VisiStat Uses Advanced Analytics to Gain Customers

           Google Analytics is a powerful free tool that offers a substantial analytics package that is sufficient for most businesses.  However, one area that Google Analytics comes up short in is lead generations.  Why does this matter?  Well, for most businesses, understanding who your customer is and where you can reach them is of critical importance.  Yet, there is often the gap of who the customer is and how to reach them. 

While Google Analytics paints half the picture, there are paid web-based retailers that take web analytics one step further and help companies identify prospective customers and provide the tools to reach them. This post will explore one of these online retailers—VisiStat—and uncover what techniques the company is using, how they are using the data they collect, and insights into what other information and metrics they could be using to improve their overall analytics offerings.

VisiStat “is a cloud-based webanalytics/customer intelligence platform that captures complex analytical datain real-time, and simplifies it specifically for small and medium-sizedbusinesses enabling well-informed business decisions that maximize onlinemarketing effectiveness and increase sales opportunities”.  VisiStat makes it easy for any business to implement with a simple tracking code that is installed on a company’s website. The design interface and dashboard is easy to navigate and has won industry praise for its simplicity and design. 

Once installed, VisiStat offers a myriad of tools, including standard metrics found on Google Analytics.  In addition to being able to track users, page visits, geo mapping, and other metrics found on Google Analytics, VisiStat then goes above and beyond with several advanced analytics tools.  “VisiStat seems to provide just the rightlevel of data on a site's traffic. Its main reports are graphical and easy toread. You get good information on traffic and where it comes from (bothgeographically and from which referral sites) and also excellent data on whichsearch terms are leading people to your site”.  Here is a look at what VisiStat offers on its website:

In addition to standard website analytics, VisiStat is able to use click-tracking to see where customers are going on a page and how they are interacting with a website.  This lets a business see if customers are using the website how it was intended/designed for, or if there are flaws that need to be addressed. It also helps identify the quality of the leads generated by allowing a company to prioritize leads to pursue based on time spent on the website, pages visited, or offers downloaded. The software also has the ability to report users in real-time (Google Analytics has a four hour delay); “Livesite monitoring sets this service apart from the competition. In this pricerange you'll find no other solution that shows you who is on your site rightnow and what they're doing. VisiStat has also added the ability to track useridentity on sites that require authentication, letting you record friendlyaccount names rather than IP addresses”.  

This segues into the VisiStat’s main competitive advantage over Google Analytics—lead generation.  VisiStat is able to go beyond basic metrics and conversion funnels by identifying who users are, how they are using the site/what they are interested in, and allowing you to sync that up with a customer relationship management software program like Salesforce in order to make contact and increase ROI. “The Live Leadsreport in the Lead Capture (aka LeadCaster) tool tells you who is visiting yoursite right now. Not only will the Live Leads report show you the visitor’s IPaddress, but integration with Salesforce’s Jigsaw business database pulls inbusiness details as well – including business name, website, address andcontact information for individual employees”.  Here is what the lead generator screen looks like:

            VisiStat’s lead generation tools collect several pieces of user information and put them together in easy to read reports that sync up with CRM software for maximum efficiency.  For example, if someone visited VisiStat, the company could see how they used the website, how long they were there, what IP address they came from, use the “jigsaw” generator to cross reference companies and provide contact information, then rank the leads in terms of prospects by company size, geographic location, or sales volume.  All of this information also syncs up with the company’s conversion funnel and ad campaigns virtually rendering Google Analytics as unnecessary and insufficient. 

            “The combination of live trafficmonitoring and alerting can turn your Web site into a live market-research toolfor your business. Set an alert on a specific page that will notify you whensomeone visits that page, log in to VisiStat to see who visited and what theywere looking for, and then follow up directly to see if visitors have any questions”.  This level of integration comes at a price—VisiStat is about $250 a month (while Google Analytics is free), but VisiStat offers so much more and if even just a few leads a month pan out, it is money well spent.  VisiStat allows companies to integrate all of their web analytics and lead generation into one seamless tool that is easy to use and easy to prove ROI.  

Google Analytics: The Importance of Goals, Funnels, and Filters

            Google Analytics offers businesses several ways to quantify the success of a website by through the creation of goals, funnels, and filters.  These three tools work in conjunction with each other to outline what measure for success you are tracking (goals), how consumers make their way to that goal (funnel) and whom you should include or exclude from the results (filter).  Having established the basic principles of these tools, let us take a deep look into step of the processes and examine how these tools can help provide actionable information to businesses leaders.

            The first step of this process is to understand the goals for your particular website.  For example, an ecommerce website might want to monitor sales conversions or at what stage in the purchasing process a shopping cart is abandoned.  On the other hand, a strategic consulting website might be more interested in how many people share a link to its latest seminar or how many times a whitepaper is downloaded.  Lastly, a blogger or entertainment site might be more concerned with overall visitor engagement and how long users stay on the website or how any pages they visit before leaving.  Each of these goals is valuable for different reasons and not all of the goals are equally applicable to each website. 

            A great way to help define your goals is to ask yourself what you are hoping the user to accomplish when they visit your website.  Here are some though provoking questions to get you thinking about which goals make sense for your company;

·      “What information is most important for you to track? Is this just for knowledge, or for potential changes of how your website flows?

·      What are you expecting your visitors to do once they reach your website?

·      What is considered “successful” to you? Completing a purchase, long periods viewing your site, newsletter sign-ups, 10+ total page views, etc?

·      Could you change anything in your design to influence visitorstowards completing these goals faster/easier?”

            Once you have identified what metrics define success for your website, you can begin to create your goals.  Google Analytics makes this step very easy; the goals tab is under “conversions” on the left hand side of your screen (as seen in the adjacent screen cap).  Once you click on goals, you will be taken to a screen where you can fill in the tabs to create your goal (changing the settings depending on the type of goal—URL destination, time on site, page/visit, and event). 

Each specific type of goal has its own parameters for measurement and Google will automatically help you establish these depending on which type of goal you create.

            Before we move on to funnels and filters, it is important to further define the difference between each type of goal and how they could be useful for different types of businesses.  The first type of goal you have the option of creating is the URL destination goal.  These are the most common types of goals tracked and “thesegoal types simply track when a user enters a specific page on yourwebsite”.  This type of goal is useful for tracking if specific pages on your site are being visited.  If you choose a URL destination goal, you will also be prompted for which type of URL match you consider a success. Google allows you to check “exact match”, “head match”, or “regular expression match”.  These terms are described by Google Analytics as:

•       Exact match—for standard, fixed URLs: An exact match is a match on every exact character in your URL—without exception—from beginning to end. Use this when your URLs for your site are easy to read and do not vary.
This option requires that the URLs you provide for your funnel or goal exactly match the URLs shown in the reports. There can be no dynamic (changing) information in the URL such as session identifiers or query parameters

•       Head Match—to eliminate trailing URL parameters: A head match matches identical characters starting from the beginning of the string up to and including the last character in the string you specify. Use this option when your page URLs are generally unvarying but when they include additional parameters at the end that you want to exclude. 
If your website has dynamically generated content, use the Head Match filter and leave out the unique values.


•       Regular Expression Match—for matching on multiple criteria: A regular expression usesspecial characters to enable wildcard and flexible matching. This is usefulwhen the stem, trailing parameters, or both, can vary in the URLs for the samewebsite page. 
For example, if a user could be coming from one of many subdomains,and your URLs use session identifiers, you could use a regular expression todefine the constant element of your URL.

Site duration is another common goal, and this can be set up for any amount of time you

deem a success.  Google also allows you to track “less than” or “more than” time segments.  This

feature is important for businesses to understand how much time is spent on a site and if there are certain pages that are leading to greater abandonment or engagement.  Another metric is the page/visit goal.  This allows businesses to “track the amount of page views per visitor. … Each individual is tracked for the amount of pages they viewper visit and will only complete your goal if they are above or below thenumber you set”.

            The last type of goal to track is an event.  This allows you to easily track specific actions, such as downloading white papers or forwarding on a specific link.  This is important for businesses because it shows “Which ones drive the most or least clicks?Which ones drive the most or least conversions?” .  By understanding which “offers” (ads, whitepapers, downloads, shares, etc.) consumers find most engaging/valuable, the company can begin to target its content and offer more value to the consumer, encouraging more frequent visits and long-term loyalty.

    After establishing goals, you can begin to customize your tracking by creating funnels to track how the consumer is experiencing and using your website. Every customer has to click through your website to get to their end goal, and funnels allow you to see the journey they take and if there are any bumps in the road.  To the right is a great visual of the funnel in Google Analytics.

 “Funnels help us see this process (or processes) easily, by giving us a visual representation of the conversion data between each step. This allows us to:

•    Determine what steps are causing customer confusion or trouble.

•    Figure out what language or copy might be altering our customer’s emotional behavior during checkout or sign up.

•    To be aware of bugs, browser issues andother technical nuisances”. 

                        The last step of the goals process is to then include/exclude certain sources of data.  This

is known as the filtering process.  Google Analytics makes it simple to block certain ISP addresses or to allow others.  This helps a business because it can exclude internal work networks or employees from key statistics, making the final data much more accurate. 

            Overall, Google Analytics makes it easy for a business to create and track its goals over time.  This is important for a business leader because it allows for informed decisions based on data rather than gut intuition or feeling.  For instance, a businesses leader can gauge the success of a certain campaign through the site visits or URL destinations, or he/she can understand if a certain event (ex: downloading inforgraphic) was a success based on the number of downloads. The funnel is also a crucial part of the measurement process because it shows how consumers use the website and if there is room for improvement (ex: making the pathway to achieving an event easier through less clicks or reworking pages with short duration visits).  All of these goals help the business leader create better content and offer a better user experience, which in the end will help increase goal completions (whether that is sales conversions, engagement, etc.). 

The Power of Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool for measuring the success and impact of a website. “Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, and how you can keep them coming back” (“Google Insights”, 2013).  Google Analytics is also a free tool, making it extremely practical for blogs and businesses of all sizes to implement.

One of Google Analytics’ major benefits is its ability to easily create custom reports.  This feature allows the user to determine what reporting statistics are most valuable and worth monitoring over time.  For example, a blogger might find more value in tracking where inbound traffic is coming from or how often users are coming back.  On the other hand, an e-commerce business would be more interested in bounce rates, sales conversions, and the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. 

Now, let us explore the basics of Google Analytics and some of the most interesting metrics for bloggers to keep track of.  First off, Google Analytics uses a dashboard to organize all of the available reports. 

The default dashboard shows the metrics for site usage at the top.  These metrics include:

•        Visits: The number of visits to your site during a given time period.
•     Page views: The number of pages these visitors viewed.
•     Pages/Visit: The average visit in terms of page views.
•         Bounce Rate: The percentage of people who only visited one page on your site before they “bounced” somewhere else.
•     Avg. Time on Site: The average amount of time a visitor spends at your site.
•      % ofNew Visits: The percentage of new visitors to your site as compared to allvisitors. Some businesses might want lots of new traffic, while others mightwant generate repeat visits, driving down this percentage."

Kaushik is an advocate for creating custom dashboards for specific purposes.  If you are the only one monitoring your blog, then you might only need one dashboard.  However, if you have a team of people accessing this information, you might want to create separate dashboards that break down the information into appropriate funnels for each of your audiences.  The most important thing to remember is to adhere to the following framework: “Always,always, always let the Acquisition, Behavior and Outcomes framework be yourguide. After you've created a dashboard, check to see that you have all threeelements. If you don't, you are not showing the end-to-end picture. Withoutthis you fail in your duty (and the data recipients will make poor decisions)."

So, with the understanding that Google Analytics allows you to create custom dashboards for the most impactful reporting, it is time to explore which reports a blogger should include.

Traffic Sources Report

The traffic sources report is extremely valuable for a blogger.  This report shows a wealth of data and can help make sense of how engaged people are (average visit duration), how many people are accessing your site (visits), which pages are the most popular (page visits), and how many new people you are reaching (% of new visits). This information is the foundation needed to understand the very basics of your web analytics.  This data provides a succinct snapshot of your overall site activity in either real-time or over a set time period.  The site usage report should be the first thing you check when monitoring your site.

Sources Overview Report

This report is important because it shows visually where your traffic is coming from.  This allows you to see if your traffic is driven by search engines, referrals, direct traffic, or campaigns.  For a blogger, this information is invaluable because it allows you to have a deeper understanding of where your readers are finding out about your content.  Kaushik says, “Like everything in life, you want a balanced portfolio” meaning that ideally your traffic is coming from a variety of sources in a somewhat even split.  This report will also allow you to drill down into the search feature to see what terms are driving traffic to your site.  This can help in creating key word tags and also “understand the macro balance betweenOrganic and Paid [search]."

Engagement

The engagement report is found under the Behavior tab. This report is extremely valuable for a blogger because it shows how long your visitors were on your site and it also explores page depth, or “the number of pages viewed in a session."  For a blogger, this information is valuable because it shows if readers are tuning in for your latest post or if they are hanging around and exploring other content. It can also help shine a light on what content is the most interesting or engaging, and perhaps help focus future content.

Overall, these three reports offer a blogger great insight into who is visiting the blog, where they are coming from, what content they find engaging, and how long they stay.  Another nice feature that Google Analytics offers is the ability to create custom alerts so you don’t have to constantly check in to see your activity.  These alerts can be set up for anything you deem important.  Kaushik gives the example, “With smart alertsset, you don't have to remember to check the data every eighteen seconds. Anemail, or a text message, will poke you into action…one of my favorite customalerts [is that] I would like an alert when goal conversion rate for any day isgreater than 25%. My normal is around 18%, so if it jumps up by that much I canget an alert and I can do deeper analysis to figure out what might have causedthe spike."

A blogger could set up a daily alert to check for overall activity and a custom alert for when there are more than 100 visitors per day.  If you see a spike in visitors, you can examine where they are coming from and what content they are there for.  This data will help with future posts and can also show you where you should be targeting for future readers.  Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you grow your blog by providing valuable consumer insights and a roadmap for success through measured analytics.