Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [254]
Thursday and Friday: Develop Segments
Segmentation is the principle of measuring groups of visitors who have something in common. By isolating them from the aggregate numbers, you can begin to see nuances that are particular to that group. By examining smaller groups of visitors based on search terms, behavior, conversion, or other actions, you can isolate each group, examine it, and draw practical conclusions that will enable you to improve the experience for that specific group of people.
Segmentation breaks down all the information into bite-sized chunks, which allow careful examination. Once you have broken down the visitors into segments, then you can compare and contrast those segments. Aggregate numbers (such as unique visitors, visitor sessions, and search engine referrals) treat all the visitors the same. By lumping everyone into the same group, such as “unique visitors,” you overlook all the different reasons people come to the website. Your website traffic consists of hundreds to thousands of people looking for their own needs. These needs will be similar, but you can’t develop one report that tells the story about all of your visitors.
Use Context to Build Segments
Compare your keyword segments. For example, say you are comparing the search visitors for Blu-ray players and digital cameras on an electronics website.
In Figure 20-3, you have a visitor from a search engine referral for the term digital camera on the left. The thought cloud includes all the additional information that is in their head and information that is necessary to satisfy in order to decide to complete the purchase. Some visitors are looking for product information, and others are looking for prices, details, or comparisons. Visitors are different and have different motivations, even if they type the same search phrase into the search engine. The words associated with the digital camera buyer are all the concepts that are typically floating around in the searchers’ brains but sometimes are not used in the search. However, these are important concepts to the decision-making process, and they will drive the visitor to visit certain pages, click specific links, and find what they need.
Figure 20-3: Typical visitors to an electronics website
On the other side of the website, a visitor is searching for a Blu-ray player. In doing so, they most likely will enter the site through a different page than the “digital camera” searcher did. You cannot measure the experiences of searchers for digital cameras the same way you can measure the experiences of searchers for Blu-ray players. Those visitors are looking for completely different products, and they have completely different informational needs that will persuade them in the process and have completely different expectations of the process. If you have employed SEO, then you’ve set up your marketing so that different pages rank for different terms in the search engines and bypass the home page to take the searcher to the site content that is relevant to them.
Measure Outcomes by Segment
By finding segments that are performing well, you can optimize those for even better performance and targeting. Poorly performing segments can be recognized, and conclusions can be drawn about the performance and what can be done to improve those segments. Compare segments and keyword rankings to be sure you are targeting the right words. Get a clear picture of exit rates by finding the segment that is causing you the most trouble. Comparing and contrasting is the basis of learning, and it is the easiest method to find opportunities for growth in your marketing. You may find that your best-ranking keywords, the ones bringing in the most traffic, are also the worst-performing group. Only segmenting and building context will allow that exploration.
If you know that one segment has a 1 percent conversion rate and another segment had a