measuring webpage outcomes, not inputs – and why content quality matters
DESCRIPTION
If customer A spends 2 minutes on a page and customer B spends 4 minutes on a page, who was the more satisfied customer? Is it really a good thing that customers and prospects are looking at lots of pages on your website? And does the content you provide cause the reader to act? The old web metrics are broken. In fact, they’re more than broken: they often give a false impression of your performance. High volumes of visitors, spending lots of time, looking at lots of pages could be positive – but could just as well be negative. Your content could be causing them to spend more time on a page just because you don’t have quality content and you’re not using the right language. We must move from a model that measures inputs (content produced, page views, number of visitors, etc.) to one based on outcomes. Outcome-based metrics answer the following questions: 1. Were customers able to find what they needed? 2. Were prospects compelled to act? 3. How long did it take them? If we measure outcomes then we must manage outcomes by: 1. Maximizing the actions you want them to take 2. Minimizing the time it takes to act In this webinar, learn how you can make your web pages more successful, and how to generate the metrics you need to prove it. http://bit.ly/19X9i0TTRANSCRIPT
Measuring Webpage Outcomes, Not Inputs – and Why Content Quality Matters
October 2, 2013
Gerry McGovern [email protected] www.customercarewords.com @gerrymcgovern
In most cases you can expect a small fiberglass pool shell without delivery to cost $9k-$13k, medium $12k-$16k, and large $16k-$24k. Delivery fees could be anywhere from $600 to $2,500.
Useful tools
✓Deleted 50% of all content ✓Use of the Loan calculator increased by 236% ✓Traffic to the most important product information and services increased by 520 %
© 2011 - Customer Carewords Ltd 21 October 2013
5
Telenor – 87% reduction of pages
Total pages reduced from 4,000
to 500 Conversion rate 100% up Emails to customer service down
by 35% (key channel) Customer satisfaction ratings up
6
© 2011 - Customer Carewords Ltd 21 October 2013
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Get out of my way !
90% Whatever……
TOP TASKS TINY TASKS
Content Publishing activity
#1 Remove Pages from Site
Remove Conditional Formatting
“Remove conditional formatting”
“Format text in a variety of ways based on conditions”
Remove Conditional Formatting
34%
© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 14
240m annual visits to Cisco.com
2m social media
mentions
4.2m social reach
3m customer app Downloads*
(6x YoY)
1.3m paid search
click-throughs
73m organic search
referrals
3m mobile web
visitors
1.4m social referrers
to Cisco.com
Cisco.com Social Reach Mobile Phones Tablets
Source: Cisco SiteCatalyst & other internal metrics.
2% 55% 91% 341%
Continuous Improvement
Identify Top
Tasks
Measure Top
Tasks
Task Based
Support
Tasks Pie Chart Download software,
firm…Configure / set
up a pr…
Troubleshooting (bug fi…
615
43Top 25%
26-50%
51-75%
Potential versus Current Customer
Top 25%
26-50%
51-75%
Tasks Potentia
l
custo
mer
Curren
t
custo
mer
Student
Job se
1 Download software, firmware, drivers, patches, updates 7% 10% 5% 2%
2Configure / set up a product (tech guides, notes, how-to's) 5% 9% 5% 4%
3 Troubleshooting (bug fixes, diagnostics, guides) 4% 9% 4% 3%4 Network design (tech guides, notes, examples) 4% 4% 5% 6%
5 Install / upgrade / migrate (tech guides, notes, examples) 4% 6% 4% 4%6 Pricing for an individual product or service 3% 1% 0% 1%7 Warranties 3% 1% 1% 0%
2010 15 Steps
Downloading Software for RV082
280 seconds approx
Download firmware: Obtain the latest firmware for your RV082 router compatible with Version 3 hardware.
Very Good TPI = 75 Task 1 performance =
Success Rate Comparisons
August 2011 February 2012
1
2
3
4
@gerrymcgovern
22
Effective Content for Better Outcomes
Andrew Bredenkamp @abredenkamp
Dr. Andrew Bredenkamp is president and founder of Acrolinx. Andrew has over 20 years of experience in multilingual content development. Before starting Acrolinx, Andrew was Head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Language Technology Lab. Andrew holds degrees in technical translation and linguistics and a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics. He is on the advisory board of a number of organizations, including Translators without Borders and The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL).
Content Strategy @ Cisco
“The 4900 Series is ideal for space-constrained deployments.”
“Simplified Management: Edge switch auto-provisioning”
Zero uses of “you”
Content Strategy @ Cisco
Not “space-constrained” but “smaller”
No sentence over 18 words
Eight uses of “you”
Know your customer!
Your customer doesn’t care about you
Know your customer!
They haven’t come to read your content
Know your customer!
They have come to get something done
“How can I help you?”
Know your customer!
Age Education Time Interests
Hobbies GSOH Emotional state of
mind
But, don’t just ask yourself…
Test your prejudices
Creating content that works
Develop a language that works – For the task – For the reader
Some things that won’t help
Chicago Manual of Style
“I know the period or comma goes inside both single and double quotation marks, but is an apostrophe treated the same as a single quotation mark, or does it stay with its word? For example: “That ain’t nothin’,” Joe replied.”
“Good” grammar
“A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.”
What will help
Task-oriented writing: Describing steps?
1. Format them as steps 2. Put each step in its own block 3. Each step should be a single instruction
Dimensions of language
Scanability Formality Readability (hint: not Flesch-Kincaid)
Lists (before)
This update affects the following operating systems: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and all Mac OS X Versions after 10.6
Lists (after)
This update affects: Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows 8 all Mac OS X Versions after 10.6
Acrolinx can help
Acrolinx is an enabling infrastructure for deploying your content strategy
Acrolinx can help
Enabling infrastructure for deploying your content strategy
Acrolinx can help
Define your language – The right tone-of-voice – Keeping the whole team up-to-date and
honest – Avoid buzzwords, respect folksonomy – Especially people not in your team…
Analytics
Give the team feedback they need Get rid of the useless content Find the useful content that needs to be
fixed
Findability – Keywords – Trust -> Effectiveness
First, win eyeballs
Your reader is everywhere
You do not control who reads your content – Chinese/German readers like English
content – French readers like French content
Closer to spoken language helps non-native speakers
Remember: nature your audience abhors a vacuum
Three things to remember
Search-ready People-ready Global-ready
Three more things
Good practice: – Shared Standards – Optimization Support – Analytics
Putting it all together
Measuring outcomes helps you understand the content you need
Content Analytics helps you create content that will work
