Notrefamille.

com finds success

with Omniture

50% increase in online registrations

C a s e s t u dy

Media

Overview

Established in France in 1994, Notrefamille.com SA is an Internet portal dedicated to

family identity and genealogy. The company operates three main brands: Notrefamille.com,
which allows people to research their family name, place of birth etc; Genealogie.com,
which allows people to research their ancestry, and create and share family trees; and
Cadeaux.com, which offers a wide range of original and personalised products.

Notrefamille.com SA has 2.7million visitors per month. The company has developed key
partnerships with Orange, AOL, MSN, Free, TF1, M6.
 Location: Paris, France
URL: www.notrefamille.com
Industry: Media
Products: Omniture SiteCatalyst®

Business objectives Challenge Solution Results

»» Increase online »» Inability to cross- »» Omniture SiteCatalyst® »» 50 per cent increase in

registrations for
marketing and
promotional drives
»» Drive sales through
e-commerce area of
site
»» Gain insight into
customer behaviour
and identify trends
»» Unite analytics across
three separate Web
sites
reference data on three
separate Web sites from
one portal
»» No understanding
as to where and why
customers dropped off
the site
»» Unable to respond
immediately to trends
because of slow data
collation
»» Inability to experiment
quickly with A/B tests
selected to analyse
customer behaviour
»» Transaction process
shortened to improve
conversion rate
»» Overhauled navigation
according to click-path
analysis
»» Performed A/B testing
on data collection pages
to minimise drop-off rate
registrations
»» 15 per cent increase in
look-to-book conversion
rate
»» 10 per cent increase
in number of items
purchased per transaction
»» 32 per cent reduction in
drop-off rate
»» 20 per cent increase in
the average time spent
per visit

Business Objectives Challenge

Notrefamille.com and its associate
brands want to be the first port of
call for people researching anything
relating to their ancestry. First and
foremost, however, the sites are
e-commerce portals.
Explains Emmanuel Condamine,
Content and Services Manager,
Notrefamille.com: “We’ve made the
most of Web 2.0, and have incorporated
user generated content and social
networking elements in to the sites to
make them as engaging as possible.
Ultimately, however, this is to drive
registrations on one of the three sites
and for the newsletter. Once we have
secured a registration, we can then
target them with sales and promotional
drives and encourage them to buy
related gifts and other services.”
Notrefamille.com also wanted to unite
the three brands from an analytics
perspective. “Although visitors can
access each site from the other affiliate
sites, they were very much separate
entities from an analytics point of
view. We had a system in place that
provided us with basic statistics of each
individual site, but they didn’t paint a
detailed picture. Also, reports couldn’t
be run from one portal, which made
cross-referencing the information
frustrating and resource intensive.”
“We knew that visitors
were adding products and
services to the cart but
were not going through
with the transactions; what
we didn’t know was why.”
One of the biggest challenges facing
Notrefamille.com was a lack of visibility
in crucial areas.
Firstly, the company did not know which
sites were being accessed only for the
visitor to then use the affiliate sites’
functions. “People can visit any one of the
three sites and access all of the features
of the other sites from that portal. This
is great for visitors, as they don’t have to
exit one site then log on to one of the
other two. Unfortunately for us, however,
we couldn’t see what they were doing
when they were on any of the three sites,
so we didn’t know if people were using
one site simply as an entry point then
using the functions of the other sites,”
says Condamine. This lack of visibility
had an impact on SEO and domain
management. “Our basic statistics might
show a lot of people visiting Geneaogie.
com, but this is misleading if they
simply arrive on this page only to use
Notrefamille.com’s features.”
The visibility issue also blighted
Notrefamille.com in arguably the
most important area of the site –
 We amended the navigation of the site so that it’s based on fact—we now give
visitors what they actually want, rather than what we think they want.
Emmanuel Condamine, Content and Services Manager, notrefamille.com
e-commerce. “We knew that visitors
were adding products and services to
the cart but were not going through
with the transactions; what we didn’t
know was why.”
The reports run by Notrefamille.com
were not cohesive and detailed
enough to be translated in to anything
meaningful. “The data we were
producing was not ‘joined up’. We
had statistics on how much traffic was
running through the three separate
sites, but nothing on users’ click-paths
and how they interacted with the sites
once they were there. Because this data
was out of context, it was incredibly
difficult to correlate Web traffic statistics
with sales figures.”
Worse, Notrefamille.com had to go
to considerable lengths in order to
get the data it required. “To measure
the effectiveness of certain features
or campaigns, we had to rely on our
developers to generate the statistics for
us, which was very time consuming and
meant we couldn’t respond to fast-
changing trends.”
SiteCatalyst
segments site
traffic through
Next Page Flow
Analysis Report
Solution
As soon as Notrefamille.com
implemented Omniture SiteCatalyst
the visibility issue was resolved. The
company made some significant
changes to the e-commerce area of
the site. “We were able to see that
particular items were being added
to the cart but were often removed
before the transaction was processed.
When we looked closer at the data, we
could see why. For example, for one
product it was the cost of postage and
packaging that was deterring people so
we adjusted the cost to accommodate
the postage,” says Condamine.
Analysis of the SiteCatalyst data also
allowed Notrefamille.com to generate
additional sales by recommending
products related to those already
placed in the shopping cart by the
visitor. “Some products are very obvious
to pair up; but our analysis revealed
some pairings we probably wouldn’t
have thought of.”
Notrefamille.com found that its
transaction process was too long
and was a drop-off point for visitors.
“Originally, it was a four-step process
but, despite the visitor being made aware
of exactly what stage s/he was at in the
process, it was proving too long. So we
shortened it so visitors can complete a
transaction in just two steps.”
Navigation of the site has been changed
to reflect the findings of SiteCatalyst.
“When you design a site, it’s very easy
to assume that you know what’s best
and build the site based upon past
experience and intuition. However, by
examining the click-path, we were able
to amend the navigation of the site so
that it’s based on fact – we now give
visitors what they actually want, rather
than what we think they want.”
SiteCatalyst showed Notrefamille.com
that the seemingly small things can
be responsible for visitors dropping off
the site. “Before using Omniture, the
images on the site did not contain links.
SiteCatalyst showed us that visitors
assumed the images doubled as links
and were clicking on them to navigate
their way around the site. When they
found they did not contain links, they

were getting frustrated and leaving
the site. So we gave them what they
wanted—a logical navigation path—
and embedded links within the images,
which has reduced the drop-off rate by
32 per cent.”
Notrefamille.com also used SiteCatalyst
to run A/B tests, a comparison of two
different page designs and navigation
paths to determine the most effective
format. “The tests allowed us to
experiment and see what did and did
not appeal to visitors, then tweak the
site accordingly. For example, we tested
which images prompted the most
positive response—an old or young
person, a man or woman etc.”
Condamine also used the tests to work
out the best way of collecting data
on visitors to the site. “We know it’s a
fine line when asking for information
via an online form—you need enough
information from the visitor for it to be
useful, but asking too many questions
can make them abandon the form
altogether. By running an A/B test,
we could work out how far to probe
without ever risking the visitor getting
frustrated and dropping off the site.”
Results
Since Notrefamille.com implemented Having instant access to the compre-
Omniture SiteCatalyst in November hensive data has proved invaluable to
2006, the results have been impressive. Notrefamille.com. “Being able to ma-
“After analysing visitors’ behaviour when nipulate such large amounts of data on
they were filling the cart, and shortening three separate sites using just one portal
the transactions process from four stages really puts us in control and lightens
to two, we increased the conversion rate the administrative burden. And the fact
by 15 per cent. We also increased the that the statistics can be called up ‘live’
number of items purchased per transac- means we can very quickly identify trends
tion by 10 per cent.” and preferences and make the appropri-
ate changes immediately.”
SiteCatalyst also ensured Notrefamille.
com met another key objective. “We “We’ve had great success using
wanted to really push registrations, as Omniture. SiteCatalyst has added real
they are central to our sales process. value—we can be incredibly precise
Since using SiteCatalyst, registrations with our data analysis, which feeds
have increased by 50 per cent.” back directly into our sales and market-
ing efforts.”
“The site is performing better across
the board—the average time spent
per visit is up by 20 per cent, and the
number of page views per visit have
increased by 12 per cent.”
The speed at which SiteCatalyst allows
organisations to respond to trends has
also impressed Condamine. “Previously,
running an A/B test was a real problem
because we had to ask an engineer to
set it up for us. It would take three days
to set up and another three days to col-
late the data, which was unacceptable
given the fact that we like to keep the
site fresh and update it on a daily basis.
With Omniture, we can set up an A/B
test in half a day.”

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