Engage-Digital

One should always bear in mind that correspondong data from different sources won’t always match, but one might hope that data from the same source but arrived at in different ways would still match. Like most analytics tools Google Analytics isn’t perfect, however by any standard what follows appears to be odd.

I’ve seen it before in GA… but in this example a filter was applied in the ‘entry pages’ report using /product/ and trending by month over the past 2 years. Looking at the final month – June 2010 – the volume of entries against these pages seemed a bit low. Shortening the time frame showing only showing June 2010 the data seemed much more in keeping with what would be expected. The point is GA appears to be producing two completely different figures for June 2010 with the only differentiating factor being the time frame of the report.

Concerned about this the report were then segmented using All, New and Returning default segments i.e. not custom built segments and still retaining the /product/ filter in the report. The results looked like this:

June 2010 only

Jan 2008 to June 2010

Although the two screen shots above don’t show June 2010 comparative data it’s still possible to see that in there is something odd going on in the second of the two reports. It should not be possible for All Visits to be significantly less than combined visits from New and Returning visitors.

I can see no reason why it should do this and GA provides no warning in the rport to indicate what it is doing – as it does with sampled data.

The only route to resolve is to shorten the time frame over which the report is run (trial and error unfortunately) and see how far one can get before the data starts to go wonky. You need a good overall knowldge of what to expect from you data in order to spot this.

A couple of months ago cScape’s Customer Engagement Unit and econsultancy released the 4th Annual Customer Engagement survey.  It’s the largest and most comprehensive of its kind globally with over 1,000 respondents.

With the seemingly inexorable onward march of social media, the economic woes of the world in the past 2 years and an increasingly savvy consumer, businesses are having a more challenging time in managing their brands and retaining loyalty amongst their existing customer base let alone acquiring new customers.

Not surprisingly social technologies feature heavily this year but the overriding themes of quality and customer service are also floating to the top as important mainstays in developing customer engagement.

As in previous years the report is essential reading for any marketers looking to the future and how to manage the relationships with their customer base.

The 2010 report can be downloaded here. If you’re interested, previous year’s reports can be downloaded here:

3rd Annual Customer Engagement Survey: 2009

2nd Annual Customer Engagement Survey: 2008

1st Annual Customer Engagement Survey: 2007

With the UK launch of the iPad now imminent (barring any more delays) marketers have started asking questions about what Apple’s new tablet will mean for them, their businesses and brands. Having experienced the impact of the iPhone naturally they want to know what the iPad may hold in store for them

Partly in response to questions so far and partly in anticipation of further inquiries the team at cScape’s Customer Engagement Unit have put together a white paper on the potential of the iPad for business and marketers. The opinion pieces range from apps (naturally!) to e-commerce, to publishing to analytics and much more. Have a read.

You can either read it online here or download the PDF here.

With all the usability, analytics, survey, heat mapping tools and many others that are now available for the web analyst to draw on, you’d think it has become almost a matter of form that any questions related to the online shopping process can be answered and that the customer’s decision making process can be exposed but in fact it seems that customers don’t necessarily themselves understand the mechanisms by which they make decisions.

Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University has done research into what he calls predictably irrational decision making and in his book (Predictably Irrational) he presents an example involving the subscription pricing for The Economist newspaper.

In the example The Economist newspaper offered 3 subscription options:

1. Print plus online for $125
2. Print only for $125 (no, not a typo)
3. Online only sub for $59

This was either a mistake by The Economist or a stroke of genius. Ariely presented this offer as part of an experiment to one set of students and then to another set of students with a modified offer in which he removed the middle option.

The upshot was that when the first set of students were presented with all 3 options the majority chose option 1. When option 2 was removed and the remaining two options were shown to the second set of students the majority chose option 3.

Ariely uses this to demonstrate seemingly irrational decision making but he goes on to explain the principle that option 2 while appearing to be useless and of no value (to the potential customer), in fact had value to The Economist insofar that it’s presence gave the impression that option 1 was really very good value. By removing option 2, the perceived value of option 1 was no longer apparent so people went for the cheaper option.

This has some pretty interesting implications for how product pricing can be displayed and more interestingly how up-sell can be achieved.

In the current trading environment shoppers are more likely than usual to be looking for a good deal. That generally means either cheap or good value and the two aren’t necessarily the same. Being cheaper than the next guy might have more to do with the supply chain and the deals that can be struck by the merchant with his / her suppliers, but demonstrating good value when your offering is not the cheapest on the market can be a pretty tall order.

Ariely refers to the middle option as a decoy but a conjuror or a lawyer might refer to it as simple misdirection. The point is to demonstrate value by creating a benchmark that is close enough but which the customer is easily able to discount in favour of the real offer.

Increasing average order value is hard but with this kind of understanding and a content management system and pricing structure that is flexible enough it is possible.

The idea of engagement online isn’t an easy one to articulate. Where things like conversion could arguably be the domain of a web analyst and visitor satisfaction could be considered the realm of the usability specialist, customer and visitor engagement seems to be a concept that has a far wider reach touching almost all areas of online communication from acquisition to usability to conversion.

One thing is clear and becoming ever more so as times grow harder; making an effort with potential and existing customers in helping them with their needs(instead of just selling them something) is very important.

Instead of writing a long post about it here I’ll leave it to the experts and leading lights in each field to offer their informed views and explanations in the 2009 annual cScape Online Customer Engagement Survey which you can download right here.  Just click on the link immediately below for the full report absolutely free.

cScape 3rd Annual Customer Engagement Report 2009

The Third Annual Online Customer Engagement Report has been jointly produced by cScape and the e-consultancy and was carried out in September and October 2008. It was compiled from 1,291 respondents, it has been translated into 4 different languages and it’s the largest survey of its type anywhere in the world.