10 case studies show how web analytics prove ROI

What good is data if you don’t know what to do with it?

Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of internet data for the purposes of understanding consumer behavior, improving user experience and optimizing web usage.

This might sound intimidating to some, but the reason why companies do web analytics is simple: to find insights that help make better business decisions.

Who does it well?

Here are 10 case studies of companies that used insights from web analytics and drove ROI.

1. BT FINANCIAL GROUP: Is a leading provider of superannuation, investment, and insurance products. The BT website focuses on service and usability with an online application form as one of the key conversion points. Landing pages with different combinations of the design elements for testing are created to optimize the user experience and maximize conversions. With conversion testing, BT increases form completions by more than 60%.
2. BUILDDIRECT: does business in more than 100 countries with an expanding portfolio of building materials. Though the company is growing rapidly, management is eager to improve the efficiency of its online spending. Through web analytics, BuildDirect finds home buyers who purchase a sample have a 60% likelihood of returning to the site within the next 30 days and placing a full order,  BuildDirect uses GA’s A/B testing capabilities to perfect its marketing approach. With insights from web analytics, BuildDirect increases sales by 50%.
3. HARVARD UNIVERSITY: To expand the digital reach of two established schools, Harvard Summer School and Harvard Extension School, Harvard ran a 12-month SEO and PPC campaign. They use web analytics as an audit to identify technical setbacks, content positioning, to create new landing pages for search traffic, and top-of-funnel paid search awareness campaigns. The result are: 1) 89% increase in visits from organic search, 2) 75% increase in registrations from organic search, 3) 30% increase in CTR with AdWords, and 4) 124% increase in ROAS with AdWords.
4. KEEN FOOTWEAR: Is an outdoor shoe manufacturing company based in Portland, Oregon. The company needs a better way to measure, analyze, and understand metrics that mattered on their social network to provide meaningful insight. A framework involving reach, engagement, influence, sentiment, and effect is developed. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) within each area are established. This is using the metrics: 1) Page Likes increase by 92%, 2) Post Reach increase by 342%, 3) Post Engagement increase by 137%, and 4) Active Users increase by 213%.
5. MOTOREASY: Is a company that sells extended auto warranties. Motoreasy’s Web site is re-designed to give you a quote for an extended auto warranty on your car. This involves: 1) telling people what you want them to do (fill in the form) and 2) tell them the benefits of doing so (you’ll get a quote which could save you money). The telephone number is featured prominently at the top, making it easy for them to call if they found filling out the online form too tedious. These changes reduce the drop out rate from 65 percent to 29 percent overnight. This increases the completion rate of the sign up page from 31% to 69%.
6. NIKE GOLF: Is the golf-specific retail branch of Nike. Although there is the benefit of the Nike brand, there is also the lack of a focused keyword strategy on the Nike Golf website. It is very difficult for search engines to crawl for content. Research helps make decisions like whether target keywords should be “golf apparel,” “golf clothing,” “golf clothes,” or “golf sportswear.” As a result of the research, Nike Golf sees a 169% in total increase in organic search traffic.
7. ON THE BEACH: Offers value for money flights and hotels to the world’s most popular beach holiday destinations, providing consumers with a huge selection of travel products, including 50 million airplane seats and more than 30,000 hotels. On the Beach finds that their generic search is undervalued under last click reporting, a discovery that allows the company to build a custom attribution model and increase budget on generic campaigns. This helps drive a higher volume of site traffic, holiday sales, and market share in the travel sector, which in turn led to a 25% increase in ROI.
8. PBS: Helps individual PBS producers and local PBS stations create and promote each section within PBS.org. PBS wants to develop a coordinated approach to analysis and reporting that would inform their future strategic decisions. Analysis of search engine trends leads to an increase in PBS traffic by 30%. Web analytics is set up to allow PBS to evaluate the way users consumed video. As a result, PBS increases both conversions and visits by 30%.
9. PUMA: Has rich, dynamic web site; but, just as PUMA constantly improves its products, it also believes in making site changes that help visitors easily achieve their goals. While testing its web site header, it finds a variation that increases online orders by 7.1%. Puma more than doubles the amount of time visitors spend interacting with PUMA brand content, such as news, videos, and photos. It results in 47% more traffic.
10. RYANAIR: Is Europe’s largest low fare airline. 99% of Ryanair’s bookings are made through its website making it the company’s single most important marketing tool. Web Analytics helps understand email and visitor behaviour. Ryanir is able to increase click-through rates by 200%, decrease bounce rate by 18%, increase visitor traffic by 16% to strategic pages, and double revenue generated from their email campaigns.

We, at BarnRaisers, are big believers in how data-driven results helps make better business decisions. Helping companies connect the dots between strategy, execution and results is a big part of what we do.

Do these case studies help you see how insights from web analytics can drive your business’ ROI?