A comparison of different online metrics collection methods

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Researching your online customers is very important to understand their needs.

Now you need to know how to research them. To research your customers you may need follow one of the research techniques to find the answers of the following questions:

1.       Who are they – demographics and psychographics?

2.       What do they want – their needs – why do they buy or not buy?

3.       How do they buy (online or offline or mixed mode)?

4.       When do they buy?

5.       How did they find us or our competitors?

ID	Technique	Strengths	Weaknesses
1	Server-based logfile analysis of site activity (web analytics) Examples: www.clicktracks.com www.webtrends.com	1-      Directly records customer behavior on site plus where they were referred from 2-     Low cost	1-      Doesn ’t directly record channel satisfaction 2-     Undercounting and over counting 3-     Misleading unless interpreted carefully
2	Browser-based site activity data (web analytics) Examples: www.indextools.com www.google.com/analytics	1-      Greater accuracy than server-based analysis 2-     Counts all users, unlike the panel approach	1-      Similar weaknesses to server based technique apart from accuracy 2-     Limited demographic information
3	Panels activity and demographic data Examples: www.netratings.com www.comscore.com www.hitwise.co.uk	1-      Provides competitor comparisons 2-     Gives demographic profiling 3-     Avoids undercounting and over counting	1-      Depends on extrapolation from limited sample that may not be representative
4	Outcome data, e.g. enquiries, sales, customer service e-mails	1-      Records marketing outcomes	1-      Difficulty of integrating data with other methods of data collection when collected manually or in other information systems
5	Online questionnaires Customers are prompted randomly – every n th customer or after customer activity or by e-mail	1-      Can record customer satisfaction and profiles 2-     Relatively cheap to create and analyze	1-      Difficulty of recruiting respondents who complete accurately Sample bias – tend to be advocates or disgruntled customers who complete
6	Online focus groups; synchronous recording	1-      Relatively cheap to create	2-     Difficult to moderate and co-ordinate 3-     No visual cues as from offline focus groups
7	Mystery shoppers. Example customers are recruited to evaluate the site, e.g. www.emysteryshopper.com	1-      Structured tests give detailed feedback 2-     Also tests integration with other channels such as e-mail and phone	1- Relatively expensive 3-     Sample must be representative

A comparison of different online metrics collection methods

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