http://www.jimnovo.com/images/cvpvmult.jpg

The customer location above is Best Customer in Retail (High Frequency, Low Days Since), a Former Best Customer in Catalog (High Frequency, High Days Since), and a New Customer to Online (Low Frequency, Low Days Since).  

Why do you need to do this?  If you don’t know where a customer is in the physical / emotional space - in each channel if you have more than one - you can’t measure what effect your marketing / experience programs have on them.  Right?

3. How is that possible? Both you and I know this stuff has a very long and successful history in Business Intelligence and we’re just calling it by new names to fit in with the younger folks…;)

Maybe emotional engagement should be called Involvement. Yea, that’s the ticket, Engagement and Involvement for Frequency and “Days Since”.

2) hmmm… but if it’s one of those much-coveted multi-channel customers, then looking at how long it’s been since s/he has engaged with the ONLINE funnel — w/o knowing “engagement” in other channels — isn’t seeing the full picture, and puts you at risk of making some uninformed decisions.

3) I would hope you’re not losing people on the emotional vector, but wouldn’t be surprised if you do. A few years ago when I began to include the “emotional” stuff in my research, a colleague who I respect very much told me it was fluff and a waste of effort.

> I envision web analysts spending 100s of hours of week with their heads in the data, coming up for air every few hours, and producing reports that will be totally useless

Give them more credit than that! Web site analysis is pretty sophisticated at this point, at least among people with experience. What I was trying to point out is that intensive analysis of the physical engagement - which is something web analysts are very good at - will fall short of the full potential of the “engagement approach” without the emotional, marketing & management-oriented engagement as a vector in the equation.

> By doing this, they’re able to tease out the engagement/thrashing question, because a hit/time spent across user sessions isn’t equal — it’s dependent on WHICH pages get hit, and how much time is spent on which page

Yes, and this is a well-practiced methodology at this point, for all sites. But again, this is physical, not emotional, and the question that needs to be asked is not just “where they are” in the sales funnel but “how long has it been” since they engaged with the funnel, how long does the average step take to complete, what is going on with the folks who have not completed a step in the time expected.

This is the emotional side of engagement that can generally be measured by “time since last action”.

Is this making any sense, or am I losing folks on this emotional vector issue?

2) That “Score will be an unbelievable geekfest of historical tracking capability” worries me as much as anything else. I envision web analysts spending 100s of hours of week with their heads in the data, coming up for air every few hours, and producing reports that will be totally useless.

3) A few of the more forward-thinking firms that I’ve worked with approach the design of their sites as a sales interaction. They look closely at the sequencing of page interactions to help them determine if they’re moving prospects/customers through the sales process (this isn’t an applicable concept across all products/industries). By doing this, they’re able to tease out the engagement/thrashing question, because a hit/time spent across user sessions isn’t equal — it’s dependent on WHICH pages get hit, and how much time is spent on which page.

Good luck to WebTrends with their new patented technology solution. I can’t help but feel, however, that it’s just one more hat thrown into the “we have the best engagement metric” ring.