• by Brian Kelly , September 1, 2009

Web analytics is ubiquitous for companies today, making the statistics of your Web site readily available.  You can instantly see that you had 100,000 unique visitors on Monday and 140,000 on Tuesday.  But are you able to quickly ascertain any insight beyond these operational metrics?

If your answer is no, you are not alone.  Three major companies recently had huge Web traffic spikes and in each case missed out on capitalizing on the opportunity.  The reason:  by the time they analyzed the Web data, the traffic had disappeared forever, taking with it a tremendous opportunity.

J. Crew and the Obama Effect
Michelle Obama, during a campaign appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," wore a J. Crew outfit and even mentioned the brand.  The New York Daily News later pointed out that jcrew.com saw a 64% increase in traffic and page views for the outfit worn by Mrs. Obama grew 464% from the previous day.

But J. Crew didn't translate that opportunity into increased revenues.  JPMorgan reported that the incident had no meaningful effect on the company's finances and even J. Crew's CEO stated that, "I can't say she drove [an increase in sales]."

What could they have done?

Clearly, J.Crew knew visitors and page views were exploding but they had no visibility into the behavior of these visitors. What other items did they browse?  Which colors?  Was the behavior different for first-time visitors vs. repeat visitors vs. repeat buyers?  What did they put in their cart?  What did they ultimately purchase, if anything?

The questions continue as your train of thought takes over.  Looking beyond the Web analytics reporting dashboards, your powerful but slow-moving corporate analytics come into play.  But this is the Internet and you don't have weeks to wait for analysis before you react.

Using behavioral analytics the very next day, J. Crew could have split traffic into behavior-based segments, quickly put together a few targeted email campaigns, adjusted the website's homepage and product pages and increased the relevance of their "our stylists also love" suggestions, all based upon the behaviors of those spike-driven visitors.

Instead, they lost the chance to convert fleeting visitors into revenue.

NBC and the Palin Effect
In the spirit of equal time, an example from the Republican side is vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's effect on the ratings of "Saturday Night Live" and the related traffic to NBC.com.  Last October, when the SNL sketches featuring Tina Fey were generating much buzz for the show and the network, SNL hit its highest ratings in 14 years, according to Nielsen Media Research.  Additionally, NBC.com stated around the same time that a single Palin sketch had generated 1.7 million views.

However, NBC.com was unable to capitalize on either the television or online spikes.  As the presidential election came and went, so did SNL's popularity.  In fact, for the month of November, SNL wasn't even one of NBC's own top show websites, although NBC had four of the top six show sites across all networks!

Once again, by quickly looking at the behaviors of these new visitors - other content viewed, other shows watched - NBC.com could have easily found ways to increase stickiness, particularly via their own content.  If new viewers were uninterested in other SNL clips, they could have suggested "Heroes" or "Deal or No Deal," which were the #1 and #2 top trafficked show websites across all networks in November, according to Hitwise.  

As is so common with the speed of the internet today, by the time the spike was understood the opportunity was lost.  Even today, SNL's site features only one cross-promoted show above the footer.

The Incredible Rise of Susan Boyle
Susan Boyle's "Britain's Got Talent" videos on YouTube have been watched over 110 million times, making it the third-most-viewed performance of all time.  But, that huge amount of traffic did nothing to help the television audience for "America's Got Talent."  Before this season's first episode, USA Today reported that NBC expected a "draft" from the Boyle hoopla to provide a ratings boost.  
What did happen?  A 12% drop vs. last year's opener and the show's worst-ever premiere, according to the LA Times.

Without a doubt, viewers of the YouTube videos were driven to the Web sites of "Britain's Got Talent" and the show's producer, ITV.  Going deeper than just traffic and page views, they should have been looking for patterns in visitor behaviors.  Of those who visited, what kept them on the site?  Did they watch other videos?  Of singers?  Did they look at blogs?  At other content?  What content was linked to longer "times on site?"  Simple web statistics may answer each of these questions individually, but not in a combined, train-of-thought fashion that can be instantly turned into marketing action.

Using behavioral analysis, ITV could have quickly segmented casual, somewhat interested, and very interested viewers, and then focused promotions related to the upcoming AGT premiere.  The opportunity lies in the distinction between valuable behavior and irrelevant behavior.  In ITV's case, the opportunity was missed.

The Takeaway
You need not be a major online presence or be mentioned on a national television show to realize the value of quickly understanding your visitors' behaviors. Whether your site receives 100,000 or 100 million hits per day, there are huge opportunities for you to significantly impact your business by quickly understanding and reacting to the visitor behaviors that drive monetization.