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Visitors Behavioral Insights using Google Social Plug-ins

It’s been almost a year now; Google launched the Social Component in their Web Analytics tool, and since then, we have worked with various clients setting up their Social Dashboards, and understanding the on-site behavior of their Social Visitors, and gauging their off-site activity stream via Data Hub Network.

In this post, we are not going to discuss on the fundamentals or, how to create Sexy Social Dashboard because, there are number of blog posts have been written on this topic in last 12 months so; in order to make it spicier, engaging and actionable for our marketing friends, we are sharing some interesting data analysis techniques by blending Social Reporting and Behavioral Segmentation.

Interesting Findings in last 12 Months: –
•    Approx. 78-82% of the Landings via Social Referrers get BOUNCED immediately.

•    “Social Network” as an “Assisting Channel”, contributing significantly higher Conversion Value as compare to “Last Interaction Channel” for almost all our clients. The Social Channel Revenue Contribution is not more than 1.5-2.0% of the overall revenue generated on the website. Despite of this poor performance, Social Networks playing an important role higher in the conversion funnel, and their contribution can’t be ignored.

•    For the Ecommerce Players, majority of the on-site Social Actions gets originated from the Product Pages (Social Entities under Social Plug-ins), and the corresponding referral traffic from Friends and Family have a significantly higher Bounce Rate i.e. 80-85%. The on-site surveys conducted on the Product Pages highlighted the following 4 reasons behind higher bounce rate:

1.    Since, my friend shared the Product; I just wanted to look-around
2.    Poor Quality and Size of the main Product Image with no Alternate Views
3.    Too Expensive
4.    No ongoing Promotion (Free Shipping or % OFF on the Product)

•    We spent lot of time understanding the Navigational Behavior of the Social Visitors by applying custom Engagement and Retention Segments, and learned a lot about their behavior and affinity towards different content sections of the website. Here are 15 Segments that really helped us getting deep-dive insight in to Social Visitors Behavior:

1.    Return Frequency Less Than 24 hrs
2.    Return Frequency within 1-3 Days
3.    Return Frequency within 3-5 Days
4.    Return Frequency within 5-7 Days
5.    Return Frequency greater than 7 Days
6.    Visits with 1 Page
7.    Visits with 2-4 Pages
8.    Visits with 4-6 Pages
9.    Visits with greater than 6 Pages
10.  Visits with less than 60 secs
11.   Visits between 60 – 180 seconds
12.   Visits between 180 – 300 seconds
13.   Visits between 300 – 480 seconds
14.   Visits between 480 – 600 seconds
15.   Visits greater than 600 seconds

By applying the above segments in the “Social Visitors Flow” and “Conversions” reporting we identified that, almost 85-90% of the Social Visitors didn’t go deeper than 3 Pages on the website, and their visit lasted for less than 180 seconds. The Return Frequency of Social Visitors was quite lower as compare to other channels while, those online brands and retailers, who are spending consistently on Social Paid Ads month over month, have a strong brand loyalty, diligently creating buzz in their network, and have a strong fan base across different networks, were driving decent % of returning visitors with-in 1-3 Days window. Overall, the % of revenue contribution from Social Channels was under 1.5-2%, and unfortunately Social is still an unexplored channel and account for merely 6-7% of the Total Marketing Spend.

•    Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and Google + are the 4 major Social Sources contributing over 80% of the Social Actions. Among our clients customer-base, Pinterest is considered better suited than Twitter to find about new products while, Facebook is the top social network accessed via Mobile Devices for our USA Clients. Almost 75-80% of the traffic contributed by the above 4 Social Networks was Unique.

•    We couldn’t extract much value out of Activity Stream under “Sources” section because, it was not including the Top Social Networks for our clients including Facebook and Twitter so; couldn’t find something significant to take immediate actions.

We are really excited to hear your findings and any lessons learned while analyzing the Social Data of your online visitors.

Categorised in: Online Marketing

This post was written by downtownecommerce_admin