The Great Pyramids of Web

It has been suggested that one of the greatest accomplishments of the Web is it’s ability to spit out a multitude of data on our customers’ behaviour – far more than is readily available offline.

No matter how solid or reliable, the data alone isn’t much of an achievement. We don’t marvel at how solid or reliable the brick is that the Ancient Egyptians used. We marvel at what they did with it. We marvel at the structures - The Great Pyramids of Egypt.

There are multiple schemas to which we can base our Great Pyramids of Data. Firstly, we will touch on one of the most well known conceptual pyramids in business (but maybe one of the least used), and then briefly introduce three more that can help to build insights into customer behaviour on the web.

 

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Most of us have been exposed to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at some point. We may possibly have ignored it and any other hierarchy because it does not seem instantly relevant. Let’s revisit this hierarchy:

 

For the sake of those who have had these theories drilled into them already, we won’t dwell on the definitions. The basic gist is that only once the base needs are met can the next level of needs be targeted. One set of needs rests upon the foundations of the other, I.e. you’ll be getting nowhere telling someone to drink your super-cool cola to gain social recognition and ‘be all that the can be’ if that person is just looking to get their hands on enough water to survive.

Even if you see no actionable outcomes from this type of analysis, it pays to realise that, if you don’t know where your visitors or customers are in this hierarchy, you cannot begin to respond to their needs.

Future Now’s Hierarchy of Buyer Needs / Website Optimisation

This Hierarchy helps to clarify why a systemic approach to web marketing is needed, and why focusing on usability or promotion alone (which many agencies will ask of you) will just not cut it.

 

Persuasion is a prerequisite for conversion. In contrast to Maslow’s hierarchy, our success depends on the top of the hierarchy being reached for a significant proportion of our visitors. Before the visitor reaches the bottom of the conversion funnel, our online marketing must be able to convince the visitor that each of the levels of the needs hierarchy can be met. This can apply to both the product and the website.

Focusing on functionality or usability is focusing on the fundamental foundations. A functional website does not in any way guarantee persuasion, yet a persuasive website must also be (to a degree) intuitive, usable, accessible and functional.

To learn how to optimise a site with this hierarchy, start with Brian Eisenberg’s post.

To learn more about how this can apply to products and buyer needs, check out this post.

Jim Novo’s Actionable Data Pyramid

Data only becomes useful to us when it is moulded into actionable information. Consider the following pyramid.

After witnessing a number of dead trees presented and described as ‘market research reports’, this one really does appeal to me. I don’t care what social class my customers belong to, or what education they have, unless it can be demonstrated that it will significantly impact their behaviour or response to my marketing efforts.

Behaviour and responses is where the action happens, and Demographics and psychographics can be used as tools to help determine these. Professional analytics services will show your customers’ behaviour.

Find more insights from Jim Novo

Web Analytics 2.0

This one was never really presented as a Hierarchy. It’s just presented like this here to show how we could apply the above principles to Web Analytics specifically:

This really presents web analytics data in a more marketing oriented view. The focus is on the smaller amount of really useful and relevant information at the top of the pyramid.

Visitors land here, click here, then go here, or some leave. So what? We need to first put some context around the clickstream, then:

• Determine Outcomes. Drill down and look into distribution and segments rather than averages of the data.
• Test to see what we can change and how it affects performance.
• See solid results from testing. Learn from these results.
• See what else is out there. You are not alone. You have competitors and industry dynamics
• Actually interpret the findings, and gain insights into the customer’s buying process. Clicks do not equal intent.
• Use these insights and start the process over again.

Learn more about Web Analytics 2.0 from Google’s Analytics Evangelist.

Build those pyramids

How do we deal with growing competition and of raw data pouring in? Build a pyramid or two. Think of what insights you really want to reach. Plan and set out the foundations and pile that data into those foundations. There are no kitset pyramids ready to cater for every web empire. Teaming up with a results-oriented company, such as Alkemi New Zealand or Exceed Online, can help you to analyse and focus on systemic issues to help reach your e-commerce aspirations.