E-commerce site analysis of what areas and how to focus

A lot of friends will ask me, e-commerce sites are mainly to do the content of which aspects , in my opinion this answer is easy, but not easy to understand, but the implementation of more difficult problems. This article, I want to do with E-commerce all friends to further explore, we should pay attention to E-commerce site analysis of what areas, and how to pay attention to.

Because this topic is very big, therefore divides into up and down two pieces to bring to the friend.

China's internet is never lack of innovation, but there is no shortage of innovation, so we can not see too much of the Web2.0 crazy, also see the flourishing of SNS, but fortunately, by China's extremely powerful manufacturing of high electronic commerce is in the ascendant, and constantly create the industry miracle. (My Sina scarf please click: http://t.sina.com.cn/webanalytics)

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E-commerce is hot, objectively also lets the website analysis the demand to explode, for whatever purpose, for example wants to obtain more potential customers, or wants to compress the cost, or wants to enhance the user experience, the website analysis is therefore concerned.

This is an opportunity and a challenge, and the challenge is that when there is no driving experience on the road, the expected convenience will become an accident or disaster. Web analytics to the level of e-commerce, the requirements are really high, we need to know what we want, and what we want to do.

Start with business requirements

My friend Zhe liu,2009 started running an E-commerce site for daily Necessities, a new website that he needed to get a lot of traffic (acquisition), but he was also concerned that the traffic was worthless. "It's full of garbage," he said. "How can I buy really valuable traffic?" "A typical E-commerce network marketing needs, web analytics should obviously notice."

And a friend asked me, how should I increase the proportion of visitors to buy goods? A typical transformation needs, by many aspects of the decision and impact, which is related to the site analysis?

One of my friends, William, asked me how to choose the category of goods--to find goods that really have a profit and a market. This is also a typical business needs, web Analytics can help?

And so on and so on ...

In China, in most parts of the world, site analysis is the boss led by the nose, so the site analysis practitioners are always very "nose acid" and "envy." We are not doing site analysis, we are just doing site data, our output is not insights, just report, we are away from the decision-making center, and then openly to ourselves a hat called "BI."

Back to business, back to business, back to business!

I've summed up several of the most common business requirements for E-commerce sites:

1. Whether the marketing method is effective and whether it can be further improved;

2. The user who visits the website is the target user, which channel obtains the user to be more valuable (has the intersection with the first demand to have the difference);

3. The user to the website feeling is good or bad, in addition to the commodity itself which factors affect the user's feeling;

4. In addition to lying, what kind of business tools can help persuade customers to buy;

5. Where further cost savings can be saved;

6. Where the new market opportunities are, and which goods are not on the shelves can bring new revenue growth.

These fundamental business needs are each day by the site management in a variety of ways, if the site analysis can not be carried out around these issues, then any analysis efforts are only nowhere, the value of the downturn.

So when you're brief by your boss for a data-statistics (analysis) requirement, it's best to ask yourself what the business needs are behind it. This way of thinking can make you work better.

At the end of this blog, I have a research questionnaire, please tell me the most concerned about E-commerce Web site analysis and research needs.

Success or failure of implementation

In some cases, E-commerce site analysis has failed to start, this is because the early implementation of the future work to bury the seeds of trouble.

The implementation of E-commerce Web site analysis includes several of the most important aspects, not only the tool itself, some actually have a vital relationship with the structure of the site itself.

1. The structure and format of the website URL;

Do not underestimate the E-commerce Site page URL structure and format, E-commerce is not my hundreds of pages of the blog (www.chinawebanalytics.cn), their site number of pages are counted in million units, the latter site analysis of the efficiency of these URLs is very dependent on the rationality, so the setting of the URL will directly affect the future site analysis of success or failure. In addition, once the URL is set up, the likelihood of making changes is extremely low or difficult. This is a far-reaching problem, the future will involve SEO, involved in the data of the Organization, related to category management, etc., extremely complex, so we found in the actual case, once the early page URL format unreasonable, brought to the later analysis of the disaster is almost completely irreversible, Because very few websites dare to adjust the URL structure and format again.

Please take a look at the three Web site specific product page URL (all from the real Chinese E-commerce site), and from the site analysis to tell me which will be more reasonable:

Website a:http://www.aaa.com/ N97-style-windows-mobile-6-1-wifi-java-qwerty-keypad-bluetooth-dual-camera-3-0-inch-flat-touch-screen-cell-phone-white –2gb-tf-card–sz05150689-_p74971.html

Website b:http://www.bbb.com/product/203011.html

Website c:http://www.ccc.com.cn/product/36-c02-161.htm

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What's your answer?

3 different ways to run for many years. A friend of the website Linda told me that in the flow analysis of various commodity categories, almost do not know how to start, because the URL is completely unstructured, there is no category of information, need to manually find all the URLs, and then in the Web analytics tool through hundreds of characters of regular expressions to all kinds of statistics.

This kind of web analytics is torture. A wrong setting, in the next few years wasted the site analyst a lot of time. Even more frightening is if the boss blames this on the site's analysis of the "incompetence" caused by the results, and does not realize that it was previously buried in the timed * * *.

b What about the website? Problem, but at least a number to represent a product, so at least Excel or SPSS and other tools can help, but still can cause a lot of heavy manual collection and finishing work.

C site, very good. I don't know what "36-c02-161" means, but this structured string format is the same on every page of the product. This means that each field has its meaning and is likely to be the classification of the commodity. Obviously, it's much more enjoyable to do web analytics on this site.

How does your site work? Are you happy?

2. Indicators of flow sources

E-commerce sites are almost always rely on the purchase of traffic to survive, unless you are Taobao mall (in fact, Taobao still want to buy traffic). Therefore, in order to find out the quantity and quality of the purchase flow, we must be able to identify these traffic when the website is analyzed.

Adding tags to traffic sources is a very easy area to implement, and the link tag approach can almost solve all the problems. But unfortunately, all kinds of circumstances cause link tag implementation is not always 100% satisfactory.

However, cannot do 100%, as long as 90% can actually help to the back of the analysis, but if you do not do this job at all? --That's elephant.

3. End-to-end ROI Monitoring implementation

If we want to address the first business requirement above-whether the marketing approach is effective, and whether it can be further improved, it is not that difficult from an analytical methodological standpoint, but we need web analytics tools to achieve end-to-end ROI monitoring.

What is end-to-end ROI monitoring?

This is the most important analysis function that I think E-commerce website analysis. Without this feature, the utility of this tool will be greatly reduced for e-commerce sites. End to end, one end refers to the source of traffic, that is, the flow of your purchase, the other end is the output, that is, the traffic brought about by sales. End-to-end ROI refers to the flow-end of the input and the final flow of the sales revenue generated by the comparison. Without end-to-end ROI Monitoring, you don't really know how the various marketing methods work, or how they work.

These features are not web analytics tool default configuration can be directly provided, need to do some technical settings, part of the monitoring implementation. Our best practice is that if you fail to implement the front-end (i.e., flow source input) input monitoring, then at least you must ensure that the front-end traffic source tag implementation and the backend (that is, traffic generated sales) revenue monitoring implementation. If this piece is not done well, then want to understand the pros and cons of this field later on, goodbye.

4. Do each page correctly place the monitoring code?

You must think that this question is not worth mentioning, and the answer is of course all placed. But the reality is not the case, the larger the site will be more likely to slip through the net.

If the page does not have code, then you can only go back to the server log to solve the problem, this is not an efficient way.

In addition, according to different monitoring needs, in the specific Web site and monitoring the implementation process, there are a variety of very specific requirements, there is no one by one list. Just to say, my experience is that at least 50% of the site Analysis project did not achieve the expected results because of unsuccessful implementation. You and I may have encountered such a situation, in the analysis of the time, the analyst suddenly patted his forehead, sigh why the start without monitoring! --Cups.

Online Marketing (Digital Marketing) effects are timeless themes

E-commerce sites use a variety of means to get traffic, and the effectiveness of these measures is critical to your boss because they throw in a lot of money inside.

What do web analytics need to focus on in this field?

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1. SEO Effectiveness Measurement

Our traditional method is to use search engine SERP ranking to determine the success or failure of SEO. Very direct, very easy to operate, but very one-sided, and the trend is not obvious, can not bring enough insight. We focus on more indicators:

Organic Search traffic (natural searching flow), of course, this will certainly concern, needless to say. Total Organic traffic (all natural flow), this needs a bit of explanation. If the effect of SEO appears, in addition to the search engine traffic increased, some of the potential traffic from other related sites will also be stimulated. For example, from SNS website's sharing, recommendation type website's recommendation, the blog and the community website as well as the direct traffic (directly traffic) and so on. Popular keywords. Check out which natural keywords are more traffic? Which keywords bring visitors more interested in the product (note: This question is different from the previous one)? What keywords can bring higher income? These keywords are very meaningful potential business opportunities, it is worth digging through the site analysis, and only through the front-end AdWords or Phoenix Nest System is impossible to complete. SEO traffic Depth of access. We may have encountered such a situation, SEO after the ranking increased, the flow has also increased, but the flow of water also increased--bounce rate, access to the depth of the page to reduce the site/page stay time also shortened. So in the SEO effect measurement, we must pay attention to the quantity and quality. End to end ROI for SEO. If you spend extra on SEO, you should calculate the input and output of this strategy. Finally, SERP's keyword ranking.

2. SEM and hard wide effect measurement

SEM effect measurement and SEO similar, but more emphasis on end-to-end ROI, because the effect of SEM ads can be put through the link tag tag to subdivide. There are many tools to do this, such as Google Analytics can seamlessly connect with AdWords, and Omniture's search Center provides similar functionality. The practical method of the SEM link tag tag can be found in: http://www.chinawebanalytics.cn/?p=1675. http://www.chinawebanalytics.cn/?p=1178), and transformation and so on. HTTP://WWW.CHINAWEBANALYTICS.CN/?P=75) and Tenly developed a method: http://www.chinawebanalytics.cn/?p=1053 to study the time of flow stay.

Hard and wide measurements are similar to SEM, focusing on the end to end ROI of the subdivision type and even the individual to help optimize the specific launch options.

In addition, these two areas should also be concerned:

SEM and hard to bring the flow of traffic, and the breakdown of the flow of advertising, sem hot keywords, sem and hard wide flow of access depth, also include bounce rate, stay time, abandonment rate (see: Total Organic traffic. Similar to SEO, the launch of SEM and the hard wide launch will increase the related natural search flow and other natural flow.

3. EDM Marketing Effectiveness Measurement

EDM is a very special area, but also my favorite way of marketing. This is because, like SEM and other marketing methods, it can be continuously optimized, and because it contains a large amount of information, so it is easier to help increase conversion. In addition, the optimization analysis of EDM and the optimization of a site page is very close to the place.

In addition to the metrics that the EDM itself concerns, such as IBuySpy Rate, Open Rate, Click Rate, and the previous marketing approach, the End-to-end ROI Analysis of EDM marketing is still highlighted as the most important KPI. In addition, the breakdown EDM flow can also bring a lot of optimization to promote the insight. On the other hand, the EDM itself has more room for optimization than SEM and hard, and, like Web pages, is a very good "observation platform" for studying user behavior and interests.

If possible, we strongly recommend that you include the monitoring code for the Web Analytics tool in the EDM, so that the EDM can be analyzed and optimized as a page, and link tag must be added so that when the EDM built-in monitoring code does not work, Can still provide us with complete clickstream data.

In addition, there is one area in EDM marketing analysis that can be optimized continuously, that is, the database of EDM. You can constantly revise and supplement your customer database to make it more relevant.

So if you tell me EDM marketing is the best way to convert, I won't be surprised; you tell me it's the best way to Roi, and I wouldn't be surprised. The only problem is that the EDM does not have a large flow of traffic, so it is more important to continuously improve its quality and make it more valuable.

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4. Comprehensive analysis of all marketing methods

If the link tag tag and end-to-end ROI implementations are well executed, it is not difficult to compare the effects of different marketing approaches.

Per unit Cost flow comparison, this relatively allows you to understand who is more powerful in bringing traffic; ROI comparison of unit cost, this will let you know who is more able to help you make money (obviously the flow of how much and how many do not fully equate), this may allow you to get the new budget allocation method, And without reducing the marketing effect, and even improve the marketing effect under the premise of reducing costs; flow quality comparison; Here is recommended indicators Index (

Combining all the traffic and then a unified dimension comparison is the insight that brings you overall marketing results at a higher altitude. However, I know that in most sites this has not been done, nor has it considered the past. After all, comparing the data of the EDM department with SEM, bias will make both sides unhappy, and politics is one of the biggest obstacles to the analysis and implementation. My experience is that it is precisely because the various marketing methods are so different that it is worthwhile to find out how they are different and how to use their strengths. This comparison will eventually give you some unprecedented knowledge.

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Writing here, the last article almost finished. Finally, a summary of the above highlighted a few things: 1. As far as possible accurate and perfect implementation; 2. Emphasis on End-to-end ROI Analysis 3. Subdivision and comparison, without these two points, there is no insight. Next article recently launched