Mixed signals this week on whether companies are taking site conversion rates as seriously as they might.
Marketing budgets continue to grow, IT spend on platforms continues to grow and spend on Web Analytics internal staff continues to grow (econsultancy Online Measurement Report, published yesterday).
All good signs. On the flip side, different messages came through at an event in London yesterday (Figaro Digital Analyse, Optimise, Realise). Nick Pandya from IMRG shared latest figures with us – all relentlessly positive except one – site conversion rates have continued to fall throughout 2009, just as they did throughout 2008. I asked Nick why he thought this was so. Some recessionary effect plus a proliferation of sites that mean we browse more before we commit. I agree with both of those, and add a third, the biggest of all – most sites don’t handle arrivals well and don’t make it easy for visitors. Poor experience, poor conversion rates.
Repeated speakers gave the impression that once your analytics were sorted out, you could move straight to Multivariate Testing - no need to talk to the customer or understand why things were happening. Whatever happened to the voice of the customer, actually listening to real people and how they experience your site?
I’m being a tiny bit unfair. Ok, so the event was sponsored by web analytics vendor WebTrends – you would expect a vendor of site analytics and now MV Testing to say you need, well, those things. Logan Tod took the same line – there was a slide which mentioned user experience in very small letters but really only addressed data analytics – again, we forgive them for concentrating on what they sell, and the presentation was otherwise useful.
Most disappointing of all, the lone client towed the line, apparently not too concerned with what customers might have to do with it. A business analyst at Visit London for four years, he described the efforts to get all of the basics in order, cleaning up data sources and integration, generating meaningful analytics reports and insight. He said that last year he had spent most of his budget on getting a Single Customer View. I don’t think this was SCV in the traditional data warehousing sense, but a concentrated effort to move from aggregated site data to full tracking of individuals (where they came from, what they did) in order to properly link activities to results.
He described how they had previously used too much guess work but now their decisions could be underpinned by decent data. This year his budget would focus on MVT. Our hearts dropped..what about understanding why customers do what they do. We’ve done all that work to properly understand ‘what’ is happening and now, without understanding ‘why’, we’re off to do MV Testing.
In the questions that followed, a member of the audience asked the one I wanted to ask – “You’ve found out what is happening, how do you find out ‘why’ customers are behaving this way?” The answers, tragically, was “perception and common sense”. So, after all that effort to remove guess work, we’re back to guess work (albeit two guesses at a time!).
I’ve had many debates with MVT vendors (Google Web Optimiser, Maxymiser) and we’ve discussed the danger of using MVT as some sort of replacement for elements of site design, but it’s key we don’t lose track of the role of each part. The foundation is quality analytics (so well done Visit London) – this will tell you what is happening. Then you need customer input (feedback, surveys, focus groups and best of all, customer experience testing) – this will tell you why it is happening. This is the key input for web designers and architects to do their stuff. And once we’ve done all that, we have a great new tool – MVT software to try out more subtle changes in text, visuals, layout – this is the process of refining the site.
With these three keys stages continuously in operation, site experience and conversion rates can be continually optimised as part of day to day business.
Another good session from Neil Argent and his team at Figaro, and useful updates from Webtrends and Logan Tod on the progress and application of analytics.
