Capturing Website Visitor Data in Plone Websites

Thesis for Capturing Website Visitor Data

1. We should all strive to understand what's good and bad about the websites we create.
   
2. Actual data trumps opinions.
   
3. Many website visitors are willing to give you their input and suggestions.
   
4. We all realize Plone is an ideal website development environment, and, fortunately,
5. Plone facilitates capturing website visitor data in multiple ways.
   

Compare Data Capturing Options

1. Plone's own registration system is pretty good:
1. Email addresses are confirmed as valid.
   
2. Can register thousands of users, maybe more.
3. Built-in, comes for free.
4. Combine with other Plone products to send newsletters, etc.
5. Could tie Plone's registration system with a rule to send email on folder changes.
   

Plone's User Registration (continued)

1. Plone's own registration has some deficiencies:
1. The data is all in Plone, not a more useful tool such as Salesforce. 
2. Plone's user db is sort of a black hole compared with other databases that are more oriented toward keeping track of this data.
   
3. Doing actual marketing or analysis of the data involves getting the data into some other program, so why not put it there first?
4. What happens if the Plone user db gets broken? To my knowledge there aren't a lot of tools to deal with that.
   

Non-Commercial Options

1. PHPList - robust, works great, long life, MySQL based, WYSIWYG editor, html emails, lots of features. 
2. Forces users to confirm their email address.
   
3. Using PHPList for a non-profit client; they're happy. But Salesforce is free (10 Enterprise Licenses) for non-profits.
   
4. Create a PHPList sign up code snippet and put it right into a Plone website.
5. But what if someone hacks your PHP db?

Commercial Options

Last Page's Text

1. Autowebbusiness.com - great technology, connected to e-commerce platforms, auto-responders, confirming emails, anti-bot software, pop-overs, etc. An excellent choice for many people and a reasonable cost.
   
2. Salesforce.com - the 800 pound gorilla. Does everything. Free for non-profits. Lots of ability to add value to the organization. Web to lead works well but no anti-bot features. Can require a serious investment in capital and time.
   
3. Numerous other vendors like Infusionsoft.com, etc.
   

How to Implement Lead Capturing

1. Plone registration page - perhaps you might customize the db and add additional fields.
   
2. Standalone web page - Contact Form - Sales Letter
   
3. Portlet - perhaps with some animation to draw attention.
   
4. Popover form - obnoxious but works well for gathering a higher percentage of the visitors' contact information.

Questions?