Best Buy’s Use of Analytics

Best Buy is a specialty retailer that provides technology products, services, and solutions to consumers.  The retailer has stores around the United States, Canada, and Mexico.  In the United States, 70% of the population is within a short drive of a company store (About Best, n.d.).  Brick-and-mortar stores are important to the success of Best Buy.  In 2014, it was reported that the company owned 18% of the market share when looking at brick-and-mortar stores alone.  However, the company doesn’t have as big of an online presence.  Last year, Best Buy only had 7% market share of the online category (Best Buy, 2014).  To help grow the online program, the company dedicated a lot of new strategies to the channel.

Online Approach

The company is using an omnichannel approach as it tries to hit a customer regardless of their location or device.  This approach started after the company used analytics to understand the impact of a customer using multiple devices when interacting with the company.  It was proven that website visits are valuable even if there isn’t an immediate return.  One example is with mobile devices, the company has reported that a customer who visits the website on a mobile device is 15% more valuable to the online program.  In addition, the company understands that mobile visits can add value beyond online purchases.  A lot of customers go online before visiting a store.  Therefore, after analyzing the data, the company found that a customer that visits the website on a mobile device becomes 25% more valuable to the overall company (Best Buy, 2014).

Best Buy is also making adjustments to improve their online experience.  The company is working on several strategies including the conversion path, personalization, and online and offline integration.  The conversion path relates to minimizing the amount of clicks needed to make a purchase. Ideally, the company is trying to get it down to three.  From a personalization perspective, the company is trying to place products at the top of the page that makes sense based on a visitor’s behavior and characteristics.  Finally, the company is trying to integrate the online efforts with the offline channel.  This included adding a pick-up in store option for online purchases and integrating local store inventory levels to help with out of stock items (Fitzgerald, 2013)

Tools

Having the right tools is vital to a company’s success.  From research, it looks like Best Buy is investing with Adobe products to help them analyze their company.  In 2012, Adobe wrote an article on the company’s partnership with Best Buy and their use of the Adobe Insights tool.  This tool allowed the company to analyze online to store data, the use of multiple devices, and digital channel touchpoints to understand the consumer’s behavior from an attribution standpoint (Halbrook, 2012).

With the data needed for Adobe’s Insights tool, an assumption would be that Best Buy uses other Adobe tools such as Adobe Analytics to help analyze their online data.  Adobe Analytics is a real-time analytics platform that can help companies understand customer interactions.  This will include a website’s visitor numbers, conversions, and attributes attributed to each visit (Adobe Analytics, n.d.).  Adobe Analytics allows Best Buy to look at granular data to help create stories that lead to future strategies.

How Best Buy Uses Data

All the data collected by Best Buy is used to understand their customers in an effort to provide a better experience that results in more conversions.  Adobe’s Insights tool helps with this objective as the company is able to gain a better understanding of customer interactions.  An example can be seen when the company analyzes category level pages on mobile devices.  An obvious page that leads to a store visit is the store locator page.  However, the Home Theatre Accessories category pages led 26% of visitors to a store over a 2 week time period (Halbrook, 2012).  This was surprising to the company and allowed them to understand an opportunity from a landing page optimization standpoint.

Optimization is a general word but it ties back to the company’s reason for collecting data and describes the strategy for using the data collected.  Whether it’s personalizing a visitors experience or making changes to the conversion funnel, the company is always trying to make it easier for a customer to make a purchase.  To help understand the effect of their changes, the company using analytics to create stories of success or opportunity.

Additional Tool

Since Best Buy is already invested in Adobe, the company should look at other product offerings from the company.  If they aren’t already using the tool, the company should implement Adobe Test and Target.  It was mentioned earlier that the company looks at the behavior of difference audience segments.  The example used was related to mobile Home Theatre Accessories category pages that lead to in-store purchases.  With this knowledge, the company can implement personalized experiences through Adobe Test and Target to help lead customers to the store.  The tool can also be used to help analyze the results to see the effect of any website changes. 

Best Buy can use this tool to do testing across the website whether it relates to personalization or A/B testing.  An example of an A/B testing opportunity can be seen on the company’s home page.  There are three category links that show on the home page as seen below.  The company could test various categories in this space to understand if one category performs better than another one.

Additional Metrics

Best Buy’s website captures a lot of data that can be transferred into strategies.  After looking at their website, the company should be collecting multiple conversion metrics in addition to orders.  This includes registry creations, email signups, and app downloads.  These metrics could be considered micro-conversions for the company.  Each one of the micro-conversions will prove to have long term revenue value if analyzed properly.  Therefore, it’s important to take these into consideration when analyzing the success of the website.

Data Capture Opportunity

On the category pages, the company allows customers to filter their results.  As customers use the filtering feature, Best Buy should be collecting this information.  It can then be used to customize what products show at the top of the page or in promotional banner ads.  This data can also be used to create audiences for personalization efforts for returning customers.  Another opportunity to use this data could be in paid media tactics if the company has a tool such as Adobe Audience Manager.  This tool allows the company to target media such as display ads based on website data.

  

Data Analysis Opportunity

When trying to buy an item on the Best Buy website, it takes at least 5 clicks to make a purchase.  The first click is made when someone places an item in their cart.  While forming an example, the first click promoted a pop up window that asked about adding Geek Squad.  The interesting thing with this is that the continue button was below the page fold on my laptop.  The company should analyze the effect of this pop up on the final conversion.  If a customer does continue with the purchase, Best Buy should analyze the point in which people leave the funnel if they don’t make a purchase.  This data can then be applied to a new design strategy that looks at making a shorter conversion funnel.

Conclusion

If companies have the right analytics tools, they will be able to perform a lot of different analysis projects on their website.  Each analysis will form a story that leads to future strategies.  As companies implement new strategies, it will be important to continue looking at the data to understand the overall effect.  In the end, this will be a continuous project as the company tries to optimize the customer experience.

References:

Adobe Analytic. (n.d.). Retrieved December 7, 2015, from http://www.adobe.com/marketing-      cloud/web-analytics.html

About Best Buy. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2015, from https://corporate.bestbuy.com/about-  best-buy/

Analytics-enhanced reporting. (n.d.). Retrieved December 7, 2015, from             http://www.adobe.com/solutions/testing-targeting/analytics-enhanced-reporting.html

Best Buy To Benefit From Increasing Online Sales. (2014, June 19). Retrieved December 6,         2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/06/19/best-buy-to-       benefit-from-increasing-online-sales/

Fitzgerald, M. (2013, November 20). Best Buy Adopts an Omnichannel Strategy, Mixing Stores and Online Sales | MIT Technology Review. Retrieved December 7, 2015, from             http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520821/best-buy-battles-back-online/

Halbrook, M. (2012, April 11). Best Buy & Adobe Insight: Connecting Web & Mobile to Store    Sales. Retrieved December 7, 2015, from    http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/mobile/best-buy-adobe-insight-connecting-web-         mobile-to-store-sales/ 

Should Google be collecting user information?

Google offers a lot of free products to the public.  Note that the word free is in reference to money.  Individuals can use products such as Google Chrome, Gmail, Google’s search engine, and Google Analytics for no financial cost.  However, almost everyone knows the phrase nothing in life is free.  This is true when looking at Google products.  Google is in business to make money and does a good job with this objective.  The company made $17.7 billion in revenue for just the first quarter of 2015.  They make money through a few avenues but their main profit category is advertising.  Google offers pay-per-click ads to companies which contributed approximately 67% of the company’s revenue (Google Q1, 2015).  How does this all tie back together?  People are paying Google with information about themselves to use Google’s products.  Google can then use this information to improve its advertising strategies for companies to use.  However, the way Google can use the data it collects is concerning to some individuals.  Can a company be trusted with so much information?

Is Google being ethical?

Google takes ethics very seriously.  The company has an Ethics & Compliance team that works with outside counsels to ensure it’s acting in a proper way (Transparency, n.d.).  In fact, the company was awarded as one of the World’s Most Ethical Company’s for 2015 by Ethisphere. They were 1 of 132 companies in the world that received this award and the only company in the computer services category (World’s Most, n.d.).

This doesn’t mean everyone thinks Google always acts in an ethical way.  There are still a lot of concerns around the company’s behavior.  First, there are rumors that the ethical board was created due to a push by DeepMind.  This was a company Google acquired that does work related to artificial intelligence.  If Google didn’t truly want this board, questions could rise if they will listen to the board’s opinion.  The other concern for individuals comes from a law perspective.  The board can ensure Google acts in an ethical way towards the law.  However, the law doesn’t have comments on a lot of new technology and therefore, Google could be working on a lot of topics that the law hasn’t been created around (Selinger, 2014).  Therefore, people need to understand the concerns and form their own opinion on Google’s actions towards ethics.

Privacy

Did you know that Google collects information when you use its services?  If you don’t, you should know this information.

Do you know why Google collects your information?  You should know this as well.

If you are concerned about Google’s actions when you use their products then this is information you can easily obtain.  It’s located on Google’s website under its privacy section.  The issue with privacy concerns shouldn’t be with people using its products, instead it should be with those that are effected by products they don’t use.  One example is a link from Google’s search engine to information about a certain individual.  One side of this case is that people have the right to be forgotten and they shouldn’t have unwanted information on the internet.  However, this isn’t an actual law.  The other side could argue that people have the right to public information (Floridi, 2014).  This is a hard privacy topic as the law isn’t always clear on all issues.  With the law vague on the topic, this could turn into an ethical debate as well for the company.

Security

Security is a topic of concern across the internet.  Google provides information related to its safety like any other company trying to ease the concern of users.  There is a lot of information on Google’s website about the company’s policy, how to report concerns, and actions to stay safe.  In addition, in 2014 Google went public with some of its security audits so others could see the level of protection Google provided (Rosenblatt, 2014).  This doesn’t mean Google doesn’t have security issues.  Last year the company saw 5 million Gmail accounts get hacked (Hill, 2014).  Every company has security issues to resolve but Google certainly has the money and staff that goes towards trying to stop security issues.

The concern is if one company has so much data on an individual, it only takes one security breach to cause a lot of issues.  However, this is true in a lot of industries.  If a security breach happens on a banks website there is a lot of concern related to the information available.  There is a certain trust factor users give companies when using their websites.  Google is no different in this area than a lot of other companies.

Why Google gathering data is a good thing?

People and companies both benefit from Google acquiring our data.  From a company perspective, they are able to target ads better to connect with its audience.  In addition, Google is helping companies understand its marketing budgets from a new perspective.  This includes providing data for cross device users and tracking the impact of online ads to in-store visits and purchases.  This information wouldn’t be accessible without Google having information across multiple products that individuals use.

From an individual perspective, the biggest positive is around the use of Google products.  Millions of people are using Google products for everyday tasks at no monetary cost.  These products improve our everyday life and many of us are dependent on these products.  The other positive comes from an advertising perspective.  People click on online ads everyday with the expectation of the ad helping them get to a final destination whether that is finding information or making a purchase.  If companies have more information on individuals, they will be able to customize ads to help users get to their final destination quicker.  This saves a person time and aggravation.

Alternatives

If you are concerned about Google having your data, avoid them.  An article posted on eCloudBuzz stated that the most popular Google products are the Google Search Engine, Google Chrome, and Gmail (Biswal, 2015).  Many of us could think of alternative products without even looking it up.  If you are having trouble thinking of different products, you are probably a Google advocate.  However, below are some alternatives for reference.

Conclusion

Google is not the perfect company.  However, they provide products that are used by individuals every day.  I read a few articles that said the option to not use Google products is unrealistic.  This is due to the fact that the company has provided some of the best products available.  People have to understand the company doesn’t do this for free.  Instead, it takes information as payment which is an agreed compensation when users interact with the company’s products.  This information is needed to continue building advancements in the industry.  For this reason, people should be fine with Google taking charge and using their information to make their life easier.    

References:

Biswal, R. (2015, March 4). Top 16 Most Popular Google Products And Services - eCloudBuzz. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.ecloudbuzz.com/most-popular-google-products-services/

Floridi, L. (2014, September 16). Google's privacy ethics tour of Europe: A complex balancing act. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/16/googles-european-privacy-ethics- tour

Google - Answers about Privacy and Security. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://privacy.google.com/

Google Q1 Earnings: Ad Revenues Post Growth Once Again. (2015, April 27). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/04/27/google-q1-earnings-ad-revenues-post-growth-once-again/

Hill, K. (2014, September 11). Google Says Not To Worry About 5 Million 'Gmail Passwords' Leaked. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/09/11/google-says-not-to-worry-about-5-million gmail-passwords-leaked/

Rosenblatt, S. (2014, August 27). ​Google goes public with security audits to ease corporate concerns. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.cnet.com/news/google-goes-public-with-security-audits-to-assuage-enterprise-concerns/

Selinger, E. (2014, February 3). Inside Google's Mysterious Ethics Board. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/privacynotice/2014/02/03/inside-googles-mysterious-ethics-board/2/

Transparency. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from             https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html

World’s Most Ethical Companies – Honorees. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://web.ethisphere.com/worlds-most-ethical/wme-honorees/

Google Analytics vs Clicky

Each day users visit and leave websites.  Some users complete a conversion while others leave right away or after conducting research.  Measuring these actions through analytics should be an important initiative for every company.  Analytics can help a business understand their successes and opportunities for the future.  There are multiple tools in the industry that allow people to track these statistics.  Google Analytics and Clicky are two tools that are well known and used by many websites.  Below is information on both of these tools that can help show their value.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics has four general components that allows it to provide information.  The system collects, processes, configures, and reports on the data captured (How Google, n.d.).  When viewing data in the platform, the tool is setup with three main categories of reporting.

Audience 

This section of Google Analytics allows companies to visualize their overall traffic numbers.  In addition, companies can analyze their data to learn more about the users interacting with their website.  This includes information related to a user’s demographics, interest, geo, behavior, and device (Denyse, 2015).  Understanding the trends in data can help companies identify changes that need to be made on their website.

Acquisition

The acquisition section will allow companies to understand how users got to their website.  This information can be bucketed into categories such as search, social, referrals, and direct.  Companies can also dig deeper into each category to understand the specific domains and sometimes keywords that drove users to their website (Denyse, 2015). 

Behavior

Companies can learn more about their user’s interactions on the website.  This will include the pages they visited and metrics such as time on site and bounce rate.  The information in this section can help people understand their audience’s interest and the performance of each page (Denyse, 2015).  One report offered by Google that can be very effective is the goal funnel.  This will allow companies to understand the path each user takes to a conversion.  In addition, companies can see where customers left if they didn’t finish with a transaction.  This information can be very useful for putting together a strategy to optimize a website.

Overall Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can provide businesses with actionable data.  The platform is setup in an easy way for customers to navigate to their desired information.  The image below shows the general setup of the platform which has tabs on the left hand side that are used to navigate to the different section of data.

Clicky

Clicky is a competing web analytics tool with a lot of the same capabilities as Google Analytics.  Companies are able to see their overall traffic and split it down into more granular reports.  This includes understanding how users reached their website and the actions taken once they arrived.  Since companies can gather a lot of the same data, the question becomes what makes Clicky different from Google Analytics?

User Interface

The first page people see in the Clicky interface showcases a lot of actionable information.  In platforms such as Google Analytics, users would have to navigate into deeper pages for the same data or create custom views.  Below is an image that shows how the homepage looks in Clicky (Cleary, 2014).

Heatmaps

Visualizing data can allow companies to analyze information quicker.  Clicky has the ability to showcase certain information on a heatmap allowing companies to understand where they need to focus their attention (Cleary, 2014).  Items like this can save people time which is always a plus when trying to figure out what data is important.

Twitter Analytics

Clicky can provide information that may not be from your website.  In this case, the company is able to track activity from Twitter.  This could include # tags, senders, recipients, and links (Clicky vs Google, 2013).  It’s always helpful to have as much information in one place to make analyzing data easier.

Visitor Detail

Clicky allows companies to understand more information related to individual users.  Companies can look at these individuals and understand their exact path to the website as well as items such as their IP address, location, and the platform they are using (Cleary, 2015).  This can help companies get more granular on certain analysis projects.

Metrics

There are certain metrics that are calculated differently in the two platforms.  All the features each platform provides is important but companies must understand the data in front of them.  There are five main metrics that are different in the two platforms (Dealer Inspire, 2015).

·         Visits: Historically, Clicky has done a better job of getting rid of bot traffic.  Therefore, Clicky may have a lower amount of visits when comparing to Google Analytics.

·         Bounce Rate: The two programs calculate bounce rate differently.  Clicky only counts users that have visited one page and leave before being on the website for 30 seconds.  Google Analytics doesn’t take into account the amount of time a user has been on the website.

·         Actions: This metric is called pageviews in Google Analytics.  However, actions in Clicky combine’s pageviews and other actions such as downloads.

·         Unique Visitors: In the Google Analytics platform this is called users.  The two platforms will show different numbers as Clicky calculates this metric with one day’s worth of data.  Therefore, if a visitor comes to the website two days in a row, they will be counted as two visitors.  Google Analytics looks at this metric over a longer period of time.

·         Time on site: When there are multiple pages viewed, Google Analytics stops calculating the time on site when a user reaches the last page of their visit.  However, Clicky continues to ping the server allowing it to include the time a user spends on the final page of their visit.

Pricing

Google Analytics has two available packages.  One package is free and comes with all the general features described in this article.  However, companies can also purchase the premium service which includes higher data limits, additional variables, and more support.  This package starts at $150,000 per year (Google Analytics, n.d.).

Clicky also has different levels of service available.  Similar to Google, they provide a free service to companies.  However, companies can upgrade to packages with additional features.  This can include items such as the heatmaps.  The price ranges are $79.99, $119.99, 159.99, and a custom option.  A lot of this depends on the amount of websites that will be tracked and the amount of traffic seen on the websites (Pricing, n.d).

Conclusion

Google Analytics and Clicky provide companies with powerful data to help drive decisions.  The unique features available in each platform could separate the tools but this depends on the needs of a company.  Therefore, it’s important to research each tool to understand how their platform fits within your company needs.  Overall, either one is a great start to ensuring companies have the right data to make good decisions.

References:       

Cleary, I. (2014, May 5). 4 Extremely useful Google Analytics Alternatives or are they?    Retrieved November 21, 2015, from http://www.razorsocial.com/google-analytics-     alternatives/

Clicky vs Google Analytics. (2013, June 11). Retrieved November 21, 2015, from             https://clicky.com/compare/google

[Dealer Inspire]. (2015, April 14). Understanding the Differences in Clicky and Google            Analytics. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR3DBvKiq1s

Denyse, N. (2015, July 10). A Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics. Retrieved November 21,     2015, from http://blogs.constantcontact.com/google-analytics-training/

            Google Analytics Price & Cost. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2015, from             http://www.actualmetrics.com/google-analytics-price/

How Google Analytics works. (n.d.). Retrieved November 21, 2015, from             https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6081186?hl=en&ref_topic=6080724

Pricing. (n.d.). Retrieved November 22, 2015, from https://clicky.com/help/pricing

Walgrove, A. (2015, January 8). The Top 5 Free Content Analytics Tools. Retrieved November    22, 2015, from https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/08/the-top-5-free-content-     analytics-tools/

Should companies use multiple social media platforms?

The easy answer to this question is yes!  Reports have shown that over half of internet users have social accounts across multiple platforms (Social Media, 2015).  In addition, these users expect companies to have a presence on these platforms.  The majority of users expect brands to be on at least three social media sites (Delzio, 2014).  This can be seen in the graph below.

Before companies sign up for three sites, it’s important to understand specific user expectations.  First, there are more than three social media sites where users want to see companies.  In addition, users don’t want to just see a company online but they expect the company to interact with the audience.  If a user asks a question, they are looking for a response.  The majority of customers want a response the same day (Delzio, 2015).  If the company doesn’t respond this can damage the relationship between the company and the customer.  Thirty eight percent of users will feel more negative towards the company and 60% will express this anger which could spread through the community (Consumers Will, 2013). 

What does this mean?

All this information means that companies need to evaluate if they can successfully place their business on social media platforms.  The company has to be prepared to update their account on a regular basis.  If they don’t provide updates customers won’t believe they truly care about their audience.  In addition, they need to update it with the right information.  Ensure it’s relevant to the audience in order to keep them engaged.  This engagement will then create conversations between companies and their audience.  Companies then need to listen and respond to comments as they build future relationships (Jones, 2013).

So what should companies do if they don’t have time to manage multiple social media platforms?

Prioritize their presence

Every company should plan on expanding to multiple platforms.  However, it will take time to get the resources needed to be successful.  Therefore, companies need to determine where they should start as they grow their programs.  This could vary depending on the company but the following information should help companies look in the right direction.

Facebook

Facebook is still the king of social media.  The platform has the most active users in comparison to any other social media website (Kemp, 2015).  These users are usually checking for information often as 70% of Facebook users sign in daily (Social Media, 2015).  It’s also the platform with the highest expectation of a company’s presence (Delzio, 2015).  If you think your audience is on another social media website, you might want to ensure they aren’t on Facebook as well.  That’s because Facebook has the highest crossover rate for other social platforms.  Their crossover rate tends to range in the 89%-94% range when looking at the users of other major social platforms (Arneal, 2015).  With the dominating user presence, companies need to ensure they have a Facebook page.                                             

Who’s Next?

From a user expectation level, Twitter would be the next platform companies want to enter (Delzio, 2014).  However, the amount of active users gets closer with the rest of the social networks.  Therefore, it’s important for companies to research their targeted audience and determine how that matches up with each site.  Twitter has slightly more women users and a large presence in the 26-34 year old age range.  Pinterest also has more female users but does a better job at targeting an older audience.  LinkedIn would be a network that has more men signed in.  However, each of these networks are used for different reasons which could affect the characteristics of the audience.

There won’t be one answer for which network is the best to expand into so companies will need to determine what’s best for them based on their targeted audience.  Once they do expand, they will need to prioritize their resources based on the opportunities.  Company can determine the opportunity by evaluating the amount of users and interactions their brand obtains on each platform.  Another analysis could be looking at the company’s share of voice to determine the growth opportunity.  If companies set goals, this will help determine the analysis needed to form future strategies and resources.

Join when you’re ready

A lot of top brands didn’t join every social media network at once or when they first came out.  Additional brand content is great but the objective of the content is to create conversations.  This is when companies form relationships with their audience (Novak, 2010).  Nike is an example of a large company that took this approach.  Nike is the largest sportswear company in the world with millions of social media followers.  However, they didn’t gain all of their fans because they had a popular brand name.  Instead it was because they had a strategy.

Nike made sure they were prepared and had a strategy before placing their main brand in social media platforms.  An examples can be seen when the company joined Twitter. In December of 2011 Nike opened a Twitter account for its overall brand name.  Previously, they had tested the platform with smaller Twitter accounts focused on induvial sports but wanted to understand the platform before getting a main account.  This allowed the company to learn about the relationships Twitter could build and how they could interact (Wasserman, 2011).  Some thought they were late to the game but in reality they joined when they were ready.

In the first six months Nike was able to come out running as they gained hundreds of thousands of followers.  Some fans came because of the company name but Nike earned a lot of their followers.  They did this by tweeting several times a day with general tweets and replies to individual fans.  It was their way of connecting with the audience and keeping them engaged.  Another way the company showed they cared was by sharing content from their fans (Wakefield, 2012).  The company wasn’t trying to figure out how to use this channel, instead they came out with a strategy to own the channel from the start.

Nike continues to look at expansion opportunities in social media.  The company knows it has to invest in resources to continue being effective.  This can be seen as part of their TV and print advertising budget was moved over to digital and social media.  Part of this budget will help them staff the social department in order to continuing responding to user engagements.  A final way they continue to show their understanding of social media is by concentrating on the right types of content.  Nike hires storytellers for their social department to help keep content engaging and interesting (Smith, 2014).  This isn’t a company who has social media accounts because they are supposed to have them.  The company has social media accounts to help drive their strategy of connecting with their audience and building better relationships.  Every company won’t have the testing luxuries Nike has but they can all do research to better position themselves for success.

Conclusion

Social media accounts can be powerful tools that allow companies to connect with their audience.  They are a big responsibility as the audience has high expectations for companies.  Therefore, a company’s goal should be to expand on each social media platform that makes sense based for the industry and targeted audience.  However, they should only expand when they are ready to interact with fans and release content that is worth viewing.

References:

Arneal, L. (2015, February 6). Your Social Media Audience-Who's Using What and How Much. Retrieved November 8, 2015, from http://www.nonprofithub.org/social-media/social-media-audience-whos-using-much/

Consumers Will Punish Brands that Fail to Respond on Twitter Quickly. (2013, October 29). Retrieved November 8, 2015, from http://www.lithium.com/company/news-room/press-releases/2013/consumers-will-punish-brands-that-fail-to-respond-on-twitter-quickly

Delzio, S. (2014, December 29). New Social Media Research Shows What People Expect From Brands. Retrieved November 8, 2015, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-research-shows-what-people-expect-from-brands/

Jones, K. (2013, July 29). 5 Reasons Why Your Business Shouldn't Be On Social Media. Retrieved November 8, 2015, from http://marketingland.com/5-reasons-why-you-should-not-be-on-social-media-52585

                                                                                      

Kemp, S. (2015, January 21). Digital, Social & Mobile Worldwide in 2015. Retrieved November 8, 2015, from http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-worldwide-2015/

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. SocialMediaToday.com. Retrieved November 9, 2015 from http://socialmediatoday.com/wordspring/152636/why-conversation-not-content-king

Palmer, M. (2015, April 28). How social media sites compare as advertising platforms - FT.com. Retrieved November 9, 2015, from http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/91a471be-ea87-11e4-96ec-00144feab7de.html#axzz3qv7X9x8a

Smith, J. (2014, July 21). Social Media & Digital: Nike Doesn't Just Do It. They Get It. Retrieved November 8, 2015, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140721193207-42400039-social-digital-nike-doesn-t-just-do-it-they-get-it

Social Media Update 2014. (2015, January 9). Retrieved November 8, 2015, from http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2015/01/PI_SocialMediaUpdate20144.pdf

Wakefield, K. (2012, June 8). Nike Scores Big on Twitter. Retrieved November 8, 2015, from https://contently.com/strategist/2012/06/08/nike-scores-big-on-twitter/

Wasserman, T. (2011, December 30). Just Did It: Nike Finally Opens a Twitter Account. Retrieved November 8, 2015, from http://mashable.com/2011/12/30/nike-twitter-account/#XYshgqk35Gq4 

Analyzing click-through rates to drive strategy

Websites show a lot of different links allowing visitors to go in a direction that best fits their needs.  Analyzing the amount of times a link was clicked and dividing it by the number of times it was viewed gives a company the click-through rate of each link (Reed College, 2015).  This information can be extremely helpful as companies try to understand their audience’s behavior.  In addition, a lot of websites have links that drive towards a conversion page.  In an effort to drive as much traffic towards the conversion pages, companies could utilize A/B testing.  When analyzing the test results, the click-through rate is a key number.

A/B Testing

The use of call to action buttons is one way companies try to drive traffic towards a conversion page.  The color, text, and position of the call to action button can have an effect on performance.  A successful strategy related to these factors will be different across websites due to the overall design and audience.  Therefore, it’s important that each company does their own tests to optimize their website.  An A/B test will allow the company to improve their performance while making small changes.  Below are a few examples of website optimizations that companies have tested and the results found.

Color Matters

ConversionXL wrote an article that touched on the colors of buttons.  The example used was the difference between a green and red button.  In this specific example, the red button saw a 21% increase in clicks when compared to the green button due to a higher click-through rate.  However, the author was quick to point out that green was used throughout the page.  Therefore, it blended in a more with the overall design (Niggulis, 2013).  This doesn’t mean red will outperform green on every website but for this company it was an easy optimization that helped drive additional traffic to the conversion page.  The use of the click-through rate allowed the company to put data toward this optimization.

Text Matters

Understanding the best way to talk with your audience can have an effect on the overall performance.  Websites that try to generate leads tend to have a call to action button on each page.  In the example below the website is trying to get people to give contact information for the pricing of the company’s service.  In an attempt to drive more clicks on the call the action link, the company tested the wording of the link.  The result was a 161% increase in the click-through rate allowing the company to gain more conversions (Deswal, 2012).

Position Matters

A lot of companies have call to action buttons in the top right hand corner of their website.  However, this doesn’t mean every company should go with this approach.  Again the answer to understanding the best approach is to do an A/B test.  The test can be looked at from a click-through rate perspective allowing the company to understand what position drew more visitors to click on the submit button.  In this case it was the position at the bottom of the page that saw the best results (Aagaard, 2013).

Conclusion

A/B testing is vital to a website and a company’s success.  As companies setup these tests they have to understand what metrics to evaluate.  If a company looks at clicks alone, the results could be incorrect depending on the number of impressions each test version received.  Therefore, the click-through rate takes this issue out of the equation.  It’s a simple metric that can help companies understand the actions a visitor takes on the website.

References:

Aagaard, M. (2013, March 25). 10 Call-to-Action Case Studies with Examples from Real Button Tests. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from http://contentverve.com/10-call-to-action-case-studies-examples-from-button-tests/

Deswal, S. (2012, October 4). How changing a single word increased click through rate by 161% - VWO Blog. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from https://vwo.com/blog/increase-click-through-rate/

Niggulis, O. (2013, January 16). Which Color Converts The Best? Retrieved October 31, 2015, from http://conversionxl.com/which-color-converts-the-best/

Reed College of Media. (2015, October 19). Lesson 2: Basic Web Analytics. WVU. Retrieved October 31, 2015 from http://www.ecampus.wvu.edu

Understanding Online Conversions

First, it’s important to understand the definition of a conversion.  Every website is created with a specific goal in mind that helps a business succeed.  The goal should be tied to a visitor’s activity on the website.  When a visitor performs a specific activity that helps a business succeed, this is referred to as a conversion (Measure the outcomes, n.d.).  Conversions can be analyzed in various ways.  This post will go over two ways companies should be looking at their data to help drive additional success.

Macro and Micro Conversions

A website’s success shouldn’t be defined by one metric.  Instead, companies need to understand macro and micro conversions.  A macro conversion is what most people would imagine as the goal of a website.  For an ecommerce website this would be an order or revenue generated activity.  However, micro orders can be important for these businesses as well.  A micro conversion looks at activities visitors perform before converting a macro conversion.  Examples of a micro conversion could include an email sign up, creating an account, or hitting certain pages on a website (Track your micro, n.d.).

The question becomes how do businesses use this information to create more conversions?  This is where micro conversions become very important.  Understanding the website activities that lead to a conversion will help businesses strategies what tactics they need to optimize towards.  An example can be seen with email sign ups.  The marketing agency Convert published an article related to this concept.  The image below demonstrates a key idea from their study and shows that only 3% of visitors to a website generate a macro conversion on their first visit (Heijden, 2015).

Understanding the remaining 97% of visitors is important as companies try to convert them into customers.  A repeat visitor is more likely to convert on a website (Heijden, 2015).  Therefore, companies can use their micro conversion data to help drive repeat visitation.  If a company has obtained a visitors email address through a sign up page, they can send emails to try and bring the visitor back to their website.  Another tactic could be the use of remarketing ads through paid social or display advertising.  The pie chart above shows that each of these channels has a role in driving visitors to the shopping cart.  This shows that there is value to obtaining a micro conversion and companies need to understand how they can optimize their strategies based on this information.

The Value of a Page

One of the micro conversions previously mentioned was hitting certain pages on a website.  Every page on a website has a purpose to the visitor.  Some are geared towards providing information while others try to push a visitor down the purchase funnel.  However, a conversion might not happen without all the pages a visitor consumed.  Therefore, a company needs to understand what pages visitors consume before generating a conversion.  Once they understand this information, they can try to drive more traffic to these pages and optimize a visitor’s experience.

In order to analyze this information, companies need to apply a value to each page that was consumed before a conversion.  Adobe Analytics allows companies to perform this task by applying a participation score that gives equal credit to each page in the conversion path.  The image below demonstrates this process.  At the bottom of the image a $100 purchase is made and each page the visitor consumed saw a $100 credit (Gaines, 2010).

This can be done across any conversion.  Although the example showed revenue, companies could also use email sign ups, downloads, or any conversion type they are tracking.  When companies start to analyze the overall data, they may find that their highest traffic pages aren’t the most valuable.  The example below shows this story for a subscription based conversion (Gaines, 2010).

Conversions help companies generate a profit.  However, companies need to understand how they obtained a conversion in order to drive additional activity.  Be sure to find the story that helps your company be successful.

References:    

Gaines, B. (2010, March 11). Summit Topic #3: Participation. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/summit-topic-3-participation/

Heijden, D. (2015, January 8). Measuring Micro Conversions. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from http://blog.convert.com/measuring-micro-conversions.html

Measure the outcomes of your advertising and marketing campaigns. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2015, from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2665457?hl=en

Track your micro conversions. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2015, from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2665210?hl=en&ref_topic=2665176