Ecommerce success mapping

Author: Dave Chaffey Published: January 2013

Plan > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage

About the Smart Insights Ecommerce Success Maps

With the increasingly complex range of channels companies use for communications today, mastering best practices is helpful to make best use of each channel or digital marketing technique and its integration with other channels. Success maps offer a way of driving growth and improved performance of digital channels since they give a structured way to understand, prioritise and manage best practices for marketing activities. Success maps offer these benefits: Directed at identifying factors to drive growth, measured using their impact on KPIs Help manage processes with complex best practices of marketing activities Group related activities and show dependencies between different activities Identify and prioritise improvement activities when managers are discussing with specialists or agencies. Give a visual hierarchy for activities on a single sheet They are also handy for reviewing knowledge as part of learning, for example revision or planning an exam question. They can be used in a simple way as a specialist form of mindmap. The origin of success maps We use the label Success Maps since it shows the purpose of using the technique in a userfriendly way. Technically they are also known as Cause and effect diagrams Herringbone diagrams Ishikawa diagrams Ishikawa diagrams originate1 in the process manufacturing industry where they are used to identify defects in operations. We first heard about them around ten years ago when there was a movement to adopt Six Sigma principles in marketing. Dell was one of the earliest adopters of the technique in marketing and I was influenced by Sam Decker, then an Ecommerce manager at Dell as he described their benefits and how Dell had used them. NB. Typically, Ishikawa diagrams are used to resolve problems by identifying defects in a process and potential solutions. This success mapping technique is different since it defines different marketing activities to improve performance of a marketing process rather than solving a particular problem. How to create and use Marketing Success Maps We will provide example success maps that cover a typical range of best practices, but we hope you will also want to develop your own for other processes you are working on. To create a success map: 1. Start on the right of the diagram, define your goal(s) for the activity or marketing process you want to improve. 2. Define specific goals and KPIs to show what you are looking to improve 3. Identify the 3-8 main groups of work activities or tasks that will drive performance. It can help to use a conventional mindmap which is similar in many ways, but not so process driven 4. Draw 3-8 arrows of primary and secondary performance drivers which are the activities 1 Wikipedia: Ishikawa diagrams
Ecommerce Success Mapping

Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides.

driving performance angled towards the right onto the main axis which will drive activity. Where there is a clear sequence of activities, e.g. start on the left if auditing is part of the activity on the left. 5. Add individual tasks and sub-tasks or activities onto each major grouping of activities. We hope you find them useful, do let us know how you get or any questions you may have.

About the Ecommerce Success Map

The first success map we have created, featured in this template, is a top-level success map featuring the success factors most relevant for improving revenue from a transactional online business. We have created this using generic success factors so that it can be applied to analyse any type of business with a transactional website involving sale of services or products including online retailers, travel and financial services businesses. We think it will also be useful for non-transactional businesses such as business-to-busness companies using digital technologies to generate enquiries or leads since many of the decision points are similar. Dave Chaffey has also written a post giving a little more background on the technique2. What does the Ecommerce success map show? The benefits of using a top level success map like this to review Ecommerce strategy are that it offers: Focus on commercial growth. Managers of Ecommerce or digital marketing or agencies making recommendations for clients are responsible for identifying opportunities for growth. The Ishikawa diagram approach is directed at identifying inefficiencies and opportunities for growth. Simplicity. Our members have told us that they find our in-depth best practice guides useful, but they would like more succinct ways to summarise the key factors. Comprehensive coverage of key online marketing activities. We have structured this Ecommerce success map around the areas of the Smart Insights PRACE framework to ensure it covers all relevant activities. Strategic success levers defined. These are the factors in marketing identified under Plan that make online communications more effective such as targeting approaches and creating new propositions. Tactical success factors identified. These are techniques to increase efficiency of websites, apps, email and social media activities. A tool to plan future improvements. The diagram can be used as an analysis technique to quickly scan the strategic and tactical success factors you need to prioritise. You can then create a roadmap to test and improve these marketing activities Recommended resource? Digital marketing toolkit Use the Digital marketing toolkit templates to prepare a customised plan for your business or your clients. The toolkit contains unbranded Word, Excel and Powerpoint templates to help form a plan for your business. In 2013, we will add to this success map with other more detailed success maps for specific communications approaches like SEO, Paid search, Social media and Email marketing. We will do this as part of our rolling programme of updating all our resources through the year. 2 Smart Insights: Success mapping
Ecommerce Success Mapping

Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides.

 Online contribution Share of voice Brand metrics

Site and social engagement nLeads Lead conversion and quality

Repeat conversion rate Customer satisfaction & advocacy Active subscribers

Plan
Browse vs search Targeting strategy Satisfaction drivers Content Contact strategy Service quality Advocacy policy Site cross-sell and up-sell recommendations

Act
Customer journey options Planning process
Persona Merchandising Home page scent trails Home page Relevant objectives Brand essence Landing pages Run-of-site

Engage
Customer email communications

New markets

and penetration

Strategic

Growth opportunities
Customer satisfaction Page template efficiency
Category & product recommendaPersonalised

agility

Product

Revenue

development

models

Strategy

review

Online value proposition Brand Social media

Target segments

Target market
Brand personality Engagement devices

Recommendations

Customer onboarding
Product Customer registration? welcome

Targeting options

positioning Customer engagement

Analytics Content marketing setup templates Conversion page

Marketing mix

Reputation Community tions Run-of-site opt-in? management building

Proposition

Form

conversion

Online value proposition

(website, mobile, social, email) Value: Content matrix

Prospect conversion
Display Affiliate

Email welcome

Growth targets

Content strategy
Content calendar

strategy
Site Network personalisation remarketing

Add-to-basket process

Revenue per visit Online profitability Visitor satisfaction

Paid vs owned vs earned Paid search Social presence

Paid media
Brand preference & trust

Online conversion
OVP Form efficiency Sales support

Media selection Owned media

Blogging Outreach

Continuous vs

campaign?

Drive to web

Trust Testimonials marks

ROPO site integration

Offline integration Earned media

SEO

Multichannel conversion
Offline Store locator and proposition mobile proposition

Campaign integration

Reach

Convert
Online conversion rate Offline conversion (ROPO) Average order value (AOV)

Volume (nVisits) Quality (Conversion) Cost (CPA)