E-commerce: Web Analytics System Gives a Clear Picture for Figleaves.com
Problem: Figleaves.com sought to understand customer behavior online without having to submit an IT request every time information was needed.
Solution: It implemented a Web analytics platform.
Results: The British onlline marketer garners exact metrics on customer behavior, benchmarked against other merchants in its vertical.
Early last year, London-based Figleaves.com implemented a Web analytics solution to more easily track customer behavior on its Web site. Prior to that time, the online intimate apparel merchant relied on an in-house solution that was incomplete, at best.
Much of the in-house solution was based on the analysis of complex databases that logged customer actions on individual pages on the Figleaves site. “It was a bit like being a forensic detective,” says co-founder Michael Ross. “We had this partial picture of what was going on, and we had to infer things from odd bits of data.”
Specifically, if Ross wanted to know where his customers went after viewing individual pages on the site, he’d have to ask his database manager to drill into a data set and extrapolate an answer based on this information. While Ross admits that he knew the important metrics that affected conversion, he was seeking a more complete picture.
Late in 2004, Figleaves began looking for a full-fledged Web analytics solution that could help the company see the whole customer behavior picture. After spending about four months looking at various analytics packages, Ross and his team chose a Coremetrics Online Analytics tool. Although he notes that the company implemented Coremetrics primarily because of its robust functionality, another selling point was the ability to anonymously benchmark Figleaves’ Web site against other merchants both in and out of its vertical WHAT??. One of his big obsessions, Ross says, is not only knowing his site’s metrics in great detail, but also knowing how those metrics stack up against other e-commerce sites.
