Technorati Tags: analtyics conferences, emetrics, GAUGE, gaugecon, Google Analytics User Conference, san francisco analytics conference

It is amazing to see that every year my gym gets over packed with people whose New Year’s resolutions are to get in shape and lose weight. Unfortunately, most of these people will disappear by the end of January and we might see them back in the year after.

To avoid such quick and unhappy ending for our Web Analytics next New Year’s resolutions, I would like to share with you few tips to help you reach most of your planned goals. Yes, some of these tips are very obvious, but we can all use a reminder from time to time.

1. Set meaningful goals for what you love to do the most.

This is the first ingredient to success; you must love what you do and what you want to be. It is true that no one was born as a Web Analytics ninja, but also not everyone was born with the ability to work with data. So if you are one of those people who don’t enjoy data, then maybe it is time to use this New Year’s resolution to reevaluate your career path and consider discovering other options that you like.

Same logic should be applied to which branch of Web Analytics you want to invest in more. Choose the concentration that you really enjoy and desire to continue advancing in, not something that your employer or the industry says is good for you. If you don’t have strong internal motivation within yourself about what you are doing, you won’t be successful.

2. Take baby steps.

Last year, my wife decided to run a 10K race. She was totally out of shape and could barely run for 5 minutes straight. She divided her ultimate goal into smaller challenges, but achievable goals guided by a running program called “Couch to 5k in 9 Weeks.” In a few months she successfully participated in a number of 10K run fundraisers!

Mastering Web Analytics is no less challenging than the 10K race. Whether you are an Analytics guru or a beginner, in order to advance your knowledge and experience in Analytics, you should set realistic goals and then take small steps that are likely to be met with success.

3. Don’t keep your resolutions to yourself.

I learned this technique from the SEO guru, Matt Cutts, of Google who always shares his 30-days challenges with his social friends and blog readers.

While I didn’t talk to Matt about his motive in sharing his monthly challenges and whether the sharing is helping him in achieving these challenges. For me though, I find myself more responsible in fulfilling my personal commitments when they are made public, especially when one or two friends show interest and decide to commit to the same resolution.

I strongly believe that resolutions are best made with groups. Friends and colleagues can gently push you in the right direction when you lose direction and motivate you when you slow down. So for next year’s Analytics resolutions, if you can find a friend or a group of friends who commit to the same New Year’s resolution together, then I guarantee you a better chance of achieving your goals [as known in analytics as “higher conversion rate” and “lower bounce rate”]. You will be more accountable to each other and give a hand to each other when things gets tough.

4. Get good mentors.

It is part of the human nature to imitate those around us. So as we are working on our next year’s resolutions, we need to make sure that we surround ourselves more often with people who carry common interests and similar career objectives and who offer us sincere advice, listen to our ideas and fears, and tell us when we have gone off track.

Analytics conferences offer good opportunity to hunt for good mentors and to connect with new Analytics friends. Although these conferences are a bit expensive, many of them offer a Social Networking pass or Exhibit Hall only pass at a good discounted price, so don’t miss these opportunities. Another good social event that no Web Analyst should miss is the Web Analytics Wednesday, which take place in many cities all over the world.

5. Fine-tune your spirituality.

It is important to add a spiritual dimension to your goals. For example, if one of your goals is to get certified in Google Analytics, you may also resolve to use that knowledge to serve your community through offering free internet marketing consulting to your favorite charity organization or government/education institutions.

There it is, folks…

I think I’m ready for a good start! Good luck in your resolutions and feel free to share them with us if you think that will help in implementing them

Technorati Tags: goals, new year's resoultions, web analytics

Imagine you’re a used car salesman.  I know, you’re disgusted and feel like taking a shower now, but humor me.   A customer who has been searching for a Toyota Camry comes to your car lot because he saw your flashing sign for just that – a great deal on a Toyota Camry.   You tell him, “Sure!” and point him in the direction of the entire car lot.  “Find it yourself!”  Do you think you’ll close that sale?

How about imagine he walks through the lot with your Toyota deal in his mind, but you have salesmen calling him over trying to sell him BMW’s, Honda’s, KIA’s, etc.  Not only is your customer now annoyed that you made him search for the deal himself, you’re team is bugging him with promotions he’s really not thinking about or interested in.

Let’s say after that, your now annoyed customer sees a car lot next door, and ALL they sell are low priced Camry’s.  Who’s going to get that sale?

This is how you should be thinking about your site and competitors.    In particular, basic web usability theory says the internet make things so easy and convenient for us, that it’s trained us to be…well…lazy.  If you don’t make things as easy as possible for your visitors, your competitor will, and there is no penalty or price for your visitor pressing the “back” button and then clicking on your competitor.

10 Tips for Building Effective Landing Pages

The beauty of the internet now is that you can create targeted custom landing pages focused on closing one product or service without any distractions.  Landing pages are focused, eliminating confusion, putting your prospects into a “track” that hopefully will result in a lead or close.

In this post, I’d like to talk list some best practices on how to do that right.

1 ) Simplicity = Clarity.  This is a key point that not only web design and other media is based on in general,  but most of the landing page best-practices are based on this.   There is definitely a balance that needs to happen – all important information needs to be included – however, it’s important that information is succinct and that also there is no other fluff on the page that will distract the visitor from closing.  Hubspot (a great authority on internet marketing) calls this the “blink-test” – meaning it should be clear on the page (any web subpage) what the page is about within the first 5 seconds (before you blink).  How do you do this?  With clear headings, images, calls-to-actions and reducing all other distractions.

2 ) Maintain the Scent.  In many cases, your paid ads/email ads will be targeted and a landing page will be best to serve them, since the landing page can be focused specifically on what your ad/mail is talking about.  Like our Camry analogy, there’s nothing more annoying than coming to a page that says “Free Kindle!” but then all it says (and in fact is yelling), “Here’s a bunch of information that has nothing to do with that.”

3 ) Headline.  In many cases, this is the first thing a visitor will see.  Make sure it maintains the scent of your ad if it’s from paid traffic.    Also, make sure it conveys what the page is about, whether it’s the name of your product, why they should purchase it, a promo you are offering, etc.   Again, internet surfers like to think as little as possible, if they scan your headings and don’t find what they’re looking for, there’s no penalty for them bouncing.

4 ) Salespoints.  Sounds obvious, but too many times we’ve come to a page and they dance around the main reasons why we should buy their product or contact them.  Understand your prospects, what they are looking for, what possible hesitations may stop them from taking advantage of your product/services.  Outline that then make sure it’s all included in your landing page.  Only thing to keep in mind is when you put them there, you don’t want to write a novel as to why visitors should buy.   Minimal, succinct words and phrases that best convey your ideas.

5 ) Clear Calls-To-Action.  Another one that sounds obvious.  Your design should clearly distinguish it’s call(s)-to-action.  It’s image should contrast (a bright button on a muted surface) or the link should be bright and big.  If there is only one clear button, and that’s the only place they can go, it increases their chances of them going there.   Also, minimize your calls-to-action and keep them above-the-fold (meaning it shouldn’t be at the bottom of the page where visitors have to scroll down to find it).  If your conversion element or call-to-action is a form, make sure it’s nice and big, stands out, and is above the fold.

6 ) No Escapes.    I want them to look at the rest of my site!  I want them to see what other services I provide!  I want them to see my Facebook page!  By them leaving this page that nurtures the lead, you are significantly risking them losing the sale.  Remove all escape elements from the page – no navigation, no social networks, no other offers.  In the case where they may want more information on your company, you may provide one hidden escape to again minimize the chance of them getting distracted an you losing the lead (maybe link your logo to your homepage), but make sure to open this page in another tab/window so the original offer/landing page is not lost.  If you want them to see your certifications, high-profile clients you’ve served, etc – include that in the actual landing page design and layout.

7 ) Reduce Distractions.  Aside from actual link “escapes”, design can get in the way too.  Too many images, background patterns, textures, rotating information, etc – can distract a visitor from your main “track”.  You may need to include some of these things, but minimize it.  Simple backgrounds, simple images, simple colors.   You can still be simple and be aesthetically chic.

8 ) Credibility Badges.  Any certifications, testimonials, client logos, authority certifications of your business will help legitimize you and could refute apprehension by your visitors to convert on your landing page.  The nice thing is now that your landing page is simple, it has space for this information.

9 ) Test! In design, it’s always important to understand – best practices are just that – “best practices”.  They are not written in stone and may not always apply, or a tweak to them may further optimize them.   It’s great to have hypotheses of how your visitors will act on the page based on their marketing personas and to also follow best practices – this is a great starting point.  However, you wont truly know how your page will perform until it goes live, and you wont know if it’s doing the best it can do till you test different strategies, layouts, designs. You can have different landing pages under different campaigns to test, conduct user-testing, or you can try A/B testing services such as the Google Website Optimizer.

10 ) Thank You Page UPSELL!  This is something everyone neglects (even until recently, so did we!) .  You just closed a lead!  You can place a plain thank you message, or further your business by putting a promotion on the thank you page, upsell other products you have, or even better, add a social “share” link so that your happy lead can share this info with their friends.  Word-of-mouth sales close significantly greater than cold leads.

This particular webinar was similar to the last webinar, but gave a little more detail on optimizing your Facebook Ad campaigns using their insights and reports features.

Here are some summary notes:

1) Optimizing the Creative of your ad

• Try to think about what engages your target audience.
• Adding questions is usually engaging – “Are you up for it?”  “Want the best football boots?”
• Keep the body copy of your ad as concise as possible, but try to include as many key selling points as you can.   The more fluff or words you use, the less space you’ll have for key selling points..
• Urgency often increases click-through -”Offer ends…”
• Offers/Discounts help -  “Free” “Promotional”
• Image – Logos don’t really work unless it’s a well known brand.  Use really attractive images.

2) Target and Segment Campaigns Clearly

• Your ads are broken down into campaigns.  Make sure to set up campaigns and set them up correctly – segment them by gender, age, geography, etc.  Ex.  Female, UK, 13-30 yrs old.
• They suggested a maximum of 3 -4 ads per campaign – it makes it easier to dissect data
• Make sure your landing page or custom Facebook landing tabs have relevant info. As they say “maintains the scent”.  If you say there’s a free download, that landing page/tab better clearly deliver.

3) Utilize reports

• Facebook ads interface is able to generate detailed reports.
• Every few days, look at all creative and see what works.  From there, PAUSE ads that arent working.  That way, they dont compete with each other – only the best one is running.
• Look at frequency and reach of the ad.
• Launch new campaigns after people have seen the ads a couple times.  Refresh the creative so ads look fresh and people aren’t seeing the same ole ads.

Evaluating Performance

Facebook Ads General Dashboard

You can view the:

• Size of your target audience or “Reach” – unique users that have seen your ads.
• Social Reach – The beauty of this is many people will see that their friends that like an ad.  This carries a rapport or “word of mouth” value.
• Look over past couple days, note if you see peaks (Ex. maybe they are clicking more on the weekends, so you want to focus ads at that time).
• You can break it down by ads.  Monitor the Click-Through-Rate, Cost-Per-Click, etc.

Responder Demographics Report

Seeing the demographics can be valuable insight, because then you can further segments to further optimize then refocus your budget.   Ex. This age group might be working better or this Gender, so you can tailor some ads to those specific demographics.

Facebook Page Insights

• Facebook pages themselves (vs. ads) have great insights built in.
• You can see if your friends are fans or if non friends are fans of your page
• You can monitor your Total Reach.
• A new insight added are “People talking about you.”  Basically, this is the # of people who have liked your page, liked a post, posted on your page, shared a link about your brand, etc.  It’s a good indicator of how engaging and popular your page is.  While you may have x amount of followers, if no one is talking about your page, what’s the point?!
• By viewing these insights you can optimize your page posting strategy!
• See when people are responding best and post at that time
• Gain insights at what types of posts people are responding to and increase those types of posts.

Questions from the Audience

How does system decides how much my ads costs?

This is based on CPC (cost-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-1000 impressions).   When a user visits an ad page, an auction takes place with the ads.   It takes into account:

• Your bid, so to better your chances, bid slightly above the range.  This is not how much you necessarily will pay, but it’s the max and allows you to compete.
• Historical performance of your ad – how well was your ad doing?  CTR, etc.
• How are users interacting with your ad?  Are they liking them, or hiding them?

Do you have details on optimizing my Facebook page?

• Figure out when you are going to post.  Best thing is to have a strategy – preferably a post calendar (to avoid spamming).
• Post engaging items – photos, videos.
• Insights – use it to figure out how many people are engaging and what posts.

Can you give further details on “# talking about this” stat on FB pages?

Anyone who commented on your page, tags your page in comments, likes your posts, etc.  It gives you a picture of how many people are interacting with your page (more importantly, engaging).

How often do you suggest we refresh creative?

No hard rule about it.  Monitor your ads for a couple days so you can see how its performing.  Then you can determine if you want to optimize them – generally 7-10 days.  You’ll see impressions declining, reach will decline – so that’s when you refresh.

When should I use “likes and interest” targeting vs “broad” targeting?

Depends on your target.  If you want all sports, say you have a sports store, then you use broad.  If you want something accurate, like people playing golf – then you use precise interest targeting.

Do you find differences between ads that lead to Facebook or external websites?

Depends, but Facebook objects tend to do better because they allow for social targeting.

Can you explain “Social Reach”?

Your ad reaching friends of friends and shows that their friends like your ad.  This is better, as it builds rapport if “friends” like a brand.

How often should I review reports?

Everyday.  Check where your impressions are going.  For example, if you see some demographics are getting an ad, you may do another ad to focus on another segment of age.

Sponsored Stories vs. Ads?

Ad you control the text and creative.  Sponsored stories – something that is within the newsfeed and you can promote that.  Say if someone likes the page, or a post on your page that had a great response.  Gives posts a boost.

Ads performance has declined, what should I do?

Figure out which ads have declined and do your best to figure out why.  Then refresh creative.    But it will be normal to see that after awhile, an ad will naturally will become stale and decline.

Is it a good idea to target an ad to only your fans?

It is, you can get them to interact more with your page and posts.  You are generating virality.  Keep in mind only 5-20% of your fans will see a post.  Whereas an ad targeted to them, 100% will see it.

Today we announced our fifth strategic agreement with Google, enhancing E-Nor’s enterprise service offerings to include Google Analytics Premium. This is exciting news we wanted to share with you.

Google Analytics Premium, a paid analytics offering, contains more processing power, advanced analysis tools, and dedicated support. This new offering is a welcome addition to the already awesome features available in the Google Analytics Standard Edition – awesome just got super awesome!

Both Premium and Standard Editions of Google Analytics will receive many great feature enhancements going forward, with many coming out in the near future. E-Nor can help determine which edition is right for you and how to implement the best option for your organization.

We have supported many of Silicon Valley’s Fortune 500 companies realize tangible business results by leveraging E-Nor’s Digital Marketing Optimization Framework to drive analytics strategic planning, solution integration, advanced analytics implementations, and knowledge transfer. We look forward to working with you!

Join us for a Google Analytics Premium Webinar to learn more:

When:
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PST

Visit Google Analytics Premium or call E-Nor at 1.866.638.7367.

Technorati Tags: google analytics, Google Analytics Premium, web analytics

Kipp opened the webinar with a yell that jolted me a little (he was really excited .  He confessed that he is a giant marketing dork (his words, not mine), and that while normally, experts paint a fluffy picture of social media, he wanted to do something different.

He started by pointing out a problem – a study that angered him:  73% of CEOs say that they don’t believe marketers drive revenue or demand to their business!  “They thinks were just arts and crafts!”  He argued the good news here is the only way to go is up.

Bottom line is, as marketers, the measurement of success in social media should be it’s ability to generate leads.   When we can demonstrate that Social Media does generate leads, we can prove that 73% wrong.

Here are some summary notes:

• This is the best time EVER to be a marketer.
• Leads is the metric to rely on.  Its a proxy for sales.
• Social Marketing that doesnt drive sales wont last.

Examples of how social lead happens:

• Tweet > Landing Page > Form > Lead
• Friend “Likes” a Facebook post > You read the Blog Post > There’s a Call-To-Action > Landing Page.
• +1 on Google > Brings you to a product page > Call-To-Action > Landing Page

Best way to generate leads with Social Media?

Kipp spent 2011 doing in depth research on what works.

1) Get the “basics” right

• Build your reach! This is a HUGE step.  If no one is there, it doesn’t matter what you share.
• Follow, Friend, and CONNECT.  This is the simplest step, but at the same time hardest -  a lot of marketers think reactions are just going to happen by themselves.  NOPE.  You need to search and seek out the conversation.  For example, follow industry people on Twitter, then they’ll follow you back.   That’s how you start.  Get out there, talk, connect, friend.
• Share lots of links!  People are looking to news and info more than ever before.  Dan Zarrella found a correlation that those who share links have more followers.
• Post often and consistently! Bit.ly (the link shortener website) released data on their clicks- the shelf life of a social media link is only 3 hrs!!!!!  That means you need to post something engaging and post often cause chances are after awhile, that link will disappear.
• Automatic Sharing.  Use some automatic sharing applications to minimize your admin time.  Set up connections between twitter feed, blog posts feed, etc.  There are plenty of services like tweetdeck, hootsuite, etc, that will do this for you.
• Leverage your existing base of contacts to join your social networks.  They can start as early members.  They may also be advocates that share your info, thus building your reach.  Email marketing is a huge opportunity to build social network.  Include social links in your emails, explicitly ask existing subscribers to join.
• If you have a Facebook page, USE A “LIKE GATE”!!!!  These are landing tabs that force visitors to “like” the page to see hidden content, which is usually a promo or something free your company can offer to entice them to join.  “Like this page to get….”  IT WORKS.

2) Maximize Content Discovery

• We need to get people excited to read and share content.
• First, you need to create or have fresh regular content.  So people will know to come to you for information.
• Second, you need to share that content.
• Next, we have to do dedicated monitoring.  Who’s talking and responding to your posts?  Who’s sharing?  Of those people, who do we engage with so they can continue to support you and advocate for you?
• COMMIT to a CONTENT CALENDAR.  A lot of companies wing it, and you will find yourself struggling to come up with content everyday.  Take the time to sit down and build this calendar so you just put the time in once a week/month, then everything else is like clockwork.
• BUILD Social thank you pages.  This was a great piece of advice I hadnt heard before.  Put links on thank you pages to share.  When a visitor likes your page thank them and explicitly ask them to share your page.  To make it easier for them, provide a “share” link (many plugins or widgets are provided by facebook/twitter themselves).
  
• Time-box  – too many people spend too much time monitoring their social networks (or they dont spend enough time).  Start out with 15 minutes a day, post and respond.  Scale up as needed.

3) Create Conversion Ubiquity – Calls to action all over the web

• Place Calls-To-Actions everywhere!!!!  If you’re not catching them, your missing opportunity.  It doesn’t have to be in everyone’s face, but make it available.

4) Test and Fail fast.

• FAILURE SUCKS!!!!  But, invaluable part of marketing.  Allow us to improve and iterate.
• Set qualitative objectives.  If you can’t measure your progress, then you cant know if you failed and how to improve.
• Set a methodology how to gather data.  You need to figure out how you will measure everything.  There are plenty of built in insight tools as well as 3rd party tools to measure social media.
• Finally, conduct and experiment.  Set action items following up experiment.
•  If something works, you double down, if it doesn’t, change.

5) Optimize for Maximum leads

• Social media converts best vs. most other traffic.  The rapport from word of mouth or that is just built from interacting with your brand is invaluable.
• Keep in mind though, not all platforms are right for all businesses.  If your “Visits” to “Leads” are low for x platform, change your strategy and try a platform that works.
• Conduct RADICAL tests.  Landing page, web design, social media campaign.  Test 2 radically different ideas, and most likely, you will end up with a hybrid of working parts from both tests.

Here are some notes on how to use Facebook Ads to effectively market your business or Facebook Fan pages:

Use Facebook ads to drive fans to your page and even more than that, use them to reach friends of those fans.

-800 Million active users on Facebook – scale of TV, precision of direct marketing, as well as ability to harness power of connections between friends.

-There are 4 ad formats:

• Standard Ads
• Application Ads (app)
• Like Ads (FB Pages)
• Event Ads

-The last 3 include a powerful tool – social context (meaning they can display “[Your Friend] likes this”, which is more likely to inspire “trust” and thus, better chances at click-through).

Important Steps:

1) Make sure you’re targeting efficiently.

Understand your audience. Ex. Are you a brick-and-mortar store? Then a good question would be “Where is my audience located?”

Other things to consider: Demographic targeting?  Does a specific gender come to my store?  What’s their education?

More precise targeting: Likes and interest?  Ex. Are you a restaurant?  Then try touch people who like a certain type of food.

2) Design an engaging ad.

Make sure to get the “creative” right!  This could be the difference between someone clicking on your ad, or not.

Succinct copy!  Be short and clear, but compelling.

Use an image that is eye-popping.

Make sure to have engaging content – Promos (“Free Download!”).  Questions (“Do you like pizza?”)

Your ad should be action-oriented – explicitly tell them what you want them to do.  ” ‘LIKE’ our page!”

3) Setting correct budget and bid – you can only reach certain people with a certain budget.

Lower bids get lower chances of ad’s being run.  Bid a good number and if your ad is doing well, bid on the high end.

4) Analyzing and Optimizing

Test multiple versions. Multiple text, headers, images, etc.  Choose the most optimized.

“Page Post Ads” – if you have a good post with good comments – you can create ads out of those to reach people it normally wouldnt.   Links, events, questions, photos, videos, etc.   Target posts.

Define strategy.  Do you want to drive sales? Or get more fans?

More best practices to drive traffic to your page:

Select to run a “Page Post Ad” – sometimes you have a great post on your page and you want more than just your fans to see it.   Facebook Ads allows you to run this.

Choose a image that’s engaging – human interactions are usually more successful.

Ad copy needs to be engaging – asking a question, promoting a discount

Create a sense of URGENCY – let them know when promo is ending.

Questions from the Audience:

I set up campaign, but I have very few impressions?  What do I do?

Make sure to set bid high so it’s competitive.

Can I give access to someone else to manage my ads without giving them access to my profile?

Go to Ads manager and you can add verified users to see ads.

How often should you check the results of your ads?

Every couple days.  Make changes based on results of engagement.

A good indicator that your ad is working is if you hit your budget everyday.  If not, you may have to up your bid.

What does “Targeting by broad category” mean?

Broad category are common categories.  Ex.  Broad category are “pets”.  Precise interest are “dogs”.

Is it better to have broad or precise targeting? 

Depends on your own goals.  If you want people with likes or interest similar, go with broad targeting.  But if you’re advertising a product that is specific, then go with precise interest.  You may want to add several price interests.

If I don’t bid high enough, possible my ad wont show?

Yes.  You need to bid high enough.

How long would you run an ad before adjusting it?

Every couple days.  At least every 10 to 12 days to make sure your ad isn’t going stale.

Technorati Tags: channel segmentation, facebook, pay per click, social marketing, social media, social networking

Here are some summary notes:

Our lives our made of connections to things we care about: people, songs, hobbies, sports, places – this makes us who we are.

Technology (such as Facebook) brings us closer – transforms how we connect and share our lives – on an ongoing basis.

Benefits to businesses?  They can connect to friends’ friends – through word of mouth.

Stats:

• Word of mouth is twice as likely to cause engagement, 4 times as likely to cause purchase.
• 800 Million on Facebook
• 350 use mobile
• 2 billion posts/day
• 500 million log in
• 250 million photos uploaded

Conversations and sharing are happening in a way never done before

It’s up to you to build essential connections – not just count clicks.  Our job to spark conversations, inspire sharing.

How to Grow Your Business

Pages

• Upload photos and info to express your business
• Engage – this is how you let people know and communicate with your audience – ask questions, exclusive offers.
• FB recommends to connecting to at least 10% of your base – statistically, these are your influencers.
• Updates, photos, events, etc – posts go to their newsfeeds

Ads

• Simple to reach your fans and their friends per ads.
• Utilize Facebook Ads, sponsored stories.  Granular targeting – by interests, local reach.

Sponsored Stories – shows your target audience how their friends interact with businesses.

• Take actions already happening with your page and make it visible by friends’ friends.
• Ads manager – you can turn on sponsored stories
• You want them to always be running – you can boost your reach

Social Plug-ins

• Simple line of code and you can integrate your site with Facebook and its social capabilities
• Have to ask yourself though, “Is it good for my kind of site”
• American Eagle added a “like” button so people can share with their friends.

1-800-Flowers – make sure everything they do is social.  Contests, promos, etc.  Starts every campaign with the question “Is it Social?”

It allows you to communicate with customers on a consistent basis.  Facebook page allows you to blast message to fans already interested.

Increase Facebook fan base by “marrying” offline and online together – in store signs, receipts, etc.  Add “Facebook” info to your offline literature.

Success Stories

How consistent should we post?  There’s no exact science, it’s on a page by page basis.    But there are a couple rules of thumb:

• Post at least once a week
• Set up a post calendar – post certain types of content on certain days to keep users engaged.
• Most effective? It will vary between business to business, but mix it up.
• Put questions in your posts to get feedback.
• Utilize photo/video to grab attention.
• Over time, you will see what kinds of posts gets you the most amount of feedback.

Technorati Tags: channel segmentation, facebook, pay per click, social marketing, social media, social networking

• 68% more likely to remember an ad with social context. 2x more likely to remember ads messages. 4x more likely to purchaseYour establishing connections to your customers, multiple times, and their friends, but its your job to keep them engaged
• Strike balance – not too much bad content, good content
• Talk “with” not “at” – just like your profile, put things up you think your friends will like.
• It’s iterative – we can see what works. Put it out, see what works, then evolve
• Drive convos with ads – connect ads back to Facebook page
• Sponsored stories – make sure more people can see what your fans say about you
• This is how you light your brand up
• People tell friends about products, thats what sells products – WORD OF MOUTH
• Dont go in set from the beginning – Monitor, Adapt, Leverage
• Social needs to be the fundamental ingredient from the beginning- can’t just “sprinkle” social
• Dont get rid of other ads – TV, print – create a cohesive campaign that connect.
• Reach customers AND THEIR FRIENDS!
• Link to social graphs – make everything the basis for on-going connection
• Engage customer, write back to them so they keep coming back. This is how you get messages to go viral.
• Inspire. Be creative. Put out experiences.  Get them to put their experiences, their childrens.  Great messages, videos, pics – these things get twice as much engagement.
• The web has gone social, marketing can go social too.
• Ex. Barista put out an ad with curse words.  Outcry on Facebook page.  They apologized, put up a new cut, and they got a great response for taking responsibility and listening to their audience.
• First time you can have a comprehensive conversation with brands themselves.  Go iterate, get started.

Terminology

Before we begin looking at these reports it is important to understand what we are looking at.  Each flow page will have nodes.  The node is simply a segment of visitors.  These nodes represent some feature of the visitors, such as traffic sources, new visitors, browsers, etc. The connections represent the number of visitors that went from one node to another. Red connections are those who left the site.  The size of the nodes and the connections are proportional mean smaller numbers will have smaller numbers and larger numbers will appear larger. This makes it extremely easy to see these flows. The image in the next section illustrates the nodes and the connections.

Goal Flow and Control Panel Overview

The first new flow report, the "Goal Flow" report will be a welcome addition to the Conversion section in Google Analytics. The image below shows this report, I highlighted the connections, nodes and segmentation capabilities.  The first dropdown in the purple box, will allow you to select which goal you would like to be presented.  The "Select a segment" works just like the "Advanced Segments" feature. You can pick any of the pre-existing segments, such as returning visitors, or you can create your own segment such as branded keywords. The flow reports by default only show significant sources of connections, but you can show more by dragging the connections slider, which is in the purple box. You can also change "source" which is the default view, to a variety of other dimensions, including city, keyword, browser, and more.

For this "Goal Flow" report, I have shown a purchase funnel.  We can see the sources on the left side and each step in the funnel following on the right.  For each dimension, the report will show the top five and then group the rest in a sixth entry. The steps in the "Goal Flow" all come from the goal funnel you define in the profile settings. Only URL destination goals are supported at this time, not event goals. The table at the bottom of the graph shows the numbers of visitors that make it to each step. This is extremely useful as you can use this to address issues. For example if you use the browser dimension, you might see a huge decrease in mobile users that reach the purchase page.  This would suggest that your site might need some mobile optimization. The best part is if you don’t have a goal or goal funnel setup, you can create one and it will use your data to populate the report as if it had been there all along.

Visits Flow

Next up is the new "Visits Flow" report. This looks very similar to the "Goals Flow" report. The image below shows this report with purple boxes calling out important information. This report can be accessed by clicking the home button icon in the main toolbar from any area in Google Analytics. Below is the default view for this report.

When you first open this up it may appear to be a bit overwhelming. It is quite easy to start digging for insights. You can click on any of the nodes under the dimensions ("Source" is show in the image above) and show only connections from that node. You could do analysis coming from any of the dimensions. You can also click on any of the pages nodes and select either traffic from or through the node. The image below shows traffic through one of our blog pages. You can see the pages they came from and went to and add steps to previous or next pages that most of your visitors came from or went to.

The “Navigation Flow” report lets you group pages by regular expression.  You could group all pages that contain a common word as an example, which is extremely useful for websites that are promoting different products.  Let’s say you sell Apple and PC products, you could group them separately and compare common dimensions that bring them to the site or group them together and also understand how they view your site as a group.

Final Thoughts

Path Analysis has not been easy to do and gaining insights can be a painful process. Google Analytics has clearly spent a lot of time on these reports and it has shown. Flow Visualization makes seeing common trends and gaining insights significantly easier. The “Goal Flow” report is my favorite, and the segmentation combined with the running table at the bottom makes it painless to see what is going on with a variety of metrics. This is what differentiates it from all other competitor’s offerings.  Google is truly making it easier to visualize visitor data, which gives us a whole new view called Flow Visualization.

Google Analytics has spent a huge amount of time developing out the new interface and adding many new features to it.  In the last 3 months alone, we have seen social media tracking and multi-channel funnels added.  I am confident that in the coming months many new impressive features will be coming.

What is Google Analytics Premium

Google Analytics Premium looks and feels like Google Analytics Standard Edition, the interface we are all familiar with. It includes more processing power, advanced analysis, and dedicated support.  Below is the list of differences that will only be in Premium

Processing Power

• Guaranteed processing for up to 1 billion hits per month
• Faster, intra-day processing for up to 1 billion hits per month
• Service Level Agreement around data collection, reporting, and processing
• 99.9% on Collection up-time
• 99% on Reporting up-time
• 98% on on-time Data Freshness (within 4 hours)

Advanced Analysis Tools

• Up to 50 Custom Variable slots
• Unsampled report downloads for custom report requests
• Unaggregated report downloads for large report requests (up to 1 million rows per download)

Dedicated Support

• Dedicated Account Management
• Phone & Email support 10 hours per day, 5 days per week
• Implementation Consultation & Tagging Audit
• 24/7 Product Emergency Escalation Support, if the product is ever outside of the SLA

I strongly feel that this is a very strong edition to the Google Analytics offerings.  It is targeted at a very specific audience, who has very complex needs and require high levels of customization.  For, the average Google Analytics user, they will never require these features.  For those that have large data sets and much higher levels of needs, many of their needs can now be met.  If you have any questions about Google Analytics Premium or Google Analytics in general, I encourage you to contact me or leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: Delicious, Google Analytics Free vs. Premium, Google Analytics Premium, Paid Google Analytics, web analytics

Today, Google Analytics released Real-Time, a new dashboard that will show your website traffic and certain metrics as it happens. Google Analytics has shown they are committed to the free version, by making this feature free and available to all starting today. The data that is shown only has a delay of 1-2 seconds from when a visitor clicks to one of your pages.

Here are the links to the topics and posts you requested; feel free to contact or email if you have any other questions or comments.

• Tracking Online and Offline Campaigns with Google Analytics
• Google Analytics URL tagging Kit (download the spreadsheet here)
• Analytics Reporting Framework Whitepaper
• Use cases for Custom Variables
• Analyze and Optimize for Mobile

Two other notes:

• You should have received the slide deck by now
• The follow up Q&A online webinar is scheduled for Friday 9/30 at 8 AM pacific. You should receive an invitation early next week so mark your calendar!

In preparation for the Q&A webinar, please add your questions and/or comments here and we will get those answered ahead of time or review them during the webinar.

Thanks again and happy analysis!!

Technorati Tags: google analytics, training, web analytics, workshop

Interestingly, they had a different strategy than the traditional one, and it actually made a lot of sense.  Normally, you might try to build your page fan base as large as possible, then use that free stream of connection to push your product/services, either through updates on your wall (that will appear your members’ news feeds) or through message “updates” that appear in your members’ inboxes.

However, changes to the Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm (called EdgeRank) threw a little bit of a wrench in that – most of your posts actually aren’t seen by your page members.  Also, “updates” show up in an unnoticeable “other” box that may be ignored.

Webtrends’ strategy takes this into account and apply a different approach – engage your visitors to build heavy rapport, then reach them through paid ads.

—

EdgeRank !

EdgeRank actually suppresses 95% of posts! The EdgeRank algorithm uses Engagement of the post,  Affinity of a user to your page, and Decay to determine whether an update makes it to a member’s feed.   Facebook hopes to provide as relevant content as possible to you (since it’s impossible to feed everything).  That means if people aren’t interacting with your post (engagement), a member doesn’t really visit your page often (affinity), and/or a post is old (decay), the chances of your members or friends seeing it in their feed is pretty slim.

Engage

Webtrends stresses the importance of social engagement.  That’s the intended nature of social networks – to start a conversation.  Build rapport with your members and get them to consistently engage with your page through fun and simple posts rather than simply using your page to push your own products and promotions.  Promotional posts statistically do not generate as much engagement as “fun”, simple, conversational posts.

Some key points:

• “Emotional stories” and “sports wins” get great engagement.
• Simple and easy questions are the most successful in engaging users.  Example, Lane Bryant’s posts with maximum engagement were “Like this is you are a curvy women” and “Fill in the blank: My favorite color is:_____________”
• Promotional posts don’t get as much engagement as simple, social questions.  A good ratio of promotional posts to other posts is one in every 10.
• Keep a close eye on posts and respond – the more responses and the quicker the reply, the more likely a conversation will break out, which will higher the EdgeRank score of that post.

Monetize (Using Ads)

Once you have enough “reach” (your membership is large) and your existing members are engaged, use Facebook’s targeted ads to target your own page members for products/promotion.  Since you have built rapport and you now have a strong bond with them, they are more likely to pay attention, click through, and convert (assuming you have an optimized conversion page/process).

Before Channel Groupings

For this view I have filtered the report to only show Paths that include other, which are the undefined Channel Groupings.  This isn’t a very useful view, as there is not much analysis that you can do with it.  You don’t know what other is, but after going through the steps later in this post you can break these out and you will have paths that look like this instead:

After Channel Grouping

Above is a report that provides much more information, and is more appealing to look at.  Instead of being presented with a bunch of “Other” we have broken apart other into the marketing channels that we have been tagging correctly using Google Analytics campaign tracking.  This is extremely useful as you can start to analyze how the various marketing channels you are using such as QR Codes, Banner Ads, and even offline media are contributing to your site conversions.

How To Create Channel Groupings

To create your own Channel Grouping like the one presented above, you select the Channel Grouping dropdown and select “Copy Basic Channel Grouping template…” which will copy the settings for the default view that you see in MCF’s.

After clicking on “Copy Basic Channel Grouping template…” you will be presented with the view below.  This is how Google has chosen to categorize the channels in all the reports for MCF’s.  As you can see the “(Other)” channel comes from a rule that Google made if something doesn’t match any of the conditions above.

When you click “Add new Rule” which can be found under the last channel that has been created, you will be presented with new options to create your new channel, which should look like the image below.  Here we have grouped everything that contains “affiliate” in the Medium and grouped it together with a pretty color.  The amount of different combinations are very extensive.  An example of this is for AdWords you could split the Channel into two Channels, those that came from  display advertisements and those that came from paid search.

After you have applied and added new rules for your campaigns your should have a nice list of all your channels, with channel specific colors to make your reports more appealing and easily readable, as shown below.  Again the possibilities of different channel grouping are many.  Google uses a suggestion of making Generic Keywords vs. Branded Keywords, you could incorporate this into the new template you just made by making another copy of it.  You could split your organic search into the two keyword groups, and go from there.  I foresee channel groupings being essential to providing support to marketing questions that arise.  In a meeting a question that may be asked;  “Is social media really worth the time invested?”  To help provide insight into this, you could start breaking apart the social media channels and see which contributes to conversions.  Channel Groupings is my favorite feature of MCF’s, and I have a feeling it will be most peoples as well.

Technorati Tags: Bubbles, Channel Groupings, Colors, google analytics, Multi Channel Funnels

To reach this goal, marketers need a guide to help build the marketing accountability that analytics, and smart people, bring to the table.

I hope to provide this guide and structure in my 7-Step Analytics Reporting Framework whitepaper. This framework will help marketers navigate through seas of data and reports and leverage insights to impact their business.

You can download the full whitepaper here.

And for those of you on the go, here’s a quick outline of what to expect:

1- Define your requirements

Clearly identify what you need to measure and extract key data to measure your performance. This is the foundation for all following steps.

2- Know your channels

Pageviews alone won’t cut it anymore.  Different media platforms require different measurement approaches and techniques. Understand the characteristics of your channels and how to track each of them.

3- Trim your metrics

When it comes to reporting, apply this strategy: “less is more”. Just because you have a lot of data doesn’t mean you need it all.

4- Segment for context

Absolute numbers and aggregates hide a wealth of insight and can be very misleading. . Segment and allow “context” to give your data meaning.

5- Put intelligence at your service

Let computers crunch the numbers. Let reports detect and flag significant changes in your key performance indicators automatically. (If you are not a Google Analytics user, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon and leverage its powerful Intelligence engine.)

6- Integrate reporting

Data from your website offer just few pieces of the puzzle. Incorporate data from mobile, social, offline, competitive, etc. and look at the big picture.

7- Automate

Tired of manual reporting? Automate your reports. This gives you more time to do proper analysis.

Bonus Step

Channel Attribution & Multi-Channel Funnels

Download the full whitepaper here. Feel free to comment and share.

Technorati Tags: analytics framework, analytics requirements, channel segmentation, digital marketing, google analytics, marketing optimization, report automation

What was great about this webinar was that while Social Media workshops give you the typical tips (referred to as “Rainbows” & “Unicorns” by Dan) like “engage your members” or “love your fans”,  Dan actually had data supporting his claims and recommendations and data even disproving some common myths.  While he does bring up a lot of “correlations” and not so much “causations” (so we cant really say that implementing his tips will directly result in, say, more exposure or reach) they are still important points to consider.

Some Key Points:

• Myth: Ideas spread because they are good.  Some ideas are bad and they spread (Rebecca Black’s “Friday” being an example) and some are good but go no where (can’t think of any examples here ).  There are other factors involved in spreading an idea, which he gets into later when he talks about “contagiousness”.
• Myth: Viral growth is an exponential pyramid.  According to Dan’s data on examples of viral growth, an idea may start slow, but there are usually key moments where an idea is exposed by the right people or “influencers”, resulting in it going viral.  Then, the idea eventually dies out.   This is opposed to the typical “first day one person shares to 2 people, second day those people share” pyramid.
• Contagiousness.  In order for an idea to be contagious, the following 3 pillars need to be established:  EXPOSURE + ATTENTION + MOTIVATION

EXPOSURE

It’s really important to have as much exposure as possible, a large REACH – followers, email subscribers, Facebook likes, etc.  If you don’t, it’s important to do your best to connect with an influencer who does (but here’s an instance of chicken and egg, because he states to increase your chances of getting an influencer to follow you, you need to increase your followers).

• Myth: Engaging in the conversation builds reach.  He’s not saying engagement isn’t important – this builds rapport, customer loyalty, etc.  However, it doesn’t directly increase reach.   According to his data, twitter accounts with over 1 million followers were less conversational than accounts with less.  (I would question if these accounts were conversational before they got too big to respond to their followers, or even feel the need to respond).
• Valuable content!  According to his data, accounts that pushed valuable content and links had more followers than conversational accounts.
• Myth: Don’t call yourself a guru.  While it may seem pretentious, there is a correlation between accounts that make claims authoritative claims and having more followers.  He recommends to use authoritative titles like “Official”, “Expert”, “Author”, “Founder”, etc.  I have to admit, when I read a Twitter bio, I am usually duped by titles like this, only to be surprised when I found the “CEO and founder of x company” has only 10 followers.  While the pretentiousness here correlates with having more followers,  constantly emphasizing your authority in your content may result in the opposite.
• Positivity.  Positive users have more followers than those that are always negative.  People come on Social Networks to be happy.

AWARENESS

The human brain takes in so much information per second but can only process so much.   Thus, it is wired to filter what’s important to it.  That’s how a lot of advertising or ideas get ignored.  You need to have an idea or service that triggers followers to put you in the “relevant” category and avoid being filtered.

• More tweets per hour = lower CTR.  Don’t crowd yourself out.  Tweet maybe once an hour, give it time to breathe and allow people to read it.  If you tweet too much too close together, that’s one way to get ignored.
• Myth: Friday, Sat, Sunday are bad days to publish.  Since less people are publishing these days, theres less garbage to filter from.  Emails have higher CTRs on Sat and Sun.  Facebook sharing have more shares on Sat/Sun.
• Experiment. Don’t take anyone’s word for it – always experiment to see what works for you.

MOTIVATION

This is the difficult part.  While one may be interested in viewing your post, to be really contagious, your idea/post needs to be interesting enough to motivate it being shared.

• Information Voids.  Find out what people want or are looking for, and create content that answers those questions.  You can search for questions on twitter.
• New Information.  People want to share what’s interesting and new, not something that has been shared 1000 times and that everyone already knows.
• Simple language.  Write simply and plainly as not to lose readers.   Writing less and being more engaging is actually harder than writing more.
• Request explicitly to share.  Data suggests that actually asking readers to retweet, repost, or share makes your post 4 times more likely to be shared.  Sometimes, your readers may not actually think to share, and simply asking them will trigger that since they already have rapport with you.

Technorati Tags: facebook, social media, twitter

There are 5 new reports and today I’ll give you a brief overview of a few.  The first report you’ll see is the overview.  Here you can see there where 1,261 conversions and of these 405 were assisted.  Assisted means they used a combination of traffic sources.  This could mean they visited our site twice from referral.  The later reports will break this down more.

Assisted Conversions is next up.  This starts to break down those assisted conversions and shows which channels contributed and whether it was first click, last interaction, or both.  The  values in this table are derived from the values that we assigned to our goals.  This conversion value will be especially useful if you have e-commerce enabled and setup in Google Analytics.  Keep in mind that in this report you can change to look at first click vs. last interaction and these are not mutually exclusive.  A visitors path could look like Organic -> Direct – > Organic and in this case Organic would get both a first click and last interaction conversion.  An awesome new feature in this section is the ability to make your own channel groupings, which for example could be a list of branded keywords and this can all be done on the fly.

The Top Conversion Paths Reports, display the conversion paths in a very user friendly manner.  For the example below you can see that most of the users who are converting on this site, stick with the same channel.  When looking at this and other reports, it is important to not just look at the overview as we have done for these examples, but also to drilldown and look at individual goal and e-commerce conversions.

These new reports open up many new layers of analysis.  Multi-Channel Funnels complements the recent update to sessions.  We will be providing more posts, about more detailed analysis that can be done inside of each of these reports.  If you have any unique insights into how you are going to use these reports leave a comment below.

Technorati Tags: google analytics, Multi Channel Funnels

Even though I was psychologically prepared by my friend Brian Clifton to see some non-sense in the report, I have to say that I was shocked to find out that the ranking criteria was the number of hits to the site.

My first hope was that their definition of “hits” is not the one we teach in Analytics 101 and hoped that at least they actually meant “visit” instead of “hit”, but after reading the attached notes to the report I found them clearly stating that the number of hits, “does not indicate the number of times a particular page on a website has been visited, but in many instances will include multiple components (e.g. text, images, videos) each of which are counted.”!

What is wrong with “Hits”?

I still remember my first personal website back in the days where “hits” was the only metric that I could use to measure the success of my site. At that time we knew that the hits report is like a garbage bin for all file requests from the web server [html, CSS, JavaScript, images, PDFs,…], but we were still happy for the small piece of information about our sites.

It is important to know that if two sites are visited the same number of times and the same number of pages are viewed in each site and one of the sites has more images, CSS/JS calls, and file downloads, the site with more server hits will rank higher in the Department for Transport’s report!

The use of hits may have been acceptable 10-15 years ago as the industry was not equipped with the right tools nor educated enough on what to measure and analyze, but now as we have advanced in the digital analytics sphere there is no excuse to use these outdated metrics in our analysis. The hits report is so useless that in reality it does not tell you anything about your site and visitors and certainly deserves the acronym that Katie Delahaye Paine gave to “hit”: How Idiots Track Success.

The example above illustrates the uselessness of the “Hits” report. By looking only at the number of “Hits”, Site A is doing much better than Site B and that is probably due to different factors that have nothing to do with the user experience (i.e. more CSS and JS calls). Once you look at other more relevant metrics like Visits and Pageviews, you will clearly see how bad Site A is doing compared to Site B. The numbers show more visits and pageviews, more time on site per visit, less bounced visits and more importantly higher conversion.

Good news!

I am happy to see the Google Analytics site [second in the list] being visited by some government employees (Civil servants as they are called in the report), which gives me some hope that next year’s report will be based on more meaningful metrics rather than the useless number of Hits report.

Related Posts

• Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
• Asking the Next Question To Improve Online Customer Experience
• Kill Useless Web Metrics: Apply The “Three Layers Of So What” Test

Technorati Tags: hits, pageviews, time on site, web analytics, web metrics

Pros

Tabs – Facebook pages give you the ability to add and customize tabs, which are like extra pages or menu items. These tabs take basic html, so they are extremely flexible, just as almost any general page on the web. This is very useful if you want to provide information that doesn’t necessarily fit within the default Facebook functions/media. For example, you can have forms, links to your latest products/downloads, videos, banners, etc. These tabs also allow you to also create optimized landing tabs that you can design solely for conversion of a certain promotion. For example, “Click here for you’re your chance to win a free ipod!” Here’s an article on how to add custom tabs to your Facebook page.

Apps – There are some cool apps available only to Facebook pages, such as e-commerce apps that allow you to sell on Facebook, Youtube apps to display videos, “Bandpage” apps for musicians to display their music, etc. You can even hire developers to create completely custom applications for your company. Unfortunately, Facebook has closed the app directory, so you will need to search for any existing apps. One wayto find existing apps that might be great for your page is to go to pages similar to yours and see what apps they are using.

Search Engine Optimization – Facebook pages have great SEO, so even if you end up doing nothing with your page, it’s still a good idea just to have that presence. When creating a Facebook page, make sure to fill in all pertinent information – give it a good Title, About Us, basic info, local info and addresses, etc. Make everything as keyword-rich as possible because this is what will be read by Google and may index above even your website. Also, even when searching within Facebook, it’s a lot easier to find your needle in a smaller haystack of businesses than it is to find it in 750 million profiles.

Inbound Fans Only – While I list this as a con later, what you have here by default, is the members of your page are only quality leads. In outbound marketing, cold prospects may or may not be someone interested. Example, in Myspace, business pages had the luxury of sending friend requests. However, you’d find that members would just except them, either without thinking or just for the sake of increasing their friend count. This is opposed to now your members who had to consciously subscribe to you. Members like this will more likely have open ears to what you have to say.

Ads – Facebook’s ads system is such a robust system because of its precision targeting. Profiles not only filling out their interest, but choosing already existing pages allows Facebook to pool everyone together based on interest, resulting in highly targeted, quality segments. With a page, you now have access to the most targeted market there is for your business – members of your page! Who else would want to purchase your product more than those who consciously joined your page because they were interested in you?

Aside from this, you may one day need to reach another market through Facebook ads. For example, you may be a musician similar to Justin Bieber and you’d like to market your music to his millions of fans. You can now target that pool of prospects and combine it with other similar pools to create significantly large, targeted audience that is likely to be interested in your page or product.

Sponsored Story’s – Someone says something good about your page – here is the key to viral and social marketing, the power and trust of word-of-mouth. Now, having a page allows you to extend that reach further – you can pay for “sponsored stories”, similar to an ad, you can increase the reach of that word-of-mouth and give it more weight to those that may not have necessarily seen or paid attention to the glowing review.

Insight – A huge benefit for having a Facebook page is Facebook’s built in analytics system that measures engagement to your page. You’ll be able to track, for example, how many likes you get a day. What posts are the most engaging? Has your engagement dropped from last month? Did a campaign increase engagement? By how much? Facebook’s API allows access to their data and can be used for different types of analytics integration, including Google Analytics Social Engagement measurement. Though the system can be improved (there are limits on what you can segment. Also, the definition of metrics like “likes” are too ambiguous – do you mean I got 10 likes to posts today or 10 likes to my page?), this is great for a general idea of what activity is happening on your page.

Cons (Limits of Fan Pages)

Inbound Fans Only?! While this is great from a consumer’s perspective – limiting spam requests – for marketers, it’s …well … limiting. Your market has to come to you. Similar to the “Opt In” vs. “Opt Out” email subscription discussion, while “Opt In” will get you more qualified leads and less unsubscribes, it also means you have to be a lot more creative in enticing prospects to sign up. You have a similar challenge here – businesses now have to come up with engaging content and promotions to make it of value for users to “Like” their page. While this has its benefits, it doesn’t make life any easier for increasing your membership.

Wall Updates don’t reach all your fans. With Facebook’s new EdgeRank algorithm, only posts relevant to users will appear in their feed (based on how often they interact with you page, how much engagement your posts get, etc.). It becomes the chicken-and-egg – no one will see your post if it’s not attention worthy, but then how can it get attention if no one sees it?! If your page is new or took a break for a little while, and people stopped visiting, your 1000+ fans you worked so hard to acquire may not even see any of your wall updates.

“Updates” page don’t trigger a “red” notification. There is a way to send notification-type messages called “updates” via your page. However, these do not trigger an update like regular Facebook inbox messages do. The fall into an “others” bucket, and may not be read right away, or if you’re like me, I don’t even read the “others” bucket at all. While this was meant to reduce spam interaction by putting all the “business” type messages in one bucket, I would even argue that this is more detrimental to consumers. They willingly wanted to get updates from these pages, and because of this, they may miss things they were interested in.

Unable to invite members to an event. While you can create an event under your page, you are unable to send invites to members of the page (though you can send invites to friends of your profile to that event). That means it will not show up in your members’ profiles under events (unless they willingly make the effort to find your event and attend). Thus, if your guests aren’t engaged with your page, very few may notice the event.

Unable to message event guests. If you do manage to get guests to your event, if the event was created under your page, the “Message Guests” feature will not be an available function. Instead, “Update Fans of Your page” is available, which means you can send a non-notification updates about your event, but to all your page members, not event guests.

While having consistently engaging content on your page is the standard way to engage your members and will eventually increase your membership, sometimes, you need a boost! The limits on Facebook page functions sometimes hinder this. In our next post, we’ll go through some “guerilla” viral tactics that use functions (events and messaging) that are available to your profile, your friends’ profiles, and your page, to maximize notification and engagement.

Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook fan page, musicians, social marketing, social networking, viral

PRO

With the “edit” feature in Google+, it does not matter how many errors you make, because you always have the ability to go back and correct them.

CON

There exists the ability to edit/change thoughts on a conversation after comments have already been posted. This could possibly lead to misleading situations.

Take the following scenario: I start a discussion on a certain topic and after people have engaged in the conversation I change the existing subject all together and without notifying the participants.

Here is a Google+ update I posted today to my work circle:

After I got few answers to my question, I changed the question to how I like to see it

In reality this change of context does not happen in human interactions without the awareness of all participants…unless you were interviewed by an unfair news station and when later watching your interview you realize that it was butchered and only passages were aired taking everything out of context.

Request to the Google+ team:

To be fair and accurate to all participants and readers, comments should always be attached to the original topic they’ve posted under/replied to; whether they were a reply to an original post or to someone’s comment. Once a preceding piece was edited all those who commented should be notified of the change and have the ability to approve, delete or change their reply based on the alteration to the original topic.

Related Posts

• Farmers’ Market and Social Media
• Facebook Fan Page Marketing Tips
• Tracking Offline and Online Campaigns

Technorati Tags: google+, social media

The old post referenced the traditional/syncronous version of the Google Analytics tracking code. This new post features the newest release by Google, which is the asynchronous code execution.

Please note that I am not going to re-do the entire post, just the code portion.

So here is the code update:

Traditional Snippet (Synchronous):

function validate()
{
isEntered(document.getElementById('name'),'name');
isEntered(document.getElementById('email'),'email');
isEntered(document.getElementById('phone'),'phone');
isEntered(document.getElementById('company'),'company');
isEntered(document.getElementById('comments'),'comments');

frm.action='/thankyou.aspx?src=contact_us.htm';
} 

function isEntered(el, field_name)
{
     if((el.value=="") || (el.value==null))
     {
     pageTracker._trackPageview('/contact_us.htm/empty/'+field_name);
     }

     else
     {
     return false;
     }
}

Asynchronous Snippet (NEW):

function validate()
{
isEntered(document.getElementById('name'),'name');
isEntered(document.getElementById('email'),'email');
isEntered(document.getElementById('phone'),'phone');
isEntered(document.getElementById('company'),'company');
isEntered(document.getElementById('comments'),'comments');

frm.action='/thankyou.aspx?src=contact_us.htm';
} 

function isEntered(el, field_name)
{
     if((el.value=="") || (el.value==null))
     {
	 _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/contact_us.htm/empty/'+field_name]);
     }

     else
     {
     return false;
     }
}

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• Optimize Form Length with Input Analysis

Technorati Tags: form optimization, google analytics, web analytics

Please note that I am not going to re-do the entire post, just the code portion.

So here is the code update:

Traditional Snippet (Synchronous):

<script type="text/javascript">
var srcPage = getDomain (document.referrer);
var parameter = get_parameter('id');

function get_parameter(name)
{
  name = name.replace(/[\[]/,"\\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\\]");
  var regexS = "[\\?&#]"+name+"=([^&#]*)";
  var regex = new RegExp(regexS);
  var results = regex.exec(window.location.href);
    if( results == null )
      return "";
    else
      return results[1];
}

function getDomain (thestring) {
  var urlpattern = new RegExp("(http|ftp|https)://(.*?)/.*$");
  var parsedurl = thestring.match(urlpattern);
      if( parsedurl == null )
      	return "";
      else
        return parsedurl[2];
}

if (parameter == '1')
{
    window.location.hash = "utm_source="+srcPage+"&utm_medium=press_release&utm_campaign=hurricane_katrina";
}
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
pageTracker._setAllowAnchor(true);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

Asynchronous Snippet (NEW):

<script type="text/javascript">
var srcPage = getDomain (document.referrer);
var parameter = get_parameter('id');

function get_parameter(name)
{
  name = name.replace(/[\[]/,"\\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\\]");
  var regexS = "[\\?&#]"+name+"=([^&#]*)";
  var regex = new RegExp(regexS);
  var results = regex.exec(window.location.href);
    if( results == null )
      return "";
    else
      return results[1];
}

function getDomain (thestring) {
  var urlpattern = new RegExp("(http|ftp|https)://(.*?)/.*$");
  var parsedurl = thestring.match(urlpattern);
      if( parsedurl == null )
      	return "";
      else
        return parsedurl[2];
}

if (parameter == '1')
{
    window.location.hash = "utm_source="+srcPage+"&utm_medium=press_release&utm_campaign=hurricane_katrina";
}
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-X']);
  _gaq.push(['_setAllowAnchor', true]);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();

</script>

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Technorati Tags: google analytics, press releases, web analytics

Samantha Bedford of Location 3, Thomas Bosilevac of Mashable Metrics, and I will be cover the “A Few of My Favorite Tools” session on Friday October 21, 2011 from 1:10-2:00pm.

As our dear friend Jim Sterne said: “Consultants are tool agnostic” and “they certainly have their favorites and they know how to use them.”  Come join us to learn about some of the coolest analytics, integration, and visualization tools out there.

Early Bird Registration ends September 2nd, so register now and take advantage of the early bird special. Oh, and you can even save more, by using this 10% Promotional Speaker Discount code: EMOSSPEAK.

Don’t miss out!  Join us and the eMetrics folks to “celebrate 10 years of turning data into insight” If there is a specific tool you would like reviewed, please reply in the comment section below or email me directly, feras @ e-nor dot com.

Thanks
Feras

Technorati Tags: analytics consultants, analytics tools, data integration tools, emetrics new york, feras alhlou

What’s New on Facebook

• Send Button – it’s a selective Like button. It counts in the Like total on your page as well, and can be delivered as a Facebook Message or on a group wall.
• Deals is still in test mode and is only available in 5 cities. But the point is that it will get groups of friends to discover the business by sending out deals with no upfront costs.

What benefits can I get from using iFrames on my page?

iFrames are frames that allow a visual HTML Browser window to be split into segments. Ultimately by introducing iFrames into Facebook pages, companies are now able to brand their pages.

• Now you can use styles on Facebook as you use it on your website, this is great for branding your company.
• You can also track page views using Google Analytics
• Google Website Optimizer – is now available to be used on the tab pages.
• Links can open within the iFrame as if you are on your website. For example, you can have a whole cart process within an iFrame and NOT leave Facebook at ALL.
• If you want to know how to set up an iFrame on your Facebook check out Hubspot’s blog post on “How to Set up a Facebook Custom iFrame Landing Page Application.” You can also download for FREE “The Facebook Marketing Update – Spring 2011” E-Book which includes a step by step process of setting up iFrames for your custom facebook pages.

Can you use photos and videos as marketing?

• Photos and videos are much more visible on the news feed because they take up space, so this would be a smart technique to attract attention from your fans.
• Also, keep in mind that videos are much more engaging than pictures because fans will more likely click play and tune in than Like an image.
• Tip: Turn images into Call to Actions to see what kind of interaction you may receive.
• And now with Google Website Optimizer, you can test videos and photos to see what interests people more.

What to do about Negative comments?

• Don’t ignore negative comments, that will only make things worse.
• Address the comment and take it offline.
• Suggestion: Have a customer care person who is not the same person updating the facebook page to address negative feedback to try to assess and fix the issue.

When is the best time to post?

• It depends on your audience, no one set rule for everyone, it just depends on the kind of site you have. Keep in mind, if they are across the world, they won’t necessarily see the post because of the time difference. By the time people get to the post it may be buried, so if your target base is in another country across the world, make sure to post in their waking hours.
• Keep involved but don’t over do it.

Which brand is doing Facebook advertising best?

• Audi – more engaging than Justin Bieber – they have 3.5 Million fans. This is because there is a lot of interaction and discussion. By answering comments and engaging users, they have gained a heavy fan base.
• Mail Chimp also has a lot of interaction and comments. They have a human element by commenting, it’s not just a faceless brand.
• Retail sites are hard to get engagements but Sephora does it well
  • Fans talk to each other about products and advice on which product works best.

The webinar was based off of the FREE HubSpot E-book, “The Facebook Marketing Update – Spring 2011”

Follow @HubSpot‘s hashtag #FB2011 to see what others are tweeting about today’s webinar!

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• Farmers’ Market and Social Media
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Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook fan page, iFrame, social marketing, social media

While most of the products offered in the farmers’ market are available in grocery stores in a more presentable way and even at cheaper prices sometimes, people love to shop at the farmers’ market for the social aspect. My family and I love to go there to meet our community and to support our local farmers and vendors.

My kids go around and try every sample, my wife talks to different vendors about their products and recipes and I network with my friends and neighbors.

The farmers’ market provides a unique environment hardly found in grocery stores. (I’m not suggesting that either business model is more important; both serve consumers differently.)

The uniqueness of farmers’ markets in enhancing social interaction is similar to expanding social media sites, as compared to regular brand websites, in the online sphere.

Unfortunately, most businesses have not grasped the idea of social networking! Many still deal with social media as another advertisement platform rather than a unique interactive platform. Businesses/organizations treat social media pages as an extension to their main website rather a completely different platform of communication with clients.

Businesses need to know that by participating in social media that they are no longer the hosts but visitors; audiences are now leading the conversation. Businesses need to respect the evolving culture and ethics of social media and adapt to the language and habits of their audience. This shift in mindset might sound scary but I strongly encourage businesses to better engage their audience.

In the past, businesses were limited in online marketing by the number of visitors vising their sites. Today, the game has changed and the number of potential audiences can be multiplied if businesses adapt and follow the new rules of social media.

What internet users think of social media
First, we need to understand what internet users think of social media. According to a study done in 2011 by the IBM Institute for Business Value, 70 percent of consumers go to social media sites to “connect with network of friends and family” while only 23 percent noted that they go to social media sites to “interact with brands.”

What marketers should think of social media
In my humble opinion, online marketers should ask themselves: How can I make the 70% of consumers who go to social media sites to connect with their networks see the real value of my product/service and talk about it?

Achieving an effective social media presence:

Because there is no one solution, each company must apply the strategies that best optimize their business model. Here are some general best practices for how to go social and reach larger audiences:

1. Strategy

Create a concrete plan for going social. This includes:
- Defining your business and social objectives
- Defining your target audience
- Deciding on the relevant social content [not just “offers”] and needs of the community
- Defining the engagement elements
- Deciding on the committed financial and human resources

2. Selecting the right social media platform

Once you successfully outline your social strategy and the value it will add to your potential target audience, select the most appropriate social media technology to help achieve your social goals.

A big mistake many companies make in the selection process is starting their campaign via Facebook and/orTwitter. Remember, although very popular, these are not the only social platforms available on the web. Because of the huge success these two platforms for personal accounts, many businesses assume it will be just as successful for their business needs!

Let us take the “Google Analytics” as a brand example and attempt to measure how people talk about the brand in the social media. While there may be thousands of Facebook users who use Google Analytics on their personal and corporate sites, it is less likely that these users discuss web analytics when logging into Facebook pages. Instead, LinkedIn might be the more appropriate platform for Google to invest their social media efforts in for this specific product.

Here are some media platforms to consider: Blogs, Photo Sharing [Flicker, Picasa], Video Sharing [YouTube, Vimeo], Podcasts, Social Networking [Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn], Wikis.

3. Give to get

Social media is for social interaction and with that interaction, users expect to get something in return [new friends, news, knowledge, entertainment, reviews,..], just like my family and I hope to get at our local farmers’ market



Companies need to think of different ways to add value to their audience’s experience by interacting with them through social media before expecting anything in return.

4. Overcome your fears

We all have a fear of being publicly criticized especially because social media provides a platform for unhappy customers to easily express their opinion. While to some extent I share this concern, we must realize that our brand lies in the hands of consumers as social media slowly takes control over information circulation.

Businesses need to take an active role in shaping the image of their brands by carefully listening to and participating in the conversation about their brands. These conversations will help businesses improve their products and services and provide more relevant solutions to the world.

One of the best recent examples of participatory branding is by Domino’s Pizza. The company dedicated an entire campaign to address their shortcomings by seeking customers feedback.

The “Pizza Turnaround” campaign used social media, along with other means, to deliver a clear message to their customers: we’re listening to you. In response, consumers were very honest and didn’t hesitate to express their opinion about Domino’s Pizza (some blunt critiques included: “pizza crust to me is like cardboard”, “totally void of flavor” and “the sauce tastes like ketchup”)

Domino’s has since been improving their recipes. Though I have never had a slice, and thus cannot confirm or deny their claim, I am impressed by their courageous and frank approach.

5. Dedicate resources

First you need executive buy-in; successful social media marketing requires integrating social media with the culture of the organization. Without the buy-in of the leadership of the organization, it is very hard for marketers to get the human and financial resources to truly go social.

In the 2008 presidential race, we witnessed an unprecedented social media movement. Because of the clear vision and understanding of Obama and his team, the digital campaign team was empowered and well equipped to utilize social media tools and reach a large segment of society who would have been hard to reach otherwise.

The Obama administration continues to pay attention to social media by dedicating valuable resources to social campaigns. This can be seen in their consistent communication with the public through weekly addresses on YouTube, administration updates on Twitter, events photos on Flicker and supporter recruitment on Facebook. Obama even formally announced his re-election in an online video!

Ironically, while writing this post, I received a tweet reminding me about the live Facebook town hall with President Obama. (Yes, I was listening to Mr. President while writing this post





6. Fan participation

As businesses/organizations evolve their social media efforts and their social media fan base increases, businesses/organizations need to facilitate and encourage fan participation in marketing campaign creation. If fans feel they are trusted and given ownership of these social platforms, they can be very helpful in achieving the businesses’ social media goals.

In July 2010, Old Spice came up with a very creative idea to market their new brand of shower gel. They created 180 personalized videos, released them over 3 days, in which they responded directly to fan and celebrity comments.

Regardless of whether Old Spice sales increased, the “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign was the biggest social media buzz ever created for a brand. The company credits this success to audience participation and involvement. The graph below shows the rise in Google searches for “Old Spice” during and after the campaign, which confirms the success of the campaign in increasing interest around the brand.

Finally: Measure and optimize

Like any other campaign, you need to know how social media campaigns are helping in achieving your business goals. Number of fans, followers, and visitors don’t tell much, if any. You need a more robust mechanism to measure the involvement of targeted users with your brand, product or service.

Here are few Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) just to give you an idea in what to look for:

• Volume of social media mentions
• Visitor loyalty
• Sales/conversion by social campaign
• Improved search engine ranking
• Number of advocates
• Number of customer service issues solved by social interactions
• Number of reviews and feedback

Go social!

Share with us your own best practices and thoughts by dropping a comment below or connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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• Tracking Offline and Online Campaigns
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Technorati Tags: facebook, linkedin, social marketing, social media, social media strategy, twitter

Go ahead and ridicule me   I know my little twist on that infamous song sucks, but I mean well so I’m willing to swallow my pride for Planet Earth’s sake.  I had asked a more musically inclined colleague of mine to come up with an Earth Day tune, but he chose to defer to his SLA defined response times, and I wasn’t able to produce something cooler for you. 

Happy Earth Day everyone!  Planet Earth, stand up and take a bow.  You’ve earned it!   You’ve endured years and years of man’s heedlessness and exploitations.   Gandhi once said “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” 

To be honest, I’m not really a big fan of "special days" – The values being promoted on Earth Day are priorities we should have in mind in our day to day lives, not just one day out of the year.  Every day should be Earth Day!  That being said I certainly understand and appreciate the need for awareness and encouraging involvement for the cause.

I started thinking about what I could do as an individual and what E-Nor could do as a company to "do our share." I googled and googled, but all I found were these boring and mundane  tips and suggestions.  What to do?  That’s when it dawned on me… There’s something to be said for simplicity isn’t there?  We’re so caught up in a world full of 3D ultra thin uber-gadgets that we often have a tendency to over-think things.  Our contribution doesn’t have to be complicated – the simple things sometimes make the biggest difference.  If all of us did a few simple things, we would undoubtedly initiate and affect positive change. 

All of us care very deeply about this cause, so here’s a list of some things that E-Nor and our staff will be doing.  Some of these are Earth day activities, but we will make a sincere effort to make them ongoing.  I’ll report back next Earth day and let you know how we did. 

Here’s our list:

• E-Nor will be matching (dollar for dollar) any donations made by our employees to their favorite "green causes"
• Stop and smell the roses – try not to get stung by a bee
• Grow vegetables & share the prolific fruit from the beautiful orchard remnants in the backyard
• Carpool/bike/walk instead of driving
• Recycle our electronics at recycling centers
• Start using environmentally friendly cups/plates/utensils at the office
• Read a book about living green
• Eat fruits and vegetables for snacks
• Wear a green shirt on Earth Day
• Use the A/C less in the car (anyone who knows me knows this is a huge struggle for me!)
• Use a clothesline to dry laundry instead of the dryer
• Attempt to build/setup a composting process at home
• Dim lights in the office and open window shades

As you can see, all the above are small contributions, but every little bit helps.  That’s our small contribution to Planet Earth.  What’s yours?  Share your tips in the commments.  Nothing like a little healthy competition

Technorati Tags: Earth Day

Marketing on Facebook – Effectively Building and Using your Facebook Page

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that Facebook is the number one social network out to date.   1 in every 13 people on this earth has a Facebook profile.   Many credit its innovative ways of communication as an instrumental tool in galvanizing the recent international revolutions.   Of course, like anything else gaining extreme popularity, it has attracted the attention of businesses looking to use it as a marketing tool.

It is now as common (and as necessary) for businesses to have a Facebook page as it is to have a website.  In fact, it has the potential to become more common:

• It’s free
• It requires no web development knowledge
• Similar to an email list, it keeps a steady connection between businesses and their “fans”
• The beauty of social network is “in-bound marketing” – meaning your market comes to you.   This rapport is less invasive than traditional outbound marketing – for example, hoping your market will catch an ad or flyer you put out.

So to the nitty gritty! How can you use Facebook page to effectively help your marketing?

Victoria Ransom had some great tips:

Her philosophy is built on 3 pillars…

• Grow
• Enagage
• Monetize

GROW

Facebook Ads

• Spend Ad Money. At the end of the day, a significant portion of fans come through Facebook ads.  Facebook ads are very targeted based on users’ interests (their ad system is growing and is slowly but surely gaining ground from Google Adwords).  Do set aside a portion of your budget for this – the fans you gain can potentially yield an easy return.
• Give your prospect a reason to click your ad. Rather than simply putting information about your business – promotions, incentives, and contests will give you a better click through rate.
• Don’t drive people out of Facebook (to an external site). You’ll increase your bounce rate.  They came to Facebook to be on Facebook.  Lead them to a customized landing tab on your Facebook page.  Get them to “like” – establish that connection so you can market to them later.
• Advertise to friends of Fans. Facebook allows you to do this, and it builds credibility if their friends like your page.
• A/B test your ads. It’s important to test ads and keep them fresh.  If users see the same ad consistently, they are more likely to ignore it.

Promotions/Contests/Giveaways

• Pages that employ incentives have twice as many fans as pages that don’t.
• Keep contests simple.  If fans have to join a thousand things, click here, go there, etc, the amount of energy it’s forcing them to spend will make them quit!
• Make it social by offering a prize for referrals – have fans bring fans!
• Keep your audience relevant by offering prizes related to your industry.  For example, offering an iPad will definitely get all types of participants, but may not be fans that are interested in your clothing store, for example.

ENGAGE

• Engagement begets more engagement. Just because you post something to your wall doesn’t mean your 1000 fans will see it.  Facebook has an algorithm that decides if your post will be “fed”.  A big factor is engagement with that post, so it’s important your posts get interaction.
• Actually explicitly ask fans/friends to engage – Post “Like this!!!” or “Share This!”
• Pose open-ended questions to get fans to answer. “What are you going to do for Earth Day?”
• The quality of your post is more important than quantity of posts.  Posting 100 times a day could saturate your wall.  Choose quality posts over quantity.
• Build a calendar of posts around events.  For example – post Christmas related questions and promotions around Christmas.

MONETIZE

• Make your buying process social.  Not only include a cart in your store, but offer coupons/prizes to facebook fans.
  

Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook fan page, social marketing, social networking

• Better understand your customers
• Improve your site performance
• Squeeze every bit of ROI from your marketing initiatives, and
• Provide valuable insight/recommendations to the business

Lofty goals and they should be. But are they achievable? Yes! Supercharge your marketing by implementing the 6-step Analytics Framework outlined in this post (although, for those of us addicted to data, it seems as though we might benefit more from a 12-step program ).

Before I dive into the framework, and for the (hopefully small) minority that is still getting familiar with analytics, it’s time to get serious about measurement or risk falling behind. Here’s why everyone should jump on the analytics bandwagon:

• Millions of sites, from start-ups to Fortune 25, use enterprise-class analytics solutions such as Google Analytics to improve their site performance.
• Today, analytics literature is abundant. Do a quick search for “web analytics” on Amazon and you’ll get over 200 results.
• Even in this day and age, it seems that only a few companies are serious about measurement and analysis. It’s time to move beyond the basics and treat data as a strategic asset. So if you’re looking for gold, it’s clear where you have to dig. Big companies like IBM can’t acquire analytics companies fast enough!

So we have established that there is more interest in data and more access to enterprise level analytics – but what is missing? We need smart people and commitment to a process. And as importantly, we need practical tips to guide us through the web of analytics. Assuming you have (or can get) smart people who care about the business and ask the right questions, here is a tried and tested framework guaranteed to take your marketing optimization to the next level.

The 6-step Analytics Framework

1. Know Thy Channels
2. Metrics: Less is More
3. Segmentation: Give Me Context
4. Intelligence at Your Service
5. Reporting
6. Automation

Let’s get started!!

1 – Know Thy Channels

Your traffic is skyrocketing and you don’t know why. Not a good thing. You deserve more visibility. And since you’re smart and up-to-date, you know you can’t measure every channel using old metrics and by using just one tool. Hello Multiplicity! The good old pageviews won’t cut it anymore. Because channels are constantly evolving (did you know of anyone measuring “tweets” three years ago? ), it’s crucial to understand the characteristics of each channel and identify meaningful metrics specific to that channel.

For example:

• If you are a content site, and you are busy producing videos, you want to measure the success of this digital content. Look at user behavior and events (play, pause, forward etc) and understand where and when your audience is most engaged with your content.
• If blogging is your forte, measure number of comments, average words per post and average words per comment. Successful blogging is comprised of an engaged audience. We use WordPress’ Blog Metrics.
• If you’re one of the millions on FaceBook, listen to the conversation through comments, ‘likes’, shares, etc. Today, conversations happen outside of your own site.

Power tip: Identify all your channels and document what engagement and outcomes you expect and want to measure.

2 – Metrics: Less is More!

Are you drowning in rivers of data? To prevent sinking, critically examine your load. Just because you have access to large amounts of data and reports in Google Analytics (and the four other tools you have on your site), you don’t need it all. When sorting through data, remember: less is more. Just focus on what keeps your CEO awake at night (or jumping for joy ). Focus on key results, here are recommendations:

• eCommerce: report on revenue, ROAS and compare to expected outcomes
• B2B businesses: report on qualified leads and cost/lead
• Report on conversion rates and what channels are best/worst performers
• If you are just starting your analytics journey and you don’t have your analytics solution fully implemented, reporting on a “basic” yet powerful metric such as bounce rate will help you identify your worst offenders (campaigns and pages) and that’s something you can improve fairly quickly
• If you’re really advanced, develop your own custom KPIs. For example, check out how philly.com has done it. This newspaper website is measuring engagement on a new (and slightly complex) level. They are asking very thoughtful questions to help them understand their user behavior.

Power tip: Identify and trend 2-3 metrics for each of your stakeholders (business, marketing, IT, product, support)

3 – Segmentation: Give Me Context

Last month, you had one million visitors to your site. Sounds good, but is it? Not if you had three million visits two months ago. So always give your data context, segmentation is key. With Google Analytics, you can apply advanced segmentation capabilities to slice and dice your data in almost every other way you need (e.g. paid vs. non paid searches, engaged vs. non-engaged, geography, visitor type, browser, time comparison, etc. you name it). If you are the deep-dive type, you should then zoom in on your segments for more meaningful data and whatever makes sense for your business.

• If you have an eCommerce site, report on sales this month, planned sales, sales last month and sales during the same month last year

Power tip: Review your current dashboard and assess where to add an additional dimension to each report

4 – Intelligence at Your Service
Let computers do all the number crunching. Make faster, smarter decisions with reports that automatically detect and surface significant changes in your key performance indicators. It’s your site and you’re responsible for it. So log into Google Analytics, set your preferences, and let intelligence do the work. As a result, you’ll have more time to analyze and properly present your data.

Power tip: Set Google Analytics custom alerts for each of the KPIs on your dashboard

5 – Reporting
It’s the end of the month again and reports are due and you know that your site is no longer the center of the universe. You have offline data sources, campaign cost data, mobile applications, surveys etc.) So you want to blend the data for a meaningful presentation, insight and actionability. For your Analytics dashboards, bring in data from different sources and organize it under one framework.

Power tip: Trend and report on those 2-3 KPIs you identified earlier

6 – Automation

Better manage your time by automating your reports. Manual reporting can take so long that we eventually neglect properly analyzing the information. Many tools are available to send data to your inbox (or dashboard). So once you have selected your key performance indicators, and to the extent possible, automate report generation. Why you might ask? Trust me, you’ll have much more time to act on the data. But, wait, there’s more!

For example:

• Say you run an eCommerce site and you are using Google Analytics, find your favorite tool in the Google Analytics Application Gallery and get that data out of GA and in to your favorite application. Check out the application from our good friends at ShufflePoint who leverage the Google Analytics API to export data into Excel and Powerpoint (we simply are very impressed by what they have done and do recommend their solution to our clients). Done are the copy and paste days. Voila! One click and your data is in Excel! You can then use simple trending/charting options, advanced pivots or more elaborate dashboards as you see in these snapshots. Analyzing the data requires smart people, but getting reports should be a piece of cake. Now, spend your time wisely on important things (like reading E-Nor blog posts ).

Concluding Notes

To summarize, marketing optimization is not a one time thing, or something that we “set and forget”. You want to “measure.. analyze… optimize” and start again. I encourage you to establish a weekly, monthly and quarterly set of activities to improve your measurement framework. The details will depend on your business and marketing activities but you definitely want to audit what you do to ensure you:

• Stay updated on new marketing channels
• Measure only what matters
• Run reports efficiently
• Dedicate time to analysis
• Upgrade your team’s Excel/reporting/analysis/presentation skill-sets
• Act on findings to positively impact the business and make sure the organization is aware of the impact!

So here it is. The 6-step framework to supercharge your marketing optimization effort! I hope you put it to use and I welcome your input, comments and feedback.

Related Posts

• Tracking Offline and Online Campaigns
• Advanced Segmentation Options in Google Analytics

Technorati Tags: analytics process, automation, channel segmentation, google analytics, intelligence, report automation, reporting, Segmentation, web analytics framework

In the last two weeks, we had back-to-back conferences and it was great to meet friends and learn and share experiences with the brightest minds in the industry. We participated in SMX West and had a one-day Google Analytics workshop in San Jose. We then participated in eMetrics (and the Web Analytics Association Gala dinner) and co-sponsored and spoke at the first Google Analytics User Conference GAUGE 2011 in San Francisco, (and somehow still managed to get client work done!).

I wan to specially thank the workshop attendees at both SMX West and GAUGE for their commitment and investment in learning Google Analytics and the great questions and discussions we had. I promised to provide a list with a number of useful posts and help topics, so here it is. Enjoy!

• New Google Analytics Version Announcement (and beta sign-up form)
• Campaign Tracking & Google Analytics Tagging Kit
• Using GA to track and optimize Mobile traffic
• How to set up Goals in Google Analytics
• How to Customize Google Analytics to enable Page/Section Content Grouping
• ShufflePoint – For Google Analytics Report Automation into Excel and PowerPoint
• Internal Campaign Tracking using the GA Site Search

Thank you again for participation and attending the training sessions and I hope to see you soon!

Feras

Technorati Tags: Advanced Analysis, emetrics, feras alhlou, GAUGE, Google Analytics User Conference, google analytics workshop, SMX west

Per Google, the goal of the new version is to enhance the underlying platform for major new functionality in the future, as well as design enhancements to make it easier and faster to work with data.  We’ll have more specifics and a detailed walkthrough soon, but here’s a quick highlight of what was released in the new version.

• Major upgrade to underlying platform
• Design revamp
• Ability to view multiple Advanced Segments, without having to include “All Visits”
• Multiple dashboards including a revamped dashboard interface!!  (finally!!!) 

That’s just a quick list.  We’ll post more details soon.  To expedite getting access to the new version, pay a visit to the beta sign up page.  You can use both versions concurrently and that should help with the learning curve

Also, here’s a sneak peak at the new UI:

Enjoy

Imagine you’ve spent thousands of dollars creating a website that you’re expecting to return  millions!  You’re ready to launch!  But the inevitable question is “how the heck do I do that???!!!!”  As far as you’re concerned, the Internet is this weird space dimension where all these websites are floating around.  You usually just type an address that ends in a “.com” and the website you need magically appears on the screen.  “How do I get MY SITE to do THAT?!”

Hopefully this post will explain as simply as possible how to get your website “live” so you can start getting that cash!

Let’s start with some basic definitions and concepts.

• Your Website – your website is actually just a bunch of files, images, flash files, php files, html files, and more, sitting on a computer somewhere.   These computers are called “Servers”.   It basically displays information based on html code or instructions (hypertext markup language – a language that tells browsers how to display data). Each server has an “ip address”, which is simply a bunch of numbers assigned to a server (like 69.199.xxx.xxxx).  When your server/website is set up and you type its ip address in your browser, your site will pop up just as if you entered your web address.  Trick now is to get your website address to do that!
• Hosted Servers – If you don’t know what type of server to buy, how to set it up, or you simply don’t have the capital to purchase a server – join the club.  Don’t worry – most people simply rent server space for a low monthly fee from third party hosting companies. An example of a hosting company is Crystaltech.
• Domain – Your domain is the text-based address that you would like to point to your site.  For example, “www.yourdomain.com”.  You can “register” (which basically means you’re renting it) a domain from a selection of many domain registrars.  An example of a domain registrar is GoDaddy or Network Solutions.  If your domain hasn’t already been registered by someone else, pay the low yearly fee and the website address is yours for as long as you want it.
• Domain Name Servers (DNS) – These are special servers and pretty much all they do is hold a bunch of records associated with domains (called DNS Zone Records).  These records map the domains to their corresponding ip addresses.   When you enter a domain in a browser, you’re essentially forwarded to these nameservers, and like a rolodex, it finds the domain’s record and then forwards you to the right places (the right server or ip address).  Multiple places, like your domain registrar and most likely your website’s hosting company, have nameservers that contain these records.   An example of what a name server might look like ns1.domainregistrar.com.

Let’s tie all these together in the following diagram:

• (Item 1) Someone types your domain (www.yourdomain.com) into a web browser.
• They are forwarded to the appropriate nameserver (log into your  domain registrar control panel to see what is assigned to it or change it).  The nameserver can either be the default one provided by your domain registrar (Item 2a) or another one you specify.  Once it reaches the nameserver, it will find your record.  If set up correctly, the “A” Record is the record that contains the ip address of your site, telling it where to forward.
• www.yourdomain.com will be forwarded to the ip address in the “A” record (Item 3).

• Other important records include your “mail” and “mx” records.   If a surfer types in “mail.yourdomain.com”, it will look for the “mail” record and be forwarded to the ip address of the login interface for your mail server (which may be located at your hosting company or somewhere else you decide that may have more mail space).   The MX Record tells your server where to send emails that have an address like address@yourdomain.com.  Thus, these need to be configured correctly.

• Finally, you can also create what are called CNAMES.  For example, if you want “blog.yourdomain.com” to a different site or a special blog you have somewhere else, create a CNAME “blog” and forward it to the appropriate site, perhaps a wordpress or tumblr blog.  Maybe you want “store.yourdomain.com” to go to your store – then you’ll set up “store” to forward wherever.  Etc.

—

Bottom line: “what do I have to do to make my site live????”  Now that we know how the process works, you hopefully can see there are 2 options:

Option 1) Access the DNS Zone Record on the nameserver that your domain is currently pointing to (usually the default nameserver is provided by the domain registrar) and change each record manually to forward to the correct servers and ip addresses (usually, the most important records are the “A” record to forward to your ip address to get the site live and your mail/mx records) (Item 2a).

Option 2) Log into your DNS and change the nameserver to one that already has all the correct addresses filled in its DNS Zone records.  As mentioned, usually, your hosting company will have such a nameserver (Item 2b).

—

Your site is now live!  Now all you need is to figure out what to do with all the ROI you’re gonna get!!!

Farid

Technorati Tags: site logistics

Take a look at the workshop agenda and drop me a comment or an email if you have any other questions.

The morning session is marketing/business focused and the afternoon is more tailored to webmasters and techies. Analytics sits in between IT and Marketing, and to do it right, you really need to be aware of what’s involved in both aspects.

And rest assured that your questions will be answered. Even if we didn’t have time to cover a specific topic in-depth during the day, myself and one of our senior analysts will be available during the breaks and after the seminar for Q&A and hands-on review of your GA account and any data/analysis questions that you might have.

Register today and save $100 with this promo code (smx100feras).

I look forward to seeing you at the seminar!

Thanks,
Feras

Technorati Tags: analytics training, google analytics seminar smx west, google analytics workshop, SMX west

“Reflections” are a cool, popular Web 2.0 trick that really makes your site look polished – literally. If you’re looking to have an online marketing presence, it’s important that your site looks as contemporary and as professional as possible – and subtle effects like this is what will achieve that image.

Last time you visited a car showroom, I’m sure you realized the floor buffed to a shine – to the point where you could see the cars’ reflections on the showroom floor. In fact, the cars probably were so clean, you could see yourself in them. “Reflections” indicate cleanliness, newness, professionalism and quality. Images, icons, and text on your favorite site designs (and even print/video designs) use this effect to have their brand give this feeling to their audience.

If you’re just beginning Photoshop, creating this effect is really simple:

1. Isolate the image you want to reflect in its own layer. In the example below, I have the “e-nor” logo image in its own layer.
   
2. Duplicate the layer by right-clicking on it and choosing that option. Rename the new layer to a meaningful name, such as “image reflection”.
   
3. Select the layer by choosing the “selection tool” and right-click on the image. Choose “Free Transform”.
   
4. Right-click again and choose “Flip vertical”.
   
5. Move the reflection just below the original image.
   
6. Add a layer mask to the reflection layer. Use the “gradient tool” to create a gradual fading mask. For the first gradient, reduce the opacity of the gradient tool to something in the middle, like 50%-75% so you get a light fade. Do that as many times till you get the right transparency.
   
7. To create a more realistic effect, increase the opacity of the gradient tool back to 100%, then create a layer mask gradient from the bottom of the image till about the middle of the image to fade out the bottom of the reflection.
   

Note: you want to make sure the reflection very subtle and really transparent. An opaque reflection usually looks like a cut, unfinished image and comes out to be gaudy more than anything else.

Technorati Tags: web design

When the analysts clicked on the segments’ URLs, they imported the report structure exactly as it was configured under my login. But when they saved the segments under their login, the segments were saved under wrong profiles!

Why to share segments?
First of all we need to know that Advanced Segments and custom reports in Google Analytics are tied to the user login and not to the account/profile under which these segments are created in. So if two users have access to the same profile but they are using different login to access the GA account, the segments created by user A are not accessible to user B unless they are manually shared by user A. So, all the amazing segments and custom reports that E-Nor creates under their Google Analytics login will not be visible to their clients who are using a different login credential, even though both E-Nor and their clients are logged into the same GA account.

What went wrong with the segments I shared with our client?
When our client’s analysts clicked on the shared segment’s URL, the segment showed up by default under the first profile of the first account that the login of each user has access to. Because the relevant profile applicable to the segment was not the first profile in their accounts list, they failed to add the segment to the right profile and when they later logged in they were unable to allocate the segment under the given profile.

Disclaimer

The “share” functionality in the Advance Segment and Custom Report is good as long as the recipient of the shared segment applies the segment to the right profile using the “Visible in” menu (See point# 6 of this post). But if you want to make the life of the recipient much easier then follow the simple solution provided below.

Solution:

After looking at the Segment link and other GA reports links, I noticed that if we add the Profile ID to the link URL as parameter, then the segment will be populated under the right account and the right profile. So the solution is simply to attach the profile ID with the segment link

How:

Let me translate the above solution to 5 simple steps to follow:

1. How can I get the profile id?

Google Analytics assign a unique ID for each profile. This profile ID is different than the account ID [UA-123456-1], which we add to the website pages along with the JavaScript pixel. In order to find the Profile ID, just log in to Google Analytics and locate the account and the profile under which you created the “Advanced Segment”. Click on Analytics Settings > Edit, and the Profile ID will be in the upper left corner of the profile settings page.

2. How to create advanced segments and custom reports?
This is not the focus of this blog post, nevertheless, to learn how to create your own advanced segment read the following help topics:

• How do I create and use advanced segments?
• Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting

3. How to get the custom segment Link?

Click Share for the relevant segment or report. [Go to Advanced Segments > Manage your advanced segments > Share > Copy the URL]

4. How to add the profile ID that I got from step# 1 to the segment Link URL that I got from step# 2?
Very simple! Just append the Profile ID [ex. id=18900120] to the end of the segment link URL

• Original Segment URL:
  http://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/add_segment?share=8VkOriwBAAA.RD_MY1rbVaEf7ayaUJLvVB_VBXDuTSw4FuVR3CYvPg_WSW-vkcaxJt62unrUjoT_byTGuV-Esw8bgJ8bhvuYDA.HHCYnjuOnWMaNIngCF4wVw

• Enhanced Segment URL:
  http://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/add_segment?share=8VkOriwBAAA.RD_MY1rbVaEf7ayaUJLvVB_VBXDuTSw4FuVR3CYvPg_WSW-vkcaxJt62unrUjoT_byTGuV-Esw8bgJ8bhvuYDA.HHCYnjuOnWMaNIngCF4wVw&id=18900120

5. What is next?

Send the enhanced segment link to anyone who has access to the Google Analytics account. When the recipient clicks the link, a template of your advanced segment or custom report loads under the correct account and correct profile.

6. What if I receive a segment link that doesn’t contain the profile ID?

Happy Analysis

Technorati Tags: advanced segment, Custom Reports, google analytics, Segmentation, web analytics

For those of you on the go, here’s a quick glance at the material I covered.  Try to make time to read each post in-depth, even if you have to read it on your smart phone!

1 – Look for Mobile Trends

In the first post, I detail how to monitor and analyze mobile traffic using key performance indicators. This is best done by customizing your GA settings to receive mobile traffic reports, custom alerts, and for the enthusiast, using the Google Analytics data export API.

2 – Give Your Reports More Dollar Power

So you’re mobile trends are positive, do you just throw the data to your boss? No. You always want to give your reports more dollar power. The second post centers on the power of presentation. If you’re CEO can easily connect the dots, two bottoms will be covered — your company’s and yours!

3 – Act on Your ROI

The average analytics guy will stop at step 2, but the third post encourages you to do more. Additional segmentation and leveraging  AdWords’ reports will allow you the much needed visibility into campaign performance to maximize your results.

And There’s More!

For tor the technically inclined, and to get a more comprehensive perspective on your mobile presence, there is more you can do. Check out the code site page on mobile to:

• Track native iPhone or Android applications
• Track activities on websites from low-end mobile devices

And be on the lookout for  niche analytics solutions specifically built for mobile.

Remember, it’s never too late to start maximizing your company’s mobile investment and implementation. Be sure to check out each post for more details and practical tips.

For more analytics tips and insights, follow @ferasa on twitter.  Happy analyzing!

Technorati Tags: google adwords, google analytics, mobile analytics, mobile traffic, pay per click, search engine marketing, Segmentation, web analytics

That post was geared towards those who already had a good understanding of URL tagging. How about the beginners? In this post, we will try to address both beginners and advanced users. Does either of the bullets describe you?

• You are familiar with URL tagging, but need to find a way to automate the process using an elaborate tool
• You are looking for a brief how-to guide on URL tagging.

If the answer is yes, keep reading. Actually, keep reading either way – this was just a poorly crafted attempt at being dramatic.
Although url tagging isn’t a hot new topic, proper planning and tagging is fundamental to improving visibility into campaign performance, overall accuracy and proper attribution of campaign conversion data. Some of the most common questions we get asked are related to URL tagging, so we figured it was time to share some of the tools we use internally to help make the URL tagging process less mundane and more bulletproof.

Why should I continue reading? Here’s what you’ll get…

1. Online URL Tagging builder
2. An Advanced URL Tagging Kit (Excel based), and yes, it’s free!
3. A video guide & practical tips

Ok fine….How do I get started?

Start with the end result of tagging – a pivot report with Channel Segmentation.
Impress your boss and brag about your marketing channel and campaign segmentation skills, show them a sample report like this one (and get additional help/resources for your analytics team!) and then proactively follow the steps and tools in this post.

Let me explain why the above report is so powerful:

• All your campaigns – online and offline are segmented and properly tracked
• The pivot data is in an analysis friendly format
• The raw data is available and easily exported from GA (extracted into Excel via the API)

The three tools listed below will help you set up proper campaign tracking.

1- Online URL Builder

If you’re trying to learn how to build properly tagged URL’s or just need a tool to facilitate building a quick link or two, this tool will serve your needs very well. It’s quick, easy and available online here:

http://www.e-nor.com/url-builder.aspx

Simply enter the appropriate values, and then press the Generate URL button, and you’re done.

2- The Google Analytics Campaign Segmentation | URL Tagging Kit (beta)

The URL builder above is great for onesey twosey links, but woefully inadequate if you have more than a few links to tag (who doesn’t?) For a more robust method, check out E-Nor’s URL Tagging Kit. This Kit provides an automated method to tag many urls at the same time for multiple campaign variables. Using the URL Tagging Kit offers the ability to tag in bulk, updates formulas, error checks and prepares final tagged URLs for distribution to the campaign manager and then off to Quality Assurance.

Input Parameters:

Output Tagged URLS!!!

For beginners, just use the default settings and tag away!

For advanced users, here is what you get with this beta version:

• Auto concatenation of tag fields
• Error checking
  • Space character is handled gracefully
  • Character case is auto-fixed based on selection
  • Leading/trailing spaces are trimmed
• Your choice of querystring parameter character (? Or #)
• Auto-creation of final static version of the tagged URL

Download the URL Tagging Kit here

3- Online Video Tutorial

Don’t have time to read? Just watch the short tutorial below

(for whatever reason, I can’t seem to get full screen mode enabled on this video. Click here to watch the video on Youtube with full screen enabled.)

Practical Tips

• Google AdWords offers an “auto tagging” feature, if you turn it on and you connect your AdWords account with your Google Analytics account, you are all set. No manual URL tagging are required.
• Use URL Tagging for campaign types, such as:
  • Newsletters
  • Email
  • Banners
  • Affiliate
  • Shopping Comparison Sites
  • Non-Google CPC, CPA or CPM based advertisements
  • Press Releases
  • TV
  • Radio
• Basic UTM tagging only applies to your domain(s) and does not apply to external domains.
• Check which querystring parameter your site supports: ? or # (if you are using # as your querystring parameter, make sure you read the reference from Google Code on the _setAllowAnchor command)
• Establish an insightful naming convention for your team & stick to it!
• Ensure a QA process is in place:
  • QA naming convention (including upper and lower case) and if you use holiday_2011, don’t use FALL-2011 for the same campaign.
  • Check links to verify landing pages render properly.
  • Verify final tagged urls in all final content.
  • Verify information is passed to Google Analytics as planned.

So there you have it. Tag, Track, Segment, Analyze and Optimize!

Advanced User Notes:

• For advanced users and those interested in multi-channel attribution, you can make use of the Multiple Custom Variables (MCV) feature in Google Analytics to measure first, last (and in between) campaign attribution
• If you are running social media and online viral marketing activities and you are active in blogging, on Twitter and Facebook, you should include “off-site” measurements in your overall campaign analysis.
• Here’s a nice post on the GA blog detailing a solution that requires no tagging.

Related Posts

• Tracking Online and Offline Marketing Campaigns with Google Analytics
• URL Tagging help topic

Technorati Tags: api, google analytics, pivoting, Segmentation, url builder, url tagging, web analytics

Use this promo code smx100feras and save $100!

Who Should Attend?

• Marketing Managers
• Business owners
• CMOs
• Webmasters
• Agency staff

Why?

If you are struggling to go beyond basic web metrics of visitors and pageviews and want to move into actionable insights, this seminar will put you on the right track. You will learn how to improve your return on investment (ROI) on marketing campaigns and utilize analytics insights to optimize performance.

What will you learn about Google Analytics?

The two-part seminar will focus on:

Marketer/Business Focus – Strategy & Planning

• Web Analytics Strategy
• How It Works
• Master the User Interface
• Advanced Features Overview

Webmaster/Technical Focus – Implementation

• Accounts & Profiles, Filters & Goals
• External Campaign Tracking
• Reporting
• Advanced Segmentation & Custom Reports

We will have ample time for Q&A and I’ll be hanging around for additional hands-on analytics review and advanced analytics questions.

Again, the seminar is in San Jose, CA on Friday March 11^th, 2011. Register today and invest in learning!

I look forward to seeing you at SMX West San Jose and don’t forget to use this promo code smx100feras and save $100!

If you are still not convinced, maybe the following testimonials will persuade you

“E-Nor’s Google Analytics seminar provided me with the insight I need to provide our clients with actionable metrics” R.B., Managing Director

“I think you did a really good job presenting to an audience that had a wide range of Google Analytics experience. Glad I stayed the extra day to attend” C.S., Marketing Manager

“Feras clearly knows the intricacies of Google Analytics thoroughly. If our clients need advanced Google Analytics help, we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Feras and the group at E-Nor.” R.L. Principal Consultant

“Very pleased with the Google Analytics workshop at SMX East in NYC. Feras was extremely helpful and knowledgeable in all aspects of GA. Highly recommend this course to all Google Analytics users”, M.W., Marketing Manager

Feel free to leave a comment or email me if you have any questions or comments.

Technorati Tags: feras alhlou, ga training, Google Analytics Seminar, google analytics workshop, smx west 2011

What is considered “direct traffic” in Google Analytics?

Direct Traffic represents visitors who typed the URL directly into the web browser, clicked on a bookmark to arrive at your site, or clicked on an untagged URL in a desktop based application that link to your site.

What is the issue:

By default, Google Analytics attributes a visit and its conversions and sales to the last traffic source; that is what we call Last Click Attribution model. An exception to this rule is a “direct” visit. If a visitor returns to a site directly, the last traffic source before the direct visit will still get credit for that visit’s activities. This behavior is disliked by (few) analysts who prefer to look at the “direct” traffic like any other traffic sources.

Here is a simple example to illustrate the issue:

You are a web analyst at forever21… you ran a huge online campaign for the back to school sale (banner, email, social media, affiliate,..) now you want to measure your brand awareness in the market. You want to see how many people because of your branding efforts visit your website directly by typing your URL?

A few months after the end of the campaign you still see visits are tracked as “paid search”, “email” and “banner”. You see a very small number of “direct” visits. In the budgeting meeting you shared the numbers with the board and you decided to spend more $$$ on marketing because you haven’t reached your brand awareness goals yet.

Hold on! Do you know that most of these “paid search”, “email” and “banner” visits that you see today in your report are “direct” visits?These campaigns did their job months ago and now the whole universe knows about your brand and comes to your site directly.  Unfortunately, you have no insight about these “direct” visits because of the rule that “direct” visits do not override previous traffic sources for 6 months!

Can we change this rule? If this will answer your business needs and save you money, of course we can

Solution:

Simple! Just credit visits to the last campaign/traffic source regardless of whether the visit was a direct or non-direct visit. See the table below for a comparison between the default GA reporting settings and the “True Direct” solution settings:

How:

We will need to run some JavaScript code before firing the Google Analytics tracking code. This JavaScript code will check:

• the value of the URL of the page that loaded the current page (Output: URL or Null)
• the current page’s URL (Tagged with Google Analytics campaign UTMs or not tagged)
• if the value of the referring page is NULL and the current URL doesn’t contain any UTMs, then update the URL with the following utm parameters utm_source=(direct)&utm_medium=(none)&utm_campaign=(not set)

Why do we check whether the current page is tagged or not?

Sometimes pages are loaded without referring information, yet they might have been manually tagged with campaign parameters to force GA to credit the visit to a certain channel. We do not want these pages to be overridden by our “direct” parameters.

Example: http://www.mysite.com/myfile.html#utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=thanksgiving

The traffic source for this visit will be:

• Source = cnn.com
• Medium = banner
• Campaign = thanksgiving

Click here to view the entire code segment

Let us explore the code, section by section:

function get_referrer() {
var source = document.referrer;
if (source == null || source == “”)
return “direct”;
}

This portion of the code will determine the URL value of the page that loaded the current page (referring page). If the value is NULL, the function will return “direct” indicating that the current page was not referred by another site.

function get_parameter() {
var urlstr = window.location.href;
var results = urlstr.match(/[\\?&#]utm_source=([^&#]*)/);
if (results != null)
return “tagged”;
}

This portion of the code will determine if the current page is manually tagged with Google Analytics campaign parameters.

if (srcPage == “direct” && parameter != “tagged”) {
window.location.hash = “utm_source=(direct)&utm_medium=(none)&utm_campaign=(not set)”;
}

This portion of the code will check the values returned by the two functions above. If the visit has no referring information (direct) and the URL is not tagged with any Google Analytics campaign UTMs, then the page URL will be updated with Google Analytics UTM parameters setting the source and medium for the visit to “direct”

Page URL
http://www.mysite.com/myfile.html
New URL
http://www.mysite.com/myfile.html#utm_source=(direct)&utm_medium=(none)&utm_campaign=(not set)

* Notice that we did not use window.location.href function because this function will reload the page with the new URL, which is not what we want to happen. We just want to update the URL, without affecting the visitor experience, in order for the Google Analytics tracking code to attribute the visit in a certain way.

Bonus: Defining a Search Term as Direct Traffic

Sometimes out of convenience or laziness visitors reach your website by entering your domain name or business name as a search term in a web search engine (ex. google, yahoo, bing). Those visits will be attributed in GA as organic search visits, even though, the only difference between the two visits is that in one visit the URL was typed into the web browser’s address bar and the other was typed into the browser’s search box.

In my opinion, these branded searches should be dealt with as direct visits. In GA we have the option to do that so if you are convinced, then let’s configure Google Analytics to treat certain search terms (our brand) as direct traffic.

The configuration has to take place at the code level. It will be simply adding the _addIgnoredOrganic() method inside the Google Analytics tracking code for each keyword we want to track as direct traffic.

The custom Google Analytics tracking code will look like this:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxxx-x']);
_gaq.push(['_setAllowAnchor', true]);
_gaq.push(['_addIgnoredOrganic', 'e-nor']);
_gaq.push(['_addIgnoredOrganic', 'e-nor.com']);
_gaq.push(['_addIgnoredOrganic', 'www.e-nor.com']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function () {
var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

Congratulation, now you don’t only have access to the direct visits data of those who visit your site for the first time as direct, but you will have insight into all direct visits regardless of whether they took place during the first, second or even the tenth visit.

Related Posts

• Tracking Online and Offline Marketing Campaigns with Google Analytics
• Excellent Analytics Tip #18: Make Love To Your Direct Traffic
• Tracking Traffic from Press Releases in Google Analytics

Technorati Tags: google analytics, web analytics

As I typically do after a workshop, here are the answers, links, and additional references to questions raised that we didn’t have time to address in full details. Feel free to drop me an email if you have an account specific question.

• Weighted Sort in the Google Analytics reports. One of my new favorites features, I love it when Google Analytics does the heavy lifting for the analyst
  • Weighted Sort Definition & Examples
  • A link to a recent post by Avinash on the greatness of Weighted Sort
• Multiple Custom Variables (MCV), they can be used in many different ways. Here are some ideas:
  • Segmenting on user attributes
  • More examples on segmenting by visitor actions and selections
  • First and Last Touch Attribution
• Tools to test Google Analytics code on your site
  • GA blog post on tools to debug your tracking code and Google Chrome Extension
  • WASP
• Payment Gateway & eCommerce Integration
  • Paypal
  • Using Google Checkout to track Google Checkout Orders
• Search and Replace Filter:
  • An example on how to clean up dynamic URLs and make your page names much more meaningful in the GA reports
• Google Website Optimizer (GWO)
  • Using Google Analytics and Website Optimizer together
  • Customize for multiple subdomains
  • Control script customizations
• Internal Campaign Tracking
  • If you are using a parameter in the URL (e.g. to track an internal campaign, www.mydomain.com/?src=logo) and you don’t want to use the “?” but rather use the “#” in the URL (www.mydomain.com/#src=logo), here is the code you should add to recognize the “#” in the parameter

  _gaq.push(['_setAllowAnchor', 'true']);

• Quality Assurance
  • Many of you asked about validating their Google Analytics implementations. A Metric and Reporting planning process as well as a QA process should be in place. This will ensure your implementation will lead to the desired results. In addition, Audits and Validations by third party consultants can be very useful. Here is a link to what E-Nor offers for Google Analytics Audits and Validation (other Google Analytics Certified Partners offer similar services)
• Follow up Webinar: speak with you all on Friday at 10am Pacific

Again, thank you all for attending the workshop and I hope you start putting all the power of Google Analytics in use to help you improve the performance of your website and get better ROI on your marketing campaigns.

10/19/2010 Update

Some of you asked for more technical details on flash and video tracking, here are the links. Enjoy!

• Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash & Gadgets
• Event Tracking in Google Analytics
• Video Tracking using Event Tracking in Google Analytics

Feras

Technorati Tags: google analytics, smx east, training, web analytics, workshop

If you are not attending our Google Analytics workshop at SMX NYC, and happen to be in or around Chicago, you don’t want to miss our upcoming half-day seminar at Search Engines Strategies (SES) Chicago at the Hilton Chicago on Friday October 22, 2010 from 1-5pm, buy your seminar pass today at $845!

There are a number of search marketing workshops taking place on the 22nd, so check out any of the morning sessions, and more importantly (we’re not biased ), make sure to attend E-Nor’s session in the afternoon. Mark your calendar and register today.

So why should you attend?

Sure, you want to spend your training budget, add something to your resume and just really want to meet in person (and these are all valid reasons) but what else can SES Chicago do for you? Well, if you are struggling to go beyond basic web metrics of visitors and pageviews and want to move into actionable insights, this seminar will put you on the right track. You will learn how to improve your return on investment (ROI) on marketing campaigns and utilize analytics insights to optimize performance.

What will you learn about Google Analytics in a 1/2 day?

Marketer/Business Focus – Strategy & Planning

• Understand the user interface & clever stuff you can do with Google Analytics
• Campaign Tracking – measure performance of search, email, banner campaigns

Webmaster/Technical Focus – Implementation

• Accounts & Profiles, Filters & Goals – structure your data properly
• Advanced Segmentation & Custom Reports – powerful ways to find insights

Who Should Attend?

• Business, marketing and technical management and staff
• Webmasters
• Business owners
• CMOs

We will have ample time for Q&A and I’ll be hanging around for an additional hour for hands-on analytics review and advanced analytics questions.

Again, the seminar is in Chicago on Friday October 22, 2010 from 1 to 5pm. Register today and invest in learning!

I look forward to seeing you at SES Chicago.

Technorati Tags: Google Analytics Seminar, google analytics training, Search Engine Strategies, SES Chicago

You know analytics will do the trick, but where and how can you get the proper training? Easy. Come and learn the tools of the trade at a full day hands-on Google Analytics training.

If you’re convinced and ready to register, do so before October 3. Feel free to use this code for a $100 dollar discount: smx100gaw (case sensitive). You can register here and enter the promo code or just click on this URL. But if you’re holding out and still need a bit more convincing, check out some (uncensored ) testimonials from previous training attendees.

The training will cover some basics, but will focus on much needed, yet underutilized, best practices. We will also explore various advanced topics and leave a lot of time for Q&A. You’ll be prepared for morning’s work with specific action items to implement on your own site (or your clients’ sites).

So whether you’re a marketing manager, a technical webmaster, or a consultant, and whether you’re working for a start-up or a Fortune 500, this workshop will help you leverage Google Analytics to the fullest.

Training agenda

Morning Session – Marketer/Business Focus – Google Analytics Strategy & Planning

• Web Analytics Strategy – approach, opportunities and limitations
• How It Works – overview, accuracy and privacy implications, integrating with other data
• Practical – understanding the user interface
• Advanced Features Overview – clever stuff you can do with Google Analytics

Afternoon Session – Webmaster/Technical Focus – Google Analytics Implementation

• Accounts & Profiles, Filters & Goals – structure your data properly
• External Campaign Tracking – measure performance of search, email, banner campaigns
• Reporting – dashboards & insights
• Advanced Segmentation & Custom Reports – powerful ways to find insights

Need more convincing? Here are some testimonials

“I wanted to thank you for the great work you’ve done in helping Blue Shield set up Google Analytics and taking us through the process of understanding the User Interface. We are enjoying the training sessions and the entire team feels very confident in your expertise. Thank you!”
-T. S., Online Member Acquisition, Blue Shield of California

“I think Feras did a really good job presenting to an audience that had a wide range of Google Analytics experience. Glad I stayed the extra day to attend.”
-C. S., Search Engine Marketing Expo

So why wait any more! Register today and don’t forget to use this promo code for $100 discount: smx100gaw (case sensitive) or simply use this URL.

If you have any questions about the Google Analytics training, don’t hesitate to email or call. For latest updates on the workshop and other (mainly) analytics tips, follow me on twitter. And above all stay in touch!

Technorati Tags: google analytics, smx east, training, web analytics, workshop

What can I do with Advanced Segments in Urchin 7?

• Identify & analyze the visitor groups who are truly valuable to your business
• Allows you to filter reporting data similar to using GA Advanced Segmentation. The feature is accessible on the Urchin 7 Reporting UI from the toolbar.
• Each advanced segment is a combination of filters joined by an "AND" condition. Metrics support numeric comparison operators "equals to", "less than", "less than or equal to", "greater than" and "greater than or equal to".

How do I use Advanced Segments in Urchin 7?

Easy   the interface is similar to Google Analytics.  The screen capture below shows the new Advanced Segments dropdown.  Click on this dropdown to enter the wonderful world of Advanced Segmentation awesomeness.

 
In the screen capture below, the user is presented with an option to manage their advanced segments, or view from a list of default segments.

How do I create a new Advanced Segment in Urchin 7?

Let’s build a really simple segment that will let us analyze traffic originating from Google.

NOTE:  in building a segment, I strongly recommend giving the segment a meaningful name.  This will help you and others that may be using the tool clearly know what the segment contains.  Don’t use names like "My Segment" or "Segment 1" or "test".  A meaningful name for the example above would be "Traffic Source=Google" or "Traffic from Google" or something to that effect.
 
1) To create and configure a new segment, click the "Create new custom segment" button on the Manage Urchin Visit Segments page.

 
2)  Below is the segment definition screen:

 
3)  Once done, apply the segment to all profiles

 
4)  Now let’s view the New vs. Returning report for our segment!

What are some practical use cases of Advanced Segments:

1)  Create a true organic segment where branded traffic is filtered out.
2)  Create a segment to analyze visitors by referrer or traffic source (like our example above)
3)  Segment by geographic location (country, city, etc)
4)  Segment by Content viewed (Landing page or Page)
5)  Segment by Goals (allowing you to see the behavior of users who converted vs those who didn’t)
6)  Segment by Technology metrics (browser type, screen resolution, etc)
All the above will help in your data analysis.  These are just a few simple ideas.  Pleases share any cool segments that have assisted you in your analysis!

Try out Urchin 7 today.

Related Posts

• Urchin 7 Now Available
• Google Analytics’ Gift to Humanity:  Multiple Custom Variables

Technorati Tags: advanced segment, google analytics, urchin, web analytics

Features

• New reporting UI
• Report permalinks
• Advanced segments
• Event tracking
• Report tabs to provide more information in context
• Updated segmentation menu and options
• Customizable geolocation settings
• Custom filter ordering
• Native 64-bit support
• Faster data processing speeds
• Multiple schedulers for concurrent profile processing
• Urchin API
• Automatic updates
• Embedded help center
• Improved lookup tables
• New site summary report
• And more!

That’s an impressive list of features and more will come with time!

Works with Google Analytics

Urchin 7 receives some of the best features you have been using in Google Analytics, such as the polished interface, event tracking, and advanced segments.

In addition, you can easily use both Google Analytics and Urchin 7 at the same time to leverage the power of both tools to truly become a data-driven organization!

Pricing

The price for Urchin 7 is $9995.

Any amount paid for Urchin 6 can be deducted from the price of Urchin 7 – Google’s way of making sure your Urchin 6 investment continues to pay off!

For more information about Urchin 7 or any web analytics needs, feel free to contact us and we’ll be glad to help you.

Related Posts

• Urchin 7 64-bit released
• Urchin 7 is finally here!
• 7 Days of Urchin 7

Technorati Tags: urchin, web analytics

Here are the top changes for this release:

• Limit on a total number of log sources in Urchin (65000) was removed.
• Yahoo CPC sources are disabled in Urchin 6.603.
• Switch to AdWords API v.2009.
• Some specific issues related to AdWords account structure download were fixed.

Check out our Urchin page for a download link.

Technorati Tags: urchin, web analytics

This should raise a couple questions:

1. Is your site compatible on all cellular phone platforms?
2. Is the site being used on a cellular phone the same way it would be used on a desktop?

If you aren’t sure, don’t guess; check your analytics. Here’s a post on how to track mobile traffic.

Issues with Mobile Usability

The answer depends ultimately on the function of your site but of course regardless, browsing a website on your mobile is a much different experience than browsing on your desktop. That said here are some usability issues you may run into while browsing on your mobile:

• Excessive Scrolling – Phones have been getting smaller and sleeker over the past couple years, which means screens are even smaller. While the width of a standard desktop screen is around 1052px, the standard width for a mobile site is 250px. Unfortunately because of the small screen restriction, viewing a site is very frustrating because of scrolling and/or zooming in. I’ve run into this problem so many times, when I search on my blackberry, I always have to zoom into the site to be able to read, which of course means I have to scroll from right to left to read the content properly.
• Load Time – Non-mobile-friendly sites could take a long time to load.
• Page Height – Along with having to zoom, the page could be longer than necessary, causing the user to have to scroll down.
• Flash – If your site has flash, more than likely it will not be supported by all cell phone browsers.
• Mobile Location – Another factor affecting mobile browsing is location of the user. While computers are generally stationary, cell phones are used everywhere (hence the world “mobile”). The contrast of the colors and font size on a site may not be legible while using a cell outdoors.

Mobile Design Tips

Here’s a list of guidelines for designing a more-user friendly mobile site:

1. Screen Size – Design your mobile site to be 250px
2. Limited content – Since the width is limited, height may be used to fill in space that is lost with width. However, it’s best to avoid having a long page of content. After all, this is a phone and is still quite small. Whether its touch screen or keys based, it’s much harder to scroll up or down than it is on a desktop.
3. Clear action buttons – Again, since the screen is small, it’s best to make sure if you do have images to make them clear, and if that means using the whole width that’s okay. Same goes for buttons, if there is a clear action, it will be seen, so the bigger the better. I highly recommend buttons over links; specifically for touch screen users. When trying to click on a link, it’s always so hard to actually click on the correct link. The link will usually be buried within text and other links.
4. Create a separate mobile environment – administering a site that is optimized for a desktop that is at the same time 100% mobile friendly is very difficult since both natures are completely different. That would mean you’re essentially limited to the parameters of mobile (for example, when choosing the width of images for your desktop site, you’ll be nagged by the limits of your mobile resolution). It’s best to have a separate environment specifically catered to mobile screens allowing you to have freedom in both designs.
5. Real Estate – Mobile “real estate” is very limited; to maximize the use of space in your design, simplify your site to the very basic functions of your company. For example, if your desktop has three panes; a side menu, content, and news. The side menu may not be completely necessary, especially since the navigation on mobile and desktop is completely different.
6. Meet the user’s needs quickly – If the South Africa World Cup is the hot topic, and you’re cnn.com, make sure that story is visible above the fold right away.
7. Clear functions – Make things clear and easy for the user to find. If you want someone to click on a button, make it large and bright to emphasize the action. For example, on a mobile site it would be smart to have a back button rather than a link because it’ll be easier for the user to find the button than a link since a link could easily get hidden through the text.
8. Ease of use – The user shouldn’t have to waste time scrolling up and down looking for something that should be easy to find. For example, in tip #5, I talked about “real estate.” With a limited width, you lose a lot of space for content, but what you lose in width you can make up in the height. This makes it much easier for the user to read rather than having to scroll from left to right.
9. Browsing Links – Use only basic browsing links such as home and back, you don’t need to include the whole menu that is on your desktop site. Make sure to add the browsing links at the top and bottom of the page.
10. Search – For some sites, it is very important to have search because the site is search based for example, Google or Target. Google is search based links, while Target is search based products. If your site is search based, including two search boxes may be really helpful. Some companies have sites that are entirely search based such as Google, their desktop and mobile site is just a search bar. As for Target and Amazon their home pages have a search bar at the top of the page with browsing links below, which is another way to go because you can browse products as well as search for them.
11. Testing – Lastly, make sure to test the usability of the mobile site on different phone browsers. This, of course, would be a separate checklist from launching your desktop site. Keep in mind, phones can be used in any location, for example, the contrast of a screen in the sunlight, has to be legible.

Having a mobile friendly site, will make it much easier for your customer to navigate, making for a better user experience, in turn, increasing your conversion. If mobile phones make shopping more convenient, you want to make sure your site takes advantage of that trend and make it easy for users to shop for your product as well.

And now that you have a mobile site, few things to keep in mind:

• Search engine optimization (SEO), here is a link from the Google Webmaster tool on how to Help Google Index Your Mobile Site. Mobile websites are often returned in Google mobile search results (and other search engines too) in preference to non-mobile websites.
• And once your mobile site is ready for prime time, you might want to drive qualified traffic through paid search (aka Pay-Per-Click) on Mobile, here are some ideas from the Google AdWords blog.
• Last but not least, you gotta measure! A separate mobile website is easier to track on all devices than an integrated website where the tracking code might not run on all devices. Try Google Analytics for Mobile.

We’re in the process of practicing what we preach, so keep an eye out for the E-Nor Mobile Site!

References

For more info on mobile usability check out the following references:

• http://mobithinking.com/sites/mobithinking.com/files/dotMobi_Mobile_Usability_Best_Practice.pdf
• http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-usability/mobile-guidelines.shtml
• Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone
• http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/designing-for-mobile-web

Technorati Tags: google analytics, mobile marketing, pay per click, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, web analytics, web design

Whether you’re a small business or large corporation, YouTube videos/channels are as key of a component in having a comprehensive online marketing presence as having a main website or social media channels.

I’ll admit, when I first heard of YouTube, I was thinking to myself, “Ummm, not everyone can afford a video camera.” “How large are video files anyway?” “No one is going to go through the trouble of converting these gargantuan video files then uploading them.” “Why would someone want to display their videos for the world to see anyway?” Of course, my psychic intuition was horribly, utterly, and ignorantly wrong.

Your freedom to upload and share almost ANYTHING – personal movies, clips, slideshows, even audio with still backgrounds – is quite liberating and the attention feels great.

On the other end, that “play” button is like a shinny red button to a toddler calling our names – “PUSH MEEEEEeeeee!”  Rarely does it disappoint ether – “OOOOooooh, moving images and colors!”  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video may be analogous to volumes of books.

A world of moving images are at your fingertips – find anything – from videos on how to make tiramisu to personal home videos of your buddies breaking the world record for eating the most peanut butter sandwiches in a minute.

With the embed code being so easily accessible (and even sites like Facebook automatically translating YouTube urls into embed’s), it’s easier than ever to SHARE your videos.  Mix in “heeelarious” content that your friends have to see and pass on, and born is the viral video – spreads like a virus – millions of views in a small amount of time.

YouTube.com now is the second most used search engine (next to king Google). It would only be a matter of time before advertisers/marketers (including all major corporations) took notice of the value of this amount of views and would devise plans to take prime advantage of this phenomenon. For example, Dell attributes 2 million of its sales to YouTube.

YouTube and Your Business

How can you take advantage of YouTube to market your products or services? It’s 100% free to create a channel, and easy to customize and brand as your business’s own video page. Upload an unlimited number of videos that are automatically indexed and searchable by not only YouTube, but google as well.  Make your videos easy to share.  Finally, generate enough interest and your YouTube videos can go a long way in bringing you attention, potentially resulting in revenue.

General Tips for Maximizing YouTube Marketing Value

Good content – bottom line – content is king. Nothing can replace good content. If your goal is to have a video go viral, your content should hopefully accomplish the following.

• Share-worthy – Your video should make viewers want to share with friends. It’s best if this increases your views exponentially, meaning every 1 viewer passes it to at least 2 people.
• Replay Value – Your video should cause viewers to want to replay it.

Generally, viral content is usually gut-busting comedy or captures something absolutely amazing and rare to see. Another great way to get a lot of views are “How-To” videos – answering a common question with a brief instructional video. Of course, creating content like this is easier said than done.

Call-To-Action Slide – Many videos begin and conclude with a slide that has an organizations branding, call-to-action, or contact information.

Take FULL Advantage of Social Networks – by now, if you’ve jumped on the social media bandwagon, you’re checking your Facebook or Twitter as much as your email. You’ve probably added friends you’ve never even really met. You may even realize that you’re connected to a huge web of millions upon millions of people – an extremely valuable marketing resource if you can tap into as many connections as you can.

• Post the video on your facebook wall, twitter wall, blog, social bookmarks, myspace etc!
• Post often and ask friends to share and post as well!
• Note: just be careful to be balanced and not to spam your friends’ feeds, which will cause the opposite reaction – everyone to ignore you.

Best Time to Launch a Video – it’s argued that Friday and Sunday are the best days to launch a video, either during lunch or after work.

YOUTUBE SEO: Increase Your Ranking in YouTube Search (and even Google)

“ike any search engine, youtubes ranking is based on certain algorithms in which key criteria may be important. Here are some basics on how to optimize your videos so they rank better.

Tags/Meta Data – for all you SEO geeks, these fields - title, description, tags, etc. – all go into an algorithm that will your rank/index your videos in YouTube search results. The closer your video is to the top of the page when someone searches for your keyword, the better the chance it will be clicked on.

GOOGLE – It’s important to note that YouTube videos rank on GOOGLE search results as well, so having an optimized video may end up helping your SEO more than you think. Your site may not end up ranking on Google if your keyword is really popular, however, your video may end up at the top of Google organic search results.

Keywords – Optimize your video for certain keywords and sprinkle them in your meta-data as well as descriptions. For YouTube keyword research, use https://ads.YouTube.com/keyword_tool

Link Building/Interlinking – Linking to other videos in the descriptions or annotations also helps your video’s SEO.  Also, link to other sites through urls in your description (“http://” text is automatically converted into hyperlinks).  Link to a landing page on your main site.

Related Videos – You might think Youtube’s main search is best way to get your video noticed, but actually, majority of YouTube organic views (views not generated by paid ads) come from related videos. Thus, relating to the right video can be crucial. Related keywords should be taken into account in your SEO efforts.

Activity – The more active your video has, the better your ranking. Views, comments, stars, interlinks, etc, all count activity. One way to generate activity is to actually reply to comments on your video and get discussions going!

Annotations – Annotations count as activity. It engages the user with your video – engaging the user is always a plus. Ask people to comment, bookmark, subscribe to your channel, go to another video, etc.

Geographic Location – If your organization does local services, it’s always important to indicate geography in your profile since some search results can be geo-targeted.

YouTube Settings and Configurations

Title – Having a good title may make a difference in enticing a viewer to select your video. A video that’s called “206485.mpg” probably won’t attract as much views as a video titled “MOST AMAZING SKATEBOARD STUNT EVER!!!!”.

Description Field – You have 27 characters before your message becomes “…”, so use that space wisely. Link to your website or state a call-to-action.

Thumbnails – Though YouTube limits the thumbnails you’ll be able to choose to represent your video, it’s important to choose a good thumb from the options they do give you. Obviously, a still with an attractive looking person is more likely to entice viewers to click over say a blank black screen.

Playlists – Playlists show up on YouTube search results, so be sure to create good playlists.

Channel – Your channel should be treated like a landing page.  It’s your organization’s video page!

• Profile – Make sure to fill out information about your organization – sites, interests, about/bio, etc. Users will land on your channel and look to this area as a birds-eye view of your organization.
• Featured-Video – Make sure to choose an important featured video that you would like to draw attention to. Also, make it auto-play so your YouTube channel views will be counted towards video views.
• Activity Feed – Use your activity feed to update your subscribers – similar to any social networking newsfeed.

Measuring Your Progress

Traffic On YouTube: YouTube Insights – YouTube now offers some great statistics on every video you upload. Login to your account on each video on your video page you’ll find an “Insights” button. This dashboard allows you to see for each video your views per day and the demographics of your views (geographic location, gender, etc). You can measure the success of a YouTube campaign by seeing if it caused your video views to spike on certain days/months.

Traffic From YouTube – Using analytics tools such as Google Analytics allows you to see if a popular video has generated traffic to your main site or ecommerce product. You can adjust your marketing strategies for your videos based on these metrics. Say adding a link to your site in the description of your video increases traffic to your site. You now know to do that for all videos!

Summary

• Create an interesting video that will make viewers want to pass it on to their friends.
• Increase your ranking by following good YouTube SEO Practices
• Set up each video to have good branding, call-to-actions and conversion links to your respective site/product.
• Measure your videos’ performances.

Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, social media, youtube

That is an average of 36 comments per post and 92 words per comment. Congratulations Avinash!

For Analytics oriented bloggers such as Avinash, I am sure as much as they love and appreciate all their blog readers they will always value the engaged readers who make the effort to drop a line or two seeking clarification, encouraging them to write more or giving them feedback.

This segment of blog readers is by all means the fuel that keeps bloggers alive and encourages them to continue to write and share what they have in mind. Therefore, studying and analyzing the behavior and the user experience of this segment is very important for optimizing the blog to achieve your blog objectives.

In this post I will walk you through few basic steps that will help make this segment of engaged readers available in your Google Analytics report.

Assumptions:

• You have Google Analytics installed in your blog
• You are using WordPress as a platform for your blog (of course you can apply the same method to other blogging platforms)

The How:

Our approach is a three-step process:  add custom code, create a Goal in Google Analytics which tracks the number of comment submissions and then create an advanced segment for those who converted.

Step 1) Add custom code to the comments’ form code:

Since in WordPress there is no unique confirmation page – thank you page – that visitors see once they have submitted their comment, we will need to fire a virtual page every time the “Submit” button is clicked.

We will need to modify the comments form’s code and add some JavaScript code to it. The code will fire a virtual page every time the “submit comment” button is clicked. The code for the comments form is found within the comments.php file, which can be found under your WordPress theme folder [../wp-content/themes/default/comments.php]

• Add the following code to the onclick event of the “submit comment” button:

onClick=”javascript: _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/comment-submission.php']);”

Below you will see how the code will look after the JavaScrip insertion, this depends on the version of the Google Analytics tracking code you are using:

Asynchronous snippet

<p><input onClick=”javascript: _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/comment-submission.php']);” name=”submit” type=”submit” id=”submit” tabindex=”5″ value=”Submit Comment” />
<?php comment_id_fields(); ?>
</p>

Traditional snippet

<p><input onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/comment-submission.php’);” name=”submit” type=”submit” id=”submit” tabindex=”5″ value=”Submit Comment” />
<?php comment_id_fields(); ?>
</p>

Step 2) Create a Goal:

Every time the virtual page that we created in step 1 is fired, it will trigger a conversion and the hit will be available in the Goals report.

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and then click “Edit” beside your profile. You will need to configure goals for each profile you want the Goal to show up in.
2. Click on: +Add Goal
3. Enter the following Goal Information:

• Goal Name: Blog Comment Submission
• Active Goal: On
• Goal Type: URL Destination
• Match Type: Head Match or Exact Match (in this case both will work)
• Goal URL: /comment-submission.php

Step 3) Wait a Few Days and Analyze your Goal Performance

Your Goals will not work backwards, so you will need to wait for Goal data to appear in your reports. Now you have the number of comment submissions.

Is creating a goal is enough for our deep analysis? Not really! It will be nice if we can analyze traffic only from this specific segment of our blog visitors. Advanced Segments is the answer!

Step 4) Create an advanced segment

Now let us create an advanced segment that only shows the visits of those who submitted comments.

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account
2. Advanced Segments > Create a new advanced segment
3. Select the “Goal Completion” Metric for the Goal that you created in step 2

By applying this segment, now you will have more insight about the  blog commenter’s user experience, their traffic sources, geographical locations, time on site, browsers, screen resolutions, etc.

Apply the same concept to your email subscribers, contact-us requests, social media followers or any other segment of your blog readers you are interested in learning more about.

Happy Analyzing

Related Posts

• How to Setup Goals in Google Analytics
• Google Analytics’ Gift to Humanity: Multiple Custom Variables

Technorati Tags: advanced segment, goals, google analytics, Segmentation, wordpress

Marketer, marketer, what do you see?
I see detailed reports and valuable insights made available for me!

Business owner, business owner, what do you see?
I see more money for me!

Online shopper, online shopper, what do you see?
I see an amazing website customized and optimized for me!

Say you have an online store where you sell clothes for men, women, and children. Wouldn’t it be nice to have more visibility into the shopping experience based on site visitors’ age, gender, and products of interest?

Say Hello to a feature known as “Multiple Custom Variables!” To read more about how it works, check this post in the Google Analytics blog.

In this post, I would like to walk through our implementation strategy and technical details.

The Strategy

As visitors enter the store website, they will be tagged with different labels based on some personal unidentifiable information (gender and age), and based on the pages they visit (products and store departments):

Example 1:

Tom is a new visitor.  He registered on the site, viewed a product (women’s pajamas), added the item to the shopping cart and then completed the purchase.

At the end of the session, Tom’s visit will be labeled as the following:

Example 2:

Sara is a returning visitor who in a previous visit registered to the site. She viewed a few products (men’s and women’s apparel), and then left the site.

At the end of the session, Sara’s visit will be labeled as the following:

The How

1. Customizing the tracking code:

Visitor-level Labels

At the visitor level we will use custom variables to segment visits based on their entries in a form. Let’s use the values that visitors voluntarily enter in the “gender” and “age” fields in the following form. These custom variables will remain attached to the visitors for future visits starting from the visit in which they filled the registration form (until they clear their cookies).

Setting the value of “gender” and “age”:

1. Add custom code that takes the gender and age values from the registration form.
   
2. Pass the two variables (gender-variable, age-variable) to the registration confirmation page
3. In the registration confirmation page, add the following code inside the GATC right before* the pageview GIF request _trackPageview()

pageTracker._setCustomVar(1, “gender”, gender-variable, 1);
pageTracker._setCustomVar(2, “age”, age-variable, 1);

* If it is not possible to add the custom code inside the GATC, then add the following code after the GATC

<script type=”text/javascript”>
pageTracker._setCustomVar(1, “gender”, gender-variable, 1);
pageTracker._setCustomVar(2, “age”, age-variable, 1);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

Session-level Labels

At the session level we will use custom variables to distinguish visitors’ behavior across sessions based on their conversion. In this way, we can segment visits by those who complete e-commerce transactions versus those who just browse products on the site.

A visitor will be tagged as a “buyer” if he or she completes a transaction. If they do not buy anything, the visitor will be tagged as “justlooking”.

Setting the value of “visitor-type” to “buyer”:

In the transaction confirmation page (thank you page) add the following code inside the GATC right before the pageview GIF request _trackPageview()

pageTracker._setCustomVar(3, “visitor-type”, “Buyer”, 2);

Setting the default value of “visitor-type” to “justlooking”:
All visitors will be tagged by default as “justlooking” once they enter the site by setting the value of the custom variable “visitor-type” to “justlooking” at the session-level.

Add the below code* to all landing pages right after the GATC.

* High-level description of the code:

• extracts the “_utmb” string from the cookies set by Google Analytics
• extracts the “pageview count” value from the _utmb cookie
• if the session’s “pageview count” is equal to 1 (landing page), set the value of “visitor-type” to “justlooking”

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var utmb = get_utm_value(document.cookie, ‘__utmb=’, ‘;’);
var utmc = get_utm_value(document.cookie, ‘__utmc=’, ‘;’);
var pageview_count = get_utm_value2(utmb, utmc);
if(pageview_count<=1)
{
pageTracker._setCustomVar(3, “visitor-type”, “justlooking”, 2);
}
//This function extracts the “_utmb” and “_utmc” string from the cookies set by Google Analytics
//This function was originally written by the Google Analytics team (urchin.js)
function get_utm_value(l,n,s)
{
if (!l || l==”" || !n || n==”" || !s || s==”") return “-”;
var i, i2, i3, c=”-”;
i=l.indexOf(n);
i3=n.indexOf(“=”)+1;
if (i > -1)
{
i2=l.indexOf(s,i);
if (i2 < 0)
{
i2=l.length;
}
c=l.substring((i+i3),i2);
}
return c;
}
//This function extracts the “pageview count” value from the _utmb cookie
function get_utm_value2(utmb,utmc)
{
var i, j, k;
var utmc=utmc+’.';
i=utmc.length;
j=utmb.indexOf(“.”, i);
k=utmb.substring(i,j);
return k;
}
</script>

Page-level Labels

At the page level we will use custom variables to determine which product categories and store departments are visited. We will set a custom variable at the page level for each product, where the product category and the department for that product is set as a custom variable.

Setting the value of “store-department” and “product-category”:
In each product page, add the following code inside the GATC right before the pageview GIF request _trackPageview()

pageTracker._setCustomVar(4, “store-department”, “Men”, 3);
pageTracker._setCustomVar(5, “product-category”, “Suits”, 3);

2. Creating Custom Advanced Segmentation

Enough coding!! Now it is time to create some custom segments we can use for deep analysis.

In this section, we will set up a simple custom segment for all ladies (31 to 50 years’ old) who visited the men’s department, looked at suits, and bought an item during their visit.

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account
2. Advanced Segments > Create a new advanced segment
3. Add the following dimensions:

3. Viewing Reports

We are now ready to analyze based on custom segments built upon our custom variables! Let’s look at the amazing data available in our new segments:

Segment 1: Male shoppers (31 to 50 years’ old) who visited the women’s department, looked at Suits and bought an item during their visit

Segment 2: Female shoppers (31 to 50 years’ old) who visited the men’s department, looked at Suits and bought an item during their visit

From the first glimpse at the dashboard numbers above, we can confirm that for the 31 to 50 age group:

• It takes men fewer number of page (around 3 pages on average) to buy suits for women compared to women shoppers who visit 5 pages on average to make a suit purchase for men.
• The number of women who shop for men is more than the number of men who shop for women!  Shame on us men .

If you came up with more interesting segments please share with us, we are very interested hearing from you.

Technorati Tags: google analytics, multiple custom variables, qualitative analysis, web analytics

Why should you consider attending? Well, you get to hear from the analytics industry rock stars, participate in a number of networking opportunities, pick up few tips from practitioners and consultants and learn firsthand from the analytics vendors on their latest and greatest, including “what’s new with Google Analytics, by our friend Brett Crosby.

Here is the detailed agenda, but basically on Monday you have the pre-conference workshops (there were some on Sunday), the conference sessions are on Tuesday-Thursday including some awesome keynotes, and then more workshops on Friday-Saturday, and it’s all happening at the Fairmont San Jose.

You can register for the entire conference, or just for a workshop. If you are really busy this year and don’t have the time to attend the entire event then I recommend you at least sign up for the “Social Networking Pass” which will allow you to attend the morning/afternoon keynotes, evening reception, exhibit hall pass and get your own conference bag!

And don’t forget to attend the Web Analytics Wednesday event on Wednesday the 5th at 6pm.

Hope to see some of our clients, partners and industry friends. If you are coming from out of town and you need any help here in the Bay Area, let me know, I am happy to offer free local advice . Drop a comment here or email me directly. See you soon!

Thanks
Feras

Technorati Tags: emetrics, marketing optimization summit