Start with Small Data: How to Understand your Visitors, Capture Data, and Provide a Personalized Experience

How to understand your visitors, capture data, and provide a
personalized experience
Start With Small Data

Partner, Technology Director
JimKellerES
jimk@easternstandard.com
http://easternstandard.com
Jim Keller

Billboard
Purchased
SALES CHART

Starting Smaller
0
No Analytics or Data Collection
10
Google, Facebook, Amazon
5

1. Identify
2. Assess
3. Act
Three Steps to Better Analytics and Better Content

IDENTIFY: Segmenting
Understanding your visitors as a single, large group isn’t
generally very helpful. Segment your thinking, and your
analytics, to understand users as having distinct needs
and goals.

Ways to Identify a visitor:
- Individually
- As members of a known group
- By behavior patterns
IDENTIFY: Segmenting

IDENTIFY: Identifying Visitors as Individuals
In some cases, it’s valuable and practical to
identify users as specific individuals. This way,
you can provide very specific content and
targeted followup.

IDENTIFY: By User Account / Sign-in

IDENTIFY: Map to an existing CRM or Email List

It’s not always practical or worthwhile to identify visitors as individuals.
However, sometimes you can preemptively identify visitors as
members of a group
IDENTIFY: Members of a Known Group

- By tracking audience navigation (“I am a…” links)
It’s not always practical or worthwhile to identify visitors as individuals.
However, sometimes you can preemptively identify visitors as members
of a group
- By tracking clicks from targeted emails or other campaigns.
- By looking at Location or Device Type
IDENTIFY: Members of a Known Group

Even if you don’t know who someone
is or which group they belong to, you
can gain vital insights about them
from their behavior patterns.
In other words, which pages people
visit and what they do on the site tells
us about the type of visitor they are.
IDENTIFY: Behavior Patterns

The goal of your website is to provide
the right content to the right person at
the right time

Google Analytics and other platforms offer the ability to make
your data your own, and really help you understand what’s
happening.
A few topics of note:
- Content groups
- Custom dimensions
- Event Tracking
- Goals
ASSESS: Beyond Basic Metrics
Too much time and energy is spent focusing on overall metrics like total
page views and sessions, and not enough time on specific, actionable
data.

Content groups allow you to view your analytics by related types of
content; for example, men’s clothing vs. women’s clothing, blog content
vs. services content, or STEM content vs. Liberal Arts content
Grouping content lets you compare one to another, so that you can
identify whether one group is outperforming the other, or hitting goals
more frequently.
Image from: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2359561/10-point-google-analytics-implementation-checkup
ASSESS: Content Groups

Custom dimensions let you provide additional data to your analytics package.
In other words, you can filter your reports by a new “dimension” that is relevant to
your visitors.
If you’ve ever found yourself saying, “I wish I could filter this report by [x]”, a
custom dimension is probably what you needed.
ASSESS: Custom Dimensions

Custom events let you keep track of events other than pageviews
- How many times a button was clicked
- How many times an accordion was expanded
- How many times an external link was visited.
ASSESS: Custom Events

Image from: http://blog.littledata.co.uk/2015/04/setting-up-a-destination-goal-funnel/
ASSESS: Goals

Goal tracking can be as simple or as
complex as you need it to be. Start by
identifying a simple metric that you can look
at for improvement:
• “I’d like to get more people to send
requests through the contact form”
• “I’d like to have more people purchase X
product”
• “I’d like more people to complete the
application form”
ASSESS: Goals

Once you understand a bit more about your visitors, you can begin to
tailor the experience for your visitor.
Just a few ways this can be accomplished:
• Information-gathering Popups
• Email Drip Campaigns
• Content Personalization
ACT: What to do with your data

I know what you’re thinking: “but I hate those things.”
The data is there – popups increase email signups, as long as they’re
done right.
Here’s some evidence:
http://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/08/18/opt-pop-ups/
http://optinmonster.com/email-pop-up-implementation/
http://unbounce.com/email-marketing/get-subscribers-from-pop-ups/
http://conversionxl.com/popup-defense/?hvid=2EcGFw
ACT: Popups

Popups can be done right:
1. Timing is everything. Wait up to 60 seconds to display the popup,
and in some cases, you may want to forego the popup for first time
visitors.
2. Make sure the popup is relevant to your visitor. Don’t offer the same
thing to everyone.
3. Make them easy to close, and don’t show them twice.
ACT: Popups

Delivering a relevant, personalized experience.
We can change our content in realtime based on the data we’ve collected
about our visitor and his or her behavior.
ACT: Personalized Content

Decision Points for Personalization
• Location
• Device
• Search Keywords
• Visitor Frequency
• Date and time of Day
• Referring URL
• Customer History
• Sessions Behavior

Good Reading:
http://conversionxl.com/how-to-use-personalized-content-and-behavioral-
targeting-for-improved-conversions/
https://econsultancy.com/blog/10194-the-roi-of-personalisation-infographic
http://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/11/06/boost-conversions-personalization/

Start small. Work your way up.
Focus on easily identifiable goals, and work backwards from them.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to be able to do everything
before you can do anything.
FINAL THOUGHTS

Start with Small Data: How to Understand your Visitors, Capture Data, and Provide a Personalized Experience

More Related Content

What's hot (10)

Viewers also liked (16)

Similar to Start with Small Data: How to Understand your Visitors, Capture Data, and Provide a Personalized Experience (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Start with Small Data: How to Understand your Visitors, Capture Data, and Provide a Personalized Experience

Editor's Notes