Collecting site outcome data
‘Site outcome data’ refers to a customer performing a significant action which is of value
to the marketer. This is usually a transaction that is recorded. It involves more than
downloading a web page, and is proactive. Key marketing outcomes include:
registration to site or subscriptions to an e-mail newsletter;
requests for further information such as a brochure or a request for a callback from a
customer service representative;
responding to a promotion such as an online competition;
a sale influenced by a visit to the site;
a sale on-site.When reviewing the efficiency of the different e-communications tools referred to in
Chapter 8, such as search engine marketing, online advertising and affiliate marketing, it
is important to assess the outcomes generated. Measuring quantity of clickthroughs to a
site is simplistic, it is conversion to these outcomes which should be used to assess the
quality of traffic. To achieve this ‘end-to-end’ tracking, two main tools are used, first
using cookies to identify the visitor across different sessions and secondly using tracking
IDs within URLs to identify a user session.
An important aspect of measures collected offline is that the marketing outcomes
may be recorded in different media according to how the customer has performed
mixed-mode buying. For example, a new customer enquiry could arrive by e-mail, fax or
phone. Similarly, an order could be placed online using a credit card, or by phone, fax or
post. For both these cases what we are really interested in is whether the web site influ-
enced the enquiry or sale. This is a difficult question to answer unless steps are put in
place to answer it. For all contact points with customers staff need to be instructed to ask
how they found out about the company, or made their decision to buy. Although this is
valuable information it is often intrusive, and a customer placing an order may be
annoyed to be asked such a question. To avoid alienating the customer, these questions
about the role of the web site can be asked later, perhaps when the customer is filling in
a registration or warranty card. Another device that can be used to identify use of the
web site is to use a specific phone number on the web site, so when a customer rings to
place an order, it is known that the number was obtained from the web site. This
approach is used by Dell on its site.
It will be apparent that to collect some of these measures we may need to integrate
different information systems. Where customers provide details such as an e-mail
address and name in response to an offer, these are known as ‘leads’ and they may need
to be passed on to a direct-sales team or recorded in a customer relationship manage-
ment system. For full visibility of customer behaviour, the outcomes from these systems
need to be integrated with the site-visitor activity data.Selecting a web analytics tool
There are a bewildering range of hundreds of web analytics tools, varying from share-
ware packages with often primitive reporting through to complex systems which may
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for a popular site. Given this, it is difficult
for the Internet marketer to select the best tool or tools to meet their needs. One of the
first issues to consider is the different types of measures that need to be integrated
within the performance management system. Figure 9.6 gives an indication of the types
of data that need to be integrated; these include:CHAPTER 9· MAINTAINING AND MONITORING THE ONLINE PRESENCE