Strategies Segmenting Web Traffic for Marketing
Tutorial Article for Online Marketers using Simple JavaScript
May 30, 2009
Segmenting web traffic is important in delivering the correct marketing message for the maximum conversion of visitors into customers. With a working knowledge of JavaScript, or the ability to explain to a programmer (such as can be found on RentACoder.com) what the general idea is, a web marketer can make a real difference in conversion levels by segmenting entry and exit traffic.
The trick is to get the right message to the right visitor profile, and then test conversion rates as frequently as possible.
Segmenting Incoming Visitor Traffic for Higher Conversion
The visitor arrives at the web site, via one of the three following methods:
- A Google search;
- Direct link from an email, word of mouth, report, etc.;
- Another web site (recommendation).
These are the three most likely methods – there may be others, but they will be in a minority. Given that the list is so small, it is possible to write some simple JavaScript code to detect which of the above is the method by which the visitor has been acquired.
For the adventurous, it is also possible to get the exact keywords that were used to deliver the visitor too, however this is only really useful if the website owner has access to server side scripting such as PHP or Perl.
Knowing which of these methods is important, because it allows the online marketer to deliver a different marketing message to the visitor (prospect). This is a kind of market segmentation, and is important in terms of getting the right message to the right prospect in order to increase conversion.
Redirecting the prospect to the right page, is simplicity in itself. Here, for example, it is used in the body tag:
- <body onload="window.location='http://www.domain.com/google-index.html';">
The page that they are redirected to needs to offer a marketing message that reflects the method by which they arrived at the site. If it was a direct recommendation, they may receive a different message than if it was the result of a Google Search.
Tip : to make sure that the pages are not indexed, use a NOROBOT directive to tell Google, and other search engines, to ignore the customized pages when building an index of the site for search purposes.
At some point, the visitor will then leave the page, and possibly the site. If they make it as far as the shopping cart, studies have shown that in 60% of cases they still do not make a purchase, which is where having a segmented exit strategy can help.
Segmenting Exiting Visitor Traffic for Higher Conversion
There is a product called Exit Splash which professes to provide this kind of facility. It is a very simple piece of JavaScript that just detects where the visitor, or prospect, is going when they leave a page. It can be placed on any page, and should be combined with the above detection technique to deliver the appropriate marketing message:
- Exit via payment processor – one time offer, upgrade, or other upsell;
- Exit to another site – free offer, mailing list sign up, or price reduction;
- Exit to another page on the same site – one time offer.
These are just examples, and the reader is encouraged to make their own use of the decision making process that governs the visitors experience by testing how they arrived at the site, and where they are going afterwards.
Advanced marketers can also track this information in a database, using a PHP or Perl script on the server to maintain a list of visitor paths and actions, including exit and entry splash conversion results. In this way, they can build up a profile of what works, and what doesn't in order to streamline the marketing message delivery.
