Real-Time Visitor Monitoring and Marketing

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1 WHITE PAPER May 2008 Take Control of Your Online Store A Guide to Interpreting Visitor Behavior in Real Time

2 Nicole Fraley is an Online Marketing Director with BGT Partners, a global award-winning interactive agency. Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing are two of her group s specialties, and they re regularly called upon to help Fortune 500 companies drive qualified traffic to their sites. Fraley says she relies on LivePerson real-time monitoring to spot common negative terms that should be added to a negative match, especially when the client is advertising under broad match terms or phrases with pay-per-click. Fraley once worked on a PPC campaign for a furniture client that manufactured a popular night stand. Within minutes of launching we knew we had to add the word one to the negative match list. The phrase one night stand was not going to bring us qualified leads. BGT Partners had a similar situation with a travel and leisure client that specializes in cruises. It took the team just a few minutes to realize they needed to add Tom to the negative list. The key is to make the changes early on in the campaign so that the client doesn t incur exorbitant costs attracting inappropriate visitors, added Fraley. This paper draws on the experiences of BGT Partners and many other LivePerson customers to illustrate why real-time monitoring of visitor traffic has become a best practice for all online retailers and not just those who employ search engine marketing to increase online sales. Real-time visitor monitoring has broad applications that help retailers optimize the site, their messages and their web processes.

3 Introduction Now that the Internet has evolved into a mainstream channel for doing business, sites owners are struggling to apply best practices long relied upon by their brick-and-mortar counterparts to the online medium. Topping the list of best practices is visitor segmentation and targeting. Of all the visitors who come to your site which ones should you engage? Are there behavior patterns that indicate certain visitors could be encouraged to make a purchase, or increase their order size if engaged by a site representative? If so, how can you proactively identify and invite those visitors to chat at the most opportune time? With the right chat service provider, e-commerce managers can watch what goes on in their online store in real-time, and take steps to positively affect the outcome of visitor sessions. They can also identify visitors who are valued customers, as well as prospects targeted via an e-newsletter, banner ad or other marketing initiative. Moreover, watching visitors as they click through a site enables retailers to evaluate their promotions, Web processes, and the efficacy of key marketing initiatives, such as pay-per-click campaigns. Why are these important differentiators? As Shop.org, a leading research firm specializing in Internet retailing, reports, most sites have conversion rates that range between three and five percent. Chat initiatives should take care to stay out of the way of conversions that will happen anyway. But without a proactive solution to illuminate who is on your site and pinpoint the right visitor to engage, chat agents are likely to spend a great deal of time either handling service chats or chatting with visitors who are likely to buy anyway. Worse, site owners miss out on the opportunity to truly optimize their site so that it attracts happy and loyal customers. This paper examines how site owners using LivePerson services can assess who is on their site, segment visitors based on interest and determine whom to engage, optimize both their marketing initiatives and website processes, measure and report on the ROI of their chat channel, and even prevent fraud.

4 Assess Who Is On YOur Site - Right Now Gone are the days when online retailers put up websites, spent lavishly driving site traffic, and hoped for the best. Today, using LivePerson services, site owners can assess who is on their site, how those visitors arrived there, visitor interests, and even visitor propensity to buy all in real time. The LivePerson Operator Console provides a chat agent with a wealth of real-time information about visitors on their site, including city, state and country, whether they ve previously chatted or purchased an item, and specific interests based on the product pages viewed, forms completed, and items placed in the shopping cart. Additionally, the LivePerson Campaign Viewer tracks all of the many paths that lead to your site, enabling chat agents to instantly identify visitors who have responded to a marketing campaign (such as a Google AdWord or e-newsletter), typed the URL directly into their browser s address bar, arrived by means of a link on a referring site, or reached it via an unpaid (organic) search. Most of these data points, including campaign details, are available at-a-glance in the Visitor List of the Operator Console. Detailed information, such as the sequence of pages visited or past interactions, are available with just a few clicks. The Visitor List provides a snapshot of who is on your site, the pages visited, and how they arrived. Chat agents can also capture visitor session data for later analysis if, for example, they want to analyze the click-stream of visitors who arrive via a specific AdWord.

5 Segment Visitors and Determine Whom to Engage In the brick-and-mortar world, segmenting customers can be very straightforward. If a woman walks into an electronics store pushing a baby stroller, the sales associates would safely assume that she d have as much interest in an Xbox as a teenager with a skateboard under his arm would have in baby-monitoring devices. Fortunately, segmenting online visitors is now possible. LivePerson provides site owners with a variety of tools to help them determine the interests of specific visitors and select whom to engage. Some examples: Keyword Searches Nearly all consumers who are serious about making an online purchase begin the process by entering a product term into search engine. Consequently, site owners should pay attention to these visitors, particularly if they search on a keyword that represents one of the site s sweet spots. LivePerson flags all visitors who arrive on the site via a search engine and provides the exact term used, enabling chat agents to monitor these visitors and engage the hot leads. Get real-time insight into all marketing activities that drive traffic to your website, including search engines and paid and organic search terms. Repeat Visitors, Chatters, Buyers Repeat visitors and repeat chatters are highly qualified visitors. Research conducted by LivePerson revealed that consumers visit at least four sites prior to making a purchasing decision, and visit the site from which they will ultimately buy multiple times. Visitors who have chatted or bought previously from the site also show a high propensity to make additional purchases (assuming the experience was a positive one). By flagging repeat visitors, chatters and buyers, LivePerson gives agents an opportunity to reassure visitors who are in the process of making a decision, or offer special incentives to valued customers. Recipients of Marketing Campaigns Companies relying on e-newsletters, banner ads or marketing to increase market share or encourage repeat business can link those efforts to chat initiatives. The LivePerson Campaign Viewer presents in-depth details on the campaign as soon as the prospect arrives on the site. Chat agents can offer a follow-up incentive relating to the promotion, or simply monitor their click-through behavior. The Campaign Viewer is completely integrated with Google Analytics, and automatically tracks all Google Campaigns. 5

6 Value of Shopping Cart Agents can opt to initiate a chat with visitors based on the value of the items placed in their shopping carts. For instance, agents can send chat invitations to visitors who abandon their shopping cart, or offer free shipping to a visitor if his or her order meets a specific price threshold. Geographic Region As CMOs will attest, geography provides strategic insight into a customer s product preference and budget. Customers in wealthy regions are more apt to purchase higher-end product categories; visitors in urban areas tend to gravitate towards trendier product lines. By analyzing the regional characteristics of high value customers, priorities can be set for agents to determine whom to engage. Optimize Your Marketing Initiatives For many years, e-commerce managers focused their marketing efforts on bringing traffic to a retail site. Vast sums were spent publicizing a site s web address, and success was measured by number of unique visitors a site received each month. Retailers soon learned, however, that volume wasn t nearly as important as qualification, and new focus was placed on bringing only those visitors who are likely to have an interest in the site s products and services. Today, most retailers have pay-per-click, referral and banner ad/online media strategies in place. While these refinements have done much to improve the quality of visitors, costs can be steep. Now, retailers are looking for ways to refine those marketing initiatives further to enable a greater return. A significant benefit of the LivePerson Campaign Viewer is it helps site owners make rational choices with regards to marketing initiatives. For instance, the Campaign Viewer allows retailers to identify the specific keywords, site referrals, and banner ads that generate the most chats and sales. It also provides valuable insight for optimizing current initiatives, e.g., the Creative Field displays which version of an ad is clicked on by visitors and buyers.

7 SEO/SEM Campaign Optimization Keyword Optimization The Campaign Viewer can help retailers discover negative keywords, i.e., AdWords that are paid for on a monthly basis, yet bring visitors who are not candidates for your product or service. It s also helpful for spotting common negative terms that should be added to a negative match list, as the BGT Partners example illustrated in the preface of this paper. Pay-Per-Click Deployments Real-time monitoring will help retailers quickly spot mistakes in pay-per-click deployments, such as setting a campaign globally when it is better served targeted at a specific region. The ramifications of too wide a deployment can be severe: in a matter of hours, retailers can incur tens of thousands of dollars in costs attracting unqualified visitors to their sites. /Newsletter Campaigns Simply watching visitors in real time can alert retailers to problems with a promotion early in its launch. For example, let s say a retailer introduces an online promotion offering a 10 percent discount on product X for a limited time, and buys an AdWord to attract visitors. Do visitors respond? And what do visitors do one they ve landed on the promotion page? If they leave the site immediately, the retailers will know a problem exists and that steps should be taken to address it. Visitor Path Monitoring visitors in real time enables retailers to see how every visitor on their site arrived, who referred them, and what they do upon arrival. This data can be leveraged to identify details about visitor paths for entry, purchase, and exit. It is important to note that visitors do not need to chat in order for retailers to analyze their behavior. The Capture Visitor feature allows chat agents to select any visitor on the site perhaps one that arrived via an unfamiliar referring site and capture that visitor s session data for alter analysis. LivePerson makes online marketing initiatives more efficient by detecting which efforts bring the best results, and enabling e-commerce managers to tweak those efforts based on real-time visitor behavior. LivePerson Campaign Viewer provides real-time insight into all marketing activities that drive traffic to a website. Chat agents can select any visitor and capture his or her session data for later analysis.

8 Optimizing Websites, Web Processes and Content How friendly is your site to visitors eager to make purchases? Can first-time visitors easily find what they need? Are product accessory pages easy to locate? Does your site have an unusually high shopping cart abandonment rate? Assessing your site s web-processes and flows is as important as assessing your company s pricing and shipping strategy. Sites need to be optimized so that busy consumers can find what they re looking for quickly and efficiently. Site & Content Errors Monitoring visitors in real time helps retailers identify site errors and other obstacles that prevent visitors from accomplishing their goals for coming to a site. All sales promotions are essentially Web processes: visitors should click from point A to point B to point C. If a significant portion of visitors are stopping at point B, the retailer will know there is a problem with the process, and can take steps to address it. The errors may be wide ranging, from a bug in the software to messaging that confuses or fails to resonate with the visitor. Whatever the cause, real-time monitoring will alert the retailer of the presence of an issue so that remedial steps may be taken. Measure and Report on the ROI of the Chat/Voice Channel LivePerson Google Analytics integration enables retailers to incorporate live chat and/or voice statistics with the powerful Google Analytics reporting engine. The benefit of this integration is it allows retailers to measure and report on the ROI of chat and/or voice channels. Live Chat Conversions per Search Engine..

9 By integrating Google Analytics with LivePerson, the retailer gains strategic insight into those visitors who engage with an agent and go on to make purchases. This intelligence can then be leveraged to further finesse ongoing marketing initiatives and drive revenues. For instance, retailers can easily generate reports on keywords and marketing campaigns that result in the most chats; measure and track the impact of LivePerson services on online sales and lead generation; as well as access a wealth of statistical reports that track characteristics of visitors who chat (or talk) and make purchases. Prevent Fraud Retailers can leverage LivePerson s geo-location feature to prevent fraud by flagging and blocking suspicious transactions and comparing a credit card billing address to an actual IP domain location. By discovering non-matching information, sites can halt fraudulent transactions and reduce their attendant losses. Click fraud occurs when publishers who receive a commission for referring traffic to a site flood that site with visitors in an effort to drive up their earnings. Such fraud can be detected by monitoring sites in real-time. If multiple hits are coming in from a pool of users, each of whom click on the site repeatedly, it is most likely a case of click fraud. Conclusion Online sales continue to soar: Forrester Research reports that US online sales reached $175 billion in 2007, and will grow by at least $30 billion each year for the next five years. That such a broad swath of consumers has fully embraced the channel is good news for all companies seeking to do business on the Web. But it also means that competition online will continue to increase as more retailers seek to take advantage of online shopping s popularity. Success in online retailing in 2008 and beyond will come to those who are able to implement the best practices long used in the offline world to the online medium. That means knowing how your visitors are, and responding to them as individuals. And it also means honing online marketing programs so that they reach your target audience, not the online world at-large. Fortunately, the tools that retailers need to accomplish these tasks are now available. They include the LivePerson Operator Console, Campaign Viewer and Google Analytics Integration. With these tools, retailers can segment visitors, determine who to engage, finesse their online marketing programs, webprocess, content, and even detect fraud.

10 About LivePerson LivePerson is a provider of online engagement solutions that facilitate real-time assistance and trusted expert advice. Connecting businesses and experts with consumers seeking help on the Web, our hosted software platform creates more relevant, compelling and personalized online experiences. Every month, LivePerson s intelligent technology helps millions of people succeed online; more than 6,000 companies, including EarthLink, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Qwest, and Verizon, rely on LivePerson to maximize the impact of the online channel. LivePerson is headquartered in New York City. LivePerson, Inc th Avenue 3rd Floor New York, NY T: F: info@liveperson.com solutions.liveperson.com This document is for informational purposes only. LIVEPERSON, INC. PROVIDES THIS DOCUMENT AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of LivePerson, Inc., except as otherwise permitted by law. Prior to publication, reasonable effort was made to validate this information. Actual savings or results achieved may be different than those outlined in the document. This document could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Timpani, SmartBar and LiveCall are trademarks or registered trademarks of LivePerson, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies LivePerson, Inc. All rights reserved.