In the digital age, your website is critical. Organisations simply cannot afford to survive without a solid web presence. And while some are embracing advanced initiatives such as social media and multi-channel marketing; others have very under-developed online programs.

In Australia, with the planned rollout of the National Broadband Network over the next few years, consumers are only going to get more demanding of their web experience. Enhanced broadband access will enable customers to take full advantage of web tools, digital content and applications – and people will have even higher expectations of your website.

With this in mind, any organisation with a less-than-effective web presence needs to think fast about taking action.

But first, it pays to look at the reasons behind this ineffectiveness. What is causing these websites to fail in their assigned tasks?

The four reasons websites let you down

In speaking with respondents in the survey, we identified four main reasons why websites are not performing.

1. Your website is not used in the right way

Is your website essentially “brochureware”? Is there nothing on there except rudimentary product information and the standard “About us” pages? For websites to deliver value, they must be built with business processes in mind. They must support the business in whatever way they can – whether it be to generate sales, capture leads or engage deeply with customers.

2. Your website has architectural issues

This is a common one. Navigation, forms, content and links are all critical elements that will make or break a website. It pays to conduct regular assessments of your website architecture to ensure that it meets all objectives and satisfies the user experience.

3. Your website doesn’t get enough traffic

Sounds obvious, but it’s true. Many organisations invest significant funds to build their websites – but no-one sees them. You will never have an effective website if your customers don’t know about it. Invest in search marketing and other promotional activities to drive traffic to your site.

4. Your website doesn’t support your campaigns

Too many organisations are still failing here. In these instances, there is a massive disconnect between the campaigns that customers interact with offline – via TV and print advertising, in-store promotions, out of home – and what they see on your website. These organisations are not using the online channel to its maximum potential, and therefore getting mixed results in their campaigns.

The only way is up

The good news is that all of these issues are easily rectified. With the right plan in place, organisations can significantly boost the performance of their online channel.
At Bienalto, it’s our job to help you transform your online presence – and it’s our goal to help reduce that 49% statistic to something much more respectable.

Want to improve your online channel? Contact Bienalto today.

These are just some of the questions posed by the 2010 Web Analytics Survey, which Bienalto conducted during February and March 2010. We asked more than 100 Australian organisations some hard questions about their online channel – and have collated the results into a valuable and insightful report.

For the first time, Hurol Inan will be launching the report at the eMetrics Summit in Sydney. He’s sharing the key findings of the report in his summit session on Thursday, 22 April 2010.

What the report includes

The report examines, in detail, the following key areas:

• Perception of web analytics and the online channel
• Technology adoption
• Expenditure and resource allocation for web analytics activities
• Key challenges faced by web managers
• Priorities for the year ahead.

The examination of the online channel is a new addition to the Web Analytics Survey, with comments classified into three useful categories: consumer engagement, management and marketing.

By introducing this section, we sought to reveal the issues, challenges and priorities for web managers; how effective the channel is perceived to be; and, of course, how web analytics contributes to its performance.

We have also included two in-depth case studies, with Deakin University and Sydney Water. The comments provided in these case studies place the results in a real-world context that should provide some great take-outs for our other clients.

Who should read the report?

Any web manager seeking to validate investment in the online channel should be reading the 2010 Web Analytics Report.

With extensive comparisons to the 2008 and 2007 survey results, the report maps the growth of web analytics, and the areas in which organisations are gaining the most from their investment.

Download your copy of the Report

The survey – now in its fourth year – takes a snapshot of the current state of the web analytics industry in Australia. The subsequent report has become a valuable tool in the online marketer’s arsenal, to help plan and shape future web analytics strategy.

As per previous years, our goal with the survey is to understand where we are at with web analytics, and gain insights into what is motivating, prohibiting or inhibiting organisations’ adoption of various tools and methodologies.

All participants in the survey will receive a copy of the report.

Take the survey now

Win a pass to the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit

The 2010 report will be published to coincide with the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, to be held in Sydney for the very first time on 22-23 April 2010.

It is great news that the eMetrics Summit is coming to Sydney this year, as it is renowned for equipping marketing professionals with insights to help them succeed online.

Hurol spoke at the inaugural summit in Santa Barbara in 2002, and has since watched it grow to become a respected think-tank that travels to major cities around the globe such as Munchen, Toronto, San Jose, London, Madrid, Sao Paula, Stockholm and Washington DC.

He will be speaking again at this year’s summit; and Bienalto is proud to be a major sponsor.

We are giving away a pass valued at $995 to one of the participants of Australian Web Analytics Survey 2010.

> Take the survey now
> Learn more about eMetrics summit

This year’s survey shows that businesses are investing more heavily in web analytics tools, and web analysts are becoming smarter about the ways they use these tools. For the first time, the survey report profiles different web analytics users – we’ve segmented the data to show you what these groups look like:

- Advanced web analytics users

- Government users

- Google analytics users

The full survey report is available for download now.

The free web analytics solution is now more attractive than ever, giving users the ability to conduct extremely detailed analysis to extract a better return on their online investment.

Advanced segmentation

Segmentation of data is one of the fastest and most effective ways to gain real insights into the efficacy of your marketing programs. As I’ve said before, segmentation takes the noise out of web analytics data, breaking it down into meaningful chunks that you can analyse more effectively.

In the past, however, the best segmentation tools on offer were through high end solutions.

The good news is that the power of segmentation has just been brought to the masses, with advanced segmentation tools now available to Google Analytics users.

There are nine default segments that will come in handy to most people who use the analytics tool. These segments can be applied to any report you want, and include:

1. All visits
2. New visitors
3. Returning visitors
4. Paid traffic
5. Non-paid traffic
6. Search traffic
7. Direct traffic
8. Referral traffic
9. Visits with conversions

But the real power lies in the ability to create custom segments. This means that you can isolate a certain behaviour, examine it carefully and see whether your marketing campaign worked for that group.

For example, you might want to isolate:

• All visitors who came from a specific email campaign AND purchased at least one product
• All visitors from Sydney who completed a goal
• All visitors who started a transaction, but dropped out (and where).

Once you have defined your custom segments, you can then compare the performance of that segment with the rest of the site using the reporting tools.

Or you might want to compare the performance of one segment to that of another. For example, you could view the bounce rate for a page, and then split it into the bounce rate for visitors who came from search and direct traffic.

Custom reporting

Until now, users of Google Analytics have had to content themselves with using the standard reports on offer (e.g. visitors, traffic sources and so on).

With the new “Custom Reports” tool, you can define your own criteria and create your own report. For example, you may want to create a report showing e-commerce information by geographies. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Create a custom report with the following metrics:
   • Visits
   • Unique purchases
   • Revenue
   • Per visit value
   • Average value
2. In the dimensions, add “city” at the top level. If you have customers from around the world, you may like to define “country” as the top level, and add city as the second dimension. If you do this, the report will initially show visits by country, and you can then select a country to see data segmented by city.
3. Then you can compare cities according to the metrics you defined – so you can see, for example, the average value of a visitor from Sydney to that of one from Melbourne.

More information at your fingertips

Once you have your segments and custom reports created, you can then access deeper insights by combining the two. Want to see which city is of greater value, as well as where your visitors are coming from in that city? Not a problem. In terms of segmentation, you’re only limited by the data sets you have to work with.

Setting these reports and segments up doesn’t take long at all. Once they’re up and running, you can begin to make more finely tuned marketing decisions, and better target your offering to particular groups of customers.

Bienalto can provide Google Analytics setup and configuration services. Read more about how we can assist you in implementation and optimisation.

Further reading

You can learn more about the value of segmentation in some previous posts:

Web Data Segmentation – a pre-requisite for gaining actionable insights

Understanding your website’s users

Informing information architecture with quantitative insights

The annual Web Analytics Buyers Guide 2008 from E-consultancy is now available for purchase. With its in-depth vendor profiles and market analysis, it helps you to put things in perspective when making buying decisions.

So what’s in the Guide? And how does it compare to what’s going on locally? With responses flooding in to our Australian Web Analytics Survey, we can provide a few answers.

One of the biggest predictions in E-consultancy’s guide is that the UK market for web analytics would grow by 12% in 2008. We agree (give or take a few percentage points).

Already, we can see a trend in comparing results from this year’s Australian Web Analytics Survey to last, with organisations spending significantly more on the investment in external professional services and in-house web analytics staff.

Not surprisingly, the investment in tools doesn’t show the same growth – a great proportion of organisations in Australia now use Google Analytics as a preferred tool.

According to the UK report, only 21% of companies use Google Analytics exclusively, but typically use it as a complementary tool to support another investment.

But with Google raising the bar with its new segmentation and reporting tools, it will pay to see how these figures change next year.

Purchase the Web Analytics Buyers Guide

Download the latest Australian Web Analytics Survey

Having returned to Australia, Jon is now consulting to Bienalto and sharing his valuable expertise with some of our clients. Here, he offers some invaluable perspectives about where Australia sits on the ‘totem pole of sophistication’ when it comes to e-commerce and online marketing.

So where, exactly, is Australia on this totem pole?

JB: The good news is that Australia performs as well as overseas counterparts in some industries. In travel and publishing, for example, we can see as much innovation here as elsewhere.

However, it’s not necessarily fair to compare Australia to the UK and US. We will never have the same volumes of people online - their huge populations make it easier to justify spending more money at a greater intensity to achieve more sophisticated results in the online space.

Additionally, I would argue that the Australian retail industry is dominated (almost monopolised in some cases) by a handful of large players who simply do not understand or value the concept of eTailing. There is often little competitive impetus for these guys to push the online model. All it takes is for someone in the marketplace to “get it right” in terms of their website and e-commerce model, and the landscape will change rapidly as everyone else scrambles to catch up.

So that’s why we’re currently three or four years behind when it comes to e-commerce. But we’ll keep catching up – particularly when our broadband access improves from its current levels. I think we’re on par with Columbia at the moment, so there’s clearly room for improvement!

Let’s look at e-commerce first, then. What’s different in Australia?

As mentioned above, the number of people online and access to broadband are two key differences, as is the low competition here.

In Europe, perceptions have shifted from seeing the Internet as a giant price comparison portal, to a tool that offers convenience and choice. As more and more people come on board, retailers improve their level of sophistication and efficiency in logistics – you can place an order in the morning and have the product arrive in the afternoon. This sort of service increases consumers’ faith in the whole process, whereas in Australia products can still take a week to arrive.

Last year in the UK, retail shops on high streets suffered a terrible Christmas. Online, however, sales were huge. Year on year, online stores are selling significantly more volume than their biggest retail stores - people are changing the way they shop and the retailers are responding, not with cannibalism of retail stores, but with the positive displacement of resources.

Australia needs a sea-change of attitude – and it’s starting to happen - for retailers to embrace the online model of business.

Web analytics would play a role in this, to show them what’s working and what’s not. How does Australia rate in web analytics?

At the top end of town in Australian web analytics, businesses are just as sophisticated at their European and US counterparts.

But across the board, Europe and the US are simply more sophisticated in their use of web analytics because the increased volume of traffic makes it easier to justify the investment.

So overseas, you see web analytics bringing information in from multiple sources: email, web analytics software, paid search, CRM systems and the like. This creates a rich repository of information that online marketers use to create a single customer view, for instance. This centralisation of information empowers businesses to make more informed and balanced decisions.

What about email marketing? Bienalto is doing some great things with local customers, which would be on par with overseas companies…

What Bienalto is doing with customised dashboards and Salesforce.com is very similar to what I’ve seen overseas. Creating bespoke systems that enable powerful segmentation and targeting is what it’s all about.

For example, we had about 300,000 names in the net-a-porter.com database, and were able to deliver unique emails to every single one of them. We did it by building a bespoke system using Lyris, bringing information in from multiple disparate data sources, and populating the emails with completely different content for each user.

This is true one-to-one marketing, and Bienalto is certainly achieving it with its email marketing programs, especially in the B2B space.

We’re moving closer to the top of the totem pole, then. When is Australia at the top of the game?

What Hurol Inan and the Bienalto team are doing in multivariate testing is as advanced as anything I saw being done in the UK.

For large organisations in Australia that enjoy significant online volume, multivariate testing produces significant benefits with the spend justified through completely accountable and measurable results.

When I was working in the UK, we didn’t have access to the multivariate testing systems that Bienalto has access to. It is shaping up to be a strong area of growth for Bienalto.

So what do you hope to get out of working at Bienalto?

Hurol Inan and the Bienalto team are the smartest in Australia. They are so far ahead of the competition, pushing things that are being done overseas and attracting clients that are true thought-leaders.

Bienalto’s clients are very switched on in the commercial sense, looking at sales growth of 50-80% year on year in e-commerce. These are the sorts of figures that excite me, and I am looking forward to applying my experience in such a dynamic and progressive environment.

• Regression – predictive models built on past data to predict future responses
• Randomised trials – experimental design to test particular ideas have predict results, aka multivariate testing of web pages, covering an interview with Matt and James Roche of Offermatica (acquired by Omniture)

For the quantitative analysts, this book is the affirmation that you have chosen the right career path.

If you are surrounded by data-sceptics, get them to read this book. Written in a similar style of Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, this book makes statistical methods highly accessible to non-technical readers and will surely convert them!

Read more about the book and purchase your copy at Amazon.com

Interview with Ian Ayres

Much to my dismay, I’ve discovered that once a client gets it into their head that they want to re-design their website, it’s ‘out with the old, in with the new’. Their customers have told them that the existing site doesn’t work, so they think there’s no point in analysing it. Instead, they want to toss the old site in the cyber-dustbin, and start coding again from scratch.

Sure, a clean start is nice. But what if you could use valuable insights about the strengths and weaknesses of your old site to improve the user experience design on the new site?

By identifying what works – and what doesn’t – before you embark on the re-design project, you reduce the likelihood of building a new site that may look better, but carries the same problems as before.

Through quantitative analysis, you can capture insights about your current users – customers and prospects – and understand how the site is currently being used. For example:

• You may find that a really important piece of content or functionality isn’t being used because it’s buried too far into the site. With the new customer experience architecture, you can devise pathways to guide traffic to these areas.
• By analysing the terms customers use on both internal and external search engines, you will learn the language your customers speak when referring to your products or services. This will help you devise the right labels, and contribute to your content strategy.
• You’ll see which areas of the site have been successful at converting customers, and which haven’t. For example, if you discover that most prospects use your calculator before lodging an online application for personal loans, then you may consider closely integrating the calculator in the customer experience architecture.
• You’ll discover the relative popularity of related items such as content categories and lists (often expressed as navigational menus). This should aid classification decisions. You may want to combine items that are receiving little attention or split items that are dominating. To take advantage of sequence bias in reading lists, you can enlist items in the order of popularity.
• You’ll identify where the exit points are and delve into factors that might influence the exits. If a page – especially a gateway or category page designed to steer traffic to detailed pages –experiences a high exit rate, it means either the page is getting untargeted traffic or there is something wrong with its design. Your experience architects should use these findings to contain the exit rate.

If you don’t perform quantitative analysis at this phase, then the user experience design phase becomes a subjective process – requiring large amounts of guesswork by your information architect. It’s guesswork that doesn’t need to happen, because the answers are right there on your current site.

Four years ago, I wrote about Understanding your website’s users. Never is this more applicable than in a re-design project.

We did in-depth quantitative analysis before commencing the site re-design for AMP, and the results speak for themselves.

And as for some other clients, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt: they simply do not understand the full benefits of web analytics, and it’s my job to educate them about how valuable analysis can be at any stage of a website’s evolution.

What I want to know is, how many web analysts are putting their skills to use in a re-design project? When was the last time you used quantitative analysis to inform a website refresh? And if you did, what were the major discoveries you made that impacted the redesign?