Task: Understand visitor demographics
Visitor demographics let you identify customers at the zip code level. From their zip code you can infer characteristics that are associated demographically with that zip code.
The zip code is the lowest-level granularity of data that is not considered personally identifiable information (PII), as described in the sidebar. Having this clarity about the visitor helps you target your marketing efforts locally.
Report: Analyze visitor demographics
Navigate to Visitor Profile > Visitor Zip/Postal Code Report. This report is not auto-populated. It requires a code change on the web page that is part of the order process. You’ll need to decide whether you will accept the visitor’s billing or shipping zip code (the shipping zip code is recommended to determine the geographical location of your customers). That value is then assigned to the zip information.
Navigate to Visitor Profile > Visitor State Report. This report is not auto-populated. It requires a code change on the web page that requests that the visitor provide her US State. That value is then assigned to the state information.
Key insights
Analyzing the demographics of your visitors can help answer questions such as:
- Which states and zip codes are your customers based in? You can use this report to determine the success of a localized advertising campaign down to a specific town or city. This data needs to be explicitly solicited from the visitor, most likely in the address section of the order form.
- Where should you advertise to optimize your advertising spend? By state and zip code, you can determine the geographical locations with the highest visits, revenue, and interest in a certain product or product family. Using a calculated metric, you can also evaluate the conversion rate. This will give you insights to run personalized advertisement campaigns.
- Which state and zip code should you expand your business in? You can also identify where the bulk of your orders are being shipped to in order to evaluate distribution center placement or expansion. Over time you can identify growth patterns.
Interpretation of report data
For reports on the demographics of your visitors, based on zip code, Version 14 does not allow for the s.zip variable to be auto-populated from geosegmentation data. Version 15 requires that you request that this variable be enabled.
Code implementation and console settings
Set value in variables s.state and s.zip explicitly from a user input form (collected from information submitted by visitors).