Surveylab - Case Study
Dan Wardle, Technical Director at UK-based Surveylab, Ltd. (www.surveylab.co.uk), is a veteran of the online survey business. But some of Dan's clients turn to him for more than online surveys—they also ask him about web design and web metrics best practices. In his role as surveymaster and technical guide, Dan has been asked on more than one occasion to recommend web metrics solutions to his clients
Guiding Clients Toward the Right Metrics
"We got very comfortable guiding our small business clients toward whatever analysis tools their ISP offered—typically free tools like Analog or Webalizer," said Dan. "But we found that this wasn't as effective as it could be."
"One thing our clients found extremely frustrating about 'traditional' web metrics programs was that they could see the hits, but they couldn't really qualify the traffic. When clients looked at the reports, they had difficulty understanding what they were really seeing. For example, they'd see 1000 Google hits (which turned out to be the Google-bot indexing the site), another 1000 hits from other bots, Surveylab's IP address (of course we accessed the site regularly!) and other confusing numbers. When it came down to it, there was very little usable information."
ClickTracks: "An Eye-Opener"
One of the things ClickTracks was particularly adept at was showing Dan the search terms being used. "The reports provided by the ISPs weren't listing many of the search terms. Using ClickTracks Analyzer's Search Report, we were surprised to find that on two of our clients' sites, as much traffic was coming from MSN as it was from Google. It was also an eye-opener to find that some pages we'd thought were popular simply weren't getting the level of traffic we'd anticipated," continued Dan.
Using ClickTracks Analyzer, Dan and his clients get to the exact information they need, without having to dig through the volumes of irrelevant stats offered by the ISP-generated web metrics reports. "Analyzer gives proof that a page(s) isn't working - that visitors are leaving the site or not finding the page - in a very readable and easy to understand format. The clients take notice! I'm able to measure what works, and as a result, my methods and skills evolve," noted Dan.
The Bottom Line
Has Dan been happy with ClickTracks Analyzer? Absolutely! "ClickTracks has impacted my business in a positive way. Analyzer helps me to deliver "value-added" services to my clients at little extra cost.
"Before Analyzer, I once resorted to analyzing a web site’s logs by hand, but with limited time and resources I can’t afford to take out two days every time I want some answers for what should be pretty straightforward questions. Analyzer definitely paid for itself within the first month of installing it," said Dan.
"We've been able to use Analyzer's reports to visually demonstrate to a client why we design certain elements of a questionnaire the way that we do making it easier to obtain their buy-in on projects. I genuinely believe it has increased Surveylab's credibility with our clients and ultimately will help us to maximize our own client retention and loyalty," concluded Dan.
