The GT Conference has been organised at the Luigi Bocconi University the 19th and the 20th of June 2009. Speakers, case histories and extremely active audience are the ingredients of this event.

Among the speeches, the intervention of Eng. Fabio Pagano, CEO & Product Manager of SitoVivo srl, involved the audience using unusual communicative genres, metaphors and theatrical performances.

This was the title:


The Web Analytics and the Analyst

Unfortunately the flight is going to be very dangerous, a red light seems to indicate a failure: here is the solution
provided by the penguins in the video below.

The penguins behaviour, in order to solve a problem, is very similar to a pseudo-analyst one: a lot of intuition, superficial analysis, insufficient use of instruments (web analytics tools).

The red light is only a light signal of very complex problems, like an e-commerce unexpected sales decline, or a conversion rate fall.

"The Analyst is not only the specialist who describes the situation: he is also able to analyze it, in order to suggest proactive solutions to solve the customer's problem."

Going back to the animated cartoon, it's obvious the penguins try to be prepared to an air crash.

At the end, all the passengers are safe and the penguins already try to repair the airbus: they estimate the time of reconstruction and the materials and tools need (adhesive tape???!!!).

But the customer-lion, terrified by the events occurred, asks:


How did you make this estimate?

Eng. Fabio Pagano answers this question with a comparison between the cartoon and the reality: many times the estimations are very intuitive and approximate.
Moreover it's necessary to consider that different web analytic tools can produce different results: the important is to know the measurement criteria used.

Eng. Fabio Pagano asks to the audience:

"would you really rely on the penguins in a dark and stormy night?"

This cartoon is usefull in order to underline the importance of an expert analyst, using valid instruments.

The following slides, focused on three cases history, show the importance of a web analysis using modern and integrated tools.

Campaigns and sales

How can we measure the ROI Campaigns?
The slide below analyses the return in term of visits, visitors, sales and transactions' number in specific campaigns advertised on:
1) Google;
2) Price comparison;
3) Facebook;
4) Newsletter.



From a quick look the Google campaign gave back an important sales amount: € 7.553,60, face to 50 transactions. But analysing the average order column, we notice the Newsletter Campaign is the best, with an average order of € 189,05.
Eng. Fabio Pagano underlines the importance of a partnership based on confidence between customer and company provided by the customer loyalty techniques: the company have to actively get involved with its image and commit itself in every action.

Transactions

Even with efficient tools, some number can be misleading. For example, when we calculate the turnover, we have to distinguish between:
1)successfull transactions;
2)wrong transactions, due to:
a) fraud;
b) e-commerce testing;
c) competitors.
When we want to calculate the real invoices, we have to consider only the first type of transactions.

How can we know if the order is real and if the transaction is successfull?

This operation is possible only if the web analytics tools can recognize this difference. The answer to this question is very important because the analyst strategical proposals are mainly based on the company sales.


Google or the newsletter has the best return in terms of money?

Only if the tools recognize the identity and behaviour of every single customer, you can distinguish the validity of a transaction. Because it's obvious every customer has a different economic value.

For example if I have a yacht e-commerce, it is important to me to distinguish between a sheick luxury liner and a businessman small motorboat purchase in order to understand and differentiate these behaviours on my website.


How many targets I can define at the same time?

The definable goals number on a website is very important! But It is also important to have the possibility to define this goal after the event because sometimes there are necessities occurring after this predeterminated event.



In the above slide, it is represented a shopping cart abandon example.
Eng. Fabio Pagano analyses the different cart steps and notices a leakage between the second and the third step.


Why?

In an e-commerce, as Alessandro Sportelli said, it is possible to rise the sales by:
1) a qualified traffic growth;
2) a cr% growth

“In this case we tried to follow the second way by an usability improvement. After different tests we discovered the leakage was due to the shopping costs absence.
After specifying them we have noticed a leakage drop.
With the right tools we found the solution!"

CLICK FRAUD DETECTION

Different tools can produce different measures; this difference is due to the fact that every tool adopts different measurement criterias. Eng. Fabio Pagano shows the difference between a click tracked at the begin or at the end of the course.
The Click Quality Council is an independent group of leading online advertisers, advertising agencies and click quality monitoring firms, that published a list of eight principles. These principles should serve as foundation for ensuring industry-wide click quality. According to the CQC SitoVivo counts all clicks once in a 30 seconds session.

“This calculation difference is usefull for us in order to discover fraudulent clicks.

With a query we find all the ppc visits in a defined time period.
Exporting this document in excel, we can recognize the strange behaviour of a clicker looking at:
1)Dynamic Ip;
2)Differents Hosts;
3)Duration and interval between visits;
4)Same referer;
5)Same pages number.
The exported excel file is a documented and independent proof of abnormal traffic that you can show in order to have a possible free clicks refund

EMAIL ANALYTICS

We are accustomed to talk of Email Marketing and Web Analytics like two separate topics: the integration between them created a new term: Email Analytics (Email Marketing + Web Analytics).

Email Analytics (Email Marketing + Web Analytics)

The above slide shows different email campaigns and analyse:
1)Open Rate;
2)Click;
3)Conversion rate.

Focused sending

If we analyze, for example, the first newsletter campaign underlined (Newsletter Sconto 04-12-2008), we could use e-mail datas in marketing actions: we have extrapolated the email of people that clicked on a specific link in order to send them a more targeted e-mail.

This is Marketing one-to-one!

A travel agency owner made the same: analysing a list of 50.000 members he extrapoled a list of 60 members interested in an India Tour.
The result was three customers booked the India Tour!



Open Rate depends on...

1)Email object: an engaging text can influence the OR (30,88%)

"Looking for news customers? Just ask!"



2) A Focused list

The newsletter Toner 03/07/2008 was sent only to the people that bought before a specific printer.




In this case we can notice:
1) Small list;
2) high open rate: 50%
3) high click through: 25,95%
4) 0 bounce
5) only one removed


Click Through depends on?





1) Link Position
In this email we can see that the position is important for the ct:
a) link n°1 = 17,60%;
b) link n°2 = 8,80%;
c) link n°3 = 3,20%.



2)Link size:
In this email we can see that the position is important fot the ct.
a) link n°1 = 22,37%;
b) link n°2 = 19,74%.

As you can see, a bigger link doesn't always have a bigger ct%



3)Email Text
Headline is important:
link n°1 = it got an optimal CT% thanks to the text effectiveness, prevailed on the link n°4 CT% concerning the company core-business.


Email Marketing - Ecommerce

In this slide the email sent are connected to the linked e-commerce sales.

The speech closed with a part of “The incredibles”, another animated cartoon that shows a perfect soft landing: the hero insert the automatic pilot (Web analyst + Web analysis tools).


It would be nice to have an automatic pilot helping us to reach our target.


This ideal condition is possible only if there are an expert analyst and efficient tools .