SciVisum Campaign Effectiveness Report 2005
Three-quarters of Internet Campaigns Hit by Website Failures,
SciVisum Finds
…poor campaign planning hitting consumer confidence…
Three quarters of Internet marketing campaigns are impacted by website failures,
with 14 per cent of failures so severe that they prevented the campaign
meeting its objectives. More than a third of failures were rated as serious
to severe, with many customers complaining or unable to complete web transactions.
These are the key findings of the Internet Campaign Effectiveness Study
by web testing specialist SciVisum...
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outlining the Effectiveness of Internet marketing campaigns, carried out
with marketing professionals from 100 UK retail, financial, travel and
online gaming organisations during July 2005.
Please note that SciVisum will not make any contact details, including
email addresses, available to third parties.
Full Release
Three quarters of Internet marketing campaigns are impacted by website
failures, with 14 per cent of failures so severe that they prevented the
campaign meeting its objectives. More than a third of failures were rated
as serious to severe, with many customers complaining or unable to complete
web transactions. These are the key findings of the Internet Campaign
Effectiveness Study by web testing specialist SciVisum.
The study identified that insufficient technology knowledge is the key
factor impacting successful Internet campaign planning. Nearly two thirds
of marketing professionals did not know how many users making transactions
their websites could support, despite an average transaction value of
£50 to £100, so were not able to factor this into campaign
plans. 37 per cent could not put a monetary value on losses caused by
customers abandoning web transactions.
In addition, the study revealed an ongoing communication chasm between
the marketing and IT departments as the root cause of many website failures.
A quarter of organisations experienced website overloads and crashes as
a direct result of a lack of communication between the two departments.
“It’s hugely counterproductive to invite customers to your
website that you can’t support and end up driving away,” said
Deri Jones, CEO, SciVisum. “Online campaigns provide a cost-effective
mechanism to attract and retain customers and are now fundamental to the
marketing mix. But UK marketeers urgently need to bridge this yawning
gap with their IT departments – or they will end up destroying customer
confidence in eCommerce and damaging their corporate reputations.”
“In particular, it’s essential that the two camps map out
together the typical ‘User Journeys’ that customers will take
through the website in response to a campaign,” Jones continued.
“This will enable companies to ensure that the user experience is
good at all stages of their visit, by eliminating hidden bottlenecks.
Even companies where the two teams talk together often miss this vital
element – and end up needlessly burning money to keep the website
running at a level that may still be unsatisfactory for users during the
campaign.”
Lack of communication
The study identified lack of communication between the marketing and IT
departments as a root cause of campaign failure. 26 per cent of marketing
departments confessed they never alert the IT department about impending
campaigns, with a further 52 per cent only sometimes or rarely working with
the IT department before the start of a new campaign. Only 22 per cent of
those surveyed always involve the IT department in campaigns.
Campaigns impacted
73 per cent of organisations had experienced website failures during
online marketing campaigns, with 13 per cent of organisations regularly
experiencing website problems during online campaigns. 14 per cent of
organisations experienced serious failures, with the campaign failing
to achieve its objectives as a result. 25 per cent rated the failures
as serious, with many customers unable to complete transactions and many
customer complaints. 29 per cent rated the failures as minor, with some
customers inconvenienced and a few customer complaints.
Of those affected, more than half were able to successfully address the
technical problems. However, only 18 per cent of organisations were able
to immediately solve the problems. 14 per cent found that although measures
were put in place, it was too late. A further 21 per cent were unable
to resolve the technical issues due to budget constraints. And in 7 per
cent of organisations, resolving the problems was not felt to be a priority.
Abandoned transactions
The study found that almost half (47 per cent) of marketing personnel
have no idea how many users abandon their sites with incomplete transactions.
18 per cent estimated that at least half their users were abandoning transactions,
and a further 16 per cent estimated up to a quarter of users.
Although 49 per cent had looked into why users were abandoning transactions,
almost half of them were unable to discover the cause from their IT departments,
being informed that it was too complicated or that the investigation was
inconclusive.
Deri Jones comments, "Unfortunately, it’s often difficult
for marketeers to get the information they need for campaign planning
- tech teams can usually come up with metrics and graphs fairly easily,
but these can't always be mapped into visitors, journey satisfaction,
and why a particular campaign drop out was higher or lower than expected.”
“Another problem is that there is so often a language gap between
the commercial and technical teams. This is exactly the area where the
User Journey based approach to web portal monitoring can really make a
quantum leap in the process of making the web an effective delivery mechanism.
It focuses everyone on the same metrics and centres discussion on the
evidence of measured journeys, not perceptions and prejudices, with the
result that things can quickly move towards better and better web delivery.”
Recommendations
Based on the findings, SciVisum made a number of broad recommendations,
to turn the potential benefits of the user journey methodology into business
gains.
1. Define User Journeys
Firstly the marketing/commercial team need to define the business requirements
of the site in terms of User Journeys. The beauty of the user journey
approach for the tech team is it helps to focus on the bottlenecks that
really impact, so that relatively little effort focused on these will
give a good ROI, and quick improvements will give confidence to the commercial
team.
-document the multi-page User Journeys that visitors follow – aiming
for say the five to ten most important routes; e.g. an Add-Basket journey
which starts at the homepage and goes via Mensware / Trousers / Jeans
/ select size+colour. Or a journey that starts on a landing page fed from
an affiliate or online advertising partner site, and ends at a checkout.
-define quality of service levels for each journey – how long is
the maximum acceptable time it should take for a site visitor to follow
the journey? Ignore user think time, just look at the sum of the page
delivery times. Also agree what the maximum percentage failure rate in
page delivery of correct content through the journey should be
-set peak visitor throughput requirements for each journey. For example,
the site should be able to support at the same time: approximately ten
Checkout journeys per second, 30 Add-to-basket journeys per second, five
registration journeys per second, two check-my-order-status journey per
second.
2. Service Level Agreement
This User Journey specification can then be discussed and agreed with
the eCommerce tech team as the basis for Service Level Agreements. Forget
any previous measures that were used such as homepage delivery time and
server uptime
3. Monitoring Programme
Set up a monitoring programme that measures the agreed journeys 24/7,
and give both teams access to the real-time and summary graphs. Use of
a third party user journey testing company rather than attempting to build
something in house will reduce dilution of the technical resources. It
also means, the commercial teams won’t be able to quibble with numbers
generated independently!
After the first month review together the performance issues it highlights,
and aim for the tech team to address the early indications of any specific
bottlenecks. If it highlights the need for additional tech resources to
address key issues, make a case for this but avoid pitching for a site-wide
improvement project; instead look at places where you can deliver good
ROI and quick improvements
4. Real-world metrics
During the next campaigns that see ramped up traffic, use the monitoring
metrics during and after to decide if the performance of the journeys
was within the agreed SLA, and if not to estimate what size of effect
this might have had on increased visitor drop-outs and campaign results.
Ideally, once the user journey approach has been followed for a number
of months, the metrics after each campaign will show that the web performance
is within acceptable bounds, and if there was any disappointment in conversion
rates from a campaign the root causes must be sought elsewhere than in
the web technology systems
The SciVisum Internet Campaign Effectiveness Study 2005 surveyed marketing
professionals from 100 UK-based organisations across the retail, financial,
travel and online gaming sectors during July 2005. A management report
on the findings is available from http://www.scivisum.co.uk/campaign.
Media contacts:
Sarra Mander/Craig Brophy
Rainier PR
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7494 6570
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