Site User Lifecycle

A recently updated article in Avinash Kaushik's blog--calculate customer Lifetime value, which discusses in great detail what is the life cycle value of the site's users (Lifetime value, abbreviated LTV), And why use the LTV index. The main elaboration is that in the process of SEM and website promotion do not focus on only one visit (Visit) in the conversion rate (conversion Rates) and the CPA (cost per acquisition) These indicators, Computing the total value created by users throughout the Web site will be more meaningful, and user lifecycle value is a valuable reference for measuring web site promotion strategies.

What is the life cycle value of a user

A lifecycle is a process of development from the beginning to the end of a subject, so the life cycle of the website user can be explained as the whole development process of the user starting from the relationship with the website and the website completely out of relationship, and the user's life cycle value is the sum of the value brought by the user for the website in this process.

The user's lifecycle can be divided into 4 stages, as shown in the following figure:

From the user's life cycle curve can be seen in the site to establish a relationship between the user typically experience 4 stages, each stage brings different values for the site:

Study period: The user will tentatively occasionally to visit the site, this time the user to create a lower value;

Formation period: The user may have been a bit like your site, they will be irregular access to the site, and began to try to do some interaction, while the value of users to create a rapid increase;

Stable period: Users become loyal fans of the site, they often patronize the site, not only their own use of the site to provide services, but also may help promote the site, the user created value to reach the highest peak and maintain a relatively stable;

Degradation period: The user because of some factors and the relationship between the site began to crack, and then quickly burst until the complete departure, the value of the user created in the period of rapid decline.

It should be noted that the user does not necessarily reach the stable period after the relationship with the site will decline, at any time, as long as some factors affect the user's satisfaction, the user's life cycle may enter the degenerate period, and then completely out of the site.

How to measure the life cycle value of a user

Avinash Kaushik in his blog examples of some of the more from the perspective of E-commerce sites, because E-commerce site users of the life cycle value is more easily measured, you can directly calculate the user from the use of the site in the total amount of consumption, net profit, etc. Based on these indicators, the investment return (ROI) of different promotion strategies can be calculated by dividing the different sources of users.

This is based on the user life cycle value of the site source evaluation can also be used for general web sites, but ordinary sites generally do not have transactions and sales data, may not be based on the site's revenue as the goal of the site, then the user's transaction amount can not be used as an indicator of user value evaluation. How to define the user lifecycle value of a general web site can refer to a few previous articles about user analysis: We can still use the site user loyalty analysis from Google Analytics in the evaluation of user loyalty 4 indicators-user access frequency, recent access time, average stay time, Average number of pages browsed. These metrics are available for all sites to measure, at the same time improve the user's loyalty is the common goal of all sites, loyal users of the site's value is self-evident, they can not only bring lasting value for the site, while in the website under the brand and Word-of-mouth promotion plays a key role. So how do these 4 metrics be aggregated to calculate the total value of the user? can refer to the user's comprehensive value scoring system this article, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to get the weight of each indicator, and through a weighted summation of the way to calculate the total value of users, The result can be used as an evaluation index to measure the user's life cycle value.

Analysis based on user lifecycle value

Based on the results of the life cycle value of the site users, we can subdivide the user by the following aspects:

User access: The average life cycle value of the users who first visited your site by computing search engines, external links, social networks, direct logins, and so on, to compare which sources brought the most valuable users to the site:

The histogram above shows the number of new users entering my blog from each source, and the line chart represents the average value of the life cycle of a user coming in from each source (the sum of the life cycle value of all users brought by that source/the number of users that the source brings, 10 points). As you can see from the above picture, for my blog, search engines bring the most users (probably most sites are similar), and from the value of the user's life cycle values, external links are the most valuable, direct access to the second (can be used to evaluate the site online promotion of the value of the users), Social networking again. So I will usually see some of the introduction of Web site data analysis related to my blog to add to my external link table, if you also have web analytics related to the blog, or think my blog is good, but also want to add my blog to your external link table.

Content that is browsed by the user for the first time: segmentation based on content, such as classification of articles in my blog. You can select the user's life cycle value in the first 100 of the Access users to visit my blog to access the following categories of articles:

The bar chart above represents the number of users who visited my blog for the first time, and the line chart represents the categories of articles browsed by the top 100 users of life cycle values when they first visited my blog. This result is very obvious, "site quantitative analysis" This content classification for me to bring the most new users, but also for me to bring the most valuable users, but also the most valuable user conversion rate of the highest category, "personal opinion sharing" second.

Problems needing attention in the analysis of user lifecycle value

The last thing to say is that there is a major technical difficulty in this analysis-how to define a user's first visit.

The first is how to identify the user is the first access, that is, the user is new Visitor, we are expected to have noticed that the Google Analytics tool in the visitors module is based on New and returning to the user segmentation, Google Analytics can be based on whether the existence of cookies to subdivide, user identification There are many other ways, you can refer to my previous article-site user identification, but I have to say that no matter what method of new user identification There is a certain inaccuracy.

The

is another question of how to get the data that the user first accesses. General web site to save statistics have a certain period of time, or the site's data statistics started late, failed to count the historical data of the site, especially for the site has been developed for a certain time or the amount of data than the larger site, such statistics are more difficult, perhaps this time the site's data warehouse can play its value , the data integration of the Data warehouse and the features that preserve historical data and are not easy to change make it capable of accomplishing such complex data.