The integration of VOC data with web behavioral data is an increasingly common wish-list item for clients of every sort. It’s also something that’s usually easier than people think – and I find that some organizations haven’t done it because they anticipate much more work than is really involved.
I was thinking about this because I’ve been working with one of our clients on an integration with a simple online survey tool. They opted for a tool called QuestionPro (http://questionpro.com/). They liked the simplicity, ease-of survey development and site deployment, the flexibility to support specific analytic projects with targeted surveys and, of course, the low-cost of a solution like QuestionPro. But one of their key issues was whether an inexpensive tool like QuestionPro could support integration with Omniture (they are quite a sophisticated Omniture shop) – especially across their dozens of significant properties.
Well, not every low-end site survey tool can support Omniture (or other WA tool) integration, but many including QuestionPro can and although there are a few quirks you have to deal with, the overall process of integration is pretty darn easy. I thought I’d describe the basic integration process and some of the issues you should think about when integrating a survey tool into Omniture or other web analytics solution. Interestingly, this process also turned up a really nifty API opportunity that can make accessing complex survey data in SiteCatalyst quite a bit easier!
After I wrote this, I realized it had gotten pretty long for a single post. So I decided to chop it up a bit and release it over the course of a week or two. Let me know if you like that approach better or whether putting it all in one place is easier!
The Most Basic VOC Integration
The first step in any survey to web analytics solution integration is to see if you can get the tag on the survey page. This is a simple exercise in Boolean logic – either the survey tool allows you put JavaScript on the survey pages or it doesn’t.
QuestionPro certainly does – and it gives you several very reasonable options. You can insert code into Header or the Footer of each page. In the screenshot below, I’ve popped the footer and inserted the page code for Omniture. You can link out to the s_code.js file or you can embed the s_code.js entirely within the text here. Keep in mind that if you are using a 1st Party measurement cookie there may be issues here. But if you are using the default 3rd Party cookie this will work simply and admirably.
With QuestionPro, you can build single page or multi-page surveys. The Thank You page is separate and you can tag it as well. For many projects, you'll only want to tag the Thank You page since your primary interest will in capturing the actual survey responses.
One drawback to QuestionPro is that the footer is common to every page. If you do want to track page names on the survey then you'll have to do a bit of extra work with the QuestionPro custom variables described later.
When you’ve put the basic tag on the page, you now have the core of the integration. Your survey respondents will be registered in the appropriate reporting suites and they’ll be sessionized with the rest of their behavior.
This very basic level of integration takes only a few minutes on a typical survey. In the next post, I'll show how to capture the respondent identity in Omniture - and go on from there to show increasingly sophisticated levels of integration.
this is great! I'm waiting eagerly for the whole series.
Posted by: Jon | April 13, 2009 at 02:07 PM