Anticipating future trends and behaviour patterns
Published: 23 Nov 2009
Predictive analytics is about extracting information from data and using it to anticipate future trends and behaviour patterns. This is based on a variety of techniques from statistics and data mining.
From an online travel company’s perspective, Expedia’s director of business development EMEA, Cameron Jones says predictive analytics helps in prioritising projects and investment in resources with expected revenue and profitability impacts.
“Each project we embark on has clearly set out objectives, goals and expectations which we measure against pre and post shipping an enhancement. Predictive analytics helps us understand the impact of enhancements on various parts of the business and enables us to plan more effectively Search Engine Marketing strategies through to call centre staffing levels,” says Jones.
Jones in an interview with EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta also spoke about web analytics, behaviour analytics and much more. Excerpts:
It is said that if one is only acting on numbers, it is impossible to accurately judge whether a user has had a satisfactory experience with a particular website. What do you make of this viewpoint and accordingly, how should one approach web analytics for a website?
Cameron Jones: Considering only data like conversion could lull you into a false sense of success and risk ignoring dissatisfied customers that may purchase but never return. Through including qualitative data like ‘time spent to completing a task’ helps provide another perspective on the effectiveness of your website. This helps answer questions like “It is great our conversion percentages are increasing, but are our customers purchasing efficiently and are they satisfied?” Companies with the budget and resource can take website analysis a step further by incorporating Eyeball Tracking, verbatim feedback from Website Feedback tools, Call Centre Feedback, Focus Groups and even monitor Social Network mediums like Twitter and travel blogs. Collecting data from multiple tools, touch points and surveys helps develop a more accurate picture of a website’s performance.
Can you elaborate on what all should one focus on when it comes to website performance reporting and analysis? How do you assess the maturity level of offerings/ solutions for summary by traffic type, keyword and derivatives analysis, and search engine analysis?
Cameron Jones: Depending on the brand positioning and marketing strategy for your website there are a variety of options to consider. If your business focuses primarily on acquiring traffic from search engines both paid (SEM) and organic (SEO) search with little relative investment in branding, Google Analytics can provide data to help understand these two channels and optimise key word purchasing strategies. Businesses that have a focus on graphical advertising often benefit from Doubleclick which provides data to measure traffic source and campaign reach. This is valuable data for understanding brand exposure. Omniture is a great tool for measuring traffic through other channels, like affiliate marketing, to understand the quality and profitability of traffic from various channels. Omniture provides an effective end to end solution that uncovers how traffic filters through your website.
At Expedia we use a combination of all these tools, plus others, to monitor performance and determine strategy enhancements. When we have specific objectives or questions that we need answered we may focus on the results from one or two tools.
Can you provide an insight into the utility of tools, which help in tracking website visitors from their point of arrival on the website to completion of the booking? How should one plan and mark budgets for usage of these tools as part of overall website optimisation spends?
Cameron Jones: With many Web Analytics tools on the market it can be confusing knowing where to start and which tools will deliver the most value within budget and resource constraints. Many, off the shelf, tools provide very powerful analysis so it is important to determine the priorities for the business. At Expedia we use a combination of tools to understand different perspectives of our traffic sources, quality and profitability. Different tools enable a more customer centric approach which fuels constant innovation and continuous improvement at Expedia.
When it comes to budget and resources, it makes sense to start with the free services like Google Analytics, then move up the scale of investment if you can see the opportunity justifies the investment in capital and resource. The more complex tools require more internal resources to effective manage and realise the value.
Which is the best way to make regular comparisons of different website layouts, looking for the best combination of content and graphical images to drive revenue?
Cameron Jones: A|B testing or Multivariate testing are powerful ways to help understand how new website layouts impact on conversion and customer behaviour. At Expedia we use another off the shelf product by SiteSpect which enables us to run multivariate tests and importantly understand how long it will take to reach statistical significance and understand the confidence level of such tests. The more advanced tools enable tracking right down to profitability level by product. Multivariate testing should not be used in isolation as it is also important to consider the impacts on SEO strategies when balancing graphical and content balance.
Can you provide an insight into behaviour analytics? How is it measured and how does it help in optimising website content?
Cameron Jones: Behaviour analytics help us understand and predict our customers’ desires and to more effectively serve relevant content and products in real time, ultimately increasing satisfaction and conversion. For example if a customer is searching for a hotel in a gateway city for a 2 night midweek stay, this is likely to be a business customer that favours certain types of hotels and is focused on making a quick purchase decision without the disrupting of ads…behavioural analytics helps us to initially segment and understand certain customer groups and then anticipate new customers needs when they display similar behaviour on the site. The sort order for hotels is a critical element of providing relevant hotels to customers. The hotel sort order at Expedia has benefited from years of development and utilises sophisticated algorithms which include behavioural data to display the most relevant hotels to customers.
Comments
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WNS said on 4 Dec 09:
It’s pretty insightful to read an expert sharing his views. Brilliant interview!
Understanding the various behavioral patterns of a customer becomes really easy with the analytics mentioned in this article.
I totally agree with Cameron, social networking sites have made a surveyor's job much more effective in measuring a website's accurate execution. Recent trends state that users prefer OTAs more than anything else to acquire information related to ticketing, hotel booking and transport facilities from the spot, all under one roof.
Web Analytics will certainly help OTAs achieve credibility by appropriate performance measuring tactics and effective data research skill to overcome the most likely obstacles in their business.