The Death Valley of Over Analysis
Picture this; you run an eCommerce site and your revenue isn’t where it needs to be… and you’re only in Q1! You have a few options, you could say it’s everyone for themselves and recreate a scene out of Lord of the Flies OR (and preferably) you could do some analysis to see where the issue is. The only problem with the latter, you find yourself in the Death Valley of Over Analysis!
Identify the Issue
On a recent call we heard the following; “We’re going to tweak our messaging and turn off display, because it isn’t working. Our AB test is inconclusive after a week and we’re also making tweaks to the conversion funnel. We’re really hoping this moves the needle.” Umm, NO! While the issue is probably in there somewhere it most certainly is not going to help to change ALL of that at one time. When testing your digital strategy you have to make incremental changes so you’re able to identify what the root cause or driver really is.
But seriously, How do you identify the issue?
Start at the top? You could, but often times I like to start at the bottom. Why do I do this? Well, if I send more traffic to an awful funnel then my awful conversion rate will continue. Yes, I will drive more conversions, but the process certainly isn’t optimized. So start by evaluating the current funnel by looking at the dropoff at each step. If everything looks good there move on to landing pages and site engagement. Are your landing pages driving people to bounce? Are there problems with your call to action that drives visitors into your funnel? Still no smoking gun? Well now move on to your inbound marketing. Is one source engaging less than others? What messaging are you using for the failing channel? Perhaps it’s time to update the messaging before turning off the channel completely. Lastly, take a gander at your attribution report to see if perhaps the failing source is driving visitors too early in their decision process. You may find that while a source shows little engagement it may simply be the first way visitors find you and they return via another channel to convert.
While that was a very high-level look at how we approach digital strategy we hope it provides you with some takeaways to use on your own strategy. If you’d like a little help or want to dig into our process a little deeper why not send us a note and let’s chat!
