Guest writer: Ian Tickle, WebTrends

Best practice makes perfect

I am not a fan of using technology for the sake of it, which is unfortunately what traditionally drives a great deal of web development.

Therefore having a Web 2.0 site for the sake of it is a very dangerous thing to consider; cool as it may be. That’s why a lot of Web 2.0 technology is utilised for microsites or specific campaigns as they can be targeted towards a more specific audience. I can’t see many banks for example being too far along into planning on how they can make their entire sites Flash or AJAX-based.

The most important thing to consider is: Why do your visitors come to your site? Not what you or the CEO want them to do when they get there, but why do they come in the first place? If you don’t know or understand this, you won’t be able to get your search marketing right. There’s no point buying thousands of keywords in the hope that you can ‘attract’ (i.e. potentially ‘kid’) visitors into coming, unless you can measure what works - and in terms of a demonstrable return in the form of conversions or cash, not just ‘traffic’.

It’s difficult to get out of ‘developer’ or ’site-owner’ mode and think about how real people use your site. Usability testing is obviously very handy for this. But don’t’ start at the home page. Start from Google, or any other place you may be using as an influencer, paid or otherwise.

What happens when Joe Public logs on and starts “playing around with your website” (and sadly that’s the attitude a lot of developers have)? I know you’ve got a sign saying “Don’t use the back button” but what happens when I do? And isn’t it absurd to develop something that disallows the use of one of the most frequently used buttons in a browser?

As a geek and heavy Internet user, let me assure you that your ecommerce engine has one chance to get it right. If it breaks, redirects me, bounces me out, loses my shopping cart or tries my patience in any other way, it’s back to Google to find someone else. So unless you have a monopoly on whatever you sell, it needs to work.

The technology needs to support, not lead. By all means redesign the site to take advantage of Web 2.0 design principles, but only if a more immersive and engaging site is going to help you. It should do, but if you want people in and out quickly, it might not be the best thing.

Internet users haven’t changed all that much - yes, they respond to shiny things, but ultimately when they have a job to do (and a lot of what we are talking about here is ‘tasks’ rather than indulgence), they want clean, simple, and easy to use.

Ian Tickle is Sales Director within Northern Europe for WebTrends. He has many years of enterprise sales experience from Tripwire, Tumbleweed and WallData. Prior to his career in the software industry Ian was a Business Analyst for National Westminster Bank where he gained 5 years of experience in selecting solutions that provided true benefit and return to the business.

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Robbin Steif found out which web analytics tools presidential candidates in the U.S. are using so I decided to have a look at which tools some other governmental functions are using.

• FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, uses Google Analytics and WebTrends.
• No page tag was found on the websites of CIA, U.S. Department of Defence and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
• The White House uses WebTrends.

And here is what Robbin found:

Mitt Romney: SiteCatalyst
Rudy Guiliani: Google Analytics
Hillary Clinton: Google Analytics
Barack Obama: Google Analytics
John Edwards: Google Analytics
Dennis Kucinich: none
Joe Biden: none
John McCain: none
Tom Tancredo: none

I have also looked at which web analytics tools Swedish parties are using.

Note: We only looked for client-side data collection. It is possible that they’re using logfile analysis.

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Based on your experience from consulting, have you noticed any major differences between how Europeans and Americans approach web analytics?

I don’t have any *paying* European clients, so I don’t really have any insight on this question. Not sure why this is, they simply don’t ask me for a quote I guess! I have advised many European folks on all kinds of database marketing / web analytics issues through the free Q & A service on my web site or as a result of them buying one of my books. For example, see: http://blog.jimnovo.com/2007/02/28/profiling-library-customers-newsletter-22007/

But to answer your question, perhaps the kind of work I enjoy and am willing to take on limits my market in Europe somewhat. Europe might be “different” than the US in that Europe is more focused on web analytics for web site conversion etc. at this point rather than as an integrated part of a customer marketing and management strategy. I have no evidence of this though, I’m just guessing. Maybe it’s simply too early in the analytical cycle for European companies to engage this kind of work.

In general, I don’t accept web analytics work without a strategic component to it. If you ask me to simply “analyze your web site” I’m not going to do that, it’s just not very interesting to me. And unlike when I started doing web analytics 10 years ago, there are now plenty of people out there who can “analyze your web site”, so this work will get done by somebody. When I was starting out, very few companies owned the analytical tools, so they used to send log files for analysis to me on CD-ROM’s!

Instead, I prefer web or customer analytics jobs that are part of a larger idea, some kind of overall business optimization, and with a company willing to implement based on the results. In other words, I prefer to optimize for customer value and / or the total business, not just a web site. If the business *is* the web site, that is fine, but if so I want to be optimizing the entire marketing system including e-mail, merchandising, advertising, etc. not just landing pages and site navigation. Otherwise, it’s really a waste of time, for both myself and the client. I think Europeans are at least interested in these larger ideas though, because …

What share of your readership is European?

About 1/4 of both the blog and the newsletter readership is European, 1/2 is US, another 1/4 is Asia / Other / Can’t tell. I’ve been doing the newsletter / web site since 2000, so the audience on the web site / newsletter is *much* larger than the blog, which started in 2007.

Jim Novo is an interactive customer retention, defection, and loyalty expert with nearly 20 years of experience. His professional career has been focused on introducing Data-Driven marketing to new industries. In the 80’s, cable television was the target and his ground-breaking High ROI customer retention programs were widely adopted throughout the industry. In the 90’s, Jim revolutionized the TV Shopping business by focusing resources on the customer instead of the products. Jim has a newsletter and a blog. He has written the books Drilling Down and Marketer’s Guide to E-Metrics. Jim is also Co-Chair of the Web Analytics Association’s Education Committee.

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