Most companies are collecting data for no reason. Far too often we’re coming across companies that have some form of analytics but no idea why. They have had it put in (mainly because it’s free) and someone has normally shown them how to log in and told them what some of the numbers mean. They have never logged in again, let alone actually done any analysis of the data.

Data is useless without meaning. Meaning is useless without action. Companies need to be analysing their website statistics, finding out why certain trends are appearing or not appearing, and take action to change what they are seeing. Only then are you truly using web analytics, and not just being a data collector for no reason.

Here are some things you might want to know about your visitors:

• Where are they coming from? Which of these sources is the most profitable? What’s the trend of these visitor sources? Which are declining or increasing over time?
• What is my bounce rate? Which content gives the worst bounce rates (and therefore should be fixed)
• What content are they looking at on my site? Which pieces of content are the most popular? Which produce the most exits from the site?
• What keywords are people using to visit my site? Are they all brand led? If so what can I do to encourage people to visit my site that haven’t already heard of me?

There’s a ton of questions you can ask yourself. So why not start asking yourself right away. Stop collecting, start analysing.

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If I could apply the same level of concentration, for the same amount of time, with the same amount of conviction and determination that I can for some games, then my results would explode, I’m sure. I just need to find why certain games lock me in so tightly with so much purpose! I played Dead Space on my 360 for around 13-15 hours total to complete it and have probably spent close to that on Assassin’s Creed II.

The level of engagement is amazing. How can we create that level of engagement for something else like a website or project? What, psychologically makes the experience so good?

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We hear it too often. There have been so many times that I’ve heard people comparing offline shopping to online shopping. Trying to recreate the offline experience in an online store.

Here are what I believe are the fundamental differences:

1) Online, you can be in 10 shops at once

The possibility of comparing lots of different website’s product at once is so easy, especially with tabbed browsers now the standard. If you’re offline, you can only see one product at once price in one store at once. This is a crucial difference. Do you know what your main competition is doing to stand out? Free delivery? Delivery options? Bundled deals? And so on. Make sure you have points of difference.

2) No parking, no journey, no walking

Simple, but there’s less logistics. You can do some shopping in literally a couple of minutes online. Visits can be short or very long on a website. Quite often in offline world, you don’t spend a very long time in one store, but move from shop to shop. Generally this is done simultaneously while online. Much less stress (in theory) than an offline shop. Also a better use of time as there’s no journey time involved like going to a town centre or an out of town centre. Make sure you take advantage of these things.

3) You have to arrange for delivery

Once ordered, you don’t have the product immediately, unlike a lot of offline transactions. Especially with slightly larger items, that means delivery to somewhere that can accept it, or wait for it to arrive one day. This can be a pain for the customer. Although a lot of stores have moved this forwards a lot recently and there’s also quite a lot of innovation in this area with lockable boxes for large parcels. How are you making delivery as easy as possible and doesn’t put people off?

4) There’s more support in store

In theory, there’s good customer service advisors in store to advise and guide the customer through the store to what they want. They can answer questions you may have, you can touch and feel the products, and they can tell you things you may not have know about the product before, or suggest things they could buy with it.

This is where offline can easy trump online. The sheer level of proactive customer support is the big boon offline.

I say this is ‘in theory’ because recently the customer service has been pretty shocking ion a lot of established UK retailers like Debenhams, Tesco and New Look. Many of them have shop assistants chatting to each other while serving you, and generally not supporting the customer. The one thing where they can stand out from offline they are turning the other way. Shocking.

So for your site – think about exactly how you can can give as much support as possible. Live chat? Possibly. Great support copy on delivery, returns, etc? Essential. Great product descriptions, images and bundling? Yes please.

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Lots of commentry on the web today about Firefox 3.5 being the most popular browser. Really, when you add up Internet Explorer, it’s still IE at 55.4% and Firefox at 32.1%. See graph below. There’s a problem though

This is not what you’re clients stats are like. See below two of our major ecommerce sites for big brand names here in the UK. Note the Internet Explorer total (and underneath how much IE6 is still important too).

Make sure you work with your clients visitors, not the web news deadlines.

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“Current spend from advertisers is between 12% and 13% of total budget. However, the time spent onlone by consumers is approaching 20%. Clients need to address this shortfall” – Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP

Great quote and a very simple gap that needs to be filled. If advertisers continue this trend they will fall further and further behind consumers shopping habits and it will be very hard to catch up

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This is a follow on from the ‘7 deadly sins of beginning a web project‘ which I posted last month, this post deals with what to do, as opposed to not doing.

1) Assign a website champion

This is crucial. There needs to be someone inside an organisation that is running the website project that will be responsible for it. And I don’t mean someone who just is the point of contact for the rest of the organisation, but someone who will drive the project, be passionate about the project, and is prepared to educate the rest of the organisation on the best way forwards, in collaboration with the agency helping to build the site.

2) Understand what you want from your website

Do not start a web project by just thinking ‘We need a new site because the current one is a few years old’. Really think about it:

• What is the website’s purpose for my organisation?
• What are the top 5 tasks we want our customers to accomplish on the site?
• What plans do we have to enhance the website in the future?
• Who will be coming to our website (demographics, purpose, reason for visit etc)

There’s a lot more questions but there are a few to get you started!

3) Understand what they want from your website

Your visitors! If you have a current website, ask them what they like and dislike about it, and given half the chance, what they would improve. That information is gold dust, and shows you what needs to be focused upon for the new project. If you don’t have an existing website – ask those that are likely to use the site what they need. It’s not about you!

4) Don’t over spec the technology

This is one of the craziest parts that we have seen happen. Instead of doing step 2, companies can just start looking at packages and what functionality they provide. Suddenly, it’s essential for them to have granular access control. Really? Is it? How many people are going to be editing the site? Only 2. Both in marketing. So what’s the need for access control? Exactly. That’s just a simple example – however it can get truly out of control and cost an organisation thousands it doesn’t need to spend. At least, not immediately.

5) Remember phasing

This is related to the above. A website is never a one off build project (or at least it shouldn’t be!). It should always progress in phases, building up the site and adding only what is necessary, and preferrably when your visitors want it. That way you can change often and quickly, and measure how the changes help or hinder your site. The days of massive complete redesigns (should) be nearing an end.

6) Get expert advice

Very important in my opinion. You may know your target market very well. You may know your own business inside and out. What you may not know is the web and what it’s potential is for you. A great agency who lives and breathes digital and marketing as a whole can take you strides forwards with your website. You need advice that challenges you, pushes you as an organisation and helps you leap towards your goals. You do not want to hire a ‘yes man’. In a recent pitch for a website I said that (paraphrasing) ‘If you’re just looking for an agency to push stuff around a page for you until you’re happy, or one that will just do as they are told, that’s not us. If you want that, we are not the right choice for you. If you want to be guided, helped and challenged, then we can help’

7) Set a strong project plan

With dates, milestones and targets to be achieved. Do not let yur project drift or go off course. Stick to the plan and things are much easier to finish and much less painful along the way.

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According to Verdict Analysis, the heady days of 20-40% year on year growth for online spending is over. With the recession and ecommerce becoming more mature, growth is set to be a more sedate 11% per annum. See below:

It’s an interesting perspective. Although I agree a lot of the major retailers are doing a lot of things right, many are doing them wrong as well.

I agree the total market size and therefore overall spending may grow at around 11%, however any individual site should be looking at taking market share via creating engaging customers experiences and staying ahead of the ecommerce curve. There’s also the growing mobile space that presents many opportunities for growth online.

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As some of you may know, we work with a number of retailers helping them with their ecommerce operations. One of those companies is Next where we operate one of their 3rd party websites that sells Made to Order products such as curtains, blinds and some furniture.

It’s now been going close to 2 years and so we have a nice wodge of data that we can analyse to see the trends that are appearing. The most interesting relationship we’re seeking to understand at the moment is that between sampling (getting free samples of curtain fabrics in the post) and purchase of an actual product.

We recently sent out an email to all those people that didn’t purchase but had ordered samples, it’s been pretty successful, generating a good number of orders and paying for itself many many times over. On analysing the data of those that purchased on the promotion, we found that there seemed to be a optimum time between samples bought and the purchase date. We’e now thinking of setting up a system to take advantage of this new found optimum date to remind people at that time.

We’re now looking to delve deeper into the sample to purchase relationship to see how we can:

• Convert more people to order from sampling
• Reduce the level (and therefore cost) of sampling without reducing orders

Which should result in some pretty huge return on investment.

I think some ecommerce websites can focus too much on their traffic sources, increasing traffic from X route and their conversion rate, and not always think about some of the other simple measures on their site such as registration, sampling (if you have it) and other metrics. Are you obsessed by traffic and not behaviour?

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Run of negative posts recently but some things send me nuts. Below is a screenshot of Virgin Money’s login screen. This error message would be all well and good, except for the fact that all the characters I entered were valid, it was just the wrong password! Talk about a confusing error message.

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Back in the day when Webfusion weren’t owned by Pipex, they were pretty good. Good customer service, competitive prices and good technical support. Times, indeed, have changed. Since Pipex took over their technical support in particular but also their general service has become one giant failure.

Poor refund system

Yesterday, at Blueleaf, we wanted to cancel one of our services with them that had been accidentally renewed. It has been billed for the entire year and so I asked whether we would get any money back. As we hadn’t even entered the next year’s service yet – I would of though this would of been possible. Not a penny back. Even car tax discs give you money back if they aren’t need for heaven’s sake.

Poor cancellation process

Now the most annoying part. Their cancellation process. This is a technological company selling website hosting. So how do you have to cancel? Get emailed a cancellation form, fill it in, and fax or post it back. a paper process for an electronic company. Also, it takes 30 days to process this cancellation, so if you’re on a monthly plan, you will always pay another month. Sneaky, greedy, shockingly slow.

Horrible service

On calling saying I wished to cancel, I was transferred to their cancellation department (it has it’s own department?) the lady on the end of the phone asked what domain name it was for said she would send a form by email. Before I could even say thank you, good bye, ask a question or anything, she had hung up and cut me off. Amazingly rude.

But here’s the crux – at Blueleaf we still have a few minor accounts with them (most of them, thank heavens, are on a great hosts platform now with amazing customer service) – what do I think now – do I feel like a valued customer after that?

Do I heck. Webfusion Fail.

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