8 Ways to Learn about Your Site Visitors
Web Marketing Today, Issue 63, November 1, 1999
This article contains older information. Go here for newer information on Web analytics.
You can learn about your site visitors in a number of ways. But before we look at any of them, we need to talk about privacy. One of your visitor's chief concerns is the steady erosion of his privacy. If you want to gather information, you'll need to show integrity about the way you use the information. I strongly recommend that you develop a site privacy policy, link to it from every form (and preferably from every page in your site), and abide by it rigorously. Why don't you read our privacy policy (http://www.wilsonweb.com/clients/privacy-policy.htm), and then, if you don't already have one, use the wizard at the Direct Marketing Association site to develop your own. (http://www.the-dma.org/policy.html).Here are eight ways you can learn about your site visitors:
1. Monitor E-Mail Inquiries and Complaints
It's vital that you find a way to monitor e-mail inquiries and complaints from your site visitors. Even if you have an employee handle this e-mail for you, have them print out an extract of key questions and complaints so you can keep your finger on the pulse. I've found that my blind sides are quickly spotted by visitors, who'll fire off an e-mail. Don't look at these e-mails as enemy fire; these are your friends who'll help you improve your site. When you spot a question occurring again and again, it's a sign that you need to deal with it more fully or more visibly on your site. And, it tells you what's important to your visitors.
2. Provide Online Questionnaires
You might want to create an online questionnaire with which you can gather information from your site visitors. What kinds of questions are important? We'll be dealing with that question more fully next week in "7 Keys to Developing an Effective E-Survey " (http://wilsonweb.com/wmt5/learn-gucwa.htm). Internet World subscription form is an example questions asked by a Business-to-Business magazine http://www.iw.com/subs/subs.html. I've developed two demographic surveys for my two sites
- Web Marketing Today survey assumes a business-to-business readership http://www.wilsonweb.com/survey/demog-marketing.htm
- Christian Articles Archives survey looks at individual financial data as well as purchasing authority in a non-profit organization setting. http://www.joyfulheart.com/admin/wmt-sample.htm
Each of these questionnaires is limited to 12 questions, assures anonymity, and displays a privacy policy link. I also use surveys to evaluate each Bible study series I conduct in order to learn what participants like and don't like. This way I am able to continually improve.
Yes/no and multiple choice answers are especially easy to analyze, though fill-in-the-blanks may give you some vital information. Your visitors will need some incentive to fill out your survey or questionnaire. Perhaps your incentive will be information, entry in a contest, or a free prize. I sometimes ask visitors to answer demographic questions after filling out a contact form or subscribing to my newsletter.
After enough people have completed the survey, you'll typically download the data file, import it into Microsoft Access or Excel, and conduct an analysis using queries or cross-tabs, and graphing.
An increasing number of companies are offering survey services online. I've developed a partial list of these for your use (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/web-surveys.htm). If you've used such a service successfully, please tell me via e-mail how it worked for you. Thanks.
3. Send Out E-Mail Questionnaires
The strength of online forms is the ease with which the data can be collected for analysis. The downside is that online forms are essentially passive, they wait until someone comes to them. E-mail questionnaires, on the other hand, are active; the recipient can fill it out and reply without having to open a web browser.
But e-mail questionnaires can be more difficult to analyze quickly. A special program must be developed to harvest information from fields delimited by brackets or some other symbol. If the recipient places an answer outside of the brackets, or gives the wrong kind of answer, the survey may have to be discarded or manually scored. (If you've used a commercial program to harvest e-mail survey information, please let me know. Thanks.)
E-mail questionnaires, however, may be the survey of choice because of their immediacy and ease in sending. I got a nearly 50% response from a recent survey to newsletter readers. That's pretty good!
4. Use Cookies Strategically
Another information gathering strategy is to use cookies. Cookies are tiny pieces of information that can be placed on your site visitor's web browser for retrieval later. These are widely used to display banners, keep track of shopping carts, remember passwords, track affiliate referrals, etc. Let's say you want to learn how many of the people who responded to a certain ad actually made a purchase. One way to do this is to create a special webpage URL for the ad. When someone clicks on the ad URL, they come to the special page where JavaScript code places a cookie on their web browser indicating that they came from a certain ad. When a purchase is made in the site ordering system the cookie (if any) is retrieved and a record is made of the source of the sale. We link to dozens of articles on the use of cookies in e-commerce at /search/cat.php?page=1&querytype=category&subcat=cs_Cookies
5. Examine Order Files
Another way to learn about visitor shopping patterns is to analyze individual order files as well as summaries. Once a visitor places an order or provides an e-mail address, any information collected about that individual can be used to develop a personal profile. Amazon.com uses such information to offer recommendations of other books or purchases based on your previous purchases.
6. Provide Site Personalization
Larger company sites are employing database tools that harvest information about visitors by what products they look at or purchase, which banners they click on, etc. Then this data is merged with other databases providing demographic information by ZIP code, etc. to give a customer profile. More about the possibilities for data mining can be studied in the book Data Mining Your Website by Jesus Mena, which I recently reviewed for Web Commerce Today readers (http://www.wilsonweb.com/reviews/data-mining.htm). We also link to dozens of articles about site personalization at /search/cat.php?page=1&querytype=category&subcat=cd_Personal
7. Study Your Traffic Logs
Considerable data about your customers and their surfing habits can be gained from studying the traffic logs for your website. These can tell you how the visitor came to your site, browser used, route used to surf through your website, most popular pages, domain name of visitors, and much more. We'll be looking more closely at traffic log analysis in the next issue. (If you have a favorite log analyzer program, please tell me about it.)
8. Employ JavaScript on Your Site
In addition to placing cookies, JavaScript can be programmed to harvest information contained in the visitor's web browser, such as plug-ins available, the resolution of his computer monitor, operating system used, and version of browser.
The information you learn from each of these methods can help you gain a clearer picture of those visiting your site. Use the data with integrity; adhere to your privacy policy. But use what you learn about your visitors to fine-tune your website sales and revenues, and you'll come out ahead. Careful attention to customer data is a major factor in distinguishing successful from unsuccessful sites. Neglect it at your peril.
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