Web Analytics & E-commerce (En)

Measuring the brand interaction at These Days

Yesterday, I was very fortunate to attend a Web Analytics Wednesday at These Days in Anterwerp, Belgium. These Days defines itself as a "brand interaction company" and is a communication and interactive marketing agency, based in Antwerp and Amsterdam. Close to 50 people attended the event, which is a very significant turnout for the young Web Analytics industry.

After an introduction on building a Web Analytics community in Belgium by Michael Notté, country manager for the Web Analytics Association, a case-study on Pioneer Europe was presented by Siegert Dierickx, Web Analytics Manager for These Days.

  

These Days manages 20 country web sites, 1 Vlog and multiple pan-European micro-sites, as well as E-marketing campaigns for Pioneer Europe.

Siegert explained that they focus on 2 main KPIs for Pioneer's web sites:

• Sales Leads, measured by the number of uses of the shop locator
• Brand Interaction Hour (BIH), measured by the total number of hours spent by the users on a Pioneer Web site.

In order to make the brand interaction metric more tangible to management, the total number of hours were converted into the total number of customer service representatives needed to achieve the same number of contact hours on the telephone. Wow, so smart!

The thinking behind this is that Web sites are conversations with customers.

An operational metric was then created to measure the effectiveness and cost of campaigns: Cost per Brand Interaction Hour (number of brand interaction hours generated by the campaign divided by the cost of the campaign).

To their surprise, the cost per brand interaction hour ranges from 2 to 2,000 Euros depending on the campaign. Thanks to this indicator, they have been able to optimize their campaign strategy and remove campaigns where internauts spend on average 5 seconds on the site.

On my way back to Lille, I was thinking. Hey, why don't we use the same methodology for support section of web sites? It is usually difficult to measure the ROI for a support section, and consequently these sections are under-invested compared to the branding and product sections.

We could then have a Support Interaction Hour metric, calculated with the total time spent on the support section of a web site, as well as a Equivalent Customer Service Headcount metric calculated with the total time spent on the support section divided by the working hours of an average customer service representative.

I can't wait for my next Web Analytics Wednesday event in Belgium!

To participate to the next Web Analytics Wednesday in Belgium, please join the Linkedin and Facebook groups.

More to read: Michael Notté's and Siegert Dierickx's posts on the event.

Web Analytics Wednesday in Lille (Rijsel)

For the folks living in the Greater Lille area (Rijsel in Dutch) and neighbouring Belgium, I have started building a local Web analytics community with the objective to meet several times a year, like the "Web Analytics Wednesdays (WAW)" in other cities of the world. When I was living in Canada, I used to participate to the gatherings organized by Stéphane Hamel in Montreal, and it was always a great opportunity to meet great people and to learn new things.

Why such an event in Lille?  Some of the largest E-commerce players and multichannel retailers in Europe are headquartered in the Greater Lille area. There is also a vibrant and active Web community, with a myriad of web, E-marketing and multimedia agencies.

If you are interested in participating to these gatherings, please join the "Web Analytics Lille" groups on LinkedIn and Facebook.

New year, new start! Launch of the "Web Analytics & E-commerce" blog

I have been thinking about it for a while, and new year's time is the perfect moment to get started with one of my resolutions: to launch a "Web Analytics & E-commerce" blog.

Why a blog on Web Analytics and E-commerce? Since my relocation to France from Canada in June 2008, I have been quite surprised to notice how the Web Analytics adoption is behind in France compared to North America and Northern European countries, while France is quite ahead regarding E-commerce usage.

I will use this blog to share my findings and thoughts about Web Analytics and E-commerce, with a specific focus on what is going on in France.

I strongly believe that 2009 is going to be a great year for Web Analytics, since the economic crisis will accelerate the current transformations in the economy:

• the systematic usage of Internet to search for information and prices before any significant purchase in order to find the best deal (online or offline),
• the decreasing efficiency of traditional advertising (TV, press and radio) compared with the new online models (search engine optimization, pay per click, affiliate network, social web, etc.),
• the development of multichannel behaviors (navigation on web site and purchase in store, product trial in store and purchase online, etc.).

In this context, the winners in 2009 will be the ones measuring and optimizing the performance of their promotion, acquisition and retention actions, with whatever media or distribution channel used. Consequently, as we can already assess in North America, Web analytics is becoming a tool to overcome the economic crisis by optimizing the marketing and technological budgets, according to the business objectives and the users' needs on the web sites.

Happy new year!