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Teleconference
The Metrics That Matter To Financial
Services Web Sites
Brad Strothkamp
Senior Analyst
Forrester Research
March 30, 2007. Call in at 12:55 p.m. Eastern Time
Theme
Few financial services sites
have effective measurements
to run the eBusiness channel
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Entire contents © 2007 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Agenda
• Why should you care about Web metrics in
financial services?
• What are the benchmark metrics you need to
measure? What metrics are specific to
financial services?
• How to use metrics to drive sales goals
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Entire contents © 2007 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Agenda
• Why should you care about Web metrics in
financial services?
• What are the benchmark metrics you need to
measure? What metrics are specific to
financial services?
• How to use metrics to drive sales goals
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Entire contents © 2007 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Consider these facts
• Gen Yers would choose their computer 2 to 1 over
their television if they had to choose just one device
to not live without.
• 91% of online households use search engines, up
from 71% just four years ago.
• In 2005, 47% of financial service shoppers
researched their purchases exclusively online.
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Consumers prefer the Internet to research
“For any financial products you purchased during the past 12
months, please indicate where you conducted your research.”
60%
Online only
50%
40%
Online and offline only
30%
20%
Offline only
10%
0%
US
Gen Yers
(18-26)
Gen Xers
(27-40)
Younger
Boomers
(41-50)
Older
Boomers
(51-61)
Base: US consumers who conducted research online or offline for any
financial product they purchased during the past 12 months
Source: Forrester’s NACTAS Q4 2006 Finance Online Survey
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Seniors
(62+)
Tomorrow’s shoppers may
ONLY visit your Web site
before buying
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Tracking Web shoppers is imperative
Consumers’ path
to purchase
Referral source: How
users get to the site
Referral
source
Purchase
channel
Purchase
channel: How
Web site visitors
purchase their
product
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Web site
usage
Web site usage:
How users navigate
on the site
Agenda
• Why should you care about Web metrics in
financial services?
• What are the benchmark metrics you need
to measure? What metrics are specific to
financial services?
• How to use metrics to drive sales goals
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Entire contents © 2007 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Web Analytics Association (WAA)
The Web Analytics Association (WAA) is a nonprofit organization that is made up of key Web
analytic vendors, clients, and individuals to set
standards for analytic measurements. The WAA
defines itself as the group that “unites and
fosters the interests of industry practitioners,
vendors, consultants and educators who use,
sell, install, implement, consult, teach or train in
the field of web analytics.”
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Metric basics: the BIG three
• Unique site visitors:
» The number of inferred individual people (filtered for
spiders and robots), within a designated reporting
timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more
visits to a site. Each individual is counted only once
in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period.
Source: Web Analytics Association
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Metric basics: the BIG three
• Visits/sessions:
» A visit is an interaction, by an individual, with a Web
site consisting of one or more requests for an
analyst-definable unit of content (i.e., page view). If
an individual has not taken another action (typically
additional page views) on the site within a specified
time period, the visit will terminate.
Source: Web Analytics Association
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Metric basics: the BIG three
• Page views:
» The number of times a page (an analyst-definable
unit of content) was viewed.
Source: Web Analytics Association
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Financial services: basic metrics
• Unique site visitors (by product area)
• Top search terms (by product)
• Tool usage
• Started/completed applications (by product)
» Started application is generally defined as the first
page where the consumer enters personally
identifiable information, and a completed application
is defined as the page where he/she receives a
“thank you” or “completion” page.
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Financial services: conversion metrics
• Site conversion rates (by product)
» What percentage of unique site visitors to the credit card pages
completed an application or lead form?
• Search term conversion rates
» What percentage of site visitors who searched on “blank” term
completed an application or lead form?
• Content/tool conversion rates
» What percentage of site visitors who viewed a certain content
type (e.g., rate page, comparison chart) or used a certain tool
(e.g., payment calculator) completed an application or lead
form?
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Financial services: application metrics
• Application completion rates
» Completion rates by:
– Segments: new versus existing customers
– Product: checking versus savings
– Functionality: prefill, save/retrieve, etc.
• Dropoff rates per page
• Errors per applicant (i.e., incorrect information)
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Agenda
• Why should you care about Web metrics in
financial services?
• What are the benchmark metrics you need to
measure? What metrics are specific to
financial services?
• How to use metrics to drive sales goals
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Search marketing
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Measurement helps focus marketing dollars
“What type of search terms resulted in converting search
users into serious prospects?”
Top mortgage
search categories
Mortgage applicants
by search category
Tool
59%
38%
General
20%
37%
Rate and fee
15%
16%
Product
7%
9%
Base: Compete survey respondents who recently applied for a mortgage loan
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Top mortgage search term: 8th in conversion
5th highest mortgage search term: 1st in conversion
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Site development
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Justify site content and functionality decisions
21%
20%
Payment calculator
8%
Product selection tool
13%
8%
Affordability calculator
9%
5%
Should I refinance?
Amortization
Rent versus buy
7%
2%
2%
1%
1%
Base: Compete panelists who accessed mortgage pages at a target Web site
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Prospects
Applicants
Quicken Loans uses metrics to drive site
development
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E*TRADE uses metrics to target “engaged”
site visitors
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Application effectiveness
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Application metrics can solve completion
issues
Case study: A large multinational bank tracked
the dropoffs by page and errors that consumers
had during the application process and was able
to determine:
» A large percentage of applicants dropped off on
the first page of the application for no discernable
reason. In fact, most of these dropouts never
completed any application information.
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Early dropouts had no intention of applying
“When you began the online application,
did you intend to complete it today?”
Yes
70%
No
30%
Wanted to see what information
was asked for in the online app
42%
Was looking for more information
about the product
35%
Clicked into the application
by mistake
5%
Changed mind about applying
4%
Not ready to apply*
4%
Don’t know
2%
Other
6%
Base: 622 respondents
Source: A large multinational bank survey of consumers who dropped out of application
*Denotes coded open-ended responses
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Application metrics can solve completion
issues
Case study: A large multinational bank tracked the
dropoffs by page and errors that consumers had during
the application process and was able to determine:
» A large percentage of applicants dropped off on the first
page of the application for no discernable reason. In fact,
most of these dropouts never completed any application
information.
» Significant dropouts past the first page were a good
indicator of a problem with the application itself or
information asked.
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Mid-application dropoffs lack required info
Required info not on hand
Technical problem
Not eligible/not qualified
“When you began the online application,
did you intend to complete it today?”
Prefer to apply another way
No
30%
14%
14%
11%
App loaded too slow
10%
App timed out
10%
Didn’t understand what info was required
8%
Didn’t like product info (rates/fees)*
5%
Didn’t want to send info online
3%
App was too long
4%
Confused; made error; in wrong app*
4%
Didn’t want to send to bank
3%
Didn’t want to answer
3%
Required minimum deposit too much*
3%
Other
17%
Yes
70%
Base: 622 respondents
Source: A large multinational bank survey of consumers who dropped out of application
*Denotes coded open-ended responses
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22%
Entire contents © 2007 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Application metrics can solve completion
issues
Case study: A large multinational bank tracked the dropoffs by
page and errors that consumers had during the application
process and was able to determine:
» A large percentage of applicants dropped off on the first page of
the application for no discernable reason. In fact, most of these
dropouts never completed any application information.
» Significant dropouts past the first page were a good indicator of a
problem with the application itself or information asked.
» Sophisticated page-level reporting revealed problems with the
application (e.g., front-end logic problems).
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Summary
• The Internet provides a unique opportunity to track
prospects and customers like never before.
• Firms should sweat metric basics. All subsequent
metrics will be built off these metrics.
• Strong metrics can help inform marketing, site
development, and online application decisions.
• Metric understanding is key to successful use of new
technologies like online chat.
• Few financial services sites have “cracked the nut” on
metrics, so don’t feel that you are too far behind.
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Thank you
Brad Strothkamp
+1 650/581-3838
[email protected]
www.forrester.com
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