Web analytics trends: more focused, less bouncing

A recently published study, reported on the KissMetrics Blhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifog, is The 2011 Web Analytics Review. The source of the data is traffic trends from hundreds of thousands of websites across the globe, which have participated in Google’s ongoing study of web browsing behavior.

The study shows year over year differences of a three month time period: Nov. 1 2010 to Feb. 1 2011, versus the same time period a year before. The findings generally show:

* lower bounce rates (leaving from the first page) at 47% on average now
* shorter time on website, at 4:50 average now,
* and fewer pages viewed, down to 4.5 on average.

These figures make good benchmarks for judging engagement of one's own website, although realize that results will differ by country, category, and media mix.

Yet, the trends above hold true worldwide, and also in the USA. There are results for other countries in the report as well.

What might explain these trends, over such a large sample? It can well be the benefit of targeted advertising, combined with improvement of website navigation to be more goal oriented. With this combination, a website has more qualified leads, people with interest and intent, who come to visit. Those interested visits are quickly led to a goal page, or to the information they need.

There are also results broken out by source of website traffic. The most efficient source of all? Cost Per Click paid search, with the lowest bounce rate, the shortest time on websites, yet the highest page totals consumed. This is consistent with the interest of a search initiated customer.

Search Engine Optimization -- feeling the impact

Often I am asked by clients I consult with how to improve their search engine optimization. This is a great question, since data shows that:

* Organic searchers are expressing intent and are highly engaged after landing on the website

* More search clickers find the organic listings than the paid listings

* Google is roughly 90% of search engine traffic and is of particular interest.

* It does not require any additional paid media spend

Put it all together, and organic search is a terrific ongoing strategy to enable acquisition for CRM programs.

There are best practices for SEO, and they apply whatever the size of your website.

Consider this Blog you are reading now. As a small time, twice a week technical blogger, I need to get my blog website traffic from where ever I can. Sure I have a few long standing referrals, like Gower Publishing and The CementBloc. Those contribute some traffic. Lately my order of magnitude of visits has doubled, knock on wood. I see this on my Google Analytics reports. The reason is organic search, one of the most high quality sources of traffic you can have.

How did the organic search to this Blog here grow so much, especially on Google? That is a lesson for all website developers in Search Engine Optimization.

Just try running the Google search of "IMS acquires SDI."
Good grief with all the news wires out there, how did this mid-frequency blog of Healthcare Relationship Marketing get to be a top 5 result (and top 5 gets over 70% of the visits) on such a major news story of an industry? This was not planned, I can assure you, but every day, traffic comes here from organic Google keyword searches on that topic.

* Become search-able. Include textual content on highly searched areas: such as tablets, digital trends, health industry and social media, often. Avoid Flash embedding of key text areas.

* Use relevant meta tags. I think my titles and labels really help here.

* Try to become "authoritative" and have valid factual sources on particular areas.

* Multichannel promotion of the website. -- as I update my website, I Tweet, Email, Linked in, and Facebook others so they can have a path to come back here.

* Get your website pointed to by highly respected and trafficked sources. For this blog, things really took off once I got pointed to from highly Followed Tweeters like Relationship Marketing update by Bruce Brown and Salesforce Daily from Paul M and technical blogger J. Polonetsky. Getting pointed to by industry websites by Kyp and adPharm were tremendous helps in not only referral traffic but in establishing credibility for organic search. a big help

Want to dive into SEO traffic for your organization? Feel welcome to contact me at The Bloc.

Also, there is a website from SEOmoz that can give a tutorial and a blog community called SEOMoz where diehard practitioners of search engine optimization best practices for years have been congregating and sharing best practices.

Social Dashboards of Web Dashboards? Cut to the business

Website analytics has been an area I have been practicing for over 10 years now, back when this was an active software area of many startup companies (with colorful names like WebsideStory) outdueling each other for the most strking visualizations and most insightful path analyses. Nowadays, I have first found it surprising to see the rise in use of the free but spartan Google Analytics over the more mature and visually robust Webtrends and Omniture (now part of Adobe site catalyst). Those two have gobbled up many of the aforementioned startups.

Lately this month I have stumbled across new developments: software that take Google Analytics output and create new dashboards. One is Unilyzer software for dashboarding social media trends out of your Google Analytics output. The other are actual Google Analytics post-processing apps. I'll bet there are more that post-process in this way. I myself often take "G.A." output and visualize in my favorite dashboard prototyping tool, Spotfire. Tell me ones you know!

How to learn about the best choices for dashboard design, cost aside?
Much has been written over the past two decades about effective display of visual information in dashboards.
The work of Edward Tufte is foundational, and there are excellent texts like
Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few, reviewed in UX Design.
One can even read about dashboards in other original areas for inspiration: see this
blogger on automobile dashboards

However, don't forget the main purpose of your dashboard should be to drive business decision making. Therefore be business focused. Create the dimensions that matter to your application domain and to your clients. All data miners say that data processing to get clean,insightful KPIs is up to 80 percent of the project. Do not push that off by merely re-displaying the raw feeds. Make sure you get right to the drivers of your business.

Analyzing iKyp professional data

I always love analyzing and visualizing innovative data streams, and this past week got to look at the output of an IKyp webkey deployment within a pharmaceutical professional setting.


This webkey is an acquisition device for relationship marketing programs, consumer or profesional. It is a USB drive attached to a packet of educational literature, describing the drug, medical device, or professional services. When the drive is inserted into a computer, it calls up a website, that can be a landing page for a CRM or PRM program. In a professional setting, often sales representatives are delivering them to group practices, encouraging the healthcare professionals to sign up for a value added PRM program.

Interestingly, ikyp webkeys all have unique serial numbers, and they can also be programmed to carry a categorical or cohort code, like a sales territory or a metro area. Furthermore, each insertion is date stamped and recorded as a unique transaction in the analytical datamart.

What this means is alot of great analytic potential:

* One can do basic subtotals of how many devices used per day, or per week, and even subtotals by sales territory.

* One can use these for funnel analyses, from manufacturing, to distribution, to usage, to website landing page visits, to registrations.

* Also, the data enables path analysis that can reveal insights. Like how devices are passed around to different professionals, different computers, and used repeatedly over time.

In summary, this mutli-coded physical acquisition device can help a pharmaceutical company understand the effectiveness of its PRM program in ways not seen before.

Cookies and all the front page news

At one job, we used to say to each other, "Don't end up on the cover of the NY Times or the Wall St Journal." Yet, the WSJ has been running an series on online website behavioral tracking, especially picking on usage of cookies.

The publicity of how cookies and tracking works helps create an informed marketplace. As the WSJ notes, cookies have been legal since 2001 and 2003 court rulings. It is especially the newer "Flash Cookies" that seem to be problematic, as they cannot effectively be deleted by website users wishing to do so, and they appear to replicate.

Let's just not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Cookies do have positive benefits for the user experience in CRM and PRM. They enable automated login, on return visits. Cookies can enable a continuity of experience upon subsequent visits, and well as customization of website content based on what has been viewed before.

Of course, if a user wishes to remove cookies, they sacrifice some of those benefits, but may also prevent other, more frivolous websites from tracking their scent. Caveat emptor: strictest privacy, unfortunately, comes at a sacrifice of quality of digital RM experience.

Professional Portals: What Behind the Curtain?

Healthcare professional portals are gaining prominence and sophistication among pharmaceutical companies. Some examples are
When designing a healthcare professional portal Pfizer Pro, Merck Services, and Bayer Diabetes' Simple Wins Pro. Increasingly, these portals represent a portfolio of products from the same manufacturer, in addition to other practice management services being provided.

One decision to make when designing and implementing such a portal, is what content to display open to all visitors, and what information is "behind the curtain," requiring the HCP to register, or login.

While there is no hard and fast rule, it depends on the business objectives. Usually a primary goal of professional protals is to expand reach beyond the sales force, and to get product information "details" out to a broader range of professionals, such as remote physicians and "no see" doctors. For this reason, basic product information is usually in front of the curtain.

What goes behind are special value added services that a healthcare professional will find especially worthwhile as a "value exchange" for logging in. These may include electronic samples, information about speaker programs or grants, training programs, or requesting a sales representative visit.

Some items could go either in front or behind the curtain. Patient eductaion materials and key opinion leader videos can help provide valuable information about product benefits. which all may want to see. But they can also be a draw to encourage professionals to sign in and join the communications database.

In summary, plan your professional web portal carefully. The more valuable features behind the curtain, the more incentive to log in. However, that may take away from visit rates, search engine placement, and reach expansion. Even if those visitors are anaonymous, at least they are getting your product messaging.

Cutting through the clutter

Very different stories this week bring up an old theme.

One is the uproar at this month's World Cup football tournament in South Africa over the vuvuzela trumpets, which create a dull, bee-like drone to those playing or watching the sporting events. Announcers, chanting, singing, are all inaudible due to the constant hum of the vuvuzelas. Many have been calling for their ban, others say part of the local culture. Each fan thinks they are cheering for their team, but in aggregate is just part of the hum.

Another, reported in MMM online is the recent phone survey of about 1,008 U.S. adults by Kyp and Opinion Research that patients are finding too many options for health websites. The article notes that "while 76% of respondents search the internet for health information, only 22% use the web as their first port of call after they suspect a health problem – seemingly because of the confusing number of online sources. Even in the 18-34 demographic, more than half (55%) report that 'there is just too much choice' and that they 'simply don't know where to turn for the best advice.'"

The common denominator of these two articles is what we in direct marketing have been calling a need to "cut through the clutter," whether the audio of the vuvuzelas, the stacks of direct mail each day, rows of "spam" invading email inboxes, or broad array of similar websites.

Solutions?

- more intelligent search engines, and search engine optimization for those genuine authority health resources (inbound links from referrals)

- distinctinve, relevant messages, offers, and creative that get noticed

- in-market testing, especially on email subject lines.

Talk to us for more, we can help you "toot your horn."

Closed Loop Promotion - Overview, Audience, and Challenges

Last week, my colleague Jackie Sanders from The CementBloc and I sponsored and presented a CBI webinar on pharmaceutical closed loop professional promotion
Click here to access the full presentation slides and video.

We were delighted at seeing 96 registrants across a wide range of disciplines, pharmaceutical manufacturers, drugstore chains, pharmacy benefit managers, agencies, technology vendors, and consultants. This audience truly illustrated how widespread the interest is, and how the professional promotional landscape has been changing.

The key components were straightforward to explain:
- promotional planning, personal and non-personal
- tablet based selling
- digital website portal
- tracking behaviors and the feedback loop
- segmented messaging

However, the hottest topic for questions and comments was the various challenges to overcome: organizational alignment, investment required, coordination between personal and nonpersonal promotion. Yet all of these are solvable, and a phased approach over two years or more is critical.

Pharma Digital IQ: CRM Perspective

I highly recommend reading the just-released in-depth study of 51 Pharmaceutical Digital presences , a research report compiled by L2 (Luxury Lab) and PhD Media.


The review is quite well done in having a range of principled dimensions on which to rank a pharmaceutical brand’s online presence. These include:
• Website platform (brand translation, site functional elements)
• Off platform messaging (online advertising, mobile, email)
• Search engine optimization (keywords, search architecture, authority)
• Social media (dabbling in facebook, twitter, youtube, user generated content)


Within the study, products are reviewed by therapeutic category for meaningful comparisons.Note that the emphasis of this study is consumers and patients, rather than resources for healthcare professionals.

Brands are scored numerically, and given competence categories having catchy names like "genius," "gifted," or "challenged." To me, the rankings and categories are secondary, for each brand may change over time. What is important is a systematic process for taking into account the overall consumer pharmaceutical digital experience.

For a CRM perspective, this framework is valuable in that it recognizes that patients seeking healthcare information online are navigating through a broad array of digital channels. This matrix of channels: mobile, search, email, social media, and website must be integrated into an overall experience that provides health education, encourages consultation with licensed healthcare professionals and leads to better medical outcomes.

Reinventing Web Analytics on the Sales Tablet

Brand and business goals remain the best way to measure impact of a promotional tactic. However, this truism is not always applied with new technologies

Many pharmaceutical companies are now selling with digital tablets, where almost every click the sales representative makes can be measured, and time tabulated. These tablets generate sequential data streams, which are sometimes measured with basic KPIs like time spent, and the order of tablet slides used.

This is reminiscent of the early days of website analytics ten years ago, where the metrics often cited were page views and time on website. Back then, those were used as KPIs because they were reportable in the elementary "web log" systems.

However, whether it's websites or sales tablets, the objective of engagement within a channel is to achieve a business goal. Therefore on websites, we now measure funnels to goal pages like CRM registrations, and consumption of segmented content areas.

The same should hold for sales force tablets. Think about your brand goals,and what particular sections of the tablet presentations are most aligned toward achieving those goals. Measure consumption of those sections as a valuable indicator of success.

PMSA Promotional Workshop - Measurement planning key; digital analytics rare

Three weeks ago I had the pleasure of joining 75 of the industry's deep thinkers at The Pharmaceutical Management Science Association's PMSA's January Symposium on Optimizing Promotional Spend, held in Philadelphia,January 28 - 29, 2010.

Most attendees expected to see extensive mutlivariate regression models for optimizing the media mix. There was some of that. However, far more extensive was discussion of measurement planning: aligning to business goals, and gathering the right information sources. The message, do not save analyses until after the campaign is over - Plan Ahead!

Anoher surprise was a question posed to manufacturers in the audience: how many are actively analyzing performance of your websites? Zero responded affirmatively. As digital channels grow ever more dominant in CRM, we need for digital agencies and manufacturers to more closely collaborate in optimizing digital media and the websites they drive to.