What Women Want: Web Analytics

What is it that women want!?! Let's face it, one of the greatest mysteries in this life is figuring out what women want. Men sure don’t know and I would dare say that many women don’t either. Some might say that marketers have figured it out, these guys know what sale and what do not sale. But I think marketers have missed the mark. In this post I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that web analytics may actually be a tool to help all business persons male and female, understand what women want in online ecommerce or emergent mobile markets

Before you exit this page, press delete, thumbs down, or label me as some “crazy” feminist, allow me to explain myself. Every day, men and women and boys and girls are exposed to the ideas that are valued by those who control the purse. Unfortunately, it’s not the women who control the purse in the media and business world. Allow me to illustrate this example by sharing one of Colin Stokes’ observations he shared in a Ted video. He points out that seldom will you ever watch a movie where there are two women characters who actually have meaningful roles or even when two women converse about things other than their mutual crush. He adds that in "Argo," the critically acclaimed blockbuster, the major line said by a woman in the movie is "Are you coming to bed Honey?" Need I say more? The dearth of missing dialogue between women to women and men to women is a testament that men and some women don’t know what is important to women or that what is important to women is undervalued. Now where does web analytics fit in all this?

Web analytics, if used properly, can be a powerful tool. It enables website designers, marketers, and managers to have immediate feedback as to what “works” and what does not on a website. Web designers, marketers, and managers can implement A/B and multivariate testing to see what web pages have lower bounce rates, who seem to encourage conversion, and are the most popular among users. Web analytics can even have customer specific information that can be aggregated to show trends among clusters of users. Web analytics presents a great opportunity for designers, marketers, and managers to capitalize on the ability to experiment on their websites to actually understand better what it is that women want in a website. I will now elaborate on this idea by focusing on mobile fitness apps.

In my emergent technologies class the other night we were discussing what makes a fitness app successful. Words and phrases like “tough competition” “intensity” “muscle mass accumulation” echoed throughout the discussion (I think I even heard a few grunts of approval). But I couldn’t help but wonder if these are programmatic attributes that women want in a fitness app. The men in the class also suggested monitoring heart rate and calories burned. These are important to women of course too. But not a single classmate suggested a successful app might allow the user to track other weight-loss indicators such as the following:

- Emotional stability
- Frequency of emotional eating
- Frequency and potency of chocolate cravings caused by unbalanced hormones
- Level of pain caused by menstrual cramps

For women, these issues are inseparable from weight loss. Of course my classmates did not come up with these suggestions. They are men! It is not likely that they would come up with these suggestions...ever...Because men and women experience the world differently. Now, don’t get me wrong. Women are VERY competitive. We just compete in different ways and we are different from men physiologically. These differences need to be taken into account when designing websites.

If competition between participants is magic formula for male fitness app users, what is the female counterpart magic formula? Now is an ideal time to launch emerging market online and mobile apps that experiment and seek for the “magic” formulas that empower women.

We do need to be cautious, however, in our attempt to understand what women want by analyzing web analytics. The website needs to be designed strategically or we may take home the wrong message and find ourselves just as clueless as we were before. Avinash Kaushik explains in his book Web Analytics 2.0 that when taken out of context, the data pulled from your website can be meaningless or completely understood (2010). He also suggests adding context into your analysis by asking your viewers questions. I would dare say that he is asking us to couple quantitative analysis with qualitative research. For example, a manager might choose to A/B test two web pages that look like they came out of Cosmo and airbrushed photos of sixteen-year old girls that look like sex goddesses (Russel 2012). The manager will be able to see which page was more effective at getting conversion rates. However, the manager will be no closer at understanding what women really want then they were before. However, if a manager were to decide to implement a web pages that had more uplifting and empowering messages, followed up by a three to five question survey asking them about their experience, then the manager might have a better understanding.

Now is the time. More women have a college education then men in the United States. More women then men have taken management roles. The wage gap between men and women is decreasing. More men are taking on the role of care-givers. The world as “we” know it is changing (Rosin 2010). Why not design our websites and the tools that we use to evaluate them more strategically. Why design our websites and the KBRs and KPIs we use to judge the websites around what women really want?




Citations:

Kaushik, Avinash (2009). Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity (p. 148). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

Rosen, Hannah (2010). The End of Men: And the Rise of Women. Penguin Press. NYNY.

Russel, Cameron (2012). Looks Arent’ Everything, Believe Me, I am a Model. http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_russell_looks_aren_t_everything_believe_me_i_m_a_model.html

Smith, Dorothy (1987) The Everyday World As Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Northeastern University Press

Stokes, Colin (2012) How movies teach manhood. Ted: Ideas Worth Spreading.http://www.ted.com/talks/colin_stokes_how_movies_teach_manhood.html. .

Survey Says

Survey Says...

Advantages

There are many benefits gained by initiating a survey campaign. Surveys can help online organizations understand what their users want before starting any development process. It can take the guess work out of determining key enhancements.

In A Critical Assessment of Online Survey Tools, Barbara Bogue stated, "Use of assessment can provide a competitive edge in addition to measuring effectiveness, improving programming and informing future activities".1

Major benefits of a survey includes:

• Saves Time - A survey doesn't require extensive development work. It can be as simple as asking a few questions to understand the needs of your users. A/B testing, although extremely beneficial in understanding ways to increase a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), requires development time which could possibly be discarded if not successful. A simple feedback survey can point development in the right direction before any work begins. 
• Saves Money - The development cost spent in other strategies is a cost savings for a survey. Most survey tools are available online at no cost. Tools such as Qualtrics require a fee, but allow unlimited surveys to be created and allows companies to access a broad range of users.
• Direct Audience - Because the survey can be housed directly on your website, you can assure the right audience is being reached. Most tools allow users to be segmented so only individuals in a certain country or using a certain tool can be not prompted to take the survey.
• Personal Profiling - During a survey, personal information about your users can be gathered to help determine a common profile. Web analytic tools don't reveal the common age, gender, interests, or other personal information. A survey allows companies to learn more about the type of people coming to their site as well as what they do when they get there.
• Web Analytics Connection - Many web analytics tools will allow a campaign or event id to be added to the end of survey url. A common url with a campaign id would look like this "www.company.com?id=survey1". The "survey1" is the name of the campaign which can be tracked through a web analytics tool to see what the user did after taking the survey. If the survey was about a new feature added to the website, the analyst can then see if the feature was used after the survey was taken.

Disadvantages

• Limited Response - Surveys are often overused and customers are becoming less responsive. If survey campaigns are used, the company should be careful to only initiate surveys periodically or try to segment different users each time.
• Possible Misinterpretation - If the user misunderstands the question, you will not get an accurate response. Often users will choose a preferred feature based on look and not functionality. Surveys don't offer a real life use experience and can be misleading.
•  Difficult to Analyze Long Text - At times it is great to just ask for open feedback, but analyzing and categorizing multiple lines of text can be very difficult and result in wasted time.

 Common Survey Tools

• Survey Monkey
• Free - Up to 100 responses per survey
• Monthly Fee Options -Unlimited responses, skip-logic, redirect url, and more.
• Key Advantage: Simple to use
• Qualtrics 
• Free - Up to 250 responses per survey
• Corporate Pricing - Unlimited responses, skip-logic, 100 different question types, graphical interaction, and more.
•  Key Advantage: Advanced features and uses
• Wufoo
• Free - Up to 100 responses per form and only 3 Forms
• Monthly Fee Options -Unlimited forms, up to 100,000 responses per month, advanced form design and functionality
• Key Advantage: Multiple purposes and designs
• SurveyGizmo
• Free - 14 Day Trial
• One Monthly Fee - Unlimited Responses, advanced options and reporting
• Key Advantage: Integration with SalesForce, ExactTarget, and Google Spreadsheets

 Cool Tips and Tricks

Figure out the Hot Spot of your website! 

Let's say you want to understand what your users think of the new design on your home page or the usefulness of added features. The Hot Spot feature in Qualtrics can be used in your survey to gather direct feedback on a graphic or a screenshot.

1. Choose Hot Spot as the question type.
2. Upload a screenshot of the site. 
3. Mark certain areas as regions of interest.
4. Ask your users to choose whether they like/dislike each highlighted feature.
5. When they take the survey, they can simply vote on each feature and if desired offer additional comments to explain their selection.
6. The data can easily be calculated and useless features can be discarded or changed. It is simple and effective.

 Learn more at Qualtrics.com

 Read More From Sherrie Cowley

Time Spent:

Research - 3 Hours

Write-up - 2 Hours

References:

1Bogue, Barbara. "A Critical Assessment of Online Survey Tools".  University of Missouri. 2006.

2WolfWikis. "Advantage and Disadvantages of Web Surveys". North Carolina State University. 2013.