I have come to the conclusion online marketing suffers from Left Brain metrics.
Again and again I hear more about clicks and visits than sentiment and intention. There are several reasons for this. The first is Left Brain metrics are easier. An analyst can generate a seemingly endless amount of reports from a web measurement tool. I can get visits,page views,and time on site sliced,diced,and spliced into many different reports. But how did the visit lead to a sale.
Secondly,quantitative measurements are more objective and normally easier to effect. For example,it is easier to optimize site performance to increase traffic to a product video on the site than increase the brand sentiment lift of a product video (which the client spent buko bucks on and is not willing to “optimize”).
I spend much of my day creating strategies for new vehicle shopping sites. Since new vehicles are bought offline with a shopping process several months in duration,it is difficult to correlate the majority of metrics to an offline sale.
Automotive is not unique. Many product sites (e.g. HDTV,restaurants,alcohol) have a similar dilemma:how do visits equate to offline sales. Left Brain metrics give us the user behavior. It is the what users did on the site. We can read the data tea leaves and try to interpret user intent,purchase intent,or brand sentiment.
This is very dangerous. We need to balance the Left Brain metrics with a little attitude or Right Brain metrics. By researching consumer attitudes on the site we can determine the impact the site experience had on brand sentiment and purchase intent. This does not guarantee offline sales,but will tell us if the experience is influencing the consumer positively.
