Omniture SiteCatalyst is a popular and extremely customizable web analytics platform. Marketers new to SiteCatalyst are sometimes surprised that the default traffic source and campaign reports don’t always summarize activity in a manner that they’d like to see results. Below are 3 suggestions to consider related to traffic source measurement before setting up or enhancing your SiteCatalyst implementation.
Measure bounce rates of your marketing efforts. Bounce rate, defined as the proportion of site visits consisting of a single page view, provides a great gauge for measuring visitor satisfaction with landing pages and/or the quality of traffic that a marketing program is attracting. High bounce rates are usually undesirable, indicating entry and exit while only viewing one webpage. This is information every marketer should be looking for. Reporting bounce rates by campaign tracking code, however, is not part of the out-of-the-box SiteCatalyst reports (see this Omniture blog post for a general overview of bounce rates in SiteCatalyst). Be sure to talk to your implementation consultant about measuring bounce rates of your marketing programs, both by tracking code (e.g., individual paid search keywords) and higher-level classifications (e.g., keyword category and search engine). This can be accomplished through customization within SiteCatalyst or other Omniture tools, and we recommend that clients discuss whether the solution being developed for their site provides this data.
Consider using multiple variables to evaluate marketing performance. The default campaign variable provides the foundation for tracking marketing efforts. However, if you’re interested in analyzing marketing efforts using different attribution logic (e.g. comparing differences in performance between 7 day vs. 30 day look-back windows), then plan to store the tracking code in a second variable too, with different expiration/allocation settings applied within SiteCatalyst. Consider using different conversion variables to evaluate campaign performance several different ways and help find the attribution model that’s most appropriate for your business.
Discuss the Unified Sources Vista Rule with your Omniture team. The default SiteCatalyst reports do not provide a single view detailing traffic and conversions from both paid programs (e.g., paid search, comparison shopping engines, email) and unpaid sources (e.g., natural search, referrals from other sites, direct load). The Unified Sources Vista Rule operates on Omniture’s backend servers and is aimed at providing a customized solution for addressing this deficiency. The end product is the ability to run a single “unified source” report itemizing the performance of each traffic source. A more detailed explanation can be found in this recent blog post from Omniture. A different tool designed to accomplish a similar goal is the Channel Manager plug-in, which many clients also find sufficient for their channel tracking needs.
As mentioned previously, Omniture SiteCatalyst is an extremely customizable platform that allows marketers many options for tailoring online measurement to their unique needs. As with any platform, don’t make assumptions about the default implementation. We recommend sharing sample reports with your Omniture team that you expect to produce. Some upfront planning and confirmation work in the early stages can save time and frustration down the line.
Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.
Solid information. I tend to accept bounce rates at 40% or less. If my bounce rates for a landing page are greater than 50% than I have work to do.