Analytics Speak

This post goes into detail on a question I was asked in an interview. The question wasn't as straightforward as my writing, for obvious reasons.

" If you had aggregate non PII information - how would you go about making deductions on the value of each new visitor "

Assumptions
The visitor is a new visitor
You have no information beyond cookie information on the visitor
They don't login or sign up

Information on visitor
IP address (geographical area)
Referral source

My answer: The only way to tag a value to a new visitor with little or no information is by analyzing their clickstream on your website.

There should be a score assigned to each link on the website, or to a combination of links.

For example:
User 1
LP -> Products (click1) -> Most Expensive product name (click2) -> Features (click3) -> Exit/Abandon page

User 2
LP-> Products (click1) -> Productx (click2) -> Help center(click3) -> Q&A troubleshoot (click4) Exit/Abandon

User 1 would/should accrue a better value score than User 2 simply because he seems more likely to be a potential customer than User 2.

Now this scoring method is a common sense method - but put into a numerical format makes it easier to compute scores for all the traffic to your website.

The ultimate goal would be: Every user accruing a score > X, starts to see stronger call to actions, offers etc. The information is recorded in the persistent cookie, and the system every subsequent visit with a higher priority/more targeted ads etc.