High Rankings Advisor Issue 026

The Benefits of a Yahoo! Listing

~~~Notes from SES Conference~~~

++Measuring Success (Part Two)++

Here's the second part of Stacy Williams' report from the San Jose Search Engine Strategies conference for your reading pleasure. If you missed Part One, you can catch it here. - Jill

Last week, I covered "Rankings and Traffic" from the "Measuring Success" sessions at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose mid-August. For most sites, rankings and traffic are a means to an end - unless they translate into a conversion of some type (an action taken on the site) and positive return on investment (ROI) for the company, they're not worth much.

That being said, as our moderator, Detlev Johnson, Managing Director of The Ascendant Group put it, conversion starts on the search engines' results pages. So a strategic search engine marketing effort that leads to high rankings for targeted search terms, coupled with a well-designed site including clear navigation and a compelling offer, should lead to conversions and a healthy ROI.

What should we measure? There's no lack of data available, but the key metrics for most companies will probably be click-through rate, cost per click, traffic, conversion rate, sales, sales per visitor, and cost of sales. Note that this data should be analyzed not only on a global basis in terms of totals, but also on a granular level in terms of each search engine and each search term. That is, ideally, we should be able to tell that, although the click-through rate is twice as high on AOL as compared to Google, the conversion rate for visitors from Google is three times as high as it is for those from AOL. Ditto for search term A versus search term B. You'll probably want to put most of your efforts against Google and search term A, rather than AOL and search term B.

Ensure that the data you're measuring ties in with your business's goals and its definition of success. If your site is one of the few that is surviving based on an advertising model, you may only care about the number of visitors and the number of eyeballs that see your ads. If your goal is to get lead forms filled out or white papers downloaded or demos scheduled rather than an online sale, that's what you should measure.

What's an acceptable conversion rate? One that makes you money. One where the inflow of revenue exceeds the outflow of costs. That's something that only you can define - but you should be measuring it and constantly trying to increase it.

How can we measure all this data? There are a number of outsourced, ASP model services available.

Representatives of the two market leaders, HitBox by WebSideStory, Inc., and WebTrends Live by NetIQ Corporation, demonstrated their web-based services. (I've personally investigated both of them - they're both quite powerful, affordable, and easy to implement. The "small- to medium-sized business" solutions for both services feature demos right on the site that you can walk yourself through and view sample reports.)

Eric Peterson, Sr. e-Business Analyst of WebSideStory, showed the audience screen shots for an outdoor sporting goods supplier's ecommerce site. We were able to view revenue by search engine, by keyword phrase, and by product. The system also displays the browse-to-buy ratio so you can see what percentage of visitors eventually make a purchase. This particular client, partially as a result of changes made to the site due to HitBox data, experienced sales growth of 153% in 2001 and 115% in the first half of 2002.

HitBox tracks pay-per-click rankings (bids on Overture and Google AdWords) as well as regular search engine rankings, so you can compare apples to oranges on one system. It also reports on zip codes (if your site's lead or order form requires it), so you can identify which zip codes perform the best for your company before ordering a direct mail list.

John Simpson, Product Marketing Manager for WebTrends, emphasized that web traffic and conversion data should be used to drive both web strategy and site design. John told us about a credit union client that increased online banking signups to the extent that it saved $250,000 a month in customer acquisition costs. John pointed out that it's not only good to increase sales by leveraging web data, but it's also great to reduce costs.

Catherine Seda, President of Seda Communication included other ways to measure success. Small business ecommerce solutions such as Yahoo! Stores offer their hosted sites a plethora of tracking options, as well as exclusive banner ad and keyword text link options that aren't available to other sites. Advertising network firms like Advertising.com do SEO on a cost-per-acquisition basis, so you only pay for what you get. And affiliate programs also offer rich data, showing exactly who's buying what at which price.

Finally, Mike Sack, SVP and Chief Product Officer of Inceptor, Inc., spoke about his company's services. Inceptor's platform allows sites to control where search engine traffic lands on a site, and to test different messages and promotions. Real-time analysis is available so you can make changes on the fly and immediately see results. The data gathered allows you to send micro-targeted emails to prospects and customers, building loyalty and sales.

All this data capture and analysis can be overwhelming. Kevin Lee, CEO of Did-it.com, Inc., suggests looking at clusters of data instead of too many disparate items. Sometimes you've got to get granular, but other times it makes sense to aggregate the data and look at overall trends. Bryan Eisenberg, Chief Information Officer for Future Now, Inc., says to simply get started! There is value in measuring, so measure something! Focus on the low-hanging fruit - even small changes to your biggest problem areas can have a huge impact.

Stacy Williams
Prominent Placement, Inc.

[Thanks again, Stacy! This is such a hot topic lately as it's so very important to any Web site's success. Stay tuned next week for more about conversions and ROI when Grant Crowell reports on the "Converting Visitors Into Buyers" conference session. - Jill]