Decoding Digital Footprints with Analytics to Better Understand Consumers

Every time a Website is visited or a banner ad is clicked, a trail of footprints is left behind. These footprints offer clues about likes, dislikes, and habits—the consumer’s digital behavior. Web analytics is the science of studying digital behavior to make Websites and ads more compelling, relevant, and user-friendly to consumers. It’s a fast-growing field in marketing; analytics tools truly measure consumer activity, but only for marketers who understand how to interpret the footprints.

Analytics can open your eyes to many aspects of consumers’ online behavior. These efforts can, for example, detail the specific pages a consumer visits on a particular site, when and where that consumer ends his Website visit, from which online properties the consumer was referred, why a consumer abandons a shopping cart or exits a branded application.

Often marketers are surprised at just how much they can learn from analytics, as well as how useful these data can prove when applied correctly to the design of online consumer experiences of almost any kind. In 2005, for example, before SBC changed its name to firm AT&T, the company wanted to improve the usability of SBC.com, the corporate portal used by consumers and businesses to learn more about SBC’s products and services. We at Avenue A | Razorfish applied a Web analytics tool called “click-density analysis” to identify the most-visited and least-visited areas of the site.

Figure one below shows the old SBC Website, covered with tiny red dots. Each of the red dots represents places where visitors were clicking on content. In SBC’s case, the red dots revealed that site visitors were not clicking the links that SBC expected them to click. The sporadic density of the dots, which appeared all over the page, showed that visitors were distracted by too many links and too much content. The site design was most likely too busy.

Figure 1

By applying this information, the home page design was significantly simplified, as illustrated by figure 2 below. In just two months, SBC saw click-throughs to desired content increase 17%. Desired self-service functionality increased 18%. As marketers increasingly understand the value a focused analytics initiative can provide, many are applying them and later unveiling simplified, clean, highly usable Web experiences.

Figure 2

User-friendly site design is one of the most effective applications of analytics packages today, but the packages have value for other important applications as well. Sophisticated search engine marketers, for example, often apply analytics packages to optimize pay-per-click (PPC) search marketing programs. By tracking conversion rates of various keywords, marketers can identify those that may not be living up to their potential. Certain advanced analytics packages can home in on these problematic keywords and track and understand the navigational behavior of visitors who click on a search ad and arrive at a Website. You can also leverage analytics in search to better understand which engines and keywords drive the most or best visitors, instances where one keyword might be cannibalizing sales from another keyword, and many other helpful findings that can boost the effectiveness of a program.

Beyond site design and search, analytics packages can shed light on many other online efforts for marketers. From understanding which products should trigger an upsell effort to troubleshooting why an online game or application might have a high abandonment rate, analytics packages can clarify many facets of online consumer behavior.

Marketers should understand how to decode the footprints left behind by consumers and tracked through analytics. Those who do will better understand key aspects of online consumer behavior that, when applied effectively, can significantly improve the caliber of almost any online experience.

Dave Friedman is president of the central region for Seattle-based interactive services firm Avenue A | Razorfish and a monthly contributor to CHIEF MARKETER. Contact him at [email protected].