Introduction:

• Measurement for assessing the effectiveness of an e-commerce site can be related to different levels of marketing controls which includes strategic control, profitability control, annual plan control and efficiency control.
• Efficiency measures are more concerned with minimizing the costs of online marketing.

Measurement techniques

Various measures for marketing effectiveness of an e-commerce include:

i. Channel Promotion:

• Channel promotion consider where the web site users originate- online or offline, and what are the sites or offline media that have prompted their visit.
• Log file analysis can be used to assess which intermediary sites customers are referred from and which keywords are - - Quality will be determined by whether visitors are in target market and have a propensity for the service offered.
• For each referral source such as offline or banner ads online it should be possible to calculate:
  • Percentage of referrals
  • Cost of acquisition
  • Contributions to sales or other outcomes.

ii. Channel Buyer Behaviour:

• Once customers have been attracted to the site, the content accessed by the customer needs to me monitored.
• Various parameters like when they visit, how long they stay and whether this interaction with content leads to satisfactory marketing outcomes such as new leads or sales.
• It is important to recognize return visitors for whom cookies or log-in are used.
• Key measures here include:
  • Bounce rate for different pages, i.e. proportion of single page visits.
  • Stickiness i.e. Page views/visitor sessions
  • Repeats i.e. Visitor sessions/visitors.

iii. Channel Satisfaction:

• Channel satisfaction includes evaluation of the customer’s opinion of the service quality on the site and supporting services such as email.
• Online methods such as questionnaires, focus groups and interviews can be used to assess customer’s opinions of the website content

• Key measure here includes the Customer satisfaction indices which contain ease of use, site availability, performance and e-mail response.

• Traditional marketing objectives such as number of sales, number of leads, conversion rates and targets for customer acquisition and retention should be set and then compared to another channels.

• Basically, it records customer actions taken as a consequence of a safe visit.
• Key measure include channel contribution and conversion rate.

v. Channel Profitability:

• The profitability of the web site, taking into account revenue, cost and discounted cash flow can be referred to as channel profitability.
• A contribution to business profitability is always the ultimate aim of e-commerce.
• To assess this, leading companies set an Internet contribution target of achieving certain proportion of sales via the channel.
• Discounted cash flow techniques are used to assess the rate of return over time.
• Service contribution from e-channels should also be assessed.