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Summer 2010
Web Intelligence: Tips & Tricks
Sponsor
WebAnalyticsWorld.net
Page | 2
Summer 2010
The concept of community has always been huge in the online marketing and especially analytics
space. From Eric Peterson’s Yahoo group to the creation of the web analytics association by
Jim Sterne, there has always been a place you could go and learn/discuss strategies with other
professionals.
Community played a large part in my decision to create this eBook. I could have very easily
come up with numerous tips & tricks from my own experience, however by extending the offer
to other professionals I thought readers could gain insight from a broader range of experiences/
backgrounds.
In this eBook you will find strategies form a plethora of different topics including:
• Customer Satisfaction
• Search Engine Marketing
• Conversion Optimization
• Social Media
• Web Analytics Tools
• Site Search
• Implementation
• Mobile
This is the inaugural release of this book and I am hoping we can publish later versions at least
twice a year. So if you’re interested in participating or have any feedback, please send me an
email to [email protected].
Enjoy!
Manoj Jasra
www.WebAnalyticsWorld.net
www.JasraInc.com
Twitter: @WaWorld
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Summer 2010
1
Nothing happens without clear goals. Do
expect web analytics reports to give you
any answers. They’re only valuable if they
get you to ask questions. Data by itself
doesn’t offer any insight. Data is never accurate
or complete or perfect. Chasing perfect data is a
perfect waste of time. It need not be precise, it
need only be compelling. Segmentation is where
the money is. All statistics are political. The only
metrics that really matter are income, expenses
and customer satisfaction. Figure out how your
organization rewards its people and find the data
that will help them get those rewards. Analysis is
all about communication. If you can’t explain it, it
doesn’t matter. It’s better to tell stories than show
graphs. Hire people who like puzzles, detective
novels, science fiction, crosswords and whose eyes
light up when they learn something new. Read
http://www.emetrics.org/101things/
Author Bio: Jim Sterne is an international
consultant focused on measuring the value
of the online marketing for creating and
strengthening
customer
relationships.
Sterne has written eight books on using the
Internet for marketing, produces the eMetrics
Marketing
Optimization
Summit
www.
emetrics.org and is co-founder and current
Chairman of the Web Analytics Association
www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org
2
Why you should measure
your SEA campaigns with
a (your own) web analytics
tool
Every SEA company will tell you, you only need
to integrate their pixel, then you’ll get the correct
numbers and everything is fine. But in the past
I have experienced very different numbers from
different SEA companys (sometimes twice the
amount of the other one) for the same campaign.
It’s because they are using different counting
methods. To get more transparency for what you
are paying for I would recommend to measure the
SEA campaigns also with your own web analytics
tool and use this to settle the right numbers.
You are already measuring your SEM campaigns
with your analytics tool, but why are the
numbers so different?
Have you also experienced this? The numbers
your traffic agency (marketer) reports to and
charges you differ immensely from those which
you yourself have measured on your website?
Doubts arise concerning your traffic agency and
your own web analytics tool. As a consequence
you get yourself involved in endless discussions
over bills, pricing, range of coverage and
counting methods with your marketer. People
often ask me how this could be, where the
difference originates from and what can be
done about it.
One thing has to be made clear in advance:
The numbers from your marketer (which are
generated via his pixel) will ALWAYS differ
from the ones from your analytics tool, no
matter whether you got them via log files or
website tagging. It would be a miracle if they
would match perfectly. The question should
rather be: How much do the numbers differ?
As a rule one could say that variations of +/-520% could be considered normal. If they should
deviate further, I would strongly recommend a
deeper investigation.
Where do these deviations derive from?
There are a number of explanations that could
apply. Among others:
• Different positions of the evaluation
pixel on your webpage. The pixels are
placed below each other. It could happen
that one is activated, the other not. This
might happen for example, if the user has
already clicked on the next link although
the page hasn’t completely loaded yet.
• Your webpage is too big and doesn’t load
completely. As doesn’t the pixel.
• Different counting methods, for example
AdClicks vs. page loaded
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Summer 2010
• You pay for AdClicks, but the user quits
straight after he has clicked on your
banner on an external page before he
gets to your website or landing page. No
arrival is counted on your page
• In contrary to him being counted by
AdClicks.
• Here are some suggestions that have
proven useful in practice:
• Pay for the generated sales / leads not the
AdClicks or AdImpressions
• The marketers pixel should always be the
last one on your page
• Arrange with your marketer in advance
whether you bill according to his numbers
or the numbers generated by your
analytics tool
• Get it straight who gets the reward for a
purchase or lead: the campaign that has
generated the first or the one that has
generated the last contact – or distribute
the claims linear alongside the campaigns
via which the customer or lead has visited
your website
• Be attentive to when your marketers
evaluation pixel is activated on the
confirmation page of the shopping or
lead process
• Make sure that your landing page is small
sized, as it only serves as a transit for your
customers
This should help to optimize your SEA
campaigns, to reduce the CPC and to get more
transparency about the campaigns.
Author Bio: Matthias Postel is an expert for
online marketing optimization, especially
in web analytics, usability and conversion
optimization
3
Why/how to get external
help for web analytics tool
evaluation
6 advantages of booking an external
web analytics consultant rather than accepting
the one offered by the vendor and how to find
yourself a good one
The external consultant
• Will take the time it needs – the vendor
usually will not have the resources to
guarantee you the attention necessary to
fulfill your needs.
• Will offer you an individualized solution
– not one size fits all as is often the case
with vendors.
• Ideally will be able to speak comprehensible
both to your technical department and
to your marketing (as I often say: there
is no use for analytics if you do not think
marketing at the same time - and vice
versa).
• Will provide an individual training of your
staff, while the most you will get from the
vendor will usually be a standard training
– hopefully at least using your data...
• Will save you money – both by preparing
your employees better for the job and
thereby getting more out of the tool as
well as simply because he will cost you
less: In general the price per hour of your
vendor will be more expensive.
• Will be able to explain to you the
advantages
and
disadvantages
of
different tools and will be free to offer
you the one most suitable to your needs.
• This will probably save you money as well.
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Summer 2010
7 points to ensure expertise
• Does he know the difference between
Google Analytics and the chosen web
analytics tool? He should be able to
answer this question!
• Has he done a project for one of your
competitors before? (That is a difficult
one...)
• Look out for references concerning
projects he has handled before.
• Is he accredited for the tool he offers you?
• Ask him to disclose his project plan and his
working methods. In general, he should
start with an analysis of your website, your
business model and also with a workshop
to define your goals and requirements.
• Take a close look at the documents he
provides.
• Will he be willing (and able) to coach one
or more of your employees during the
conception and implementation phase?
Author Bio: Matthias Postel is an expert for
online marketing optimization, especially
in web analytics, usability and conversion
optimization. He looks back on more than 15
years of experience in the online business and
was involved in many web analytics projects,
e.g. for the Deutsche Post, AOL, BMW, TUI
etc. Matthias Postel is founder and managing
director of the iCompetence GmbH in Hamburg,
Germany.
4
There are two (not just
one) cycles of continuous
improvement with web
analytics.
Conventionally, we speak of “the” cycle of
continuous improvement as something similar
to the following
1. Define your KPIs
2. Measure and analyze aggregate behavior
3. Test and pick the winners
4. Rinse and repeat
This is extremely worthwhile and there are
published case studies from Unica web analytics
clients such as Citrix who have been able to
improve conversions by as much as 1900%.
However, marketers may be squandering a
huge opportunity if they do not also leverage
web analytics for driving the second cycle of
continuous improvement. Here web analytics
serves as a rich source of behavioral insights on
individual prospects and customers.
1. Define your visitor identification strategy
on the website (and ideally also mobile
site, Facebook app, etc.)
2. Measure, score, and profile individuals’
behavior
3. Target individuals behaviorally with
relevant content and marketing offers
delivered through site personalization,
email, or other channels
4. Rinse and repeat
In the first cycle of improvement you aim for
improving KPIs over time. In the second cycle of
improvement you aim for improving customer
lifetime values and wallet share over time.
Author Bio: Akin Arikan is Director of Product
Strategy at Unica Corporation, responsible for
ensuring customer satisfaction with Unica’s
web analytics and Internet marketing solutions.
Arikan has worked with analytics practitioners
for more than a decade. A noted speaker and
writer, he has presented at many conferences
throughout the world, and in 2008 wrote the
book, Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and
Methods for On and Offline Success.
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Summer 2010
5
Money spent on PPC may
be wasted by weak efforts
further down the stream
that it is always the actual newsreader who
pays, something which I very much believe to
be true, we should conclude on the currency
in which he pays, before we even debate the
actual monetization strategy. I have recently
presented a theory that the newsreader can
only pay in the following three currencies:
• Time
• Data, and
• Money
I am not going to add any suggestions on
where I believe we could or should optimize, as
we need to agree on the above currencies first.
Before that, no optimization can take place.
SEM efforts have traditionally focused only on
the top of the funnel, i.e. keyword research
and rankings (for either SEO or PPC bids). Yet,
SEM optimization cannot be done without
managing the entire chain of events that begins
with research, continues with optimizing bids
and refining ads, pursues landing page and site
optimization. And don’t forget the use of remarketing and cross-/up-sales programs either.
For example “abandoned shop cart” emails
help you catch the rebound, i.e. prospects that
don’t convert on the first attempt and wouldn’t
be likely to return on their own. Key point:
Unless every step in the SEM conversion process
is optimized, you may be wasting money by
increasing PPC traffic.
Author Bio: Akin Arikan, Director of Product
Strategy at Unica Corporation.
6
TIP about News Media
Monetization and
available Currencies
In my opinion and as we examine
Online News Media, it very much seems like
there is a mixed understanding of the actually
currency in which the newsreader can pay for
the product. If we focus on the statement,
Author Bio: Dennis R. Mortensen
is an
Entrepreneur, Author and Director of Data
Insights at Yahoo!. Visit my Analytics, Media
and Marketing blog or read about my Analytics
book
7
Conversion Rates: What
you need to know for your
business
Conversion is arguably the most
important measurement for business website
success. It is what defines whether your business
actually benefits from the website.
Perhaps you realize you need a “good
conversion rate,” but you may not understand
exactly what that means. That’s okay. Here’s
what you, as a business owner or marketing
professional, need to know.
Definitions:
Conversion: A user of your website completes
a desired task (such as making a purchase,
initiating contact, signing up for an eNewsletter,
leaving a blog comment, etc). The desired task
is completely relative to your business website.
Here’s an offline example: A customer walks
into your store and makes a purchase.
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Summer 2010
Conversion rate: The percentage of ALL
website users who complete the desired task. If
your conversion rate is 5%, this means 5 out of
every 100 website visitors have completed your
desired task. You may have multiple desired
tasks; each will have a unique conversion rate.
Bounce rate: The percentage of all website
visitors who immediately leave your website
once they arrive. If your bounce rate is 30%, this
means 30 out of 100 website visitors saw your
one page of your website and left immediately.
My favorite way to illustrate this concept is
with the bouncy ball. A user is a bouncy ball.
Your website is the wall. Unless your wall is
permeable and friendly, the ball bounces right
off.
How do I track conversion rates?
Your analytics tool (such as Google Analytics)
must be set up to accurately track conversions.
Website developers typically do this for you
when installing the analytics tool, though you
must define what counts as a “conversion.”
How do I impact my conversion rate?
Qualified traffic: Driving traffic is often a large
part of the online marketing budget; it is
completely for shame if the traffic being driven
doesn’t convert. Ensuring your website visitors
are actually relevant or interested in your
business website’s content is critical to success.
Do not waste time blindly pushing people to
visit your website. Understand your target
market, know where to find them, then work
on traffic building.
Information architecture: The way the
content on your website is organized needs to
intuitively make sense to users. If it’s confusing,
they’ll probably just leave. (As a bonus, your
information architecture also impacts your
search engine visibility.)
User experience: The way a user interacts with
your website is essentially the “user experience.”
Things are laid out and designed in such a way
to create a seamless, easy interaction. An offline
example is interior design.
Creating a product experience online isn’t easy.
In fact, it takes a lot of work. Once a user has
become aware of your website, they either
bounce (leave) or consume information. If your
user experience is planned and implemented
well, they might progress into participating,
converting or even advocating on your behalf.
8
3 Great URL Shorteners
with Analytics
URL shorteners trim down regular
links so they can be shared more
easily on Twitter and other social media
platforms. My favorite side benefit of URL
shorteners is that every link click can be tracked
as it’s redirected to its final destination. Not all
URL shorteners actually offer analytics, though,
so if you need tracking you must choose wisely.
To help you along, I recommend these 3 URL
shorteners with analytics:
1. bit.ly
It’s the Twitter default, and therefore
very popular. Full-featured analytics are
available to whoever creates a short URL
and any other person who cares to look.
The trick to seeing stats for any bit.ly link:
add a “+” sign at the end of the short URL.
Best for you if you want to stick with
a popular choice and you don’t mind
sharing your stats with the world.
2. cli.gs
This URL shortener has many of same
features as bit.ly, but stats for URLs are not
public. In other words, you must be logged
in to view your own stats, and you cannot
view stats for URLs you did not create.
Best for you if you need full-featured
analytics and privacy.
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Summer 2010
3. ow.ly
The ow.ly URL shortener and associated
reports are embedded within Hootsuite,
a social network management client. You
get analytics for individual messages as
well as a summary roll-up. Also useful:
an optional form helps you append
campaign codes to your URLs before you
shorten them.
Best for you if you’re looking a
comprehensive system for managing posts
OR you want help appending tracking
codes as you shorten URLs.
Author Bio: June Dershewitz is VP of Analytics
at Semphonic, where she specializes in helping
companies improve their day to day Web
analytics practice. She is a member of the
Web Analytics Association Board of Directors
and is an Omniture Certified Professional.
She cofounded Web Analytics Wednesdays,
a global networking event series. Since
joining Semphonic in 2007, Dershewitz has
led implementation, analysis and training
initiatives for companies including Nokia, Blue
Shield, Kohler, Charles Schwab, Intuit and Delta
Dental. She has spoken at conferences such as
X Change, eMetrics, SMX and SES. Blog: http://
june.typepad.com. Twitter: @jdersh.
9
Conversion Rates and
Landing Pages
From the internet user’s side, a
landing page is the one displayed
as a result of a search or just a click on a link,
either from a SERP as an organic result or a paid
one (banner, text ad, video ad) or even a link in
a direct mail.
From the website owner’s side, a landing page
is the vehicle to drive the visitors through a
conversion path to the reach the desirable goal.
Optimizing your landing page is as important
as your online presence, creating conversion
paths with a nice eye tracking design and a
clear call for action message; you will turn your
website traffic into conversions.
First things first! Define your Objectives
A simple thing you must consider before
creating a landing page or even better, before
creating your website, is to clearly define
your objectives; your goal is the conversion
variable. You decide whether it will be a sale,
a newsletter submission, a comment for your
blog etc. Being absolutely specific is a matter of
high importance for your online strategy plan.
Turning traffic into sales
So, now that you have defined your primary
goal, you have the channel and the proper
media (images, videos etc), the next step is to
use them in order to achieve your goal in the
most effective way. Think that you have one
shot to get the conversion you need in one
single page. Take advantage of this shot in your
landing page. Simply by placing your message
in the middle of the page, highlighting your
value proposition and communicating a call for
action. Use attractive images, an effective copy
hook and drive your traffic into conversions.
Note to repeat the call for action message for
better results. All your pages must be designed
as landing pages; it is important to follow
the strategy plan using every single page.
Remember to stay in your primary objectives
and give the chance to the users to do the right
thing in the right way.
Page | 9
Summer 2010
Experiments will enhance your effectiveness.
Try to test different variations in your messages,
change details in headlines try different
buttons, colors, and shapes but keep in mind
that the page must have a logical flow from the
top to the end.
Author Bio: Dimitris is an SEO Engineer, Online
Marketing Specialist working for http://www.
webseoanalytics.com/
10
Mindset Precedes
Toolset
The mindset must precede
the toolset. The biggest
challenge facing the digital marketing industry
is our ability to paint the complete picture of the
visitor, customer and prospect – and attribute
the accolades of success to the appropriate
people. What impact does our visitor have
on all facets of our marketing and sales:
media mix modeling, ad sales, engagement,
user experience, future intent to consider,
recommend and purchase?
Please, please, please take a minute, or an
hour, or a day, or an offsite and think through
why you want to manage customer insights
with your stellar team (hopefully increased
satisfaction and profitability), what you
need to measure to help you do that (clearly
defined, attainable goals), how you are going
to enable that (well-selected tools), and how
you are going to accomplish that (again, your
stellar team). People matter. The days of having
technology solely solve your problems are over.
50% or more of your investment in solving your
business problems and thriving in a competitive
environment should be invested in the people.
The styles, tools and types of connections we
are able to make with our visitors are more
impressive and powerful than ever before. But
we’ve still got a long way to go since most of the
conversations that I have with executives are
still talking about tools and technologies and
not enough about solutions and profitability
and massive ROI. No one provider does it all.
Author Bio: Eric Feinberg is an Industry Director
at ForeSee Results, the leading customer
satisfaction management company with
solutions based on the American Customer
Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Eric’s background
includes roles as web marketing analyst at
financial services company Gruntal & Co., multichannel strategy consultant at Wheelhouse,
usability specialist at Vividence (Keynote
Systems) and focus group moderator at Kelton
Research. As technologies and trends change
and evolve, Eric maintains his awareness and
command of how best to understand and
motivate the online consumer on behalf of his
clients.
11
We recently added “sharethis”
buttons to our websites. This
is a fairly popular service which
allows you to email, post to
twitter and post to facebook via their javascript
code.
Up until recently they had no way to track clicks
on these links. However after a little reading
and research I found I could easily insert Google
Analytics event tracking into their code and
have the ability to track clicks on the sharethis
buttons.
I simply inserted:
o n C l i c k = ” j a v a s c r i p t : f i r s t Tr a c k e r. _
trackPageview(‘/Emailchicklet/612495’)Into
each event. In this code, we are tracking clicks
on the email chicklet with a unique tracking
identifier (612495) so we know which page was
emailed. We also did this for the other visible
chicklets so we can track those events as well.
What’s more, we have 2 tracking codes on
each site so we are able to further modify this
by adding a javascript : secondTracker onclick
event to record the click to the event to the
second account.
Page | 10
Summer 2010
We use google analytics for our tracking
purposes and have found it quite flexible in
allowing us to do some basic A/B testing. I know
it can do more but here’s what we did:
On many of our sites pages we have text links
and graphic buttons which both go to the same
page. I used onclick events to track clicks on
both the text links and buttons to see which
were used more.
To my surprise, in our case text links outperformed graphic buttons 3 to 1.
Just thought I’d share this tip to show how you
can use analytics to help make design decisions.
Author Bio: Rob Sullivan has been performing
search engine optimization for 10 years. His
clients have included anything from mom & pop
sites to fortune 500 networks. His experience
in dealing with technical issues as they related
to search engine rankings has earned him
speaking invitations to various industry specific
conferences throughout the years.
Rob currently works for a company whose focus
is helping clients optimize local business listings
so they are found at the top of the search
engines.
12
When it comes to social media
analytics, I’ve seen experts
throw everything into the sink.
The problem with that strategy
is nothing really surfaces to the top and the
most important data point could be hiding at
the bottom of the pile. Rather than look at
what does the data tell us. Start with, what
do we want to achieve from the data? What is
our goal? What is our business objective? Then
drill down from there. Of course, you’ll often
find some surprises, as I have in my sink. But,
with a focus on what you want to achieve, the
“surprise” will not stand on its own and either
be in parallel or concert with your overall
analytics program and business strategy.
Take this for example. Your goal is to increase
the number of purchases by women over 50.
Your business objective is to acquire X number
of new “boomer” customers by the end of Q4
2010. Strategically, you’re going to hire a famous
“boomer” blogger to create content that you
can seed onto boomer blogs, appropriate
Facebook Pages and Twitter channels. Your
social media analysis finds that boomers are
in many places online, not just reading blogs,
posting on Facebook and Twitter. In fact, there
are many private social networks for boomers.
What do you do?
Do you abandon your original strategy to focus
on the ladder? Of course not. You integrate,
cross market, as your audience is relatively the
same from one channel to the next. The bonus,
as derived from your social media analysis is
that there is an additional medium for you to
target. The new challenge is to now use the
data from your social media analysis to develop
a plan on how to craft messaging for that new
(and the old) audience, how to engage with
those audiences differently on those channels
as it will apply to achieving your goal and
business objective. Sound too simple?
That’s because it is. It’s real-time engagement.
You know your business. Find the opportunity.
Leverage your communication channels to
best fill that need and drive people to talk
about and purchase from your business. If you
do the opposite, and are always looking for
“surprises,” then you’ll be let down. As I said
earlier, find the opportunity, the one that will
move the market and your business forward.
Author Bio: For over 15 years, David Libby
has been at the forefront of leveraging
and integrating today’s communications
technologies, traditional media and social
and digital platforms. He has led social
media initiatives for clients including General
Motors, Bayer Healthcare, Nestle CRUNCH,
Obopay, Accera / Axona, Bay Area Air Quality
Management District (BAAQMD), among
Page | 11
Summer 2010
others as well as pro-bono campaigns for The
San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group and
The Internet OldTimers List Foundation, a
members only list of more than 500 advertisers,
marketers and public relations professionals
from leading global brands.
13
Export more than 500
rows of data – Google
Analytics
It’s safe to say that Google
Analytics is by and far one of my favorite
analytics tools available for tracking and
analyzing visitor data. What used to be a paid
version of Urchin, it’s now freely available to
anyone who takes the two minutes to sign up
and implement on their website. Though many
paid analytics solutions exist, few are as robust
– and did I mention it was free?
Having said that, and as great of a tool Google
Analytics is, it’s not perfect. I spend a good
portion of my day reviewing, analyzing, and
reverse engineering the traffic data that comes
into Google Analytics. Though you can view the
data in a thousand different ways, sometimes
it’s nice to be able to export the particular page
you’re on to an Excel file and manipulate the
data for your own use. Google Analytics gives
you the ability to export to PDF, XML, CSV, Excel
or TSV formats. Very handy.
The solution is to go to the page within Google
Analytics that you want to export data from.
In this example, I’m at the Traffic Sources >
Keywords area within Google Analytics.
Once there, go up to the
address bar in your browser
and
enter
“&limit=5000″
(without the quotes) to the
end of it and hit “enter” or
“go”. After hitting enter, you
should still be able to see the
“&limit=5000” at the end of
the URL.
The resulting URL should
look something like: https://
www.google.com/analytics/
reporting/keywords?…………
…..&limit=5000
You can now export the data to a CSV file with
all your rows of data, not just 500. It’s important
to note that you have to export to CSV format,
not the CSV for Excel.
Let me know how that works for you, or if you
have any other Google Analytics tips!
Author Bio: Nicholas Perez is an SEO, SEM and
Social Media Consultant. Technology Consultant
and Project Manager. I’ve worked on SEO/SEM
projects for Fortune 500 companies as well as
small businesses.
That’s all fine and dandy, but when you use the
Google Analytics export feature, you’re limited
to exporting no more than 500 rows of data.
For large accounts, you’re certainly going to
have more than 500 rows of data!
Formerly worked as a Project Manager for the
top RFID Medical Location Solution Company in
the United States working with break-through
technology in large institutions such as the Cleveland
Clinic. Also worked on small to large scale enterprise
level technology projects in the greater Southeast
Michigan area as a Project Manager.
Page | 12
Summer 2010
14
In analyzing our site searchers
keyword usage, I confirmed
my opinion that Site Searchers are Lazy!
Environment: ColdFusion8 Server / jQuery
1 word “keyphrases” dominate. In a 90 day
sample of our top 500 keyphrases, 95% were
two words or less. 50% of all keyphrases were 1
word, 45% were 2 words and 5% were 3 words,
with only one keyphrase being a four word
string.
Using jQuery to
auto tag sections
of a site or specific
items in a div.
Problem: How do you take a static list of
hyperlinks on a set of pages and go about
setting up some method to tag each of these
links with a Javascript call to Omniture. Also
trying to put in some type of future proofing so
that ongoing updates to this file(s).
My Approach:
[code]$(document).ready(function()
{
$(‘#divToBeTagged a’).each(function(i)
{
var
hrefval
=
$(this).attr(‘href’);
$(this).bind(‘click’,function
(event){
omnitureJSCall(‘Product Category’,hrefval)});
});});[/code]
I went with this for a few reasons, the main one
being the ease of future updates to this page. I
work on a small team of dev’s and anyone else
could be making updates to this page and with
this method, we will always have the correct
tags on our product downloads on this page. Is
it perfect? Nah... but it does work well for me.
Author Bio: Rudi Shumpert’s 14+ years of web
development experience in the Atlanta, Georgia
area have centered on building successful,
robust and capable web based applications
and sites/portals. Working with technologies
like ColdFusion, ASP, jQuery, XML and a variety
of other languages and tools, Rudi creates and
expands the functionality of his projects.
Of late, he has become more involved with all
things Analytics and has enjoyed and excelled
working with the various platforms at Ariba.
Leveraging his tools and making innovative use
of Omniture, he has expanded the capabilities
of Ariba systems and has extended Ariba’s data
and analytics gathering. Rudi’s website: www.
rudishumpert.com
15
Site Searchers are
Lazy Searchers!
Our team began to ask questions, as good
analysts do.
Q: What is the effect on the rate of Search
Refinement?
A: There is a direct correlation between number
of words initially searched and the rate of
refinement of their search query. The fewer
words used, the higher the Search Refinement.
Naturally.
Q: What is the effect on conversion rate?
A: While conversion rates for 1 and 2 word
search queries were nearly identical, the 3 and
4 word search queries resulted in conversion
that were 2.5x greater.
We then began to ask the more important
question for web analysts – WHY?
Q: Why do our site searchers do the opposite
of what is considered normal search behavior?
Google reports that their average keyword
string consists of 4 words. Why is our site search
so different?
A: Many theories were exhaustively put forth.
• They [searchers] expect our search results
to know what they want.
• They are not the average [sophisticated]
searcher.
Page | 13
Summer 2010
• They expect our site search to deliver
product listings, by keyword.
• They are lazy.
We all went with #4, and called it a day.
Author Bio: Rob Cox is founder and president
of POOLCENTER.com, and a recognized expert
in internet marketing strategies within the
Home & Garden vertical. An early adopter of
ecommerce, Rob Cox started POOLCENTER.com
in the basement in 1995 as an informational
website surrounding pool care and repair.
$100M in sales later, POOLCENTER.com is a
category killer, with over 100,000 annual orders
for 27,000 products for pools and outdoor
living.
16
Content Grouping in
Google Analytics
The other day I was doing
my daily reading and I came
across the following paragraph: “Analytics
people who like to cull patterns from massive
amounts of data like to aggregate rather than
split data. In web analytics this means treating
several pages as one unit in order to know about
visits that saw one or more of a certain set of
pages that the analyst thinks belong together.
In WebTrends and other software this is done
with “content grouping” and Google has no
parallel to it.” Chris Grant, Got Analytics? blog
I consider Google Analytics my baby. So I went
to my colleague, Rehan Asif, to discuss this and
in less than twenty minutes we came up with
the following concept:
• Categorize pages into groups of related
content.
• Collect these pages together on one page
and treat them as a single entity.
• Specify the URLs that you want to include
in each group by defining URL patterns.
• Create a filter for each group. Each filter
will search for the group identifier and
replace the entire URL with a new URL.
Here is a real example on an online shoe store
where we want to take all pages that focus
on specific brands (for example, Converse,
Timberland, Vans, and Reebok) and treat them
as one content group.
1. First, we studied the URLs and found that
they contain the brand name.
http://www.domain.com/authentic-vansshoes-satain-blackpink.html
http://www.domain.com/adidas-bgsuperstar-whtblk.html
http://www.domain.com/puma-big-kidsdrift-cat-jr-blkwht.html
2. Using an advanced filter, all pages with
“vans” in their URL will be renamed to “/
vans.html”
3. Now create filters for each brand and
apply the filters to a new profile called
“Content Groups”
“Google has no parallel to it!!” I have to
admit that I took this statement personally as
4. Now we have created content groups that
allow us look at all pages for any brand
as a single entity. We can now study the
links where people exit, the entrance
keywords, the entrance sources, other
pages they visit on the site, and more.
Page | 14
Summer 2010
Now, as I like to say, the real analysis begins!
you need to think about before you start your
implementation.
Author Bio: As a Digital Marketing Associate
Director for The Nature Conservancy, Amy
Ganderson manages the Conservancy’s evergrowing social media networks. In addition,
she manages the Nature.org web analytics
program, natural and paid search, and content
licensing partnerships.
Prior to joining The Nature Conservancy,
Amy worked in e-commerce for Discovery
Communications. Amy received an MBA from
The George Washington University and a B.S.
from Cornell University.
Author Bio: Allaedin is a technical web analyst
in the Bay Area, California, an analytics blogger
and a Google Analytics Evangelist. Through
his blog and involvement with the analytics
community, Allaedin has become recognized
as an advocate and a technical reference for
Google Analytics.
17
I’m currently in the middle of
an Omniture implementation,
so my tip will be on the
implementation topic.
My number one suggestion of implementing a
new web analytics system is to first sit down and
scope out your strategic plan for analytics and
your business objectives (if you haven’t done
so already). A new tool like Google Analytics,
Omniture, or Web Trends is there to help you
understand how you can achieve those business
goals. I feel like a lot of people rush into
implementations thinking they just need to get
a new system up and running - that’s the end
result. That’s not the case for our organization.
We spent a lot of time determining our business
requirements and asked ourselves some tough
questions - like what information do I need to
do my job and hit my goals? what data will help
me make decisions? Those are the questions
18
Analytics in a global multinational company is very
different
to
accomplish
successfully than in a small
company with a one or very few sites. The work
needs to be distributed to the correct teams
and functions. Management can’t expect small
teams of one or two people to do it all from
tagging, QA, reporting building, reporting,
analysis, and optimization. Tagging should be
a Development function. Tag testing should
be a QA function. Reporting should be done
by formal report writers. Analysts should
analyze the data to answer specific “business
questions” based on pre-determined business
goals. Site Optimization is a function unto itself
that needs leadership to drive it across user
experience, analytics, product, and marketing.
One size does not fit all organizations. Best
practices work until they don’t. Strategy works
until it doesn’t. Doing Web Analytics well and
successfully is a massive investment in people
alignment, process creation, and the judicious
application of a set of different technologies
that reach across all functions. Companies that
are successful with Web Analytics understand
it’s complexityand difficulty. They are willing to
make appropriate investments to become datadriven companies and, hopefully, analytical
competitors.
Page | 15
Summer 2010
Author Bio: Judah Phillips is an expert at using Let me show you by example what I mean:
digital measurement to drive business strategy.
1. JetBlue’s Twitter page has 1,397,089
As Senior Director, Global Site Analytics at
followers, and they link to their corporate
Monster Worldwide, Judah is responsible for
web site. Unless I’ve missed something
generating actionable insights on user behavior
there is no link from the website to
from the web data for Monster’s global
Twitter. Now, if I wasn’t curious as to
properties (including Monster.com).
whether they had a facebook page
Prior to Monster, Judah was the Director of Web
and googled it, I wouldn’t have known
Analytics at RBI (Reed Business Information).
about their Facebook page with 57,369
He is on the board of advisors for YieldBot, an
fans, (facebook by the way, links to their
advanced segmentation analytics and real-time
website, two twitter pages, and their
ad matching and targeting platform and holds
flickr page.) And, if I hadn’t googled
an MBA and an MS.
jetblue youtube, I wouldn’t have known
they have videos posted.
I’ve been wondering lately
about the concept of integrated
2. Rubbermaid’s Twitter page with 5,920
social media strategies for
followers, links to their blog. On their blog
businesses.
there are links to their flickr, friendfeed,
facebook and youtube profiles. But in
There’s no mistaking it but some social media
none of those places could I find a link to
will work better for certain types of businesses
their corporate website, where one would
and industries than others. Some will excel with
hope to find links to those respective
the use of videos, and some with the written
profiles. I looked on the “Contact Us” page
word. Some will adopt the use of multiple social
thinking maybe I would find something
media— running the gamut of blogs, twitter,
there. Rubbermaid’s Facebook page links
linkedin, youtube, and facebook.
to their website and blog. The homepage
of the website only has a link to the blog.
So here’s the question which has been plaguing
me for a while: Who’s doing it well? I mean,
3. Duncan Donut’s Twitter page with
who’s doing a good job tying them all together,
37,518 followers, links to their website.
cross-linking and integrating them into a full
The website doesn’t have any links to
user experience.
their social media profile pages. When I
searched for a corporate blog, I found the
I became even more curious yesterday after
last post was published in July 2009. And
reading a post, Which Twitter Strategy is Right
what about their youtube channel with
for You, by Rodger Johnson. The post describes
337, 566 views, how would anyone know
the twitter strategies of six companies you may
about that?
have already heard about: JetBlue, Rubbermaid,
Dunkin’ Donuts, Dell, Zappos, and Comcast. So,
4. Dell’s Twitter Page links to community
with these key twitter players in mind, I thought
tools, ideas, facebook, flickr, videos,
I’d do a little experiment, and see whose
blogs, as well as their website. Under
doing what and how well are they linking all
Community Tools on their website there
their profiles and web sites together e.g. how
are links to join the discussion, share your
would a user know about all the profiles these
ideas, read our blogs. The Blogs have links
companies have?
to youtube, flickr, facebook, linkedin, and
twitter.
19
Page | 16
Summer 2010
5. Zappos Twitter page links to follow the
ceo on twitter, and the ceo’s twitter
page links to zappos website. The home
page has two youtube videos embedded
on the very bottom of the page, but no
direct link to zappos youtube channel
with their 42,944 views. It also doesn’t
link to their facebook page, which has
23,226 fans. The facebook page links
to follow our ceo, two company twitter
pages, corporate website, zappos jobs,
and youtube. Within the content of the
wall there are links to the zappos running
blog, but nowhere could I find a link to
zappos corporate blog. On the blog there
is a link to rss, subscribe to all blogs, but I
wondered, how many are there?
6. Comcast’s Twitter page, ComcastCare’s
with their 32,449 fans, links to their
website, but there aren’t any links from
the web site to twitter. Or links to their
facebook page (not sure if there is one or
not there was a search result for a group
page), and no links to a clearly defined
comcast youtube channel.
Care and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
included marketing project management,
strategic
planning,
web
information
architecture and content management, and
collateral design.
Most recently, she has published personal essays
and poetry, including essays in All that Matters,
(The Paper Journey Press, 2006) and poetry in
Survivors Review, an online literary publication.
Debbie’s role at Weber Media Partners is as
Social Media Manager, blog author and SEO
writer. You can follow Debbie on Facebook,
LinkedIn and Twitter.
20
Social Community
Engagement Value
Measuring social media
has some nuances not
found with other media. When combined with
traditional media social media can significantly
improve the effectiveness across all media
channels. Social media has long term value not
found with other media. Social media drives
both search and drives consumer engagement
Of these six companies, Dell appears to be in such a way that there is short term value
doing the best job in terms of cross-linking and long term value. Short term value can be
all of their social media profiles from their measured based on the immediate engagement
corporate website. Everyone seems to have a that takes place with the blog, the Facebook
Long
slightly different approach to where and how page or the branded community.
they are linking. What’s up with not linking all term is driven by improved search. All those
these pages from corporate websites? It makes conversations act as ‘link juice’ for the search
me wonder if corporate websites have outlived engine algorithms. They drive activity, inbound
their usefulness in terms of being the place links and a broader portfolio of search terms
which points visitors to all relevant company that can be indexed.
pages.
Social media also drives long term value through
What do you think? Is there a disconnect in increased engagement with the brand. If a
linking social media profiles for businesses? consumer engages with a brand in a social
What companies do you know of who are doing community that engagement drives positive
brand awareness, consideration set and purchase
it well?
intent. It also drives higher levels of brand imagery
Author Bio: Debbie has a unique combination by supporting particular aspects of the brand
of web marketing and content creation attributes that make up a brand. All of these
experience that span the last 15 years. Her roles aspects add up to delivering extraordinary results
in organizations such as Harvard Pilgrim Health for a brand through the use of social media.
Page | 17
Summer 2010
Author Bio: If you would like more information
on this topic, please go to and review our list of
available white papers (http://www.MarketingCalculator.com/DownloadNow.aspx). Or if you
would like feel free to reach out to me on
Twitter at @GuyPowell.
Focus on your forms
Nearly every website uses a form at some point
in the conversion process, ut they are too often
overlooked. Design signup forms and checkout
pages to be as simple as possible. The leastintrusive and fewest-question forms are the top
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to connect all performers. The more you ask of site visitors,
your marketing activities to their impact on sales the less likely they are to provide information.
revenue? Wouldn’t it be great to remove the
guesswork from putting your marketing plans Test, revise, repeat!
together? Over the last 20 years Guy R. Powell,
based in Atlanta, GA, USA, has done just that in Sometimes minor adjustments can make a
senior level sales & marketing across the globe major impact on site performance. By making
both on the client and consulting sides. As part small changes - and testing the results each
of his current consulting activities he has trained time - you can fine-tune each page to achieve
and/or presented his findings and methods to the optimum results. The ability to observe
thousands of marketers all across the globe. His visitor interactions with real-time behavioral
recent book, Marketing Calculator: Measuring analytics provides near-instant feedback on site
and managing your return on marketing adjustments to help you know when you’ve hit
investment (http://www.Marketing-Calculator. the sweet spot with a particular feature - or
com) illustrates how marketers can now prove when to pull the plug to stave off disaster.
and improve their marketing effectiveness. Author Bio: Shmuli Goldberg is the Director of
Also, information about his to be published Marketing and Communications at ClickTale,
book on the ROI of Social Media can be found the industry leader in Customer Experience
at http://www.TheROIofSocialMedia.com.
Analytics. After watching countless hours of
21
Optimizing for
Conversions
Based on extensive analysis of
thousands of visitor browsing
sessions across many multitudes of websites,
there are some best practices that can be
employed to help improve site performance:
Give visitors what they want.
user browsing sessions and dabbling with most
web analytics solutions on the market, Shmuli
has gained an uncanny insight into the world
of web analytics and usability. London born and
bred, Shmuli has studied in both the London
School of Advertising and the Interdisciplinary
Center, Herzlia. He now lives in Israel, where
the ClickTale head
22
How many heads
does a hydra have?
To create the optimum level of engagement and
How to track unique visitors
conversion, you must cater to your audience.
in Web 2.0 Analytics
Design the site in such a way that it serves your
customer - not you. Ask yourself whether the
site/page/form, etc. offers real value to your Paradise Analytics
audience, why should they care and how useful In the ideal world, web analytics tools are
it is to them.
able to track unique visitors without occurring
in data accuracy doubts. In this world, every
customer has one site with a unique domain
Page | 18
Summer 2010
(www.mysite.com) and the tracking tool is
based on first party cookies, so that it can bypass
the browsers’ security settings. In this scenario,
the cookies used to track the unique visitors are
written from the same domain that is tracked.
The only elements that could affect/inflate the
counting of unique visitors are the cookies
deletion (by the users or by cleaning tools) and
the usage of different browsers, different PCs
or different devices by the same visitor.
- if the visitor accepts the connection, a welcome
message (a kind of “Welcome Visitor, you are
signed in with your Facebook account”) will
appear on the site;
- all the most relevant data provided by the
Facebook profile, as gender, day of birth, geolocation and so on, are collected in the web
analytics tools in conjunction with the visitor’s
behavior on the site;
This integration offers the big opportunity
to segment your offer based on the visitors’
By the way, unluckily the real world is more behaviour on the site and their own Facebook
something like this: one site with several information
(social-demographic
data,
domains (e.g. one domain for country) and thoughts, and so on). The Facebook visitor ID
several sub-domains (e.g. for minisites). The is the only keystone that ensures that the cross
biggest issue in this scenario is the impossibility browser and cross device tracking works right.
to activate the first party cookies tracking. The
worst case of the real world scenario is when a As you can imagine, the Facebook solution is in
unique visitor browses mysite.com and mysite. conflict with the user’s privacy, and this is why
it during the same session using the PC on the this solution is the most talked-about. There’s
morning, his mobile device on the afternoon a trade off between the greatest accuracy to
and the iPad on the evening! Which are the identify the unique visitors and the privacy
possible solutions in this complex world? Some that seems to be not granted. If this scenario
customers are experiencing the Local Shared will take place, the web analytics world will
Objects (LSO) commonly called flash cookies, in switching from an anonymous data collection
order to track the visitor cross browser. The flash to a one-to-one data collection.
cookie is written in your computer, and even if
Author Bio: Moira Fascioli is a Senior Web
you delete your browser’s cookies, you still are
Analyst in BitBang (Bologna-Italy), BitBang is a
recognized as the same visitor. Anyway there is
company leader in Italy into web analytics and
still an issue: Flash technology is not supported
web marketing solutions from 2003.
by the great majority of mobile devices.
The hard truth
23
Connected, RealBy the way, another solution is recently coming
Time Data is the
to the light: the Facebook solution, so the visitor
that uses PC, iPad and Iphone to navigate either
Future of Marketing
mysite.com and mysite.it could be uniquely
Analytics
identified by the connection with his Facebook
user’s profile. We are just testing this method Lyris provides customers with the tools to run
right now and the following steps can give you and analyze connected, online marketing
an idea of how it works:
campaigns.
And while the concept of
integrated or connected marketing across
- the visitor lands on the home page of mysite. multiple channels is nothing new, we strongly
com and a popup appears to the visitor, asking advocate its importance, and have worked
him if he wants to Connect the site with his with customers to provide the tools needed to
Facebook account (typically rewarding some make this happen. As a connected marketing
discount or special offers);
Page | 19
Summer 2010
approach across web, email, social, mobile,
search and SEO channels is best, the same holds
true for the marketing analytics that measure
success.
Author Bio: Blaine Mathieu is responsible for
Lyris’ brand and product strategy, including
driving marketing initiatives for the company’s
Lyris HQ hosted integrated marketing suite and
its award-winning ListManager email marketing
To date, analytics have tended to be siloed and software product. Most recently, Mathieu was
far from real-time. Marketers have had to work general manager and vice president of product
with two types of data aimed at two different and marketing at Corel Corp. There, he was
audiences: web analytics data for web analysts responsible for creating global marketing and
but also discrete campaign data for marketers product strategies for a wide range of software
like clickthroughs or open rates used to track products targeted at consumers, businesses
campaigns. As an industry, we must work to and professionals. Mathieu also held a variety
shift the customer mindset away from this siloed of senior management positions at companies
approach that separates web analytics from such as Adobe Systems and Gartner Group. He
discrete campaign analytics to one of broader received his MBA from Athabasca University in
marketing analytics. This holistic marketing Canada in 1999, and his bachelor of commerce
analytics approach, coupling campaign data degree from the University of Alberta in 1989.
with web analytics data, measures the success
of online campaigns from clickthrough to web
Online Marketers:
traffic to conversion and ultimately to revenues
3 Tips to Make
generated.
24
Your Website More
Testable
With this, marketers will better understanding
how customers respond to online marketing
efforts and the specific actions that lead to As a direct marketer, you’ve tested print and
email, but have you used multivariate testing on
conversions.
your website? In a multivariate test, variations
And as we free marketers from being data of your site’s content are presented to visitors,
analysts by merging often-complex web and whose behavior is tracked to determine how
campaign data into a complete, easily digestible each content variation affects your marketing
view of marketing analytics, we must also do goals, such as conversions and registrations.
so in real-time. Marketers need the ability
to follow customers as they pass through the While multivariate testing is an effective and
conversion funnel, capturing data and reports proven technique for optimizing a site, some
as they happen. This type of tracking allows sites can be made easier to test than others.
marketers to take corrective and optimizing Doing so will help you out-test, out-learn, and
out-optimize your competitors.
actions while the campaign is still “hot.”
As marketers continue to embrace and Here are 3 top tips to prepare your site for
implement a connected approach to online multivariate testing success, which represent
campaigns, we can expect the future of analytics the fundamentals of making content testable:
to be one of holistic marketing analytics in
real-time for greater campaign visibility and
optimized ROI.
Page | 20
Summer 2010
1. Use cascading style sheets (CSS)
CSS is a popular choice for web design
consistency and standardization, and
that’s great news for multivariate testing.
Among other things, CSS centralizes sitewide styles such as text and headline
specifications (font, style, color, size), page
layout, and positioning of elements. So,
when you make a CSS change, you change
it in one place and the style is updated
everywhere on the site. This makes it
much easier to test multiple variations
of site elements since you don’t have to
wrestle with changes in multiple places.
For example, a recent test for a B2B site
revealed that by increasing the font size of
copy by 20%, the time-per-visit increased
by 21% and pageviews-per-visit increased
by 18%. This test was highly fruitful, and
because only one line of CSS was changed
it was very easy to design and deploy.
2. Employ text-oriented navigation
In the past, web designers often relied
on images or Flash for navigation text
elements, particularly for sites that were
built before 2004-2005, since browser
technology was such that CSS couldn’t
be relied on for precise positioning
or stylization of text and labels.
Unfortunately, using images or Flash for
navigation has the side effect of making
it difficult to test alternate text labels —
for example, to test “My Preferences” vs.
“My Profile” vs. “My Settings.” Over the
last few years, however, browsers have
become much better at supporting most
CSS standards, so there’s little reason
anymore to rely on images or Flash for
navigation. Text links are much easier to
modify and control, and thus are much
easier to test and optimize.
Another important tip to keep in mind
is to use fluid design wherever possible.
Fluid design is a general approach where
a site’s elements can be added, removed,
or rearranged without interrupting or
breaking the layout of the surrounding
content. Besides being a good design
principle that makes the site more
accessible across varying screen sizes, fluid
design makes multivariate testing much
easier because you can determine which
layout is most effective.
The truth about layout is that different
types of visitors scan content in different
ways. For example, older visitors who grew
up without computers may view a page’s
sections in a different order than younger
visitors who have been “wired” since
birth. Similarly, behavioral differences
exist based on gender, education level,
and language spoken. By making it easy
to adjust page layout through the use
of fluid design, you’ll be able to test and
optimize for the audience that is unique
to your site.
Summary
Overall, you’ll want your website to be
modular, flexible, and easily testable. These are
the qualities that make a site usable for your
visitors and will support thorough testing and
optimization tow ards reaching your online
marketing goals.
Author Bio: Eric Hansen is the founder and
CEO of SiteSpect, and the chief architect of the
firm’s non-intrusive technology for multivariate
testing, behavioral targeting and digital
marketing optimization. Eric is a frequent
speaker at conferences covering web analytics
and optimization, and writes regularly on topics
dealing with the intersection of marketing and
technology.
3. Apply fluid design
Page | 21
Summer 2010
25
Measurement - at
the heart of mobile
advertising
Mobile advertising is now
becoming an integral part of many brands’
digital marketing strategy. It is now recognized
by marketers as an effective platform to reach
millions of customers worldwide and most
importantly build customer engagement. At
the heart of all this is mobile metrics, however
measurement is the key area highlighted by
the media, analysts, agencies and brands as the
“black hole” in the mobile marketing mix today
Only this way they will be able to fine tune
their mobile advertising proposition and
the complete visitor experience and most
importantly build customer engagement and
maximize ROI.
Author Bio: Ray is Chief Executive of Bango,
a leading provider of mobile payment and
analytics products, which enables businesses
to deliver and sell their products and services
directly to mobile phone users on all networks
world-wide. He co-founded Bango in 1999 after
realizing that the convergence of the internet
with the ubiquity of mobile phones could open
up huge opportunities for content and service
There is a widespread belief that mobile providers.
campaigns are hard to measure with any
Ray is an entrepreneur, innovator and investor
accuracy and that mobile users are difficult to
with over 20 years experience. He holds a
track. Determining if mobile campaigns really
1st Class Degree in Computer Science from
offer value for money is too much down to
Cambridge University. He is a keen pilot and
personal opinion over objective analysis.
fashion photographer.
This viewpoint, well formed or otherwise, is part
of the explanation for why mobile marketing
budgets are not growing more quickly. In a
recent survey of over 100 brands, agencies
and content providers carried out by Bango,
the results were surprising – 27% admitted to
not measuring their campaigns, with only 17%
saying they use a mobile-specific analytics tool.
For brands to succeed in building customer
engagement, they need to realize the
importance of measurement and using a mobile
specific analytics tool. One which accurately
provides:
• Unique visitors count, not just visits
• Which ad placements are delivering the
best conversions and which ones aren’t
• Tracks engagement levels, shows visitors
paths and behavior
• ROI across all ad campaigns and networks
Page | 22
Summer 2010
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