Dickson K.W. Chiu

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COMP7880 E-Business Strategies Creating
effective web presence

• Dickson K.W. Chiu
• PhD, SMIEEE, SMACM, Life MHKCS

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Strategic Premise

• Building a Web Site for an Enterprise or
  Non-Profit is Not an Exercise
  in Either
  Technology Or Aesthetics.

It is an Exercise in Creating Satisfying
Customer Experience in a Way that Leads to
Cost-Effective Execution of Marketing Strategy.
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Effective Execution of Marketing Strategy

• Building Web sites that deliver satisfying
  customer experience and do so in a way that fits
  both strategy and budget.
• Visual attractiveness is a plus, but not a
  necessity.
• If technology gets in trouble, it is a negative,
  not a plus, e.g., flash intros/demos.
• Web sites is an important marketing strategy but
  not the only one - that must be cost-effective.
• Most Web sites should eventually be expected to
  produce a reasonable return on investment.

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Web Site Development Process

• Not too different from marketing / communications
  planning
• Planning a Web site should be first
• Foremost a business/marketing planning process
• Good business sense should take precedence

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Establishing Site Objectives

• Enterprise/Unit Marketing Objectives
• cascade with levels
• The Interactive Nature of the Internet
• Communications/Branding Objectives
• Behavioral Objectives
• Role of Web Site on Overall Marketing/ Marketing
  Communications Strategy
• integration of online and offline strategy for
  multi-channel marketers

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Identify / Describe Target Market

• Demographics, Life Styles
• Motives for using the site
• Tasks they wish to perform
• Consider utility and customization
• Stepwise scenario development / use case analysis

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Site Content / Navigation Structure

• What content do visitors need/expect?
• How do they access content?
• More than just a straightforward replication of
  offline content
• Interactions
• Marketing research
• What role should visuals/graphics play?
• Simple and Usable
• Content and structure more important

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Typical Site Hierarchy

• Enough second-level pages to clearly categorize
  content but not create confusion
• Visitor should never be more than 2-3 intuitive
  mouse clicks away
• Avoid dead ends ?

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Main Page Design

• marketers should specify the goals and
  requirements to guide the technical people

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Site Design Issues

• Content
• Navigation
• Color (especially background)
• Font
• Minimize Scrolling
• Artwork
• Animation/Graphics/Rich Media
• Demo Case http//www.cnet.com/

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Deployment and Tuning

• Uploading site server / hosting service raises
  many technical issues
• Calibrating and fine tuning for best site
  performance is highly technical
• Reliability and scalability issues
• Test at your target customers regions and
  environment!

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Measure / Evaluate / Improve Performance
Effectiveness

• Measuring and Improving site performance is a
  technical task
• Measuring and improving the business
  effectiveness of site is a marketing task

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Measurement Techniques

• Concept Tests - basic marketing research
  techniques
• Prototype Tests
• Beta (Functional) Tests
• Customer Usability/Satisfaction Feedback

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Measuring Web Customer Satisfaction

• Employs research methods developed offline
• Adapted for the online environment
• Single measures vs multiple measures

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Satisfaction with Content
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Satisfaction with Transactional Experiences
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BIZRATE.com Surveys CustomerExperience to Rate
Sites
At Checkout and After Delivery
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E-Commerce Satisfaction Drivers
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• What Should The Marketer Do
• To Create Good
• Customer Experience
• On The Web Site?

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Stages/Elements of Customer Experience
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Continuous Improvement Essential
Figure 9.12 TOP Image Only Goes Here
Figure 9.13 TOP Image Only Goes There
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Elements WSJOnline Offers

• Usable Site
• Navigation Made Easier By Familiarity With Print
  Version
• Personalization Options
• A Trusted Brand Name
• E-Mail NoticesFeatures, Breaking News
• Community Through Feedback/Discussions

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Web Site Costs

• 2 to 3 times as much to maintain a site as it
  costs to develop it initially!

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More on website evaluation
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The Power of Clickstream to Produce Internet
Metrics

• Tremendous amount of data produced on the
  Internet.
• One of the main challenges for the Internet
  marketer is to control this data to improve
  existing marketing programs and to gain insights
  into additional marketing efforts that have a
  high probability of being productive

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Purpose of Usability Testing

• Visitors expect smooth navigation suiting their
  need
• To be pleased and not frustrated
• The fundamental basis of Web site usability is
  user task performance.
• Visitors come to the Web site motivated to
  accomplish some goal, to perform some task.
• Usability testing is designed to ensure that task
  performance is not only possible, but hopefully
  efficient and entirely satisfactory.

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Types/Stages of Usability Testing

• Concept Testing - testing site design concepts to
  see if they make sense. This is primarily site
  structure, not design approaches.
• Prototype Testing - testing prototypes to see if
  they fit the manner in which users expect the
  site to be organized and laid out in order for
  them to complete tasks in an orderly fashion.
• Full Usability Testing - Testing the full
  usability of the site when it is functionally
  complete and most if not all of the content is
  there.

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Pareto Curve for Usability Testing

• Over 75 of the problems can be identified with 5
  user tests only 15 are need to find 100 ?

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No Website can Ignore the Need for Usability
Testing

• Usability testing is critically important.
• A careful marketer can learn to do it, especially
  one who has had focus group training or
  experience.
• It can be outsourced to interactive marketing
  agency or a specialized marketing services firm.

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Site Performance Metrics
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Traffics Audience Metrics

• Site Administered
• Hit Counters
• Purchased Services
• Server Request Log Data
• Coded Web Pages
• Customer Panel Data

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Hit Counters are Often Free
They Provide Simple But Useful Reports
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What is a Server Log?

• Server logs record every hit (every file
  requested) and most pages have many files.
• This is a necessary lead-in to understanding that
  the IT people use server log data to run the site
  and marketers use it (after much processing) to
  understand the performance of their marketing
  programs.
• Includes, e.g. IP address, date and time of
  request

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Basic Metrics Site Traffic

• Hits
• recorded each time a file is requested
• little value in measuring site effectiveness.
• Impressions.
• Typical advertising usage applies here.
• Each time a visitor has an opportunity to view an
  item, an impression is recorded.
• Page views (page impressions).
• recorded each time a page is requested.

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Basic Metrics Site Audience

• Visitors - simple count of the number of people
  who visit a site
• Unique visitors - the number of different people
• Identified visitors - the next step up now we
  know who they are
• Unduplicated audience - the number of unique
  visits/exposures in a specified time frame.
• Traffic and audience measures are obviously
  related.
• Traffic simply measures the activity on the site.
  
• Audience measures are of more interest to
  marketers who need information about the
  composition of that traffic.

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ALMOST INFINITE NUMBER OF SPECIFIC VARIABLES
BASIC METRICS
?
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Sample ROI Report
For Marketing Campaign
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Sample Traffic Report
For Web Site
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Sample Path Report
For Web Site
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Sample Site Effectiveness Reports
For Ad Banners
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Almost Infinite Number of Variables/ Reports

• By Single Variable
• By Multiple Variables
• By Day
• By Time
• By Specific Page
• Etc., etc., etc.

• Marketing Objective
• Should Guide the Choice

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Need for Ratings

• Management to assess performance
• Investors to assess potential returns
• Advertisers for traffic numbers
• Must be accurate verifiable
• External audit is the preferred option

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Television Ratings

• Create-once-sell-many medium
• Production costs dont change with number of
  audience
• Producers cannot directly count their audience
• Independent panel-based measurement companies are
  preferred, e.g. ACNielsen
• Survey a representative sample of viewers and the
  TV channels to which they tuned
• Set-top box is used to record the viewing
  behavior

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Magazine Ratings

• Create-many-sell-many medium
• They can count how many copies printed sold
• No way to count magazines actually opened and
  read
• Independent companies verify circulation numbers
  based on audits of financial documents, mailing
  lists, postal receipts, and printing bills
• Survey is much harder than TV as the number of
  magazines is much higher than TV channels
• No mechanism similar to set-top box

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Web Ratings

• Create-once-sell-many medium
• Supply side resembles magazines but demand side
  resembles TV
• Can count using server logs how many pages were
  printed
• Can install set-top box like software to record
  viewing behavior
• Millions of web sites with billions of web pages
  require prohibitively large samples
• Representative samples are impractical to put
  together in addition to difficulty of installing
  measurement software
• Dont guess but count!

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Something You Can Know

• The referral links let you know how much traffic
  is coming from where?
• Also captured are the search terms visitors typed
  into portals like Yahoo!
• Can discover the most-used entry and exit pages
• How long did they stay on each page?

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IAB Online Measurement Study
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Background Objectives

• Online Advertising Measurement Study
• Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
• Media Rating Council (MRC)
• Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)
• Conducted by PricewaterhouseCoppers (PwC)
• Review measurement criteria practices for
  online advertising and audience measurement
  reporting
• Document and report the comparability of existing
  metrics used by the industry
• Propose a common set of industry definitions and
  guidelines for data analysis and reporting

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Scope

• 11 participating companies selected by IAB
• portals (e.g., AOL, MSN, Yahoo!)
• destination sites (e.g., CNET, Forbes.com)
• third party ad networks / servers (e.g., Avenue
  A, DoubleClick)
• Participating companies represented 2/3 of total
  industry revenue
• Interviews
• what types of audience and advertising data are
  measured
• how the data is measured and how it is reported
• Verified collection methods definitions using
  scripted testing
• Identified discrepancies between definitions,
  editing procedures, and reporting

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The Fundamental

• Standard Metric Definitions
• Well-Controlled Process
• Reliable Ad Campaign Measurement Reporting

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The Top Five Metrics

• Ad Impressions
• Clicks
• Unique Visitors
• Total Visits
• Page Impressions
• Time Spent on Page
• Number of Completed User Registrations
• Conversions

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Top ? Currency Metrics

• Ad Impressions
• Metric upon which revenue-generating contracts
  are based
• Clicks
• Contracts based on the Cost-per-Action pricing
  model
• Page Impressions
• Content or page sponsorship
• Email Subscribers
• Email Messages Delivered
• Email Messages Opened
• Conversion
• Referrals

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Ad Impression

• A measurement of responses from an ad delivery
  system to an ad request from the user browser
• filtered from robotic activity
• recorded at a point as close as possible to the
  actual viewing of the creative material by the
  user browser.

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Page Impressions

• A measurement of responses from a web server to a
  page request from the user browser, which is
  filtered from robotic activity and error codes,
  and is recorded at a point as close as possible
  to the actual viewing of the page by the user
  browser.

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Ad Impression Measurement

• Server Initiated Measurement
• prior to serving a web page to a user agent
  request
• the page is built with links to an ad resource
• ad impression transaction is recorded in a log
• Client Initiated Measurement
• direct connection between a user agent and the ad
  server via advanced HTML tags
• recorded via an independent request to a special
  ad transaction logging server

Participants
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Server
Client
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Ad vs Web Server Logging

• Ad Server Logging
• after receiving a request from the web server
• prior to rendering the content
• Web Server Logging
• after the ad server responds to the request
• prior to rendering the content

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Ad vs Counting Server Logging

• Ad Server Logging
• after receiving a request from the client
• prior to rendering the content
• Counting Server Logging
• after the ad server responds to the client
• a separate redirect call to the ad counting server

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Cache Busting for All

• Cached ads result in undercounting impressions
• Cache busting technology
• reduce an ad request to be cached in either a web
  browser or a proxy server
• append a random number to the end of an ad
  request
• append a time stamp to the end of an ad request
• All 11 participants support cache busting
  technology

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Clicks

• A measurement of the user-initiated action of
  clicking on an ad element, causing a re-direct to
  another web location.
• Tracked and reported as a 302 redirect at the ad
  server.
• This measurement is filtered for robotic activity
  and is recorded at a point as close as possible
  to the actual viewing of the destination web
  location by the user browser.

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Uniform Use of 302 Redirects

• All 11 participants track clicks share a common
  definition
• A click is a user-initiated action of clicking on
  an ad element causing a redirect to another web
  location
• A click does not include information on whether
  or not the user completed the redirect
  transaction
• All base click metric on 302 redirects (or
  transfers) successfully processed by the ad server

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Unique Visitor

• After resolving the two issues related to the
  visitor definition, consider the additional
  issues for defining unique visitors, including
  the use of sampling and estimates, and the
  treatment
• include or exclude visitors that do not accept
  cookies) of new cookies for cookie-based
  calculations.

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Unique Visitors

• 10 out of 11 participants track unique visitors
• Cookie Based
• 8 use cookies with 2 using also IP address
• recurring vs new cookies
• Registration Based
• 2 use registered users or user login counts

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Cookie Based Unique Visitors

• Should new cookie be counted?
• Count all new cookies
• Exclude all new cookies
• a unique cookie must visit the site at least
  twice to be considered a new visitor
• Exclude some new cookies based on historical data
• using known user data
• estimate of new cookies representing repeat
  visitors that do not accept cookie

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Total Visits

• Resolve whether the approaches to determining
  visitor counts can be addressed in one definition
  (I.e. cookies, user registration)
• require disclosure of the definition
• Resolve whether session time limits should also
  be included in the definitions.

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Total Visitors

• 10 participants calculate total visitors
• Definitions vary among participants
• Actual
• Sampling
• sample user activity (e.g. several days over a
  period)
• Statistical Analysis
• to perform statistical analysis to estimate total
  visitors

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Web vs Ad Server Tracking

• 8 participants track page impressions
• 6 use standard web server logs
• with successful HTML status codes
• filter from robotic activity
• 2 use web beacon technology (see Yahoo)
• A Web beacon is an object that is embedded and
  invisible but allows checking that a user has
  viewed the page or e-mail.
• no third party entity does the tracking

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Robotic Activity Filtering

• All participants perform some such filtering
• Basic
• prevent robots from scanning the ad server
• exclude transactions from empty agents or bot
  agents
• List of Known Robots
• based on User Agent Strings or IP address
• varied from 10 to 700
• Behavioral Filtering
• define business rules to identify robotic
  behaviors

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Internal IP Address Filtering

• Eliminate any activity generated by internal
  monitoring tools
• Demographic of company users may not be
  representative
• Eliminate any activity generated by internal
  testing

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Independent Verification
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Resources

• Web Metrics Proven Methods for Measuring Web
  Site Success, Jim SterneJohn Wiley Sons, Inc.,
  2002
• IAB Online Ad Measurement StudyPricewaterhouseCop
  pers, 2001