How to measure online engagement 
Dr Dave Chaffey, consultant, cScape Customer Engagement Unit
and author of Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice
Dr. Dave Chaffey is a consultant in cScape’s Customer Engagement Unit and a recognised guru in digital marketing. For more information about the work Dave does, visit Dave Chaffey's website.
Summary of presentation
Dave’s presentation focused on metrics for assessing the effectiveness of customer engagement techniques. Beginning with a quick poll of the audience which indicated that over half were currently using web analytics, Dave proceeded to outline 10 metrics for customer engagement success on your web site, coupled with actionable engagement tactics to take away.
10 Metrics and Tactics for Customer Engagement Success
- Engagement Metric: Percentage of non-home page entry visits
Your home page isn’t necessarily the most important page on your site. People might arrive on other pages so make sure your messages are distributed throughout the site.
Engagement Tactic: Use run-of-site OVP messages
Use Online Value Proposition messages such as banners and adverts throughout your site, not just on the homepage.
- Engagement Metric: Bounce rate
The percentage of visitors who enter a site or page and leave immediately.
Engagement Tactic: Use a run-of-site signup
Place value-based messages throughout your site. See for example Thomson.co.uk.
- Engagement Metric: Duration
Duration on site, or better, pages per visit.
Engagement Tactic: Use heatmaps or overlays to assess engagement
Tools like ClickDensity look at what people click on and how soon. This will help you refine the clarity of your message.
- Engagement Metric: Marketing outcomes
Assign values to outcomes/events and use them to assess the success rate, e.g. newsletter sign-up, 2 points; register CV, 5 points etc.
Engagement Tactic: Get your scent right
Experiment with design or language variations to see what is attractive to visitors.
- Engagement Metric: Micro or step conversion rates
Assess the effectiveness of your site by measuring drop-off at every stage of the customer acquisition-to-conversion lifecycle.
Engagement Tactic: Interactive sales advisors
Replicate the steps you would use in a physical sales situation, considering types of questions asked etc. and tailor responses to visitors accordingly.
- Engagement Metric: Brand search term strength
Understand search behaviour on your site to see what is popular, what’s not, and also what’s missing.
Engagement Tactic: Integrate news feeds into your sites for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Add a constant flow of updated third-party content into your sites to drive traffic.
- Engagement Metric: Email activity level
Use email communication for on-going engagement with customers, all the while checking levels of activity and response.
Engagement Tactic: Refined touch strategy
Develop a strategy that looks at message type, triggers, outcomes required, the right medium for messages and the right sequence etc.
- Engagement Metric: Define activity levels or hurdle rates (for different activities)
Set metrics to review different types of user activity, e.g. number of new users in last 60 days, number of active or dormant users etc.
Engagement Tactic: Personalise by activity or lifecycle of content in web or email pods
Offer users different messages depending on their status, i.e. message for new visitors will differ from message for regular, registered users.
- Engagement Metric: Emotional response
Conduct benchmarking research with users to assess their emotional responses to aspects such as look and feel, design, messaging etc.
Engagement Tactic: Multivariate testing
Test different permutations of buttons, messages etc. to see what the highest uplift is.
- Engagement Metric: Outcomes
Beyond the use of analytics tools, play programmes to find out what people think, including aspects such as relevance, believability and likeability etc.
Engagement Tactic: Use secondary navigation to highlight next steps
Use a combination of images and text for menus to invite users to do something else on your site.
Finding the time to actually do the research and analysis required to implement effective engagement tactics is often the most difficult thing. Dave concluded by stressing the importance of finding the right partner to help you. The market for tools is highly fragmented, although many analytics tools are now becoming part of bigger marketing automation systems.
Contact cScape's Customer Engagement Unit for more details:
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