July 27, 2010

Chapter 10 - Evaluation and improvement of digital channel performance

Learning objectives

What are the necessary tasks for managing an online presence?

There are six different tasks that are important when managing a website. The first includes creating the text that will be added to the website. This includes creating the process for approving website text, the formatting of the text, and any images that will be added to the text. This is important, because a business does not want to add inappropriate content or unformatted text to the website. The next task includes reviewing the website for text that maybe misspelled, contain grammatical errors, or changes that need to be made due to product or services that have changed. The business must also be constantly making corrections and updates to the website by modifying and text or images that needs to be changed, added, or removed on the website. A business must then publish any corrections they made to their website and then review further for any other changes that need to be updated. Testing needs to be involved at all stages to make sure there are no styling issues, technical issues, or any other issues that can be disastrous to the business. Lastly, the business will need to make the website modifications available to their customers.




What are a few terms used to measure and improve site effectiveness?

When collecting data, a business must determine which types of measurements they want to track to allow them to gauge the effectiveness of their online website. One type of data that can be collected includes website visitor activity data. This can include data such as pages per visit, visits per unique visitors, ad clicks, or page impressions. This data can be used to create a picture of how many visitors are coming to the website, the frequency a unique visitor might be coming back to the website, o what the visitors are looking at.

The business might also collect data for clickstream analysis and visitor segmentation. This might include data  like conversion goals being met, bounce rates, pages per visit, top website search results, and top pages being exited. This data would answers questions such as how successful the website is engaging the visitors, where the visitors are entering the website from, and which of the pages are most popular.


What are the appropriate processes needed to collect measures for Internet marketing effectiveness?

There are many tools out there that can collect the necessary data needed for effective Internet marketing. One such tool is the web analytic tools, which range from free to thousands of dollars to purchase. This tool is used to effectively collect the data from a website and allows users to view hundred of reports and even create custom reports. Another such tool would be customer transactional database tools, which allows the business to record transactions on the website as they occur. In many cases, the business will create customized software to analyze the data, but there are many tools out there that a business can purchase out of the box. Other tools might include sales software, that will track the customers through the sales cycle. This type of tool allows businesses to paint a picture of how customer travels through transactions being made on the website. All of these tools are necessary for a business to understand what their online business is doing or how it is meeting the strategies within a company.


Questions for marketers

How much resource do I need to put into maintaining and monitoring the site?

The resources needed will for maintaining and monitoring a website depends a lot on the size of the company that owns the website. There is many things that must be done in order for a company to create and maintain a successful e-commerce website. In the maintenance of the website, a company must make the decision who is in charge of the processes that keep a website running smoothly. This includes such tasks as who writes the promotions, who makes the decisions what goes on the website, what process documents must go through when adding content to the website. If a company does not have these types of questions answered, then these tasks might not get completed. Other questions the company must ask is who will own the content creation, the website formatting, and the technology involved in creating the website. All of these things are important when maintaining an efficient website that meets the strategies created by the company when first developing the website.


What processes should I use to maintain the website?

There are a few processes that must be maintained in order for a website to keep working for the company. The first involves the writing of the content, the layout, and the associated images that are to be added to the website. Reviewing the website on a consistent bases for errors, misspelled text, content quality, and other layout issues should always be a consistent part of maintaining a website. The website maintenance also involves making the corrections that are found from reviewing the website. This also involves publishing any new content that needs to be applied to the website. Once content has been published, the company must consistently test the website to make sure there is no technical or web related issues. Lastly, the company must publish revised versions to the public and make these available to the public.


How do I measure the effectiveness of web marketing?

Effectiveness can only be measured by the business and the strategies they have set forth when they develop an online presence. The business will need to create a set of benchmarks that will measure the success of the online presence, which include analytical data that must be captured. The capture of metrics and the use of tools that analyze the metrics allow businesses to paint a picture of how their customers are using their online presence. A business must constantly analyze the data they capture, whether it is website statistics, transactional, or sales for them to react to the changes of online consumers. The effectiveness lies in how a business responses to the data they collect and improvements they make from what they learn from the data. 

 

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