iTWire - Web analytics can give second shot at sales

Web analytics can give second shot at sales

by David M Williams
Thursday, 04 December 2008
Page 1 of 3 Do you know how many visitors to your web site eventually end up making a purchase? Why did the others not buy? Did they drop out during the sales process? Can you work out why? And, importantly, can you pick that sale up again? The answers might be sitting dormant in your web log - if only someone looked. Register now to win a Canon EOS 500D Five years ago I was introduced to a category of product that is still as relevant today as it was then. While consulting to a large Australian online company, web application developers Izilla found themselves “Johnny-on-the-spot” when the client – in an unrelated incident – discovered its e-commerce gateway was down and, in fact, had been for three weeks. You’ll appreciate that was a chilling revelation. The client was understandably disturbed by the obvious loss of immediate sales as well as repeat business to visitors who would never return. Izilla were asked if they knew of any monitoring tools available that could regularly test the health of web-based apps and alert on failure. Yet, the bulk of tools that could be found were extremely trite. Most would ping a web server and simply ensure the server was responsive. Others honed in on specific web sites but still did little more than test a valid starting page was displayed when the site’s address was loaded. This is still true today; searching Google for web site monitoring reveals many results – including paid results – for systems which fundamentally do just these exact same things. On the one hand it’s absolutely critical to know if your web server has failed, but on the other hand, in modern complex distributed commerce sites there are so many other possible points of failure even if the hardware is still up and running. Back in the scenario I described, Izilla determined to commit their in-house resources to develop a tool which would go beyond such basics. Within twelve months they had created what they called “the WAM,” namely, the Web Application Minder. Originally, Izilla considered calling it the Web Application Monitor but they felt “Monitor” had the wrong connotations, suggesting merely passive observance. The WAM did much more this merely “monitor” a site. Instead, the WAM, they considered, was a critical utility to give businesses peace of mind because not only do they know their site is accessible but because the WAM also works to minimise lost trade. Just how did the WAM work, and what practical lessons can you learn for your own online business? CONTINUED << First page < 1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>