If you ever wanted proof that multiple influences work on the buyer (in B2B or B2C) “Top Conversion Paths” in Google Analytics is helpful. It provides at least partial proof of digital marketing influences that finally convinced your prospect to place an E-Commerce order or sign up for your newsletter depending on how you define conversions.
In Google Analytics (GA) there is this cool feature that allows you to look at the digital behavior of the customer for up to the last 30 days as they visit your website. They may not be on the “buy page” but GA recognizes past website visits and produces a report similar to the one alongside. In Google Analytics, go to Conversions–>multi-channel funnels–> Top Conversion Paths. Let us consider some insights from the report alongside taken from a period when a couple of campaigns were going on:
- Organic Search x 2 refers to the path taken by 45 buyers who seem to have searched Google twice in the previous 30 days and then done an ecommerce transaction.
- Direct x 2 refers to 37 buyers who had bookmarked the page or remembered the URL and did not do a search. These folks would have either a prior relationship with the brand or some off-line communication which worked.
- Organic Search-Direct involved one organic search and then a direct visit before converting by 31 customers.
- Referral-Social Network x 2-Direct x 2 yielded 9 customers and refers to No. 5 in the graphic above. This one is really fascinating because the referrals are from a display advertising campaign that also had a social media marketing element. These 9 people had come first through referral then twice through a social network ( LinkedIn) and then got motivated to come directly and convert to buyers and customers.
And the above is only tracking the online visits from the computer or mobile device that was used in the transaction. It’s very likely that there are more off line influences at work . The great thing is that you get an understanding of pre-purchase digital behavior of your new customers by some simple analysis using “Top Conversion Paths” in Google Analytics. About StratoServe.