Leveraging Key Performance Indicators To Determine The "How" And "Why" Of User Behavior

You just invested your entire interactive marketing budget on a complete overhaul of your website. Even better, you have a marketing strategy in place and have a killer web analyst to report website behavior mapped back to your business objectives. The site launches and everyone is anxiously awaiting the first analytics presentation. Let the web analysis begin!

Wait! Not so fast.

The basis of many web analytics programs these days is the KPI scorecard. Short for key performance indicators, KPIs are metrics that are tied directly to your business objectives. These are very powerful tools for communicating visitor behavior and gaining executive buy-in when major changes are needed on your website. Your KPI scorecard likely has some of the basics like traffic volumes, conversion rates, landing page "stickiness" (visits that go beyond the landing page), visits to key content, online campaign performance and several others depending on your site objectives.

Without a doubt, KPI reporting allows analysts to really quantify the activity on your website. It does not, however, provide a clear picture of the "why" or the "how" behind the "behavior". You may be scratching your head…that's okay, I'll explain.

Take a step back for a moment and ask yourself this:

• Do you know who is coming to your website?
• Do you know why they are there?
• Do you know for certain what your visitors are trying to accomplish?
• Do you know how their online experience affected their perceptions of your brand?
• And, do you know when they will follow through on the call to action?

Yes, interactive campaigns do enable you to get a better understanding of your customers more so than any other medium today. You probably have some answers to these questions in the form of "X% of visitors access the site directly, another X% from search engines and another X% from another site. 60% of visitors seek us out by using a branded term and look at product information during their visit." It would be a real stretch to say "60% of visitors are young adults with moderate to high income for their age, who are willing to take risks with their money, but will only do so if they know they are getting something in return like an exceptional rate with low banking fees, convenience of no restrictions on money transfers, etc. This is much different from the double income households with college-bound teenage children that you have been targeting by touting the benefits of saving money by using an online financial institution.

Thinking this is an extreme example? Maybe.

The bottom line is that website (behavioral) data is only going to give you half of the story. Your next step, to fully leverage the power of interactive, is to understand the other half. Here are a few ways you can get started.

Attitudes, Attributes, and Perceptions…Oh My!

The marketing mix is evolving to be multi-channeled and multi-directional and so naturally brand building is extending to online. At a very basic level, successful brands are reflections of positive customer experiences. The truth of online is that visitors will form opinions of your entire line of products, services, characteristics and brand identity in a matter of seconds.

Adding pre-visit and post-visit surveys to your website will help you determine the degree to which the experience supports your key branding elements. Ask the same questions of both visitors who are just entering your site and of visitors exiting your site. Identify the differences. Ideally, you will find the online experience supports your branding, in which case your pre- and post—responses will be the same, if not higher. Consider including questions to address your brand positioning, personality, imagery and attributes.

Then, tie your survey responses back to website behavior to see which content or features contribute to the experience. For example, a visitor who thought your site was particularly engaging may have spent some time with an interactive tool on your site. Looking at this information as part of your monthly KPI analysis will help you identify shifts in attitudes so that you can proactively respond with refreshed features.

Experience the Difference

For more than 10 years, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has found there to be a significant relationship between customer satisfaction and financial earnings. In particular, the research shows that companies have benefited most from improving customer satisfaction relative to the competition by concentrating on improvements that lead to the greatest marginal increase. These improvements may not always be what customers state are most important.1 Whether you choose to implement the full blown ACSI instrument or ask a few site experience questions of your own, the benefits are obvious.

To get started on your own, identify strengths and areas of opportunity by surveying visitors on their experience with content, functionality, navigation, etc. Then, compare this experiential data to visitor expectations and intent to convert. This data will help you identify the primary drivers of satisfaction.

Not all visitors are alike, so ask questions to understand the reasons for their visits, what they are looking for, and what other sites they have visited. As you begin to segment visitors, you will begin to find ways to make incremental gains. Always integrate website behavioral data. This is where you will see the real power of this methodology. Not only will you understand what visitors are looking at, but you will begin to understand why. Together, this will make a powerful mechanism for understanding and building loyalty. (Not to mention that you will finally have an answer to the "why" question that senior executives always ask.)

Give It Another Shot

Your web analytics tool will help you understand the top paths that lead to conversion. These paths represent the pages and activities that visitors engage in during a visit in which they convert. For visitors who leave without converting, find out why.

The key here is to keep your questioning very brief, while trying to understand ways to help prospects find their way. You'll want to drop questions at critical points where visitors fail to take the call to action. (This is where you should consult with user experience experts on the most appropriate way to implement this type of questioning so it seems integrated into the experience.)

Your objective here is to understand what visitors are looking for, if they found it, why they didn't convert, if they intend to come back, and if their experience was one worth mentioning to a friend. Create another opportunity to convert these prospects by offering a call to action at the end of your questioning. For a lead generation site, this may be offering a link to an application or contact form or perhaps a phone number for customer service. For visitors who didn't find what they are looking for, offer a link to take them there. Optimize the site based on your findings and watch your conversion rate on your KPI scorecard improve.

DFD – Don't Forget the Demos

Always ask a few demographic questions in your online survey where appropriate. This is your opportunity to acquire additional information to help with your targeting. Include qualifying questions to determine if visitors are likely prospects - your target audience may not always be the audience who is actually accessing your site.

There are many ways to approach website survey research. When in doubt, start small. Use your experience and learning from each survey to build the next. Interactive marketing gives you an opportunity to develop a greater understanding of your customer than any other medium. Understanding the complete picture will help you improve your bottom line.