behavioral targeting

10 considerations when building a website in this brave new Social World

August 24, 2011 By Chris Elvery 4 Comments

I’ve been helping businesses to specify their requirements in relation to web sites as effective sales and marketing tools for over 10 years and in that time – apart from the tech, little has changed – until now (well, when I say now, I mean over the last couple of years). If you’re currently looking at improving your website or are in the process of building a new site, then take note, the world has changed and due to the rise (and rise) of Social Media your website today performs a very different role to what it did a few years ago.

1) How well are you currently performing online?
And I don’t just mean traffic to the website, but looking at individual channels into the site – What are the bounce and exit rates? Where is most of your traffic coming from?

How many people are converting to one action against one of your defined key performance indicators? Without this information there’s really no point at even looking to change your web site.

2) What is the extent of your Digital estate?
Is it just a website? Have you engaged in other digitial channels? How active are you in these? What’s working well and not so well? Are they the right channels for your business?

3) How does your website fit into this picture?
Your website is no longer an island in a digital ocean with passing traffic from the odd reference on a 3rd party website or search engines delivering traffic based on key terms – your website should be bang in the middle of the shipping lane, with traffic directed towards it from multiple sources. Your website increasingly is not the place where decisions are made, but more often than not will be made outwith your site, with the site itself just nailing the “sale”.

Having said that we’re not there quite yet, so you still have to consider how your website stacks up, how it interacts, but you also have to be aware that individual pages of your site will be referenced across the web and so each key entry page has to work as hard as the Home page, with consistently placed calls to action (although these may vary based on what you’re trying to achieve on any given page). You need to think of your site as a series of landing pages.

4) What are your competitors up to?
This is very often missed and shouldn’t be, as it gives great insight in to how your competitors interact with their customers. You can use some of the free tools out there such as Yahoo site explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/uk/) to see what 3rd party links they have pointing into them, a keyword density analyser (I use http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html) to see what they’ve optimised individual pages for, and one of the Social Media monitoring tools (there are loads – Addictomatic/ Twazzup etc) to get a feel for what their customers are saying about them and where they are saying it.

5) What’s the purpose of your site?
Strange question? But I see so many sites that have absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than to look good in the developer’s portfolio. You need to really think what you want to get out of your site, set KPIs so you know when it’s been successful. You also need to understand how the website fits in to your other online activity.

6) Who are your customers? What do they want? Where do they hang out online?
Persona development is key to delivering to your customers the information they want (and the information you want them to know) in the environment that they frequent. There are lots of great articles on persona development and that may be worth exploring in a future blog post, but in essence – consider your top 3 types of customer (there’ll be more, but lets focus on the key ones) – who are they? How tech savvy are they? How do they want information delivered? What are the triggers that will make them engage?

You’ll end up with a profile of your key customers and that’s as good a place as any to start building content which addresses their issues.

7) Content, Content, Content
You may think that you have the greatest website on earth, but is this where your primary engagement with your customers will take place?

I’ve recently undertaken an excercise with a couple of clients whereby we got a large sheet of paper (very high tech I know!) and written down the left column all the information (based on the personans) that we believe customers want to know as well as information that we need to tell them. Across the top we then put up their entire digital estate – blog/ Facebook, youtube, flickR etc. We didn’t take this for granted, we saw based on previous interactions which were working best, others which weren’t working as well and others we hadn’t considered up until the persona exercise. We then decided for each piece of information where it sat and what purpose it performed.

Let’s take an example – “recipes” – the call to action takes place on the website where the recipe is downloaded and they sign up to receive regular recipe updates, but the activity to get them to this point takes place across You Tube (“watch the video on how to make the recipe”); Facebook (“lets discuss the recipe and other ways of making it”); Twitter (Tweets relating to the recipe having just been made and how successful or otherwise it turned out) …..you get the idea.

8) Ensure that your relevant web content is syndicated

Lots of websites have great content which never sees the light of day and there are plenty of other places on the web that would just love to have your Presentation, Whitepaper, Press Release, Video, Images – the list goes on – don’t let your content hide on your site, get it out there (a number of my clients use PixelPipe – http://pixelpipe.com).

9) Ensure that even if your primary call to action is not fulfilled that an engagement mechanism is

This may be “Sign up for a weekly digest of information”; “Use our RSS feed”; “Follow us on Twitter”; “Like us on Facebook” etc). By allowing the customer to engage on their terms, you then have the opportunity to engage with them.

10) Monitor, measure, react, adapt

Lastly, you need to be able to be able to make decisions and refine your strategy – you can’t do this without measurements in place. Decide at the outset what your KPIs are and what you’re going to measure and then review regularly to ensure that you’re on-message.

Filed Under: behavioral targeting, data analysis, emetrics, Google Analytics, landing page optimization

Using Behavioral Analytics to Understand Web Traffic

March 24, 2009 By Jason Rushin 1 Comment

Standard web analytic reports provide ample information about past performance: page views, click-throughs, time on site, etc. While this information is critical for reporting on the areas and metrics to which you should paying attention, behavioral analytics can help give you guidance on what to do next.

We’ve just written a new white paper (download here) explaining how behavioral analytics can dig into your web analytics data to uncover how visitors truly interact with your website.

But, you’re probably asking, “What is behavioral analytics and why can’t my current web analytics tool deliver the same info?“

Behavioral analytics refers to the ability to uncover patterns of behavior in interaction data, uncovering clusters of people that demonstrate a propensity to go through similar sequences of actions, such as clicks on web pages, online or offline purchases, responses to marketing offers, etc. The payoff from understanding these behavioral patterns is huge: you can use this insight to optimize your site, influence people’s behavior, and ultimately drive actions that you care about – clicks, page views, purchases, etc.

The white paper explains how behavioral analytics helps you identify the content that visitors will look at next, ways to increase transactions, attributes that indicate likely-to-return visitors, factors that make visitors click on ads, and more.

You can download the paper here. Once you do, we’d like to know what you think. Comment on this blog posting, or email us at info@quantivo.com, and let us know!

Filed Under: analytics, behavioral targeting, Quantivo, web analytics tools

[x+1] Announces New Version of Site+1 – Custom Experiences on Real Time Data

December 10, 2008 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Earlier this week [x+1] announced its new version of Site+1, a full-service internet solution that allows companies to maximize the return on their website investments by automatically personalizing online content on a continuous basis. In this difficult economy, it allows websites to deliver more for less. The new capabilities of Site+1, currently in beta, will be released in Q1 2009. These enhancements, combined with the recently released new version of [x+1]’s core technology, the Predictive Optimization Engine ® (POE), make Site+1 the most comprehensive solution for web personalization.

“In these tough economic times, companies can not afford to waste money on inefficient and ineffective distribution of their website’s product, service and brand messaging,” said John Nardone, CEO of [x+1]. “These significant enhancements to Site+1 will ensure that website visitors see customized, specific, targeted content to maximize the effectiveness of a brand’s e-marketing initiatives.”

The new features of Site+1 include:

New Site+1 open data platform – this allows the integration of data from third party data providers for more precise targeting. Clients can choose to include industry appropriate data such as income level, education, average home value and auto ownership, among many others. Participating vendors data can be easily pulled into the Site+1 platform. The result: better marketing effectiveness based on the broader availability of prospect information.
New website creative testing – Site+1 will include a tool to perform A/B and multivariate tests of alternate versions of web pages to determine which combination of layout, graphics, content, and other variables generates the best visitor response. The result: greater click and conversion rates.
Value-based optimization – this allows companies to focus efforts to deliver higher-value conversions. For instance, a company may have 10 different products, with different profitability or expected lifetime values. With Site+1’s value-based optimization, the company can more precisely target offers for the higher-value products to those more likely to purchase them through data and statistical modeling by POE. The result: a greater return for the same number of conversions.
An enhanced rules engine – [x+1] can now more quickly and flexibly define custom rules (complex “if-then” statements that govern how content will be distributed) to more precisely personalize online content on the fly. For example, a marketer can define a rule so that an offer is seen only by high income consumers with high-bandwidth connections in the New York area between 12 noon and 3 p.m. The result: more precisely targeted and more effective messages.
A new content distribution engine – the addition of dedicated regional [x+1] data centers has increased the capacity for sub-second web page delivery, to keep up with the growth of [x+1]’s client base. The result: instantaneous delivery of content, messages and ads.

Filed Under: behavioral targeting, Usability

Behavioral Targeting Increasing Online Ad Budgets – SEMPO

May 15, 2008 By Manoj Jasra 1 Comment

Four out of five advertisers are willing to increase their online advertising budget in order to add behavioral targeting to their pay-per-click campaigns, according to SEMPO, (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), http://www.sempo.org/, which conducted a 2007 state of the market survey of 867 search engine advertisers and search engine marketing agencies.

I had a quick chat with the Chairperson of SEMPO, Dana Todd regarding the latest interest in behavioral targeting and the need to include it in a company’s online marketing strategy. Listen to the podcast of our conversation below:

Rest of the press release:

The survey also found that 57% of online advertisers polled were willing to spend more on demographic targeting, such as age and gender. Advertisers, on average, would pay 11% more for both behavioral and demographic targeting. While advertiser interest in behavioral targeting is very strong, actual investment is still low, according to the survey respondents. Some 40% of the respondents said they are not currently targeting or retargeting searchers but they plan to in the next 12 months.

Behavioral targeting is the practice of delivering ads to consumers based on their past search behavior. These ads can help advertisers reach consumers as they approach a buying decision, thus leading to potentially more conversions. Behaviors tracked and targeted include consumer visits to topic specific web sites, subscriptions to these sites; registration and user-generated profiles for chosen subjects, content or shopping categories, and request for automatic updates.

Retargeting reaches “in-market” consumers who, for example, have just searched for a specific product. Advertisers can send targeted display ads to these in-market consumers, who may have visited the advertiser’s site – or a partner site – but not converted.

Dayparting showed considerable less interest: only 30% indicated they would bid more for clicks based on dayparting, and on average, said an additional 9% budget spend was their comfort level.

Dayparting is the practice of scheduling ads to run at certain times of the day and/or days of the week. Its objective is to more effectively target users at optimum times and to give advertisers better bid management and campaign budget control.

“The next best thing to an impression or click from a search result is the ability to serve a highly relevant and targeted graphical or textual ad to a consumer while they are still very interested in their search,” says Kevin Lee, a member of SEMPO’s board of directors and its research committee. Lee is chairman and CEO of Didit.

“Online advertisers are always faced with the challenge that there is a finite number of searches occurring daily. Behavioral targeting gives advertisers an opportunity to expand the search marketing universe,” says Lee. Many analysts believe that, when combined with demographic targeting, behavioral targeting of searchers provides a significant growth opportunity for the media industry, Lee notes.

The 2007 SEMPO global survey of online marketers was conducted by Radar Research and was administered via IntelliSurvey, Inc.
Survey and research findings released earlier showed:

The North American SEM industry grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.2 billion in 2007, exceeding earlier projections of $11.5 billion for 2007.
North American SEM spending is now projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011, up significantly from the $18.6 billion forecast a year ago.
Marketers are finding more search dollars by poaching budget from print magazine spending, website development, direct mail and other marketing programs.

Filed Under: behavioral targeting, sempo

Tealeaf Introduces cxResults – Advanced Customer Behavior Analysis

May 7, 2008 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Tealeaf, today announced Tealeaf cxResultsTM, a first-of-its-kind product that changes the way organizations are able to analyze the business impact of the customer experience, and also announced updates to its core Tealeaf CX datastore as well as a new version of Tealeaf cxConnect featuring integrations with many third party tools. The company also published experience-based website optimization best practices and announced the launch of the viaTealeafTM Partner Network. Combined, these technology innovations, partnering and integration efforts aim to help companies deliver on the full promise of ebusiness.

Companies are increasingly recognizing that the online customer experience is impacting their business results. By improving this experience companies are able to maximize customer satisfaction, effectively support and service customers through the cost-effective Web channel, and grow overall revenue.

Tealeaf Technology Innovations

Tealeaf is introducing Tealeaf cxResults, a new product that extends Tealeaf’s Customer Behavior Analysis Suite. Additionally, Tealeaf is introducing key new features in its Tealeaf CX datastore, as well as new packaged versions of Tealeaf cxConnectTM.

Tealeaf cxResults is a new product for advanced customer behavior analysis. The product enables business decisions makers to:

Understand complete customer behavior patterns across multiple online visits.
Discover patterns of behavior indicating any unusual experiences.
Provide sophisticated analytics to refine and answer questions about website experiences and associated business impacts.

The new visitor data model of cxResults includes enhanced search capabilities. These capabilities allow for the creation of ad-hoc segments for detailed analysis by individual visit or across multiple visits. Segments can couple behavioral searches with full text searches to uncover anticipated and unanticipated behavior. For example:

Sequence of events: Show all visitors who saw the error message, “We’re sorry” but still purchased something later in the same visit or in a follow-on visit.
The absence of events: Show all visitors who searched for something but who never added an item to their shopping cart.
The number of occurrences: Show all visitors who tried to register three times but still were never able to sign in.

“The Web’s cost-effective, ‘always open’ business model is increasingly ‘the’ channel for many businesses to service and support their customers, partners and employees. However, given the complexity of modern web applications it is impossible to anticipate the behavior and experience of every online visitor and any associated business impact,” said John Dawes, Vice President of Product Management, Tealeaf. “Tealeaf’s Customer Behavior Analysis suite is the first solution to uncover and analyze unanticipated customer behavior and experience enabling decisions based on actual business impact.”

Tealeaf CX now supports global organizations with multilingual sites and provides a unified central management system:

Internationalization: To support global organizations, Tealeaf CX offers complete support for capturing customer experience data from sites using multi-byte character sets while localized user interfaces enable use of Tealeaf globally.
Centralized Management: As the web becomes the primary vehicle for doing business and demands on sites increase, CX includes centralized management tools for configuration rollback, audit and security, and disaster recovery.

Filed Under: behavioral targeting, Web Analytics

Behavioral/On Site Targeting Factors

August 3, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Behavioral Targeting is the ability to target users based on their behavior on your website (this is one form known as on-site targeting). The concept of behavioral/on site targeting is exactly how business should be done: offer a customized solution to your end users so that they are truly engaged with your website.

While at ad:Tech Chicago I heard Phillip Suchet of Kefta provide some excellent reasons why behavioral targeting is becoming absolutely essential:

Acquisition costs are rising and conversion rates are decreasing
The power switch from Push to Pull Marketing
The change from mass marketing to personalized marketing

There are so many factors to consider when behaviorally targeting users – so which ones should you consider? The factors and metrics are completely site specific, however below are a few factors that you should consider when developing profiles for your various visitor segments: