Not all cookies are created equal; the web site of Designer Linens Outlet is finding. Within a month of switching to from third-party cookies to the first-party cookie solution of analytics provider WebTrends, the online store reports that it saw cookie rejection drop to only 0.5% of visitors, from the 18% who were rejecting third party cookies previously.
One practical effect of the change was a more accurate picture for the retailer of visitor behavior including unique visitor count, which increased under the new system by 10.2%. That provided a more accurate method of attributing revenue to the right campaign and more visibility into deferred conversions from return visitors, according to the company.
Taking steps to optimize its site and its business performance based on a more accurate view of its own data with the services of Stratigent, a WebTrends partner and web analytics consultancy, Designer Linens Outlet identified underperforming campaigns and reallocated resources. That ultimately produced a 3.5 increase in overall ales and a 23.7% reduction in marketing costs. The retailer also saw a more than four-fold lift in online newsletter sign-ups, and a 20.1% increase in its conversion rate.
“Designer Linens Outlet joins more than 500 customers who are noticing significant improvements in accuracy as a result of switching to our patent-pending, no-cost first party cookie management solution,” says Greg Drew, CEO of WebTrends.
The use of first-party cookies is emerging as best practice in web analytics. Sites use cookies to track needed information—such as user preferences, names and passwords of registered visitors to the site. For marketers using analytics to track campaign success, the fewer the cookies rejected, the more accurate the view of customer behavior.
Third-party cookies typically have been used to monitor customer behavior and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and web site enhancements. Third-party cookies are set on the user’s browser by a web site other than the one which a user is visiting. First-party cookies are served to the user’s browser directly from the domain of the web site the user is visiting.
The problems arise when a consumer refuses to accept third-party cookies. Consumers reject those cookies and that diminishes the ability of the third party that placed the cookie to track that consumer’s online behavior, resulting in a less than complete measure of how consumers navigate the web. Consumers reject third-party cookies out of spyware or privacy fears.
Back...
