Do you want people to instantly recognise your website or brand name? You can use social news and video sites to help you spread the word about your company, but you still need to have set clear goals for what you want to achieve from this brand recognition.
[...]

“This means for approximately 98% of the traffic to your site something happened and you don’t have an account of that.”

In addressing this point, another interesting part of the equation worth mentioning is just how many of those clients who do visit, eventually do purchase or convert vs. the initial inquiry. The old television adage that a consumer must see an ad 7 times to make one impression.

Not everyone acts on the searches they make the same way, some bookmark, some ponder, others compare, etc. This is definitely where brand value exceeds impulse which is a bit more difficult to measure.

Good stuff, I will definitely be reading your book.

I am afraid the method that I have used in the past is property of a company and I can’t copy paste the code here on how to do onexit surveys. But let me try to share something of value. . . .

If you want to just capture people who exit on a particular page (say just your cart page) then I have seen this classic method work successfully….

[Sorry for the image, I have not figured out how to paste html without wordpress rendering it!]

Another method that seemed cool but probably has “something scary that someone technical should review carefully first” was on objectionhandler . com.

The page is heavy on sales and trying to sell the script that does the survey, you can ignore the sales - try to move your mouse as if you are trying to click the back button etc and you’ll see the survey. Perhaps there is something worth learning there.

Important: I am not endorsing the script author or the user experience of the onexit you’ll see the site.

Finally the most decent on-exit survey implementation methodology is the one used by companies such as iPerceptions.

It is permission based - hence has a very high survey participation and completion rates.

Go to http://www.iperceptions.com/ and you will likely see a dhtml overlay asking you for your permission to participate in a survey. If you say yes then at the end of the visit there is a survey.

I can’t disclose the code that does that, but feel free to reach out to iPerceptions! :)

ForeSee, another survey provider, normally does a pop-up with a survey to a randomly selected % of website browsers. But they also mention that they can do onexit if asked - you can call them as well.

There are some survey companies that say they do onexit but in reality they pop up a “minimized to your PC status bar” window. This “minimized” pop up window is monitoring the Visitor session and will pop a survey on exit (since it is essentially “monitoring” the visitor).

I am not a big fan of this method because you are “secretly” watching the customer who can click on your little minimized window at any time (and hopefully it says we are watching you). If you do this type of oneixt it is better to ask for permission.

I hope this helps a little bit.

-Avinash.

First off, great article. I have been a long time lurker and felt it was time to speak up.

In your book, website (and I am sure some t-shirts you wear) you always talk about implementing on-exit surveys. We fully understand the importance of these survey results and the actionable items they generate. However, the looooong standing question is …

“How do you implement exit surveys?”

If you could share specific solutions or methods it would be great!

Thanks again, keep up the good work!

Very good post, remarkable as usual, but it is very difficult to measure what activity did the customers do who did not convert.

But your point is that marketers shouldn’t just focus on those people who do convert (which is measured by conversion rate), but that they should look into why the other 98% or so do NOT convert (by finding out through surveys, etc.)..which will ultimately help them increase conversion rate?

in other words: Analysis > reporting?:-)

Given the obsession of most organizations with Conversion Rate and the Homepage, what advice or comments would you have for or against linking overall site CR or Sales with the performance of the site Homepage?

Measuring Conversion Rate is good, much better than trying to make decisions faith.

In addition to that focusing on the red part (non converted), in the graph above, using instruments such as surveys is even better. You’ll understand much better why people don’t convert, why they were there, and, for our Hero, get a feel for offline conversions.

It is tough work to analyze beyond just on-site conversions, but it can be a fun, rewarding and a near orgasmic experience! :)

-Avinash.

I’m really into posts about conversion rate and must admit I’m not sure if Ive completely understood your point why it’s not worth obsessing over, yet. In the SEO world everybody thinks conversion rate/ROI are the two most important metrics.

Your example in this case is very clear to me: A conversion rate of secondary actions (what % of people filled out a form or something similar) could be a rather bad predictor for the actual conversion rate in stores.

However, if our hero was selling e-books or another product and doing so purely online - would conversion rate not be *the metric* to measure?

I just realized I might have given myself the reply to my question: You usually say ’stop obsessing over conversion rate’ and I said in SEO everybody thinks conversion rate is the one metric you have to measure..without measuring anything else.

Is your point that it is a very critical metric, but that simply measuring it (even segmented)is not enough, because looking at other metrics (how satisfied people are with your site, etc.) and improving them will lead to a higher conversion rate? And that obsessing over conversion rate, conversion rate, conversion rate is a bad idea because then other things will be neglected (that are needed to improve ‘conversion rate’)?

I hope that made any sense!

Addition of the qualitative “likelihood” metrics to the conversion rate will give you a better complete picture of success. Then looking at the first two questions (Primary Purpose and Task Completion) will help you judge the value and quality of the 98%.

A while back I had talked about determining the true opportunity pie. That helps ensure you make intelligent choices about which segment to focus on! Post:

      Measure the Real Conversion Rate & “Opportunity Pie”.

P S : Here’s to late nighters, we are changing the world. Cheers!!! :)

Sean : You are absolutely right about multiple “touch points”. Most Purchasers on websites exhibit multi session experiences. This is why reporting of “assists” is so important - the last or the first touch point (campaign) does not deserve all the “credit” (attribution). Unfortunately computing “assists” is much more complex than it might seem on the surface.

Our good friend Ian Thomas has hinted/promised that Microsoft Live Analytics (Gatineau) will report on “assists” and I for one can’t wait!

[You are too polite to say this but I'll say that I was so impressed with the Web Abacus Product Brochure - short to making me coffee it can do anything I would ever want! Should we give Ian some credit here as well (!!)? :) Here's a link for everyone else: http://www.webabacus.com/resources/WebAbacus_Brochure.pdf]

Jeremy : The interesting thing is that doing a survey does not have to be very expensive and it is only going to get cheaper - especially if you just want to do the type of survey that I am recommending. So stay tuned!

The other ways I have seen used. . . . .

      + Many large companies will do primary market research (good old traditional market research!) and so say twice a year they get a great understanding of their overall campaign effectiveness.
      + Circuit City does this Bizrate point of sale survey thing on their store receipts, and has questions about influences from time to time and that is another way.
      + I have also gotten order confirmation emails from companies that have a quick survey *in the email itself*, two or three questions, that ask about influences (”brand campaign effectiveness”) that is a great way to know atleast for purchasers.

Those are top of mind. I am sure readers will add some to the blog.

Latham : You are on the right track with measuring content consumption! See some of the suggestions for Jeremy above, perhaps you’ll find inspiration there.

Both iPerceptions and OpinionLab use surveys but each solve for completely different things. Site Level surveys solve for different things than Page Level surveys. For more on that please see point #3 in Part One in this post, I think you might find it helpful:

      Eight Tips For Choosing An Online Survey Provider.

Dr. Pete : Your comment has pointed out a excellent nuance to be aware of.

My hope, at the end of the post, was that by using the ideas expressed readers will be able to make better decisions about sources of valuable traffic. That compared to faith based or simply conversion based.

Once the framework is in place I am sure the next step will be exactly what you recommend: How many Visits we can get from each of our optimal sites, then where are the next best, then what are our bottom of our barrel options. :) With each step Holistic Outcomes will be smaller, but based on data!

Thanks for all the delightful comments everyone!!

-Avinash.

Let’s say that you have great performance on sites in your vertical. Just for kicks, we’ll say 10% conversion. What if the opportunities to buy in that vertical are very small, though, and only encompass a portion of the available budget? You might still want to advertise on larger, lower-performing sites (let’s say 1% CR), to get a bigger audience. Even if those sites have lower conversion, as long as the ROI was still there, the ad spend would be justifiable.

I’ve seen this a lot in long-tail targeting. Some of my clients get great conversion on specific niches, but even with a max buy in that niche, the total traffic is fairly low. Put simply, there just aren’t enough people in that niche to target.

Jonghee

I’ve thought about this issue a lot, and am not sure I’ve come up with a good solution as of yet.

My problem arises from the fact I work on movie websites. As you can imagine, the overall conversion is getting people in the theater. But since we don’t actually sell tickets on the site (and don’t direct people to ticketing sites until the week of release), defining on-site goals is more difficult.

I’ve defined goals on our sites in the past focusing on a user watching trailers - essentially it revolves around the consumption of our content. However, I do not have qualitative data from our customers saying this is what they came to the site for (or that it increases ticket buying).

I know the best option is to implement qualitative analysis (currently looking to do that with either iPerceptions or OpinionLab) and just ask our customers. However, that’s not going to happen right away (time/money); so in the mean time I’m wondering what to use as a conversion metric.

For the time being, I’m likely going to continue use content consumption as a metric (until I can track ticketing), but would love any feedback on other options, general thoughts on the situation.

So what if your client *gasp* doesn’t have the budget for a follow-up survey from the site. Maybe this is a mute point and long been discussed in the annuals of analytics - but are there other ways you can best measure the almighty branding campaign?

I’ve only been in web analytics for 6 months, but it seems pretty obvious to me that you would at least want to make sure that you were raising awareness and establishing branding more efficiently, no matter what the reason for the campaign.

I find it impossible to believe that anyone would would willing ignore that data.

Perhaps the real issue isn’t the boss’s argument , but the boss feels upset that his lackey (the hero of this post) thought of it first and he doesn’t want to admit that his underling was right? If this were the case, my guess would be the hero was super excited that he found this information. And, in his excitement, didn’t deliver it in a way that was sensitive to his boss’s ego (assuming there is a way to communicate where he would listen) which lead to his seemingly illogical viewpoint.

I know I’ve seen this sort of thing in the technical support field a time or three.