How to use visitor web analytics software like Google Analytics

YouTube - Google uses data from social sites in ranking

How Do You Spell Website Success ?

spelling errors on commercial websites are a turnoff for many people. A recent BBC News article highlighted bad spelling as a potential cause of lost online revenue. In other words, typos could hurt your conversion rate and "cost you deep in the purse" or "deop in the pursa" as it might have been written 500 years ago.

That ancient phrase dates back to a time when very few people could read and write, and there was very little writing for most people to read. The idea that we should have a standard way of spelling only gained traction after printing technology drastically increased the number of words being put on paper (and even then, it took several centuries for the plural of egg to settle down as eggs, rather than egges or eggyes).

Some people still aren’t sure that standardized spelling is a good idea, a view reflected among the more than 600 comments sparked by that BBC News article in just 24 hours. However, many of those comments missed the point of the article: Bad spelling can undermine website conversion rates.

As one randomly selected web shopper put it to me: "If an online store is too stupid to get their spelling right, why should I think they will get my order right?"
Why Typos Kill Conversion Rates

Spell It RightThe fact is, commercial websites rely on text — written copy — to conduct business, from describing the product to explaining the purchase process. Even sites full of fancy graphics have to use words, and whether accurate spelling matters to you personally is irrelevant when it comes to conversion rate optimization.

The relevant opinions, the ones that rule in CRO, are those of your website's visitors. (Note: The use of Lick instead of Like as the first word of this article was intentional.)

Why would a typo cause visitors to your website not to convert, even when those people may themselves be terrible spellers? Without performing a formal survey of website visitors, any answer to that question must be based on supposition, but here are some suggestions:

Accurate spelling and good grammar are equated with legitimacy, if not consciously then subconsciously. Some of us may be more aware of this sentiment when it is expressed in the negative: Bad spelling and bad grammar are cause for suspicion. For example, what's the first clue a piece of email from a stranger is a scam? Many people would say it's the bad spelling and grammar.
Virtual transactions lack familiar clues about integrity, sincerity, and trustworthiness such as facial expression, tone of voice, and body language. We may be looking to website copy for clues instead and good spelling and grammar signify respect for the website visitor because the site owner has made the effort to copy edit the content. Obvious failure to do so may undermine consumer trust, a valuable commodity when competing for online dollars.
Size and location matter. If you are a big brand name like Target or Walmart you might not lose too many sales due to a typo in the details of a product description. But a glaring typo on the home page of a smaller brand may cause new visitors who don't know much about it to bounce.

Tips Two A Void Spell In Miss Teaks

Typos may be acceptable in some places, like tweets and Facebook comments, but commercial website copy needs to be clean and accurate.

Don't rely on spell checkers. The above heading passes a spell check with flying colors. Spell checkers can be a big help, especially those that flag errors as you type, but they just don't have the human intelligence required to know which words you should be using.
Use multiple human editors. I don't know any serious writers who believe they can reliably copy edit their own work. As the writer you tend to see what you think you wrote, not what characters ended up on the page. In a pinch, "multiple human editors" can mean the person writing the copy and one other person, but three sets of eyes are better than two.
Make sure your graphics people use the spellchecker in Photoshop for any images that include words. They need to use it before rasterizing the text layer. Editing typos in flattened image files is a real pain so check before you save to JPEG, GIF, or PNG.
Read more: http://goo.gl/Z0PGj

3 Common Mistakes in Digital Media Data Analysis !!

With multiple campaigns in full swing and multitudes of data pouring in, it can be easy to misinterpret details and jump to conclusions about results without sufficient evidence. For example, media buyers may frequently be marketing to consumers who would have searched and/or bought anyway, without being hit with display impressions.

Buying behavioral, retargeting, search and other types of targeting data can make it even more likely that you are preaching to the choir. The trick is to determine whether your ads reached those consumers who truly needed to be persuaded or if they reached those who were closer to the conversion tipping point—either they already are or were likely to become customers anyway.

Certainly we want to avoid overkill and wasting money and impressions on consumers who didn’t need it. Before making a hasty assumption that may prove to be unfounded upon a deeper inspection, consider these common mistakes when examining digital media data.
Assigning a Causal Relationship Where There Was None

It can be quick and easy to assign causality when much of your data seems to point in the assumed direction. However, thorough testing of the hypothesis is required before jumping to conclusions.

For example, perhaps we have a lot of display impressions correlated with high search volume in one geographic area. Don’t assume that your display impressions caused the increased search volume. Perhaps instead there has been a general overall spike in brand interest in this market. Could offline tactics be the driver? Perhaps there was local news coverage related to your products.

To test the hypothesis that higher display impressions are driving search, increase or decrease display impressions and isolate other potential factors to see what kind of measurable impact—if any—this has on search.
Assigning Attribution for Sales Incorrectly

Particularly in markets where there’s a high likelihood that you’ll be targeting customers who are already buyers, attributing the sale can be complicated. This is especially true with site and search retargeting tactics.

Dropping a cookie on a user who visits your site or delivering ads across multiple networks to anyone who searches for your keywords can be very effective. However, in a typical purchase cycle, consumers shop around quite a bit. Absent a direct click-through-to-conversion path, it’s difficult to say that those who come to your site and viewed a banner made a purchase because of that banner. And, we don’t know what got them to the site the first time.

Are you showing ads to an audience who would have bought anyway and then attributing their buy to the fact that you showed them an ad? It’s a slippery slope that requires testing to measure the real impact.

To test your attribution theory and be aware of how retargeting might influence your results, adjust the number of impressions, frequency caps and other parameters and closely monitor and/or control for external impacts on search. When you have an overall picture of the pre-purchase drivers, you can more clearly begin to see what’s sparking the tipping point of conversion.
Failure to Consider the Big Picture

Digital media marketing through search and display don’t exist in a vacuum. Therefore, we must take a more holistic approach in determining the results. Don’t just look at click-through or search rates, but consider conversion rates, basket size, and other KPIs in relationship to these metrics.

It can be easy to say that display isn’t driving conversion if there’s no direct click-through to attribute, but how many consumers might convert with a higher basket size because of display impressions? If we look at the total number of impressions, but don’t see an increase in clicks, we might think it didn’t work, but we may be actually making more money because consumers trust the familiarity of the brand enough to make larger purchases. And, ultimately, isn’t that what we’re after?

Had we just looked at clicks or just at impressions, these results may have been obscured. To get a more accurate picture of results, we must look at all metrics from a holistic perspective to arrive at a bottom line.
Digital Media Analysis: A Double-Edged Sword

We definitely have access to hoards of data—infinitely more detailed than we could have ever dreamed of in the offline world. However, without careful critical analysis of this avalanche of information, we run the risk of jumping to conclusions without hard evidence or misinterpreting the data we collect.

Inspired by article: http://goo.gl/Taiqj

Google Pilots an Analytics-Webmaster Integration

If you're serious about running a website and you want to get your search-related data straight from Google, chances are you've registered for both Webmaster Tools and Analytics; anyone who signs up for Analytics almost certainly benefits from Webmaster Tools as well. In an effort to start cross-breeding the two services, Google has launched a limited pilot program that integrates data and tools from both services

What the Experimental Service Includes

The cross-service tools for the pilot program will start out as fairly limited. More specifically, they will include a set of reports that pull information from your Webmaster Tools and display them in your analytics interface. Beyond giving you the chance to see more data in one place, the reports will allow Webmaster data (such as clicks, queries, impressions, average position, etc.) to be seen in the dynamic Analytics charts. Many other Analytics features, such as filtering and visualizations, will be available.

For example, organic search impressions, clicks average organic position and clickthrough rate (CTR) are part of the main interface in this Google Analytics pilot.

Google Analytics with Webmaster Tools Integration

This is just the beginning for cross-integration, however, it seems that Google is mostly aimed at rolling Webmaster data into Analytics.

The official Google statement announcing the program indicated that, "We hope this will be the first of many ways to surface Webmaster Tools data in Google Analytics and give you a more thorough picture of your site's performance." It's not yet clear whether those accepted to the pilot program will also have earlier access to additional programs.

Signing Up for the Pilot

First, a couple caveats. Keep in mind that as a limited pilot program you may just not get in. Further, if you do get in, it may not be for several weeks; as Google puts it, "If you're chosen for the pilot, you'll receive an email in a few weeks with more details." That said, signing up is fairly easy.

First, go to the Google pilot sign-up page. Fill out the form located here (you'll need to provide your contact email address, first and last name, Google Analytics ID, login email address, and domain you intend to use the reports for). Then hit submit and you're clear! All you have to do now is wait patiently and hope you get selected.

Source: http://goo.gl/jxfX1

IBM Social Media Jam Aims to Build Social Business

IBM has published a paper on social media and where it believes it is going. While IBM (news, site) might not normally be associated with social media, the paper is the result of what is described as a web jam with over 2,700 participants over three days and from over 80 countries.

A web jam, IBM says, is an online conversation with the purpose of discussing a particular issue — in this case social media — and drawing conclusions that can be brought into the future with a particular goal.

While the goals of this jam are not completely clear except that it falls into Big Blue's wider "Smarter Planet strategy," there does appear to be an implied suggestion that participants should look at their social media strategies and see where IBM technologies fit into it all.

Though not providing a clear roadmap of IBMs social media strategy per se, it does point in the direction that IBM will be going to address the concerns raised over the course of the online conversation.

Why an Adaptive Social Business Model is Needed ?

The trouble with many social business models today is that they don't allow room for adaptation and manipulation; they put organizations into a box and expect them to move in a linear way to get to their goal, not being able to move forward until each preceding step is completed.

Problem is, every organization has different needs in different areas. The point of developing something like this is to address and show the common elements among organizations that are investing in social business while allowing the flexibility of every organization to focus on the necessary areas.

How This Can Help Your Organization

Some organizations might have a rock solid organizational culture, a solid process, and a great technology stack but might be weak in the goals and objectives and governance areas. This framework is designed to let organizations look at and understand the key components that make up each sphere.

Your organization might be great at one of the five areas, whereas another organization might be solid at three of the five.

Organizations can maneuver through this framework to improve on areas where they are weak or perhaps not as strong as they would like to be. It's adaptive because it doesn't force organizations down a single path – yet addresses the key areas for social business.

Every organization can determine which areas they need to work on and which ones are solid.

While the framework uses the term "social" the reality is that many of the concepts are built around traditional approaches to business but in this case slightly adapted specifically to organizations interested in emergent social software. As Gil Yehuda has said, "it's very healthy to view a social initiative as a business initiative."
source: http://goo.gl/sVGnx

Benchmark – Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate Survey !!

Want to know about Industry Benchmark data of Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate. Participate in the Survey to access the free report.

Bounce Rate:- Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate) is a term used in web site traffic analysis. It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.

Conversion Rate:- The percentage of visitors to a web site who complete a process designed by the web marketer. For example, if out of 100 visitors who respond to an ad by clicking on it and coming to a landing page, two go on to complete and submit a form, the conversion rate for that program is 2%.

Web Analytics – Refining and Redefining The Current Techniques !!

In the coming year we shall see tremendous refinements in the current web analytics tools to meet the new and very specific analytics needs of growing organizations. Here is our list of the top trends that we are likely to observe in 2011:

1. Tackling the challenge of analyzing multiple web access points:

The ways through which people can now access web has grown significantly and so analysts needs to stand up and face the challenge of understanding the behavior of the users of these multiple platforms to drive the whole advantage. In 2011 connected devices are set to make more use of your cars, work stations, TV, devices with larger screens and so on for keeping you fully connected. With multitude of handheld devices like smart phones and iPad that offer enhanced viewing and browsing experience – the number of mobile web users is increasing exponentially. Mobile analytics here would emerge as a distinct component of reporting user information for clients.

2. In-app analytics will come up significantly in 2011:

Today’s mobiles are flooded with options to run thousands of applications, which are slowly becoming significant for communication, interaction, navigation, search, entertainment, information, gaming, etc., for the users. The list is growing at an alarming pace and is capable of keeping the users addicted to their gadgets. iPhone applications alone run over 350,000, while Android has over 50,000 apps. The reason for this growing numbers is the usability and utility of these applications in smart phones. Web analysts will have to burn the midnight oil to extract valuable data from these applications’ usage.

3. Proactive companies will focus on analyzing the voice of the customer:

With millions of conversations happening online, companies have little control over what is being talked about their brands, but by being proactive in listening and following their brand name on all online channels, companies can influence and give a positive direction to those conversations. Social media analytics would be extremely useful. Another challenge here is to cut down huge amounts of unnecessary data, which may become a specialized task for analysts. Twitter is coming up with its own analytic tool which could give out some real valuable data, good for analysts to track and drive marketing objectives.

4. Better framework for social media analytics would be developed:

Currently, there are thousands of free and paid tools in the market. Each addressing a very specific analytics need and none of them are totally accurate. There’s a need for some level of tool consolidation and a social media analytics solution that answers critical questions holistically when it comes to tracking a brand online. Convergence of best web analytic practices may shape up new and standardized frameworks. Recently concluded global events and conferences like Blogwell, FutureGov Summit, among others, focused on the hot issue of developing a strategic social media framework for better and effective analysis.

5. Social media campaign analytics is coming into the picture:

With major companies targeting social media for online marketing; campaign analytics on social media is becoming a necessity. The metrics for measurement is totally different from the standard campaign analytics. Tracking Facebook fan pages, twitter hash tags, various brand specific applications and promotional campaigns on social media is becoming the need of the hour. So with increased use of online marketing, tracking social media campaigns will now grow at par with regular web analysis.

6. Privacy concerns might change the web analytics landscape totally:

With increased concern over privacy issues, tracking data that is private in nature might get banned altogether, and analysts might end up looking for new jobs. In 2011, we will see what Federal Trade Commission’s Do-Not-Track initiatives include and how it will impact web analytics. It may be something similar to the Do-Not-Call registry for phone users.

7. The need for web analysis will shoot up, so will the jobs

With online marketing, experiencing a near primary-marketing platform status, businesses are rapidly joining the web analysis bandwagon. Major web analysis vendors have seen a steep rise in the application of their solutions, which is indicative of this trend. And with more analysis needed we will surely see a surge in demand for quality web analysts too. As per Econsultancy report, companies are investing more in people as well as technology in order to get ‘actionable’ information from their web data. Forrester Research reported that web analytics spending will more than double to $1 billion by 2014. This implies a pressing need for analysis, and of course, more jobs for analysts.

Source: Web Analytics – Refining and Redefining The Current Techniques

Why Different Web Analytics Tools Report Different Numbers !!

The main reasons behind different data against different web analytic tools are:-


a). Raw logs are useless:-

Most servers store raw logs, which are lists of all the accesses and page requests on your website. It’s possible to interpret those raw logs with special programs, creating graphic reports which will contain the number of visitors, page views and so on.

Those numbers are grossly overestimated, though, because all kinds of search bots and automated queries are counted together.

b) Webalizer and AW Stats overestimate

Webalizer and AW Stats are very popular web analytics programs, and that is because they are usually installed by default on cPanel (the control panel software on most hosting companies). Both of them tend to overestimate the number of visitors and page views your website receives, however, and such data should always be used with a grain of salt.

c) Ad networks underestimate a bit, but there is nothing you can do about it

The number of impressions you’ll see on most ad networks control panel usually is an underestimation of your total traffic, and that is because they won’t track people who can’t see ads or who block them on purpose.

There is nothing you can do about it though, and if you want to make money using ad networks you need to play under their rules. The alternative is to have your own banners embed with HTML code, in which case they would be seen by 100% of your visitors.

d) Google Analytics underestimates a bit, but it’s the industry standard

The numbers reported by Google Analytics also underestimate your traffic slightly, and that is because the software has very strict rules regarding what should be considered a visitors and a page view.

GA’s tracking is very reliable, though, and that is why it’s used as the industry standard. If you want to sell a website, for example, most serious buyers will ask for Google Analytics data before they make an offer.

The Benefits Of Web Analytics !!

First of all, what are web analytics?

The Official WAA Definition of Web Analytics: Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.



Analysis

Web analytics has been gaining steady popularity among the online community, and is showing no signs of slowing. It is a great device to look at your latest internet site trends and your visitors’ or users’ preferences in terms of site features. Here are some very general examples of the benefits of web analytics.

* It helps monitor your visitors and users

With web analytics, you know how long your visitor stayed on your site, who they are and what source they came from. It is possible for you to know their clickstream activity, the keywords they may have used to access your site, and how they came to enter your site in the first place. You can also see the number of times a visitor returned to your site and which pages took preference over the others. All in all, very useful information vital in order to make constructive website changes.

* It can help you optimize your website

Once you have carefully studied the actions of your visitors, you will be able to action some changes. This puts you in a great position to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites. You can improve, streamline or reshape site navigation to better assist your visitors, and improve their overall browsing experience.

* It can help you formulate a sales and e-marketing plan

Web analytics will be able to assist you in the preparation of an e-marketing plan. This will be more effective because your plan will be based on solid facts and not mere probabilities. You‘ll know what is popular on the site, and what your market likes and wants. By tracking highly-viewed items, you will learn which features receive the highest interest. You can even use analytics data to enhance other programs that you already have in place - like PPC for example. Then you can work on expanding your client base, as well as retaining your current customers.
Conclusion

An application like Google Analytics can help you achieve all of the above - but in order to turn your data into information - that is to make sense of it and fully understand what it means - it is helpful to use a business intelligence solution which can open your eyes to the real potential of your website in just a few clicks.

Can you think of any more? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Read more: The Benefits Of Web Analytics

Common Web Analytics Issues !!

Having frequently been involved with the web analytics process I have noticed some consistent issues with web analytics both from an agency and in house perspective. I am not talking about data quality or even vendor selection, I am talking about how web analytics strategically fits in within an organization.


Analytics is not a priority: In many cases web analytics is often an afterthought and is not implemented during a site launch or during a sponsored/email campaign. Web Analytics needs to be given more priority and should be thought of before any marketing campaigns are implemented so that you can actually quantify the amount of dollars you budgeted and spent for the marketing.


The right stakeholders are not getting the right data: If the same dashboard is given to every person involved with your online strategy then you're not allowing them to make informed business decisions which affect their part of the overall plan. Customized reporting is an absolute must - show the Marketing Manager leads (SEO vs. PPC), show the online marketing team keyword referrals/ROI by source, show the CEO/CFO sales and revenue numbers, show the IT Team Site Errors/Traffic Spikes and show the usability team barriers within conversion funnels.

Too much data and not enough resources: In both the In-House and Agency worlds there becomes a time where analysts are simply bombarded with so many requests that they simply can't keep up. Web Analytics is an extremely important tool used to show the performance of a business and how to best tweak your business's performance, so WHY NOT add some more resources to it.


Tough and tedious to find good analysts: It is difficult to find analysts who have the technical ability to implement a training solution but also have the marketing savvy to know what recommendations to offer once the data has been collected. However, there are a few good ways to train a new analytics analyst: Get them involved with the SEO/PPC teams so they better understand the business, Give them a mix between reading and scenario based training, give them some work to do which is out of their comfort zone, work with them through an analysis or deliverable, send them to SEMPhonic for some analytics training, and finally see if they're still passionate after all of this.

Source: Common Web Analytics Issues

Google Analytics Data Skewed Because Of Instant Previews !!

There are confirmed reports that Google Instant Previews may be skewing your web analytics data.

It appears that in some cases Google will conduct an on-demand fetch of your page to dynamically create an Instant Preview. The on-demand fetch happens when a searcher places his mouse over the search result on Google and the image preview comes up. Some analytics tools, including Google Analytics, may consider that a visit, because Google Instant Preview is actually visiting the page in real-time to get that on-demand Instant Preview.

There are several complaints about this issue in the Google Help forums. Google’s John Mueller replied saying they are working on fixing this from showing up in Google Analytics. “We’re working on a solution for this, to prevent Google Instant Preview on-demand fetches from executing Analytics JavaScript,” John said.

Ideally, There is no estimated time for when this may be resolved. So if you have seen a skew in your analytics data in the past two weeks, this may be the reason.

Read More: Google Analytics Data Skewed Because Of Instant Previews

Troubleshooting Google Analytics Goals and Funnels !!

Objective:-
In this module you'll learn some of the most common reasons for why goals and funnels aren't functioning properly, and how to fix them.
Troubleshooting Goals That Aren't Being Tracked

One way to check if you have written your Goal URL correctly is to see if the page is being tracked. Search the Top Content report for the goal page to confirm the page is properly tracked and counted as a goal. Please see the examples below for further information.

I. Exact Match/Head Match:

Search the Top Content report (found underneath the 'Content' section) for the request URI of the goal URL.

For example, if your goal URL is www.example.com/cats/prettycatcheckout.html, then the Request URI is everything after the domain name '/cats/prettycatcheckout.html.'

If the request URI appears in the Top Content report, then the goal URL is written correctly. However, if it doesn't appear, please see troubleshooting tips here.

II. Regular Expression Match

Search your Top Content report using your regular expression. The report filter allows regular expressions, so your goal page should appear if your regular expression is written correctly. If the goal page doesn't appear, please see the troubleshooting tips here.

Tip: If the goal page doesn't appear in your Top Content report the first time you search, try modifying your search until it does appear. Then use the search result from your modified search query as your Goal URL.
Troubleshooting Funnel Drop-Offs

If you have funnel steps with URLs to different domains or subdomains, and the tracking code isn't customized as described in the following articles, then all visitors that go from the website in the first step to any other domain or subdomain will appear to drop off in your reports. Learn how to track multiple domains or subdomains in Section 1: Installing Google Analytics on Complex Websites.

For example, suppose a funnel is setup as follows:

Goal URL: www.secondsite.com/jkl.html

Funnel Steps:
Step 1 (You're checked off 'Required step' for Step 1 from your Goal settings page): www.firstsite.com/abc.html
Step 2: www.firstsite.com/def.html
Step 3: www.secondsite.com/ghi.html

In this example, if the tracking code is not customized as needed for multiple domains, then users will appear to drop off at Step 2 because a new session will be created when the user goes from www.firstsite.com to www.secondsite.com. In the new session, Google Analytics will not know that the user actually visited Step 1 because it was done in the previous session. Since the first step is required in this funnel, it will also appear as if the user did not convert towards the goal, and Step 3 and the Goal URL will not be recorded in the funnel since it didn't occur in the same session.

Read more: Overview of Troubleshooting Google Analytics Goals and Funnels

In web analytics, everything is relative !!

What's a good bounce rate for my web site?

I get that kind of question a lot. What's a 'good' bounce rate? A 'good' time on site?

The answer, I'm afraid, is: Better than your current bounce rate. Better than your current time on site.

In web analytics, it's best to focus on your own data and on improving. Use yourself as the benchmark. This is your best strategy for two reasons:
Lack of accurate benchmarks

Accurate, internet- or industry-wide data on keyword searches, or competitors, or just about anything else, is scarce. Non-existent, really.

1. 'Panel'-based statistics like Compete.com (which I love) and Alexa (which I'm starting to like again) sweep in an incredibly wide range of web sites. The bounce rate on your online bike shop won't compare to, say, the bounce rate on the New York Times web site.
2. Statistics within your own industry will include outliers at both end of the spectrum: At one end are the companies that have invested 100x your budget to become the shining pinnacle of conversion rate optimization. At the other, you'll be comparing yourself to the sites designed according to 1992 best practices. Even if you can narrow down the data in #1, it'll be inaccurate..
3. Keyword data from Google is about as trustworthy as a credit default swap.
4. Keyword data from other sources may be more trustworthy, but shows you a tiny sliver of total search traffic.

Numbers lie

Even if you could get accurate benchmarks, they still lie. Your business isn't like your competitors', no matter how similar they seem. Competitor A just fired his head of sales, so conversion rates tanked for a month. Competitor B happened to get on Channel 5 News. Her traffic tripled, lowering her conversion rate, too - but her sales skyrocketed.

Unless you've got the whole story, the numbers will lie. And you can't get the whole story.
Focus on improvement

So, if you're trying to figure out how many visitors you should be getting for 'slobber knocker', the answer is? More than you get right now.

If you're trying to figure out where your conversion rate should be? Yep. Better than what you're getting right now.

That's what web analytics are for: Helping you improve. Which, as it happens, is also how you beat your competitors.


Read more: In web analytics, everything is relative

Web Analytics Can also Track Offline Campaigns !!

Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring Web site traffic. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print advertising campaigns.

That's what New York-based retailer BuiltNY discovered when it began running a four-issue print campaign in Dwell magazine in August. The company's "design-focused" neoprene tote bags for things like wine, lunch, or laptops are sold directly on its Web site and through resellers in 30 countries.

The campaign began in Dwell's September issue with a quirky expose of what various items look like in a BuiltNY bag through an airport x-ray machine. The ad itself featured a candid letter from BuiltNY, superimposed on one of the images, describing the events leading up to the creation of the ad.

To track the print campaign, BuiltNY put a unique, easy-to-remember unique URL in the ad, which was only in use for that campaign. That landing page shows colorful x-ray images of objects like wine bottles, lunches, seashells and beach gear, all inside the appropriate BuiltNY bag.

Through Google Analytics, BuiltNY was able to attribute an 800 percent boost in traffic when the ad hit newsstands, and a 40 percent increase in online sales from visitors that came through that URL, Steve Bowden, art director for BuiltNY, told ClickZ.

"We can read it like the Wall Street Journal for our own Web traffic," Bowden said. "Every morning we get an update on how our Web, print and e-mail campaigns are doing, correlated to sales."

"Instead of gathering around the table scratching our heads, we actually have data to show how the campaign is performing," added Aaron Lown, a principal at BuiltNY and its co-creative director.

The second ad in the series, in Dwell's October issue, follows the bare-bones letter approach, with an invitation to browse BuiltNY's new line of cases for cell phones, MP3 players, laptops and other electronics. That ad links to an online game BuiltNY developed with Justin Bakse of VolcanoKit.com, where users battle alien neoprene electronic accessories with a "ballistic champagne bottle."

BuiltNY ran a more traditional test ad in Dwell earlier this year, before it began using Google Analytics. "But I have no idea if it worked," Lown said, since he had no way to track its success. Prior to implementing Google Analytics about the same time the X-ray campaign began, BuiltNY hadn't used any Web analytics products for its first three years in business. "We just had too many other things to do, like design new products, run our business...," Lown said.

These print ads account for a majority of BuiltNY's marketing spend, which is balanced out primarily with public relations outreach, quarterly e-mail campaigns, and a small AdWords campaign, Lown said. "This is the first advertising we've done, and while it's small in the grand scheme of things, it's our largest ad effort," he said.

BuiltNY is now using Google Analytics to track all of its online and offline efforts. It's also using the data to optimize future campaigns, such as determining the best day and time to send out e-mail communications to existing customers. Because it can now accurately determine the value of its online and offline campaigns, BuiltNY can more confidently spend its limited marketing budget knowing what the return will be, Lown said.

Web analytics applications are often underutilized by small and mid-sized businesses like BuiltNY, which currently has about 30 employees. For many small businesses, the only Web analytics available are simple traffic counting applications available through their hosting provider, which provide little actionable value, Greg Dowling, senior analyst at JupiterResearch, told ClickZ. Those companies eschew more sophisticated analytics applications for reasons of cost, information overload, or confusion over how to utilize the data in their business, he said.

"I think the primary barrier is the lack of internal resources required to effectively establish, monitor, and maintain a Web analytics installation, as well as the cost-prohibitive nature of enterprise class Web analytics platforms," Dowling said. "Additionally, tool complexity prevents users who actually install these applications from getting any real value out of them if they don't have dedicated Web analysts supporting these installations."

Google tackled the first issue head-on by offering its analytics product for free, and is taking on the others with a robust help center and knowledge base of practical applications it calls Conversion University. The money saved by Google Analytics being free can also be put into hiring and training Web analysts or paying for consulting from existing partners, Dowling said.

While the tracking method BuiltNY used for its print ads is straightforward, there are hidden pitfalls that have prevented more implementations, Dowling said.

"While it is technically easy to track offline campaigns through the use of redirect or vanity URLs, the practice is often wrought with complexities and is prone to error, making the data collected highly suspect," he said. "Tighter integration with direct marketing systems that would allow for the tracking of campaign respondents across campaigns both on and offline is becoming available as Web analytics vendors enhance data integration capabilities, but widespread adoption and usage is limited."

IBM acquires Coremetrics, adds Web analytics Domain

IBM said Tuesday that it will acquire Coremetrics, a privately held Web analytics company.

With the move, IBM enters the Web analytics fray. Coremetrics focuses on everything from social media to marketing optimization to cross-channel retail sales tracking. Coremetrics counts Bank of America, Enterprise, Kraft, Virgin Atlantic, Costco, QVC and others as customers.

According to IBM, Coremetrics will give the company the ability to better track consumer interactions via a software as a service model.

Coremetrics’ software portfolio includes Web and mobile analytics, targeted email and advertising tracking and other reporting and benchmark tools. IBM said it will add Coremetrics to its business analytics offerings. Overall, Coremetrics will ride shotgun with IBM’s existing WebSphere, information management and analytics software.

Coremetrics’ 230 employees will be integrated into IBM and the deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

Source: IBM statement.

Website Path Analysis: A Good Use of Time !!

Path Analysis: A process of determining a sequence of pages visited in a visitor session prior to some desired outcome (a purchase, a sign up, visiting a certain part of site etc). The desired end goal is to get a sequence of pages, each of whom form a path, that lead to a desired outcome. Usually these paths are ranked by frequency.

Is doing Path Analysis a good use of time? In my humble opinion the answer is a rather emphatic no, except for one exception (which I’ll discuss below). Almost always Path Analysis tends to be a sub optimal use of our time, resources and any money that is expended on buying tools that do “great” Path Analysis.

WWe usually strive to do Path Analysis in a quest to find this magic pill that will tell us exactly what “paths” our visitors are following on our website. If they “follow” the path we intended we celebrate.

If as usually it turns out that our visitors don’t “follow” the path that WE want them to follow then it back to the drawing board to redesign the site structure / architecture to get them to “follow” the path or at times, worse, hours of “analysis” on: what the heck were they thinking when they click on this button or go to that page (bad customers, bad customers!).

Challenges with Path Analysis are:

* Imagine a website with five pages. Page one Start, Page five Finish. With a simple visualization in your mind you can imagine the number of paths that a visitor could take. Now imagine a website with 100 pages, now one with 5,000 pages. The number of possible paths quickly becomes infinity (well not really but you get the point).
G

* Most of our tools do a terrible job of representing this path: click forward, back to home, click forward, reverse to three pages ago, hit buy. In a world of linear path representation at a page level this is really hard to compute, even harder to depict. Yet this is exactly how our customers browse our websites.

* On most websites the most common path is usually followed by less than five percent of visitors, usually 1%. As responsible analysts could we make any decision on something such a small fraction of site traffic is doing?

* Even if the most common path is followed by 90% of the visitors current Path Analysis has two fatal flaws:
o It can’t show / say which page in a series was most influential in convincing a customer to move on.
o Current tools aggregate traffic into one bucket, when in reality each segment of traffic behaves differently (say DM traffic vs SEM vs “bookmarks” vs Print Ads). Segmentation is always key.

All of the above combine to make it quite sub optimal to glean any actionable insights that will lead to making our websites more endearing to our customers.

There is one exception to this rule. For structured experiences such as a Checkout or a Closed-off DM Landing Page experience (no navigation, just Next – Next – Next – Submit) Path Analysis can identify where the “fall off” can occur. Once that is identified we will still not know the Why (see Qualitative Metrics Post) but Path Analysis is helpful.

Here is example of new way of thinking about “Path Analysis” that I think is heading in the right direction. (Please see Disclaimers – Disclosures first.) There are atleast three more things I would like to see fixed in this version but ClickTracks address some of the usual fatal flaws here.

* CIt is possible to break down a linear process into one in which we can group a bunch of related pages (say all product pages) into “groups”. This helps fix the problem of linearity because customers can go from A to B to C or C to A to B and it does not matter for related content.

* It is possible for Visitors to show up in any stage at any point (this is actual behavior now with SEO influencing where people land). Google Analytics also has this feature(please correct me if others do as well).

* Perhaps the cutest thing is that it shows which page in the “Path” is most influential in moving people to the next stage. This is awesome because one can simply look at the “darker shaded” pages and know, for example, that no one cares about system requirements but rather the page on our 10 year no questions asked return policy is the most important one in convincing people to add to cart.

* It is also quite easy to view how different segments are influenced by different content, in my unreadable screen shot you can see All Visitors vs Visitors from Google. Imagine this intelligence then turned around and applied to personalization (!).

This is not perfect but getting there and I think all the vendors will soon coalesce around this innovation and we will all be greatly empowered.

Path Analysis as it is practiced currently ultimately is like communism (with sincerest apologies to anyone in my audience who might be offended). There are overt/covert intentions to control things, to try to regulate, to say that we know better than you what you want, to push out a certain way of thinking. I know this sounds extreme, and it is but simply for shock value and not to offend anyone.

The web on the other hand is the ultimate personal medium and one in which we all like different things, we all have specific preferences and opinions and a certain way we want to accomplish something. The beauty of the web is that all that is possible and cheaply with easily accessible technology. So why do typical Path Analysis and why try to “push” a certain way of navigation / browsing / buying? Why not get a deep and rich understanding of our customers and then provide them various different options to browse our website they want to and get to the end goal the way they want to.


Read more: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2006/05/path-analysis-a-good-use-of-time.html#ixzz123g8T3Jr

What are the Key Performance Indicators ?

key performance indicators, help organizations achieve organizational goals through the definition and measurement of progress. The key indicators are agreed upon by an organization and are indicators which can be measured that will reflect success factors. The KPIs selected must reflect the organization's goals, they must be key to its success, and they must be measurable. Key performance indicators usually are long-term considerations for an organization."

Some important points of this KPI definition:

Organizational Goals: It is important to establish KPIs based on your own business goals rather than standard goals for your industry. Expanding on this, a company whose goal is "to be most profitable" will have different KPIs than a company who defines their goal as "to increase customer retention fifty percent." The first company will have KPIs related to finance and profit and loss, while the second will focus on customer satisfaction and response time.
* Measurement Purpose: It is important to analyze KPIs over time, allowing you to make changes to improve website performance – then periodically reevaluate performance to verify progress. For this reason, KPIs must be measurable. The goal "increase customer retention" is useless because there is no quantifiable goal, whereas the aforementioned goal, "to increase customer retention fifty percent" has a definite quantity that can be tracked.

* Goal Continuity: KPIs are long-term considerations designed to help with strategic planning. While it is important to have targeted goals, they should be incremental to an overall success. Simply because something is measurable does not mean that it is significant enough to be a key performance indicator. You must define your KPIs and keep their measure the same from year to year. Not that you can't adjust your goals, but you should use the same unit to measure those goals.

* Managerial Consensus: It is important to have all managers on the same page because personnel from different functions within your company will help create the KPIs. If your KPIs truly reflect your organizational goals then it is necessary for all levels of your company to get with the program. Encourage company unity and enthusiasm for the project and make sure that everyone knows what the KPIs are.

For Various websites or online marketing compaingns KPI May be following:

* Order conversion rate
* Buyer conversion rate
* Cart conversion rate
* Checkout start rate
* Revenue per visit
* Revenue per visitor
* Average order value
* Visits per visitor
* Page views per visit
* Percent committed visitors
* Lead conversion rate
* Home page bailout rate (a personal favorite of mine)
* Average number of items per purchase
* Average time spent on site
* etc

Omniture Products

These are some omniture web analytics products:

* SiteCatalyst, Omniture's software as a service application, offers Web analytics (client-side analytics).
* SearchCenter+ assists with paid search and content network optimization in systems such as Google's AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft Ad Center, and Facebook Ads.
* DataWarehouse, data warehousing of SiteCatalyst data.
* Test&Target, A/B and MVT (multi-variate testing), derived in part from Offermatica and Touch Clarity.[6]
* Test&Target 1:1, Omniture's main behavioural targeting solution, drills down to the individual level of testing.
* Discover, an advanced segmentation tool.
* Insight, a multichannel segmentation tool (both client-side and server-side analytics). Formerly called Discover on Premise, it was derived from Omniture's Visual Sciences acquisition in 2007.
* Insight for Retail, an Insight offering geared toward multiple online and offline retail channels.
* Genesis, a third-party data integration tool (the majority of integrations work with SiteCatalyst).
* Recommendations offers automated product and content recommendations.
* SiteSearch, an on-demand enterprise search product.
* Merchandising, a search and navigation offering for online stores.
* Publish, for web content management.
* Survey, to gather visitor sentiment.
* DigitalPulse, a Web analytics code configuration monitoring tool.
* VISTA, server-side analytics.