There are some tough acts to follow in this thread, not the least of which is @ceedubsnz very well done blog post.
This article talks about the idea of “funnels” which is tracking the step by step process of seeing a page, clicking a post, adding to cart, checking out, and finalizing the process. Where in the “funnel” might people be dropping out?
There are other examples, such as email campaigns.
email sent --> email successfully delivered --> email opened --> link clicked in email --> item added to cart --> check out
Google analytics, mentioned above by Mike also does funnel analytics and visulization:
Now, for the ecommerce business, I suppose the goal i s to maximize the amount of successful transactions relative to the initial point of contact in order to make the most $$.
For a tester though? I think we are interested in the same analytics, and the end result is the same (to make the customer money!). However, if we are witnessing a large drop out rate at a certain point in the process, we need to make sure this isn’t due to some technical issue that can be resolved. It would be awful to lost purchases just because of a software bug. That’d be like having to leave a retail store on account of a broken register.
I have left retail stores on account of log lines. I suppose the online equivalent would simply be the amount of time it would take to check something out, i.e. performance. So we’d want to know that too.
That’s my thoughts concerning something I literally learned about 10 minutes ago.
-Dave K