I was chatting with one of our School Deans today about various results and he posed the question “Is it possible to see which courses people viewed after seeing one course?”. His interest was based on the fact that the user doesn’t always purchase the “most frequently visited course”. They often view one thing, but end up purchasing something else, and our reporting doesn’t highlight that behaviour.
Now, that got me thinking…that’s probably pretty common behaviour. So how can we make that visible?
Search is a veritable gold mine that is frequently ignored.
I’m not talking about Search Engines and Keywords, I’m talking about your internal search. Providing you track internal keyword searches, you can gain a wealth of understanding.
Internal search is generally used as a quick wayfinding method, highlighting areas of content that are well used, but are not readily available. And more often than not, it’s seasonal as well.
I’ve heard a number of times from potential Omniture customers (I’ve been asked to provide multiple Omniture references), that they’ve heard it’s not easy to set up or maintain. Well, that’s a myth. Omniture is in fact relatively easy to get set up and relatively easy to maintain.
I got asked today to provide a benchmark value for time on site for a competitor of ours. They asked me if I thought that 3 minutes and 41 seconds was a good time for someone to be on their site. Not an easy one to answer.
Users are here for a good time, not a long time. Get them to where you want them. Quickly. Then cross-promote them. Engage them. Then the good time can turn into a long time. But Time on Site certainly won’t tell you.