Web Analytics: Three Success Stories
With the advent and development of Internet marketing in the last 10 years, catalogers have been inundated with more data than they know what to do with, courtesy of their Web analytics packages. Catalogers shared their frustrations and success stories regarding their online marketing data at the session “Web Analytics: The Secret to Your Success” at last week’s ACCM. Below are their stories.
1. With the current version of its site active and taking orders since 2002, Classic Designs has been using WebTrends to track online marketing data since that time, said Mark Desrochers, co-owner of the woodworking catalog. But while the software had been collecting customer behavior information, Desrochers had thought of the company primarily as an offline marketer and had done nothing with the data.
It was the success of an online program, rather than a problem with the Web site, that prompted Desrochers and his team to re-evaluate the online business. Pay-per-click search had been driving significant traffic to the Web site, generating a cost/sales ratio of just 10 percent. Wanting to understand customer behavior on the site, the Classic Designs team has begun sifting through nearly four years of data collected by Web Trends to develop benchmarks for the site.
These benchmarks, which include traffic by month, user session length, referring URLs, and primary entry and exit pages, have prompted Classic Designs to focus on the Web as a much stronger marketing initiative. In addition to hiring more Internet support staff, Desrochers said the company is developing reports that initially will run every two weeks, allowing the company to compare current results to these established benchmarks and react to any changes immediately.
2. Great American Business Products has used its Web analytics platform, provided by DMinSite, to great effect, said Barbara de la Riva, marketing director for the business forms cataloger. The company began tracking both traffic and sales on the site by the media that originated the contact. These reports prompted Great American to bolster its e-mail campaign, increasing its e-mail file by a factor of 10, de la Riva said.
