WebTrends Sales Funnel Optimisation and Event Tracking
WebTrends Sales Funnel Optimisation and Event Tracking
Sales funnels have long being a visual way of demonstrating to marketing managers how their application or sales processes work. It has also been a long talked about subject at events like eMetrics where different funnels (usually related to alcoholic drinks).
Is your funnel a martini glass? Lots of traffic but one major stoppage point.
Perhaps its a pint glass where there is very little ‘leakage’ (excuse the pun).
However, is your organisation suited to make changes to the application process. Those that are reliant on external scoring tools like a credit card or a loan will take much longer to change. There is also the release schedule to consider – maybe there will only be one or two secure releases a year?
Here is an example of a WebTrends funnel:
This shows the outflows from a process on the right and inflows from the left. So if the customer were to require help at a particular stage and clicked the help button and if properly tagged we would be able to see not only where the customer went but also what question was being raised. When looked over a period of time we will see whether the drop out was an isolated incident or whether it is a common fault with the application form.
On a lot of modern application forms there are optimising new programming technologies which prompt customers to re-enter information without refreshing the page. If the page doesn’t refresh then it causes a problem because the web analytics javascript doesn’t fire and therefore no information is sent to the data collection server. However, you can create a pseudo-pageview by forcing a pageview to be made and thus information sent to the data collection server.
The only proviso is that the user MUST have javascript enabled on their system so before you look at implementing these event tracking elements check your web analytics and see what the percentage of visits are non-javascript sessions. However, also check with your technical teams whether javascript is required for completing the application form in the first place.
Two funnel types
Page to Page
If your application is a number of pages and if your reporting strategy requirements only require page based analysis then placing the necessary tags on the page (see below) you’ll b
WT.si_n = {funnel name and must be exactly the same on all pages}
WT.si_x = {numeric place}
Page Element to Page Element
If you’ve got a short one page application form – such as an online registration – then you may only have one page to tag which won’t give you much insight into the funnels efficiency at conversion. However, by using the event tracking functionality you’ll be able to see visitor movement from one form field element to another.
By using the javascript onevent handler ‘onblur’ you’ll be able to see when a visitor ‘completes’ one field and moves to another.
onblur=”dcsMultiTrack(‘WT.si_n’,'funnel001′,’WT.si_x’,'1′);”
How to use the onevent handler to capture events
As previously mentioned you will be able to record error messages by using the same syntax as above (just change the parameters. Please also not that I’ve changed the javascript onevent handler to onfocus rather than onblur which means the tag will fire when it appears.
onfocus=”dcsMultiTrack(‘DCSext.ErrorMsg’,’AppForm_ErrorPostcode‘,’DCSext.ErrorCount’,’1‘);”
From the above syntax you will be able to create a custom report which will record the number of times a paricular error has appeared. The items in italics show the name of the error (custom written) and also the count (summed up will help you see which errors appear more).
Custom Report Creation
If you’ve created the dcsMultiTrack function as described above then you then need to create the necessary dimensions (descriptor) and measures (numerics).
N.B.
Please note that dcsMultiTrack is case senstive and will not work otherwise.
Related Links
WebTrends knowledge base article on page interactions using dcsMultiTrack
WebTrends Documentation Center
