How To Measure Brand Equity With Web Analytics, Part 2

Search engine strategies in San Jose (SES) is coming up next week already where I am on the hook to describe in just a few minutes during one of the panel discussions what web analytics can contribute for measuring brand equity. Recently, in the first part of this blog post I dove into the aspect that is about measuring your audience's ability to recall your brand name. But brand is much more than just awareness/recollection of your band names.

Two other aspects that ought to be measured are positivity (thumb up or down?) and features/functionality. For example, what do you think of when you see the following sign?

Ahh... FRESH ingredients! And smiling kids behind the counter. If web analytics can contribute to an understanding what kinds of features/benefits your audience associates with your brand it would be helpful. (There are other ways to find out what customers are thinking, but the question was how much web analytics could contribute.)

Now web analytics is great for measuring customers' behavior, but not great at all for figuring out their attitudes. But one way in which site behavior reveals attitudes or predispositions that customers may have is through the use of local site search. That is one case where site visitors are typing into the web site search box what is on their minds. For example, if In-n-out burger found that most people come to the site and typed in "calories" into the search box, that would say one thing. If they typed in "fresh ingredients" or "friendly staff" that would say another. Or instead of In-n-out think of a car manufacturer. Will more people search for "maintenance issues" or "10 year warranty" for example.

Further, instead of looking at the general population the web analyst can use A/B analysis to compare the keywords typed in by brand visitors vs. category visitors. I call brand visitors those who typed in the URL of the site directly or located it by searching for branded terms on search engines. Likewise, category visitors are those who didn't know they want to come to in-n-out burger's web site. Yet, then they may have performed a web search for "burger joints" in their neighborhood and through that found the restaurant. How do you think site search would differ? We wouldn't be surprised for those non-fans to search for calories whereas fans are in awe with watching their burgers prepared freshly by Santa's friendly helpers.

On the final installment of this topic, we will look at measuring the financial value of brand visitors using web analytics. Your ideas and comments are always helpful.