Aug 27 2007
The Invisible Visitor
All moderately sophisticated Ecommerce businesses to know how users navigate their site, how they entered, how they were referred and the domains they prefer. They compile profiles that users volunteer and engage in user testing and constantly tune their web sites to run at peak efficiency. All the data is gathered and cleverly analyzed so marketing programs can be designed to leverage strengths and improve weaknesses. All of this activity leads to real improvements, grows the business and realizes a return on investment that brings wealth to the owners and employees.
The people who engage in this activity are some of the brightest and most skilled I have ever met. Yet I many times find that they really can’t get beyond the behavioral data and demographics when it comes to knowing the heart and soul of their customers. If visitors are nothing but data they are still invisible if you don’t understand their desires and motivations. Once they become visible, you are then positioned to make strategic decisions that result in major breakthroughs.
We all know that the route to understanding our customers is engagement. The discipline to do it on a regular basis is where most of us fall short. I had the good fortune to work as the Director of Ecommerce for the women’s apparel site Junona.com. During my tenure there were many accomplishments and also our share of mistakes. But the one thing we aways did right was to stay tuned-in to our customers. The owner and president as well as all of the employees kept a constant dialog and shared that information on a daily basis. When it came time to ask the question, “is this right for our customers and propects?, we almost always had the right answer.
The reason I have cited the very basic concept is twofold: 1) It is frequently ignored, 2) It is the first step to unveiling a strategy for social marketing (which I will address in future posts).
