Web Site Measurement Hacks

Measure New and Returning Customers

One of the keys to successful web optimization lies in effective segmentation of your visitor population. One of the most obvious areas of segmentation is simply evaluating behavioral and conversion differences between new and returning customers.

New customers are exploring. Returning customers often know what they are looking for. Does your site make it easy for both groups to find what they need? Or by optimizing in aggregate, have you made it ideal for nobody? The only way to know for sure is to effectively differentiate between these groups, and then explore page-by-page differences in click and conversion behavior between the two segments.

So, how can you optimize your chances for accurate differentiation of new and returning customers?

At least for now, the best option is to ensure that the persistent cookies set on your visitors’ machines are set in your domain (in other words, first party), even if you’re using an ASP analytics provider. There are several options for making this happen.

Serve Your Own First-Party Cookie

The first and best approach to implement a first-party cookie via an ASP script is to simply serve the cookie from your own web site. The cookie must contain a unique visitor identification code, typically a random number or alphanumeric string that is passed back to you with each page viewed on your site. To then pass that ID value to your ASP as a parameter with the image request, simply make a small modification to your ...