggests including external non-web data such as competitor marketing and promotional activities, and socioeconomic characteristics of the region the customers live in.
Smart companies have successfully used predictive analytics to answer questions like“ Which data points predict whether a user will stay? And if they stay, which data points predict how active they’ ll be after three months?”
Kolyshkina references Amazon, which increases sales by suggesting to customers who bought from Amazon other items they might like based on the customers’ needs identified through comparison engine analytics.
Other data sources
As with other sources there is an increasing need to look at the full blend of data sources and how web analytics relates to these.
Mekler says,“ This is really where the value of the customer data platform comes in. If you have a common language and a common set of customer data that feeds all of your tools and teams, you can capitalise on new opportunities.
“ For example, if your analytics team uncovers an audience that has a high propensity to buy a certain type of product at a certain time of year, wouldn’ t it be great to connect that customer segment with every touchpoint where that customer exists.”
Mobile first
As consumers have shifted to mobile, companies have increasingly adopted a mobile first development strategy and web analytics vendors have had to follow suit.
Mekler says this is clearly evident in the evolution of Google Analytics to Universal Analytics.
“ User behaviour is changing. What used to constitute a conversion abandonment on desktop could now be a device shifting to moment where the user continues the experience on mobile.”
And a big issue for marketers is that the rise of mobile apps – and really all the apps and experiences popping up – has hit on the true era of omnichannel and customer centricity.
“ The smartphone app marketplace has moved some traffic off the traditional web and into native apps,” says HP’ s Menon.“ It’ s crucial to track usage in those apps and feed that back into the analytics platform. One approach to simplify this is to use hybrid applications that combine the benefits of a traditional mobile application, but deliver the content from the web content management system. This facilitates analytics and tracking using the same methods as on the traditional or mobile web.”
Darkness
One of the problems for marketers who increasingly need a 360 degree view of the customer in order to deliver the kinds of experiences that consumer crave is that much of the data they need remains opaque.
Take Dark Social for instance. Dark social refers to the kind of behavior that typically gets lost once a user leaves a tagged up website. For instance, when content from a story is cut and pasted into an email and forwarded to a friend, or dropped into a status update on Facebook.
Speaking to Which-50 earlier this year, Kerry McCabe, RadiumOne MD said,“ It makes sense that people share their interests, passions and intent with those of similar characteristics, wants and needs.”
The power of illuminating dark social is that we are now able to effectively deliver on upper-funnel customer acquisition and prospecting versus an over-reliance on retargeting. From a practical perspective, brands and publishers can now engage with large segments of consumers who are demonstrating interest and intent, yet are most likely not on their radar in social, search and general RTB activities.”
Brands that don’ t really know where their traffic comes from find it hard to form a strategy to better attract, connect and engage in a relevant manner.
As he told Which-50,“ By illuminating‘ dark social’ and tracking shared content patterns more effectively, marketers can begin to capitalize on this valuable social intelligence – to find their next customer.”
His advice:“ Ensure that you have visibility into‘ dark social’ and the ability to connect with those audiences outside of your owned media assets and current retargeting practices. It could be that you are missing over 60 per cent of the leads available to you.”
Suggested vendors
Adobe www. adobe. com / au / marketing-cloud / web-analytics. html
AT Internet www. atinternet. com / en /
Clicky clicky. com /
FoxMetrics www. foxmetrics. com /
Google www. google. com. au / analytics /
IBM www-01. ibm. com / software / au / analytics / rte / an / customer-analytics /
KISSmetrics kissmetrics. com /
Open Web Analytics www. openwebanalytics. com /
Piwik piwik. org /
RadiomOne: RadiumOne. com
Tealium Real-time Data. Real-time Action. Real-time Results. Tealium. com + 61 2 9238 2335
Webtrends www. webtrends. com /
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