Netconcepts

Information As Power

Stephan Spencer — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 11:00:00 +0000

Most companies don’t even realize their competitors are “eating their lunch” online - ranking higher in the search engines, getting more traffic, converting more visitors into buyers and enjoying better returns on their website investment. They simply don’t know how well their website is performing. And they are missing out on valuable e-business opportunities.

What do you need to know? For starters: how well your site is performing. And how it stacks up against competitors.

How Effective is Your Site?

Measuring the effectiveness of your site’s design, content and functionality is a business imperative. The following metrics will give you information critical for maximizing your ROI:

Abandonment. What percentage of visitors gets no further than your home page? What percentage abandons shopping carts? What is the ratio of abandoned carts to completed purchases per day? How many items are in an abandoned cart? In a purchased cart? What items do people abandon?
Conversion. What percentage of visitors become customers or, at least, take some action? What is the cost per conversion?
Retention. How many customers make repeat purchases? Retained customers are cheaper than new ones.
Lifetime Value (LTV). What’s the value of a given customer relationship over his lifetime? Improve a customer’s LTV by up-selling, cross-selling, increasing buying frequency and reducing the cost of sales and support.
Referral Source. Determine which websites (search engines, industry portals, partners and affiliates), email campaigns and online promotions deliver the most sales, inquiries and customers.
Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value (RFM). How recently did a given customer visit your site and/or make a purchase? How often do they visit or purchase? How much do they spend? Take good care of customers that rate high in all three areas.

Other web metrics include stickiness, slipperiness, attrition, churn, etc. Two great sources for more on web metrics include Jim Sterne’s book, Web Metrics, and his “E-Metrics” white paper, available from www.emetrics.org/articles/whitepaper.html.

Competitive Intelligence is Available Online

How much traffic are your competitors getting? Find out with the Alexa.com site, which provides traffic data, historical graphs showing traffic trends, and even what other sites your competitors’ users visit. (You can also track site competitor site changes with Alexa’s Wayback Machine (www.archive.org), which shows changes to web pages since 1996.)

How many pages do you and your competitors have in Google and in Yahoo? Find out by searching both search engines for “site:” followed by your domain name (for example, “site:amazon.com”). Or, even easier, use our free tool at netconcepts.com/urlcheck to check all major search engines.

How “important” is your site in the eyes of Google and Yahoo? An important site enjoys better rankings. Find out by installing:

The Google Toolbar ( http://toolbar.google.com) to check any web page’s PageRank score, a numerical representation Google’s importance scoring algorithm.
The Yahoo Companion Toolbar ( http://companion.yahoo.com) to check your Webrank score - Yahoo’s equivalent to PageRank.

Who links to you? Find out by searching Google for “link:” followed by your web address (e.g. “link:www.amazon.com”) and Yahoo for “linkdomain:” followed by your web address. Or easier yet, use our free link popularity checking tool at netconcepts.com/linkcheck.

How are your PR campaigns, advertising, email marketing and search engine optimization affecting your market share? Consider signing up with a service like Hitwise for day-by-day monitoring of your online market share.

What’s the word on the e-streets? Search for discussion about you and your competitors on the forums at groups.google.com. Search news sites for articles mentioning competitors and your own company.

What are your competitors offering? Subscribe to your competitors’ email newsletters to stay informed on what offers, contests, sales, products and features they’re launching.

Automated monitoring services can make keeping up with your competitive position easy. GoogleAlert (www.googlealert.com) monitors chosen Google search results and emails you when the results change. ChangeDetect (www.changedetect.com) can “watch” any page on the Web and email you when the page is updated.

Collecting and monitoring site data and your site’s effectiveness in the context of your competition will allow you to identify weaknesses that need to be fixed and competitive challenges that need to be met.

An online wine shop seized the web metrics opportunity. Metrics guided its redesign efforts and allowed it to laser-focus web marketing initiatives. Breaking its visitors into five distinct audience segments revealed that one segment - less than 10% of its total audience - accounted for over 80% of revenue. This knowledge allowed the site to target that sector aggressively. New site visitors from that segment received special treatment in the form of discounts and customized content. Metrics also revealed other opportunities: for instance, cross-selling bakery products and white wine was particularly effective.

Remember, the first step toward maximum return on your website investment is building a clear understanding of your website’s effectiveness.

The Criteria Matrix

Netconcepts — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The Criteria Matrix

The Criteria Matrix will help you rate the mock-up designs and objectively choose the winning design from the group.

Use the following Criteria Matrix as a starting point. Determine your criteria and the importance of each criterion (weighting factor), taking into account the goals and objectives of your site.

WEIGHT	CRITERIA
0-20	Appeals to target audience?
0-10	Downloads fast?
0-15	Works in all browsers?
0-20	Works on low-end systems?
0-20	Generates interest in the company’s products/services?
0-10	Informative?
0-10	Ease of navigation
0-15	Encourages exploration?
0-15	Conveys the proper brand positioning and theme?
0-10	Easy to contact the company electronically?

Evaluating and Auditing Your Website

Stephan Spencer — Tue, 17 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Website evaluation resulted in more customer-friendly site

Netconcepts — Fri, 09 Aug 2002 11:00:23 +0000

“MP3.com appreciated both the honesty, and the problem-solving format of our Netconcepts’ AuditIt website evaluation. Netconcepts helped us step back and see how we come across to our audience… and just as important, how to improve our copy, usability, and functionality towards a more customer-friendly site.

We’d recommend Netconcepts & AuditIt to any executive charged with improving their website.”

Mike Matey
VP Consumer Marketing
Vivendi Universal Network Music & Media (MP3.com)

Auditing Your Web Site: Minimize Risks, Maximize Potential

Stephan Spencer — Sun, 14 Apr 2002 00:00:00 +0000

Think your website is the best it could be? Step back and take an objective look
at your website and identify its weak points in the areas of branding, usability,
security, legal, search engine findability, design, content, and more. A magazine
columnist, international speaker, and founder of multinational web design firm
Netconcepts will provide insider information on “best practices” in online
marketing from corporate clients like Birds Eye, Gorton’s Seafood, Wella, and
Midwest Express.

Website audit excellent working document

Netconcepts — Thu, 13 Dec 2001 11:00:11 +0000

“We definitely think the Netconcepts web site audit provided value and is an excellent working document. I have a new hire who is busy incorporating thoughts and ideas from the audit into our internet marketing plan.

We also shared the audit with our parent company’s eBusiness Development Team Director. He appreciated the thoroughness and usability of the document and thought it was a great value.”

Wendy Brewer
E-Business Manager
Seton Identification Products

How To Audit Your Beauty Site For Maximum Online Effectiveness

Stephan Spencer — Wed, 21 Mar 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Are you absolutely sure that your web site is running at peak efficiency, dazzling customers, coming up high in search engines, generating an adequate ROI, and not leaving you exposed to unnecessary litigation?

Step-by-step, you’ll learn what areas to audit in your Internet presence, including: legal and procedural, public relations, financial, performance and reliability, customer service, Internet marketing task force, technical, user experience, accessibility, content, community, “findability”, e-commerce, privacy, and last but not least, security.

This interactive workshop will give you hands-on experience with:

Where and how to begin the evaluation process
What to audit and how often
Tools and resources to use in auditing
Benefits of auditing, risks of not auditing
Turning measurements and recommendations into an Implementation Plan
Applying all these tools and principles to your specific needs.

How to Create Your Food Site for Maximum Online Effectiveness

Stephan Spencer — Fri, 28 Jul 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Do you want your foodservice Web site to run at peak efficiency, dazzle customers, come up high in search engines, generate an adequate ROI, and not leave you exposed to unnecessary litigation? Step-by-step, you’ll learn what areas to watch in your Internet presence, including: legal & procedural, public relations, financial, performance & reliability, customer service, Internet marketing task force, technical user experience, accessibility, content, community, “findability”, e-commerce, privacy, and last but not least, security. This interactive workshop will give you hands-on experience with:

Where and how to begin he evaluation process
What to investigate on your site and how often

Tools and resources to use in creating a web site

Benefits of auditing, risks of not auditing

Turning measurements and recommendations into an Implementation Plan

Applying all these tools and principles to your specific needs

How to Audit Your Food Site for Maximum Online Effectiveness

Stephan Spencer — Mon, 19 Jun 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Are you absolutely sure that your Web site is running at peak efficiency, dazzling customers, coming up high in search engines, generating an adequate ROI, and not leaving you exposed to unnecessary litigation? Step-by-step, you’ll learn what areas to audit in your Internet presence, including: legal & procedural, public relations, financial, performance & reliability, customer service, Internet marketing task force, technical user experience, accessibility, content, community, “findability”, e-commerce, privacy, and last but not least, security. This interactive workshop will give you hands-on experience with:

Where and how to begin he evaluation process
What to audit and how often

Tools and resources to use in creating a web site

Benefits of auditing, risks of not auditing

Turning measurements and recommendations into an Implementation Plan

Applying all these tools and principles to your specific needs

How and Why To Audit Your Web Site (workshop)

Stephan Spencer — Tue, 07 Mar 2000 00:00:00 +0000