How User Journey Reporting can help you grow your business

 

Customers usually look at a product or brand several times before buying. We call these clicks “touchpoints” and the click path from first click to conversion forms the user journey. Online customer journeys are becoming increasingly complicated and often create large data sets that are difficult to understand. But these mounds of data can represent an important value for you, if you know how to analyse them!

We are discussing User Journey reporting with David Cadman, Business Intelligence Product Owner at Tradedoubler. David coordinates the management and development of our BI technologies.  He has worked at Tradedoubler for over 10 years and has a deep understanding of the vast amount of data that is at our disposal and how to use this most effectively.  He also has a background in Search marketing.

 

What is the benefit of user journey reporting?

Last year Tradedoubler tracked 1.7 billion clicks and 28 million conversions.  We were able to build a user journey for the vast majority of those conversions by grouping together clicks and conversions carrying the same unique user ID.  Since 2015 we have provided key insights and visualisations based on user journey data via our Business Intelligence platform.

In the affiliate marketing space, clients reviewing user journey analyses get a much broader and richer understanding of how websites promoting them work together in generating leads and sales.  A key takeaway is that websites vital in driving consumers towards conversion, but rarely or never fulfilling the role of last touchpoint can be identified – and potentially remunerated.  This helps to emphasize that clients generally benefit from a wide range of partnerships encompassing affiliates with a variety of business models in order to achieve an optimum return on investment.

 

Why is this especially important today?

Today clients have a vast amount of data available to them from which to draw insights and base decisions.  Our User Journey offering stands out in helping to solve a significant part of this problem.  Also, given that often clients’ marketing budgets are increasingly stretched and scrutinised, User Journey reporting sheds far greater light on how core aspects of their digital marketing strategy work, relative to the insights provided by standard last click attribution reporting.  This helps in facilitating cost-effective decisions and the optimised allocation of resources.

 

Can you give some examples of what kind of insights advertisers can benefit from?

User Journey reporting gives advertisers and marketers transparency on:

  • How different websites and website business models work together in attracting consumers and driving them towards conversion.
  • How many hours/days users typically take between first click and conversion
  • How many clicks typically make up user journeys
  • How many distinct websites typically participate in user journeys
  • What are the key correlations between specific user journey characteristics and what is purchased.  For example, larger basket values being preceded by a greater number of clicks and a longer average journey time.
  • How different programs and marketing channels act together in attracting consumers and driving them towards conversion.
  • Which websites tend to have shorter conversion windows which can be utilised for pushing flash/short term promotions

 

Additionally marketers working with content affiliates, such as influencers and bloggers, need to be able to measure how those affiliates — which can often appear toward the beginning of the path to purchase — contribute to revenue. If you only look at performance on a last-click basis, it’s likely that the contribution of these affiliates will be undervalued. You might even choose to pause activity with your content partners, which could lead to a loss in revenue further down the line.

For example, in the UK we have worked with a large electronics retailer, analysing data across the whole user journey. This revealed up to 5x more revenue attributable to content affiliates than looking at performance solely on a last-click basis. This insight gave the brand confidence to invest more into its content affiliates.

 

If you are interested to deep dive into your digital marketing data, get in touch with us!

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