4 Tools to Track the Effectiveness of an Online Campaign

Having done this for some time, I find it odd how little people seem to actually track a website's effectiveness for online campaigns.  The general measurements tend to be the click-through rates, the overall traffic to the site, the number of donations received, and the average gift sizes. These are all important, but I feel like many people leave out checking into exactly why they got the results they did.  For this reason, I have put together a list of four online tools that I find very useful in determining what visitors to the site were doing and why.

The first tool--and perhaps one of the most well known--is Google Analytics.  Web analytics software is one of those essential pieces for tracking any site, they tell you how many people visited, why, from where, for how long, and can even give you an idea of what content is getting the most attention.  Google provides a free analytics tool which is one of the most sophisticated and easy to use tools I have come across to date.  

To set up Google Analytics on your site, simply login to Google, fill out the registration form for setting up a site (which is primarily getting the domain name and a few pieces of information about the site), and then use the few lines of Google's code that you can insert into your site.  Every 24 hours,the online tool will update and allow you to view all of your site statistics and even download and print them in an easy to follow PDF.  

The next tool and one of my favorites is CrazyEgg, which displays "heat maps" of exactly where people on your page are clicking on a given page. This may sound a bit like analytics, but there is a small and subtle difference.  Analytics is checking what links people followed, where CrazyEgg will show you what they clicked on.

This has several benefits. First, it will show you at a quick glance which areas in your site are getting some of the most attention. This is important since Analytics only tracks the link, but if you have several links that go to the same page you can now see which ones are getting more attention.  By knowing what people are view more and what is of interest to them, you can adjust other aspects of the campaign site to be just as compelling allowing you to better direct your visitors to where you want them to go.

Another benefit is that it will show you pieces of content that people are clicking on that may not be links at all.  This will give you a quick view at a possible usability issue.  It may not be something that needed to be a link in your mind but if people are confusing it for one, or thinking it should be one then you can change those pieces to better suite the needs of the visitors.

CrazyEgg is not free like Google Analytics, but it is not expensive either. Starting at $9.99 a month for the basic level, it will allow you to monitor 10 pages. My recommendation is to put this on the most important pages in the site including the home page, campaign landing page and the donation page.

Another tool I find very useful is ClickTale.  ClickTale is a "in-page web analytics" tool.  The main difference between ClickTale and other analytics tools is that this one will allow you to see the breakdown of the page not just the links followed around the site.

Say for example we know people stay on a single page linger than any  other on the site.  Why? What is it that is keeping them there that is not on the other pages?  With ClickTale we can find that out. 

 

ClickTale generates a video which shows you what the visitors are actually doing inside the webpage.  It records every visitor interaction including scroll, click, mouse movement, and keystroke.  This allows you to do inexpensive usability testing by seeing exactly what the visitors to your site are doing.  It will also generate heat map pages that will show you what visitors are doing as a group, including how far down people scroll, what is getting more interaction,  and so much more information.

The final tool is Google Website Optimizer.  This is a wonderful tool for A/B testing of a campaign allowing you to create multiple versions of pages or even just portions of a page to see which is most effective.  

Google Web Optimizer works by allowing you to create projects which will measure the different pieces of content and determine which are the most effective in getting conversion.  To create a project you simply choose a page and a goal and generate several versions of that content.  Google takes care of the rest by segmenting the users for you, then it will analyze which page version and even which aspects on a page are the most effective.  The tests can be as basic as comparing 2 pieces of content or complex testing with multiple variations.

This is useful in seeing which imagery, stories, and layout can be most effective and allow you to make changes as needed to actively improve the campaign as it runs.

It is true that any of these tools on their own can be great resources to an online campaign.  The real benefit is that when tied together they will give you the complete overview of exactly how effective your campaign is.  This will allow you to make changes to the campaign as it runs.  You can also use these tools to plan for the next campaign since you can see precisely what worked well and what did not.  Already knowing exactly what your visitors want is a very valuable resource kind of like reading their minds. 

Comments

[N Daniel, Devon PA]

Very helpful information. Too bad this was posted without proofreading!