For over a decade, companies have gathered statistical Website information -- number of unique visitors, number of page views, consumer conversion rate (if you are an e-tailer), and bounce rate, to name just a few examples. These statistics are useful and convenient to include in monthly IT or marketing reports -- but forward-thinking companies now seek even more insightful information on their Websites’ performances.
This is sparking IT-driven moves to more integrated methodologies for Website measurement.
According to Peter Kirwan, VP of business development for Web metrics consultancy NeuStar Inc. (NYSE: NSR), companies that regularly use Web metrics often do not know what to do with all of the data they are collecting -- or they don’t know how to fully interpret their data so they can make meaningful Website changes.
“Let’s say, for example, that your marketing department decides to run a promotional campaign,” says Kirwan. “They run the campaign, but they are unaware of the fact that your Website is experiencing technical performance problems that potentially can affect consumer orders. How can they assess if their campaign from a marketing standpoint is truly effective?”
The answer rests in the ability of corporate IT to effectively integrate both IT performance measurements and Web metrics into a composite picture of Website performance.
This alliance of effort between IT and Web metrics users within the lines of business can best be undertaken if a few key factors are kept top of mind:
ROI. Will a one-half-second improvement in transaction response time affect revenue, and by how much? To answer this, IT and marketing (or another segment of the business) must work together to understand the average revenue in dollars per transaction. Then, this figure can be used to project the increase in number of transactions into a dollar amount that could or could not justify additional investment in IT infrastructure.
In each scenario, IT must take a hard look at end-to-end transaction processing -- from the time spent on the Website to handoffs to middleware, Web services, and databases. The goal is to pinpoint infrastructure areas that have to be upgraded to gain the additional performance.
Website traffic gains. Was additional Website traffic sparked by a flurry of company mentions on Twitter, or was it generated via Google searches or through word of mouth? Unless companies regularly survey customers, they may never really know. Departments must collaborate with IT to conduct more effective surveys and get the best answers.
Customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers bring repeat business, but if customers are not satisfied, what corrective actions do you take to improve the customer experience? For e-tailers, the roots of customer dissatisfaction are usually planted in the supply chain ecosystem. Using a combination of Web metrics that reveal the customer Website experience while measuring end-to-end electronic transactions on the supply side, IT can pinpoint breakdowns that lead to botched shipments, botched returns, and problems with consumer credits for returns.
Web metrics transparency. Corporate IT is increasingly working with the IT departments of company suppliers to bring about total transparency of Website transaction behavior and the backend performance of the supply chain. This inter-organizational visibility, taboo in the past, is now a necessary ingredient for understanding and solving Website performance issues.
Cloud provisioning. When do revenue projections (e.g., for the holiday season) warrant expansion of IT infrastructure -- and should that infrastructure expansion be done permanently or on-demand? Working with marketing, IT can assess this situation, and can make the recommendation for either a permanent infrastructure investment or a temporary cloud computing ramp-up that will handle an anticipated period of peak demand.
These factors may demand a maximum effort from IT, but the results will be worth it in terms of knowledge gained to directly boost business success.
If you're talking about a customer who posts about the same issue without a negative comment, or otherwise reacts to a negative customer with the same problem, then yes, same rules apply.
If you're talking about a customer who contacted you directly regarding the same issue a customer who posted a negative comment, then treat the follow-up the same. However, you may wish to consider including an additional post of "How to Handle This Issue" or "If anyone else has this issue, please let me know so we can fix it".
Encourage the customer to let anyone else with this issue to take the same steps. If the issue is a customer-side problem, then be sure to post a solution as part of an FAQ and make it a "sticky note" in your social media and company site.
If it's an issue on your side, take steps to resolve it, and when it is resolved post to everyone saying "OK everyone, thanks for letting us know about X, we solved it now!"
Depending on how much perceived damage the issue did, you might even want to throw in a complimentary goodie to those who reported it, or all customers in general. It could go a long way to making sure that issue is good n' resolved.
Thank you for those tips. Spot on, one question I have is with resolving an issue, should those be any different than with a user that didn't post a negative comment - but still had the same issue?
Thank you for those tips. Spot on, one question I have is with resolving an issue, should those be any different than with a user that didn't post a negative comment?
Website traffic gains dont have to be done via Survey. Many users will be turned away from a survey if it takes too much time or it has no of their interest. with IT, link tracking can be implemented. this way, we know if visitors clicked the link from Twitter, or from other sources.
I can't think of a more "fun" and creatively challenging job than the IT/marketing combo that is embodied in the market research analyst.
The frustration is that marketing is usually very "right brained," and does not like to hear about analytics. They also are not particularly adept at goal-setting, as their comfort zone is to function more intuitively.
Marketing depts. in technology companies (because of the corporate culture) ARE more analytic and appreciative of what market research can offer.
Here's a couple of ways to measure customer satisfaction:
1. Scan social media for talkative customers. Yes, if most people are reasonably satisfied they don't say anything -- but unhappy and exceptionally happy customers may be talking. Scans that turn up nothing tend to indicate satisfactory performance -- nobody's complaining. (And people loooooooooove to chew out customer satisfaction "fails" through social media)
2. When you do screw up, do follow-up. If the follow-up (and there's many ways to do it) shows the customer is happy again, you're doing something right. If they're not -- and they're being reasonable -- something needs to change.
How can we measure customer satisfaction? Is it something we can measure? I'm thinking that most people that report back to the company is because they had issues; if it worked fine, you normally don't go back and say 'good job'.
As one of my roles IS the market research guy with an I.T. background, I know you aren't kidding when it comes to marketers not liking analytics.
Sometimes I get a reasonable request to do a Coles Notes version of my research. I appreciate this in that it needs to be concise, and usually I try to sum it up if I can.
At other times, I'm dealing with people who simply cannot interpret data. I'd be able to inerpret the data for them if I had a goal. My challenge is doubled; I don't think the people I'm immediately dealing with understand how important the goals are and the clients they are dealing with don't know how to come up with a goal.
Since people are afraid of failure, they're afraid of setting goals. I've known a few talented people like that -- they go nowhere because they're afraid to fail. It applies to companies too.
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Corporate IT has made great strides over the past few years in addressing a broad array of issues relating to Web assets. But now, as Web-based IT enters maturity, it’s time to rethink at least one key issue -- Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
When the UN's International Telecommunication Union published its most recent Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) report, it stated that there were more than 4.1 billion mobile device users in the world. The report was not news to millions of mobile Web developers worldwide building mobile applications, but it is potentially creating a familiar IT refrain: best-of-class applications with major usability issues.
In mid-November, Hugh Stephenson, deputy director for international consumer protection at the
Federal Trade Commission ’s Office of International Affairs, said, “We need to be smarter about dealing with technology, and cloud computing is posing a risk for us.”
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
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Techies are going crazy over the possibility that Google might design and sell its own Android phone. Some writers say it's a very big deal. Reiter questions whether it will happen and, if it does, whether it even matters.
In the final episode of this series about the death of Internet anonymity, Saunders describes how the Internet of the future will start to attain a level of intelligence that requires no human intervention. Scary.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
Steve Saunders talks about the risks inherent in uncontrolled, widespread profiling of Internet users, and how one day this practice could form the basis of a new industry, the Outernet, which in economic terms will have outgrown the commercial value of the Internet itself.
Search companies and social networks are collecting incredibly detailed information about their users, says Steve Saunders, who predicts that these 'profiles' could one day become commodities to be bought and sold by companies on 'profile markets' or 'identity exchanges’ – the digital DNA equivalents of the financial and commodities exchanges on which stocks, oil, and gold are traded.
One of the most important Internet issues of all time is being ignored by the media. In this three-part video series Steve Saunders explains how search companies are turning the tables on their users by creating user profiles for financial gain, and how soon this trend will explode into full scale profiling.
Tom wants a Google 'unlocked handset' for the holidays because he thinks they could just break the telco monopoly on handset distribution and thus empower the Internet as the driver of mobile broadband now and forever.
Research shows that the youth of today like Facebook – but not blogging or Twitter. Does that mean Facebook has won, or just that it's not yet out of favor? Will all the services we see today fade into Ovaltine-or-Wheaties status in just a few years?
What kinds of companies are doing the most innovation in the data center? Turns out it's midtier enterprises that are taking the "Just Right" approach.
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