Monitoring Site Performance

Answer

Understanding the effectiveness of your eCommerce initiatives begins with a systematic approach to understanding site conversion. Coremetrics leverages a best practices approach known as the 5 Conversion Points Framework to help eCommerce executives and managers understand the conversion funnel identify bottlenecks in the customer life cycle and allocate resources effectively to problem areas on their sites.

The 5 Conversion Points Framework encompasses:
? Visitor Conversion ? Visits or visitors reaching your site.
? Browser Conversion ? Visits or visitors browsing products on your site.
? Prospect Conversion ? Visits or visitors adding product to their market basket cart itinerary etc.
? Customer Conversion ? Visits or visitors completing a transaction.
? Loyalty Conversion ? Visitors or customers that return or transact again.

Leveraging the 5 Conversion Points Framework eCommerce managers can set specific goals for conversion effectiveness and align staff resources around achieving measurable goals.

Business Owners
Responsibility for monitoring site health should be held by a director or executive level individual with ownership of cross-functional resources. Measurable goals should be set for conversion effectiveness. Changes in conversion results should be investigated and accounted for by responsible teams or direct reports. Upward or downward trends in conversion rates should be studied to understand long-term impact on business operations. When possible executives should take advantage of industry benchmark data to validate that their performance is in line with the performance of a representative peer group.

Best Practices
Coremetrics presents several best practices for Monitoring Site Performance including:
? Monitoring Visitor Conversion ? Identify site conversion effectiveness based on unique visitor behaviors to allocate investment spend to maximize visitor conversion and customer loyalty.
? Monitoring Session Conversion ? Identify site conversion effectiveness based on (?visit") behaviors to allocate investment spend to maximize visitor conversion.
? Benchmarking Site Performance ? Benchmark site conversion effectiveness against leading eCommerce brands to identify areas for improvement.

1.1 Monitoring Visitor Conversion

Goal
Identify site conversion effectiveness based on unique visitor behaviors to allocate investment spend to maximize visitor conversion and customer loyalty.

Reports
This best practice leverages the following report:
? Visitor Conversion

Steps
1. Create and obtain data for the three most recent time periods for analysis. Time periods should be sufficiently long to be representative of visitor behavior (e.g. monthly).
2. Identify visitor conversion ratios for each time period.
3. Calculate the average conversion ratio over the time period.
4. Set targets for conversion effectiveness based on historical performance.
5. Monitor conversion points on an ongoing basis to identify problem areas and assess opportunity for improvement.

Actions
The action taken will depend on which conversion points are underperforming or trending poorly.
? If Visitors conversion is low ? Investigate marketing effectiveness to assess opportunities for optimizing channel spend creative or audience targeting.
? If Browsers conversion is low ? Investigate home page real estate effectiveness navigational categories and on-site search effectiveness to determine what challenges customers are having finding product.
? If Prospects conversion is low ? Investigate product page creative and pricing to understand why customers are not adding product to their market basket.
? If Customers conversion is low ? Investigate process abandonment for applications registrations checkout or bookings to identify where customers are experiencing issues and departing the site.
? If Repeat Visitors conversion is low ? Analyze repeat visitor preferences to understand how to promote items to bring visitors back to your site.
? If Repeat Customers conversion is low ? Identify cross sell and up sell opportunities to ensure that customers return to do business with you again.

1.2 Monitoring Session Conversion

Goal
Identify site conversion effectiveness based on session behaviors to allocate investment spend to maximize visit conversion.

Reports
This best practice leverages the following report:
? Session Conversion

Steps
1. Create and obtain data for the three most recent time periods for analysis. Time periods should be sufficiently long to be representative of visitor behavior (e.g. monthly).
2. Identify session conversion ratios for each time period.
3. Calculate the average conversion ratio over the time period.
4. (Optional) Review industry average session conversion rates.
5. Set targets for conversion effectiveness based on historical performance.
6. Monitor conversion points on an ongoing basis to identify problem areas and assess opportunity for improvement.

Actions
The action taken will depend on which conversion points are underperforming or trending poorly.
? If Visitor Sessions conversion is low ? Investigate marketing effectiveness to assess opportunities for optimizing channel spend creative or audience targeting.
? If Browser Sessions conversion is low ? Investigate home page real estate effectiveness navigational categories and on-site search effectiveness to determine what challenges customers are having finding product.
? If Prospect Sessions conversion is low ? Investigate product page creative and pricing to understand why customers are not adding product to their market basket.
? If Customer Sessions conversion is low ? Investigate process abandonment for applications registrations checkout or bookings to identify where customers are experiencing issues and departing the site.

1.3 Benchmarking Site Performance (LIVEmark clients only)

Goal
Benchmark site conversion effectiveness against leading eCommerce brands to identify areas for improvement.

Reports
This best practice leverages the following report:
? LIVEmark

Steps
1. Determine a review time period that is sufficiently long to be representative of typical visitor behavior and not overly influenced by promotional or seasonal activity (monthly or quarterly recommended).
2. Identify session conversion metrics in the LIVEmark report.
3. Compare site performance to LIVEmark Sub-Vertical if applicable or LIVEmark Retail if not.
4. Assess areas for site improvement.

Actions
The action taken will depend on which conversion points are underperforming relative to the index.
? If Multi-Page Session % is underperforming ? Evaluate marketing acquisition sources to ensure that paid placements are driving qualified traffic to your site. You also should investigate landing page real estate effectiveness to avoid discouraging visitors from browsing deeper on the site.
? If Browser Session % is underperforming ? Investigate home page real estate effectiveness navigational categories and on-site search effectiveness to determine what challenges customers are having finding product.
? If Shopping Cart Session % is underperforming ? Investigate product page creative and pricing to understand why customers are not adding product to their market basket.
? If Order Session % is underperforming ? Investigate process abandonment for checkout to identify where customers are experiencing issues and departing the site.