Web analytics are critical for any Web-based strategy as they provide the necessary insights and intelligence for continually evaluating, augmenting and improving both online and offline strategies. As companies adopt multi-channel based approaches to attracting, selling, and serving customers the need for gaining insights into consumer behavior, generated primarily online, is critical. The value of web analytics is in gaining the essential consumer behavior data and insights to enable marketing strategies executed online and offline to be synchronized with each other (Beasty, 2006).
Web Analytics and Online Selling Strategies
The extensive use of up-selling and cross-selling, so prevalent on websites in the last few years and now fueled by increased intelligence from web analytics, is making predicting which products and service customers want is now practical (Phippen, Sheppard, Furnell, 2004). As entire industries begin to adopt web analytics, most notably consumer electronics, its essential to have the insights they provide to achieve competitive parity (Wind-Mozley, 2008).
Examples of this include the continual competitive strategies of Dell, Gateway, HP and IBM and their use of web analytics to more precisely tune up-sell and cross-sell options offered to customers online. Dell's initial development of an online product configurator was initially seen as revolutionary, yet today everyone has this functionality. What has become revolutionary however is the use HP makes of the customer data they have on printer customers, PC customers, and those purchasing both products from them. HP has a personalization option that allows for customers to entire in their contact information and printer or PC registration. From this data, HP creates customer relationship management strategies (Beasty, 2006) that are specifically targeted to the preferences of each customer group. This ensures a high degree of relevancy for each message sent to HP customers, thereby driving up online sales of supplies, complimentary products and even replacement products. HP also uses this information to create a Master Data Management (MDM) to create a 360 degree view of their customers and fine-tune off-line marketing and selling strategies as well. The coordination of online and offline strategies for attracting, selling and serving customers is made possible with web analytics. Dell Gateway and IBM are also actively using web analytics to support their post-sales upgrade and services selling strategies. These analytics give these companies the opportunity to finely tune offers to specific audiences in larger segments. This micro-targeting of consumers is making it possible for Gateway to be successful in selling flat screen televisions for example, in addition to digital cameras. Web analytics has made it possible for these companies to define entirely new product line extensions as well.
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