Jillgaspard’s Weblog

Capturing and retaining the interest of a consumer is the most important aspect of online marketing. This integral part is what ultimately makes or breaks a website. By measuring a website’s marketing success, companies are able to analyze and fix problems current problems. Two popular systems which perform both static and realtime analysis are Web Analytics and Clickstream. Both of these applications measure aspects such as website traffic volume, conversion rates, where the consumers are coming from, profitability, and what consumers do within the website. The benefit to using these systems is that the data is automatically collected and free from bias. This information is then displayed in a spreadsheet layout, allowing for marketers to analyze results with ease.

However, the aspect that needs to be examined the most is the website’s conversion rates. There are two different types of conversions that are measured, conversion and attrition rate. Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that make the final step of purchasing or registering with the website. Attrition rate is the percentage of visitors that get lost at page transition; examples are shopping cart abandonment, and leaving once personal or financial information is required.

By measuring  important aspects such as conversion and attrition rates, it allows marketers to know where they need to improve within the website. So then the big question is how to increase conversion rates, and make the overall profitability of the website increase? From my own personal experiences, I feel that a website becomes defective when issues such as information gathering , lack of information, and ease of use arise. These issues defer a visitor from wanting to continue further, as they do not want to take the time to do more work than they have to. When a visitor doesn’t get the desired result from a website, they become unhappy and ultimately decrease the website’s profitability. This becomes a big problem, as marketers need to keep visitors at the website for as long as possible, in order to be successful.

The overall question is how to we measure website success? Do we measure it by the profitability of the company/website? Or do we measure it by how happy the visitor is? The answer is a combination of the two. By making the visitor happy, it makes the the website profitable, and therefore successful.

Everytime you open up your internet browser, your every move is being carefully watched and recorded. Consumers have been growing aware of this, and are feeling as though their security may be becoming increasingly jeporadized. They feel that by sharing personal information with one website/marketer, it will be shared with all websites/marketers. This ulimately leads to the fear of an invasion of their privacy, or even their lives.  

In 2004, the government created new legislation, called PIPEDA (personal information protection and electronic dadts act), that all businesses and other organiztions had to comply by. Meaning that websites/marketers cannot sell consumer information to third-parties without the permission of the consumer. However, it still seems that marketers are trying to get their hands on this consumer information at any cost.

Not all websites want to obtain this information and sell it for a profit, some sites need the information for delivery or statistical purposes, or they want to better the consumers’ experience. In most cases, this is not what the consumer sees.

On the other hand, some websites take it too far by making a consumer provide personal information too early on in the process. Forcing the consumer to provide information in order for them to continue within the website. A good example of this is the Quality Foods website. This then forces the consumer to provide false information, which is of no use to the website/marketer.

http://qualityfoods.com/

Due to the lack of trust on the internet, there have been third-party companies created, such as verisign and etrust. These companies certifie that the website/company is not selling consumers’ personal information for their own gain. Company trademarks are displayed on secure websites, which makes the consumer feel that they can trust that their information will stay secure and private.

http://www.verisign.com/verisign-business-solutions/merchant-service/index.html

In today’s society it is so hard to give out personal information to just anyone. There is always the fear in the back of our mind that by doing so, it is going to backfire. I guess this is the risk that we take in exchnage for the convenience of the internet; but as security issues arise, there is always someone out there trying to fix them.

This site explains ways for consumers to protect themselves on the Internet: http://www.selfseo.com/story-19455.php