The massive volume of analytics data can confuse and point you in the wrong direction. Here’s how to understand what your website visitors are really doing...
Web analytics can be extremely useful, but it the data can also be a curse. Indeed, online we now live in a world swimming with data, so much so we have to call it “big data”. The problem with big data is it needs big analysis. The more analytics you collect, the more time it takes to wade through the reports and try to work out what is happening with your website.
Google Analytics, for instance, has 103 standard reports you can look at. That’s before you start adding your own specific requirements and comparisons. In addition, there is a problem with all of these reports; none of them tell you “why” a visitor did what…
A summary of 7 principles of persuasion
There is increasing interest in applying the principles of Psychology to Digital Marketing. According to Kath Pay of Cloud.IQ, the benefits of incorporating consumer psychology into your marketing are two- fold:
"First, applying the principles of the Psychology of Persuasion can assist your customer in their journey to achieve their objective i.e. buying a product or service from you, and secondly, you, as the marketer, benefits from facilitating more successful conversions".
Kath has a new free download 'Leveraging Psychology in Digital Marketing' explaining how the relationship between buyer psychology and behaviour can help marketers optimise the online customer journey. It covers the principles and examples from landing pages and email marketing on how you can improve conversion efficiency as part of inbound marketing.
This infographic is a taster of the book's themes to help you get under the skin of your customers through psychological techniques including those focussed on…
New research helps understand consumer attitudes and behaviour by socio-economic personas/categories
Do you know to what extent customers are empowered to shop online and if they are ready to engage with you? GfK was commissioned by the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to research different behaviours amongst online shoppers. They have just published this in-depth research into this area, to help business growth by understanding the range of online customer segments they should appeal to.
GfK took a representative sample of the UK population, interviewing over 6,000 consumers, to find out how consumers shop, individual motivations and attitudes, highlighting differences by socio-economic background. The report segments consumers into 5 groups:
5 Segments of Consumers for online buying decision-making
Who do these customer segments represent?
Constrained Strugglers: Less empowered group with an average age of 45 years and highest mix of ethnic background. Tend to…
When is the best time to call time on a split test??
One of the biggest issues when running a split test is knowing how long to run it for. Confusingly, depending on the split testing tool you use it may tell you when to stop or it may even stop the test for you based on it’s own statistical calculations. For the uninitiated that might sound like job done but in fact it’s misleading and possibly injurious to the final objective. You need to consider a few other things:
Business cycle
For the purpose of split testing, the business cycle, i.e. aggregate trade activity over a given period of time, is often thought of in terms of weeks or months. Years is rather too long to call a result even if it is likely to be statistically more robust. Days are pretty pointless, they are far too short a time…
Are you ready for 'Amazon Prime Air'?
Yes, it's April 1st, but this story is not made up, it's an exclusive report from the 30th March 2015 with the byline Guardian gains access to unnamed British Columbia site where tech giant’s roboticists and engineers, stymied by American regulation, are now developing their unmanned domestic delivery service.
I could barely believe this story when it was originally announced at the end of 2013 on Amazon's Prime Air page and the BBC that Amazon was testing package delivery by drone. The aim of the retailer is offer customers the choice to have packages dropped on their doorstep by flying robots within 30 minutes of ordering goods online. It seemed like science fiction turned into a nice piece publicity stunt.
The report this week shows that this is "for real" and Amazon has…
Six key findings from the Global Reviews UK Home Insurance Providers Digital Marketing Effectiveness Study Q3 2014:
In Q4 2014, Global Reviews conducted a Digital Sales Effectiveness (DSE) study amongst twelve leading UK home insurance brands including Admiral, Aviva, AXA, Barclays, Churchill, Direct Line, Halifax, Lloyds Bank, LV=, More Th>n, Nationwide and Tesco Bank.
The aim of this study, which is part of Global Reviews’ ongoing programme of research, was to find out how consumers are choosing particular home insurance providers online, to understand and measure their digital journeys, and the key influencers in their buying decision. By capturing digital marketing and sales journey insights, underpinned by scientific framework using competitor and customer data for the sector, this research unravels some interesting facts for this insurance industry to answer many of the 'Why Questions'.
Over 280 ‘in market’ consumers looking for home insurance in the next 90 days were studied as part…
New research from 300 online retailers shows the impact of different types of personalized product recommendations on conversion rates and other Ecommerce KPIs
We're all familiar with the Amazon personalized product recommendations after many years of seeing and responding to them, but since this well-known whitepaper from the Amazon team explaining the thinking behind the 'collaborative filtering' aka Product recommendations on Amazon [PDF], it's rare for Amazon to share the impact of product recommendations on their results.
Recent research on Personalized Product recommendations from Barilliance sheds light on the impact of personalized recommendations based on an analysis of results from their clients. Barilliance analyzed revenue source data from over 300 eCommerce sites worldwide which use the Barilliance product recommendation engine.
Here are some of the main learnings from the research which highlight the potential gains from implementing personalized product recommendations. Hopefully some of these results are useful for benchmarking the relative importance of personalized recommendations with your site:
Percentage…
How do consumer purchases vary by age and product - new UK statistics
We know the overall popularity of online use and purchase with 38 million adults in the UK (78% of the population) now using the Internet and 75% of us have bought goods and services online. We have all seen the shopping landscape evolve over the years, as we see more charity shops lining our streets and vacant properties - is this due to the accessibility of information, technology, convenience, changing demographics as older generation are using the internet, or consumers looking for a bargain.
So what are consumers buying online?
The popularity of product purchase will naturally vary based on the need for consumers to touch and view products, but how big an impact does this make? The Office of National Statistic's report sheds light on this highlighting that Clothes were the most popular online purchases by 49% of adults,…
How fashion designer brand Michael Kors integrates Instagram and other social media to boost Ecommerce and store revenue
Luxury high-end fashion designer brand Michael Kors recently reported that it achieved a 20% uplift in sales in North America and 73% across its ecommerce site at the end of last year with strong growth in the UK and Japan up to 72% for the quarter also.
What's behind this growth? An integrated approach to marketing according to the Chairman's CEO Ido, he explains:
'As a company, we believe that a dynamic and integrated approach to marketing will better inform, engage, educate and inspire our customers as we continue to grow our brand awareness global.'
In 2013, they ranked in the top ten fashion brands according to Starcount for their use of social media and the following year, Michael Kors was named as the 'most searched for high street brand'…
How smartphones are being used in the United States for shopping and travel purchases
Emarketer's research focused on US shopper behaviour to understand how American companies can target the mobile shopper. Emarketer estimates that there are now over 145 million shoppers using their smartphones, an increase of 23 million since 2013.
However, it's interesting that they predict that this year only 1.6% of USA sales will be taken via a mobile, as it's a big influence in the lead to purchase decision-making process rather than a device for purchasing a product/service. Similar shopping habits to the UK where shoppers are inclined to use their mobile for researching products through the latest boom in showrooming and webrooming as 33% of Americans are showrooming on their devices.
The graph below from their report shows where consumers are using their mobile app when it comes to purchase, with the biggest increase in lifestyle and shopping.
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