A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

IPV = 10

VPV = 2

= Unique users

= 60,000

Visitors

e.g.

NB. A visit ends after 30 minutes of inactivity

IPV = Impressions (pages) per visit in time period

VPV = Visits per visitor in time period

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Chapter 12  Digital business service implementation and optimisation

Collecting site outcome data

Site outcome data refer to a customer performing a significant action which is of value to the 

marketer. This is usually a transaction that is recorded. It involves more than downloading of 

a web page, and is proactive. Key marketing outcomes include:

● 

registration to site or subscriptions to an email newsletter;

● 

requests for further information such as a brochure or a request for a  call-  back from a 

customer service representative;

● 

responding to a promotion such as an online competition;

● 

a sale influenced by a visit to the site;

● 

a sale on-site.

When reviewing the efficiency of different e-communications tools referred to in Chapter 9, 

it is important to assess the outcomes generated. Measuring quantity of clickthroughs to a 

site is simplistic, it is conversion to these outcomes which should be used to assess the quality 

of traffic.

An important aspect of measures collected offline is that the marketing outcomes may be 

recorded in different media according to how the customer has performed  mixed-  mode buy-

ing. What we are really interested in is whether the website influenced the enquiry or sale. 

For all contact points with customers staff need to be instructed to ask how they found out 

about the company, or made their decision to buy. Although this is valuable information it 

is often intrusive, and a customer placing an order may be annoyed to be asked such a ques-

tion. To avoid alienating the customer, these questions about the role of the website can be 

asked later, perhaps when the customer is filling in a registration or warranty card. Another 

device that can be used to identify use of the website is to use a specific phone number for 

customers coming from the website.

It will be apparent that to collect some of these measures we may need to integrate dif-

ferent information systems. Where customers provide details such as an email address and 

name in response to an offer, these are known as ‘leads’ and they may need to be passed on 

to a  direct-  sales team or recorded in a customer relationship management system. For full 

visibility of customer behaviour, the outcomes from these systems need to be integrated with 

the   site-  visitor  activity  data.