Gathering Customer Intelligence Via The Web

Are you trying to figure our how to make your Internet site pay? Ever wish you could read your customers' minds? Maybe you can.

For example, the analysis of just one Canadian site shows how the Internet is gaining popularity as a source of on-line information; and how buyers are increasing using the Web to shop for computing products. Looking at the on-line habits of readers of the end-user-oriented areas here at TheTechnoZone  may provide you with some insights into the interests and behaviors of this buying group.

For some resellers, the techniques used to gather this information will be applicable to your own on-line endeavors as you look to track usage on your own Web site. But the data itself reveals something of how people shop, and what they are interested in and are thinking about.

On-line usage logs for this site (http://thetechnozone.com/logs) were sampled regularly since its inception. Those of you with advanced knowledge of spreadsheets or statistical analysis tools may have fancier methods than those that were used to analyze the data. But in many ways, simply examining the most popular items and figuring out the patterns of what displays long-term "staying power" is easy enough to do with nothing more than a printout and a red pen. Excel's ability to export spreadsheet data as an HTML table, made for easy distribution among company managers.

In recent weeks, the site is seeing up to 240,000 requests per month. But what does that mean?

A "request" basically means that a Web browser has requested access of a URL - be it a GIF or JPG picture, a Web page, or another downloadable file. Thus, if your Web stats say you have had 240,000 requests, and you have five pictures on your Web page, you have had 4,000 actual visits to that page (five pictures + one HTML page = 6 requests). Note also that this does not necessarily mean you have had 4,000 visitors. You could have had one visitor dropping by 4,000 times. Cached pages, proxy servers and other issues come into play, lessening the impact of multiple visits by repeat customers.

The home page here at The Techno Zone, for example, represents five requests the first time it is accessed. Repeatedly returning to this page during a session produces no additional "hits."

The Techno Zone's pages, particularly in the PC Buyer's Guide area, tend to be economical in use of graphics, in order to keep download times to a minimum. Typical pages only account for three or four requests each. Accessing a simple page with only one graphic makes only two requests. A typical article on the site (including graphics and text) averages about five requests. Therefore, the standard rule of thumb - about a 10-to-1 requests-to-hits calculation, tends to be extremely pessimistic when calculating the number of visitors received at the site.

The potential of the Internet is huge for those who figure out how to tap it. Market research firm Dataquest says 82 million personal computers were connected to the 'Net by the end of 1997, up 71 per cent over the year before. That growth will spiral to 268 million connected PCs, by the year 2001, says Dataquest.

Also note that the "unique domains" would increment only once if 10,000 people from compuserve.com all visited the site. Cached pages similarly do not register in these numbers.

In October '99, traffic on the site increased more than 50 per cent from a month earlier, which suggests that our Halloween promotion and television advertising on Dotto on Data (seen across Canada on the Knowledge Network and affiliated stations) was effective. Even more encouraging was the observation that growth from month to month was significant. Usage since the inception of this site has grown by thousands of visitors per month, with the greatest numbers of hits occurring on days in which advertising occurs. Bingo!

Interestingly, some of the most popular areas of the Web site during recent months have been the areas with high-bandwidth content, such as MP3 audio files and video clips. Also popular was The Joke Zone area. It appears that many people are not working too hard while they are browsing during business hours!

Indeed, we also found that "off-beat" pages with unusual content were extremely popular. For example, a page of Kahlil Gibran prose on one site I examined the logs of back in April, for example, was more popular than a heavily publicized product roundup that represented the supposed interests of its core audience. Tellingly, the Gibran page was not linked anywhere on the site - ample proof that the large volume of "hits" were coming from search engines, not idle browsing. We can only assume that the fact that Gibran's book, The Prophet, is a popular source of quotes to use in weddings may have boosted this page's popularity further during the April-to-June "wedding season."

Here's a disturbing trend: A picture on this Web site with the title "warez.gif" was one of the most popular requests. "Warez," of course is a term for pirated software. Presumably, the search engines were to blame. (The picture was unrelated to pirated software and was simply named inappropriately.)

Articles about the "Year 2000 problem" attracting a significant number of visitors for much of 1999, but these numbers have -- predictably -- fallen off in recent months. At least on this site, Web authoring as a category remains fairly hot, as is computer news and, of course, new hardware.

There is ample evidence to suggest that highly focused "lists of links to related content" sections are the most visited - especially when a frame remains visible with other choices on the screen, as is the case with our Search Engine. In other words, whether you like frames on Web pages or not, there is evidence that they keep people on your pages a lot longer.

Other topics and editorial areas that are especially hot at The Techno Zone include:

• Microsoft conspiracy theories
• Celeron, Pentium II or Pentium III upgrade questions
• hard drive upgrades
• other PC troubleshooting info, especially involving Windows 98
• Macintosh, especially recent Apple hardware and Mac OS tips
• 3D and graphics cards
• Internet, especially relating to virus and browser security issues
• Linux
• Emulation (especially of the Mac)
• scanners

Digital cameras and ink-jet printers did not fare as well as we had imagined they might, although an article on ink pigment longevity was an unexpected hit. But is Java popular? Not based on these stats: the Java article link scored only eight hits - a dud!

We've been fairly impressed with a Web statistics analysis program called Accrue (formerly Marketwave) Hitlist, although the enormous size of the logs it creates when all the options are enabled can quickly clog your server's hard drive. It extrapolates monthly data from shorter periods, displays relevant stats as bar charts, shows how many people read only one page (a worthwhile figure to ponder!), and so on. A trial version is freely downloadable from http://www.marketwave.com/hl. Obviously, the reading pattern of on-line visitors to any particular Web site doesn't tell the whole story. There is much to be said for asking visitors outright about how they feel about the service and products they obtain from you. Find out what products they are thinking of purchasing in the coming months, and what part of your operations could be improved upon. People like to know you care about their opinion.

There are many ways you can improve customer feedback for your own business, but the Internet can play a role. In order to better serve your customers' needs, you have to gather intelligence.