This week on ExceedTV your hosts Jason Greenwood & Lance O’Grady are back, and this week are talking about what’s new in Google Analytics.

Over the last 6 months there have been many changes to Google Analytics, with some great new features either introduced or improved, including:
-Google Remarketing
-Social Analytics
-Attribution Modelling

If you have something you would like us to cover in a future episode of ExceedTV let us know via:
Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus or leave a comment below, and we’ll do our best to include it.

With broadband market penetration at 91% (as of 2011), in terms of internet use and economic activity, New Zealand is one of the world leaders in eCommerce. 60% of NZ internet users conduct online banking at least weekly, with 58% of users paying bills online at least monthly.

37% of New Zealand internet users purchase something online at least monthly, which may be lower than Australia (of which 52% purchase at least monthly), the USA (49%), and the UK (47%), but is ahead of all other countries around the world.

The Internet is by far the most important source for information in New Zealand and Australia. While television, newspapers and radio were an important source of information, New Zealand and Australia are notable for just how much more the internet was considered to be important when compared to traditional media sources.

What we are seeing here is the fact that people in New Zealand and Australia want to do it all online. What this means to businesses is that it opens up a huge opportunity to capitalise on this obvious demand just by meeting the market where they want to do business – i.e. “online”. You will note that I said “businesses” and not “New Zealand” or “Australian” businesses. That is because it doesn’t matter so much ‘where’ these businesses come from; with good strategic use of the internet any business (by and large) can set up and sell to the New Zealand and Australian markets. Any New Zealand or Australian business therefore that does not have a solid online presence and on-going strategy is leaving not only the doors wide open to competitors (both domestic and foreign) but all the windows too.

As the recent MYOB report showed, having an effective online presence saw 43% of New Zealand and Australian businesses surveyed report significantly more customer leads. Businesses with a website were also 31% more likely to be able to convert those leads into sales. What other business activity can you think of that can potentially increase your revenues by almost one third?

It is important that businesses look to put in place a digital strategy and make a long term commitment to it. As the saying goes, “you can’t get half pregnant”. That is why it is important to budget properly, not half-heartedly – you reap what you sow.

If you would like to discuss your situation and your goals for your business, call us at Exceed Online. We are New Zealand’s and Australia’s leading eCommerce agency and we do this stuff every day for our clients.

[Data Sources: The World Internet Project and MYOB]

One of the world’s leading market research companies, Forrester Research, reported in 2010 that while US$155 billion worth of consumer goods were bought online in the USA that year, a far larger portion of offline sales were influenced by online research. Forrester estimated that US$917 billion worth of retail sales that year were “Web-influenced”; that means there are a large number of consumers, who select the product they want using the web, and then buy it from the retail outlet of the same store. Thus the online store not only captures new customers with online purchases but also drives sales to your physical store.

Leading retail marketing firm RevTrax produced a report last year, based on two years of research. Their exhaustive study discovered that “for every $1 of e-commerce revenue generated from paid search, marketers can expect to see approximately another $6 of in-store revenue.”

In another report last year, this from ComScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), in an analysis of multiple consumer based goods running online marketing campaigns, showed that comparing the offline buying of households exposed to online advertising with the buying behaviour of households who were not exposed revealed a median in-store sales lift of 21 percent among the exposed households, with five out of every six campaigns generating a positive sales lift.

“After several years of conducting advertising effectiveness research for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands, we are learning how digital campaigns can lift sales in retail stores.”

- Gian Fulgoni, comScore Chairman

The majority of people today will look online when looking for products or services, regardless of whether they have been exposed to traditional (i.e. offline) media campaigns. For many customers, purchasing is no longer simply a case of an online or offline experience, but a complex process involving both online research and visits to the bricks and mortar store. Multi-channel retailers have the advantage of being able to meet these requirements and can provide a wide range of delivery options, including buying online but collecting goods from a local store.

It is vital today to focus on what consumers do online prior to making a purchase and to have an online presence and strategy that can leverage that information to better reach them during key stages of their decision making process.

Many people now go online before they go shopping, to look at potential purchases and have a think about what they’re prepared to pay, the brands they want to buy and the shops they intend to visit. Consumers now arrive in the store armed with most of the decision making information they need. The selling process has started hours, sometimes days before the actual store visit; often a store visit is purely to execute the purchase.

Regardless of where the final purchase is secured, across all channels, today’s online savvy consumer is much more informed of the products available, using readily available resources to explore and refine their search to pinpoint exactly what they want to buy. This behaviour cuts right across demographics – so is no longer behaviour restricted to younger age groups.

What does this mean? Many businesses ignore the ongoing costs of maintaining and growing their website. They do this at their peril. Capex is usually an easier sell to management than Opex costs because Capex is written off as a depreciating asset whereas Opex comes straight off the bottom line – perpetually. Capex generally has favourable tax implications whilst Opex does not.
Today we look at how and why businesses should look at their web investment from a more strategic perspective.

The Disconnect

All business investment must be strategic – this means it has to underpin clear goals and then you develop tactics to support the strategy to achieve those goals. This is business 101 kind of stuff but it bears repeating. Try going to any CFO and convince them to make a web investment (web build, enhancement or added functionality) and they will immediately ask you for the business case for the investment -  as they should. It is not an easy sell but in terms of the result, there is a tangible asset at the end of the exercise. The ongoing investment here though is tough for numbers guys to wrap their head around.

The Requirement

Very few businesses have an in-house web team so that means outsourcing. Outsource smartly and the results can be legendary, do it poorly and the investment can turn into a black hole of cost. We have seen this with clients over and over again, where they have come from another web agency and never saw the value and we try and pick up the pieces and prove our value proposition on a daily basis.

Holistic Considerations

When a client comes to us we try and help them ascertain and define their budget for both the build and post live phase of a web project. This primarily comes down to development of the website and then post live website marketing and SEM services + platform support requirements.

Clients generally know these costs exist but since they have yet to be defined and justified, that is always a hard part of the discussion to have. Explaining to clients that websites are not wind up clocks that you build, wind up and let run is always fun – not. As website complexity and feature set increase, so do all other associated costs so in that sense costs grow exponentially as business requirements increase.

The Elephant In the Room

Web Hosting. When you hear this term what springs to mind? That’s what I thought. A room full of servers, in a data centre, with a handful of geeks running around doing ‘stuff’. No matter how much a business invests in their web presence, they almost ALWAYS under estimate the immense complexity and ongoing costs for web hosting. This is especially true when considering hosting for complex and resource hungry platforms like Magento.

Why is this? I blame ‘Host Gator’, lol. Seriously though, there are $20/month web hosts out there that sell themselves as being Magento experts and all the rest. Big promises for $20/mo. And a big let down at go-live when 50 visitors hit the site and it falls over.

The reality is that to host Magento properly (with Hosting Support), you are realistically looking at around the AUD$1K/mo mark – base price! A twin Web/DB server setup with hardware firewall is going to run you around AUD$2.5K/mo and that does not even take into consideration initial setup/configuration costs, Staging server hosting, backup/DR plans/systems and version control systems/management.

Want to be serious on the web? Hosting will cost you but it will cost you more if you cut corners here.

Final Thoughts

Building an effective and profitable web presence is about so much more than the initial build and go-live process. Why invest heavily in this portion of the process, only to turn around, chase the bottom line and ultimately let the site languish due to under-investment? That is counter-intuitive just like letting a home degrade without keeping it clean, painted, and tidy would be.

Your website is a strategic asset so we recommend it be treated that way and that businesses of all sizes plan to make the appropriate ongoing investment befitting a strategic asset. To do anything else will ensure that the asset under performs and that will cause issues in other areas of the business. This is especially true of web pure-plays as this is the only route to market and it MUST payoff or the business will cease to exist.

Exceed can help you understand your web investment in detail and assist you in crafting a strategic vision that will help you meet your online goals so drop us a line and we can help make it happen.

If there is one thing us online folk like to do, it’s add javascript code to our websites. Remarketing, Adwords, Analytics, Website Optimiser, Clicktale, Facebook. These are just a few tools you might be using that require the installation of a piece of code in your site’s page header. The one thing that we don’t think of (even though the technical/IT team are constantly reminding us) is that each of these codes can slow down your page load time, often significantly.

If you have 8 different scripts in your header, all loading separately, you can understand that that is going to take far longer than someone with 2 scripts. What’s a person to do?

Enter Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a free tool from Google that allows you to organise and consolidate all your javascript tags into one easy to manage piece of code. Once it’s installed, you can enter all your tags in one location, and define which tags run on which page or pages.

How does Google Tag Manager work?

You need to create a new Tag Manager account to use it. Despite needing a new account, you still will need all your other Google accounts like Analytics, AdWords, and the like.

Just like you always have, you still create your tags in each of those Google products. Instead of pasting the generated code directly into your website, you will instead paste it into a Tag Manager container and add rules for how the tag is to be used on your site. The only tag code you need to copy to your site is the code that requests all the tags from Google Tag Manager.

When a visitor comes to your site, the Tag Manager code contacts Google’s servers and downloads the Tag Manager script, a file named gtm.js. No other requests are made.

According to Google, the gtm.js file has a cache time of 15 minutes. So once the initial request is made for the gtm.js file, no additional requests will be made.

The Tag Manager code is requested asynchronously, which means it will load while other elements of your page continue to load with no waiting. Once the GTM script has been downloaded, it will render and fire off all the pixels and code needed to track the services you set up.

Tag Manager loads and executes only the tags you set up, based on the rules you defined. Overall, one asynchronous call to Google Tag Manager should be an improvement over several calls to services.

Something we tell all clients is the importance of tracking secondary goals in Google Analytics. Although any eCommerce website’s main goal is going to be sales, it’s important to consider what else bares some value for the company. It’s also important to track these goals in Google Analytics so you can keep a record of how well your secondary goals are performing.

What are secondary goals?

Not sure what some secondary goals are for your business? Some good examples are:

• Newsletter Sign-ups
• Wishlist/Add to Cart
• Forum/Blog Membership Sign-up
• Job Application Submission (if you have a section on your site)
• New Follower on Social Media

These all show engagement on your site. The customer is interacting with the site, and although may not have converted directly into sales, has expressed interest in the company. Ask yourself “What is the value of an email subscriber?”. We know that email marketing is one of the most cost effective forms of online marketing, delivering one of the strongest ROIs. Getting someone on your email database is a huge achievement because now you have the ability to market to them in your monthly email newsletter for example.

What do I use these goals for?

So you understand the importance of identifying and tracking these goals, but what can you do with that information? If you’re running any type of paid campaign whether it be Google Adwords, Email Marketing, Social Media Advertising, or other paid referrals, it’s important for you to know exactly what you’re getting for your money. For example, a Google Adwords campaign may look like it is performing poorly (at a high level), but you may notice that your goal conversion rate for newsletter sign-ups is high. You now have the option to send highly targeted email marketing campaigns to these people and turn them from newsletter subscribers to customers. Looking at your secondary goals may make you realise that the money you have invested has not gone to waste, and there are other factors in place that lead to indirect/long term revenue gains.

Sit down and think

It’s all well and good getting a sale, but you need to always be thinking about the customer lifetime value. For example, once you’ve got someone on your email database you’ve got the potential to continue marketing to them for years to come. You need to sit down and ask yourself “what value does the completion of this goal bring to my business?”.

Just like you want your ad spend to be approximately 10-20% of revenue, you need to know what you’re willing to pay for a secondary goal completion. This figure will be different for everyone, and will depend on information such as:

• Average Order Value
• Average Customer Lifespan
• Average Customer Order Frequency

Once you know this information you should be able to piece together exactly what a customer is worth over the course of time, and can then work out exactly what you’re willing to pay to get them engaged with you through primary and secondary goal completions.

To stay up to date about Google Analytics, and any other announcements, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube.

It seems like the only topic clients want to talk about today is mobile. This is for good reason. Mobile device sales are skyrocketing globally and website visitors expect to have a great online experience regardless of the device they are using to access that experience. As such, one of the questions at the top of any business’ list is – “Do we build a mobile application (app) or develop a mobile optimised website instead?”

Let The Service Dictate

This is a truly loaded question and the answer depends strongly on what you are trying to deliver in terms of the visitor/user experience. Applications lend themselves well to ‘utilities’ – i.e. unique services that are best delivered as a stand alone program (which is what a mobile application is). Conversely, eCommerce targeted websites generally derive greater benefit by providing a mobile site optimised for mobile based online browsing and buying experience.

Performance

For eCommerce sites that do not offer a mobile optimised experience for their visitors, they can expect their conversion rates to be roughly ½ what their site-wide or non-mobile conversion rates are. This is pretty much the norm regardless of vertical or business model. The goal should always be to ease buying friction for mobile visitors and this reduced friction usually results in massively increased mobile conversion rates.

Cost

The next decision is: “How much are we going to spend on this exercise?”. Again, this is a loaded question. Very basic applications and mobile sites can run in the 5K range whilst complex multi-function applications and heavily customised mobile sites can cost in the region of 50K+.

Any way you slice it, this is a big investment and the time to market can usually be measured in months, not weeks. For an application, the software development model is generally used whilst for mobile optimised sites, the web development model is often the development methodology of choice. Whilst these models have similarities, they are different in some key ways which I will outline below.

What To Expect

With mobile application development, there are greater restrictions on certain elements of what can be delivered through the application. These largely stem from device/UI limitations and programming environment chosen. The developer will need to use many of the design elements from the application toolkit and there is less flexibility to let your unique design shine through.

For mobile sites, there is more flexibility and the sky is pretty much the limit. What you can develop within your mobile site is dictated largely by budget alone. If you are trying to replicate much of your full site functionality for mobile users, as mobile site is your best option.

ROI

It is pretty easy to do some back of the napkin math to see whether your site analytics data justifies a mobile investment. A quick and dirty method is to take your non-mobile visitor eCommerce conversion rate and apply that same rate to your mobile visitor numbers. Would this revenue increase over a year at least cover the cost of the investment? If so, that is a pretty good sign you should at least seriously consider a mobile investment.

Talk To Experts

Before you make a mobile investment, talk to some app developers and eCommerce companies with mobile experience. Ideally, you don’t want to be cutting your teeth on mobile at the same time your web partner is. If you already know what you want and have the data to back it up, then you can perhaps be less choosy and more cost focused – so long as your provider can implement what you are asking for.

A mobile investment gone wrong can be disastrous in terms of credibility so make sure you get good advice and consultation and make a smart investment. Done correctly the returns can be dramatic and you will stay ahead of the curve in terms of what your customers expect online. Exceed Online have extensive mobile experience and would love to help you achieve your online goals in the exciting mobile space. Ring us today to see if we would be a good fit with where you want to be.

I’d love to hear some stories from out in the trenches so feel free to comment and share away!

Jason Greenwood
Digital Account Manager
Exceed Online

Exceed Online is a full service eCommerce and Online Marketing agency serving clients throughout New Zealand and Australia.

Google have recently announced a change in the way businesses will be able to remarket to potential customers. Finally you’ll be able to create remarketing lists in Google Analytics without the need to add any extra tags to your site. That’s right, the days of adding tags to every page you want to track are about to go out the window.

Using Google Analytics data you will be able to create remarketing lists based on certain audiences who visit your website and show interest in your products. You can use these lists to create ads that run across the Google Display Network.

How can I get this?

Relax. There is no set date, but Google do say “we’ll be rolling this beta feature out in waves by the end of summer [winter for the southern hemisphere] to all Google Analytics users who are account administrators with at least one linked Google Adwords account”.

You will be able to find this exciting new feature under the “Remarketing Lists” tab in the Google Analytics account admin section. Keep a look out, and let us know when you get it.

To stay up to date about Google Remarketing, and any other announcements, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube.

Building a new website? Rebuilding/rebranding an old one? Don’t miss out on this chance to make the most of your investment! A launch strategy is critical to ensuring that you maximise the impact of your new web property. In this article we discuss how you can make this happen.

One thing we have witnessed time and again is the lack of strategy or planning around how businesses communicate their new site launch or re-branding to their client base. Often it is simply a case of completing the build and then sending a broadcast email to everyone on the database when the new site is live.

This is an opportunity lost. Through effective pre-launch campaign and communication planning and implementation you can build buzz, excitement, anticipation and client engagement around your new site build.

Maximising Value

You are likely spending big money for a state of the art eCommerce website build (or rebranding effort). Doesn’t it make sense to start thinking about how to maximise the return on this investment, even whilst the site is still being built?

Exceed Online have worked with some of the largest businesses in the Southern Hemisphere and without exception, the businesses that start generating a return on their new builds the quickest are those that put a lot of time and effort into how they engage their customers (or prospective customers) pre-launch and at launch time.

Talking Tactics 

Your online goals will dictate the strategy you will employ to help you effectively launch your website. Regardless of your goals, there are some common tactics that can be tailored to suit your goals and strategy, such as:

• Phased launch communication emails which use website build milestones as their trigger
• Effective use of banners and other design collateral (such as embedded video) placed on your existing website or placeholder page of your new website
• Use your existing social media networks to get people talking about your impending site launch to help stimulate engagement through interactive communication techniques
• Run competitions and special draws for prizes for email subscribers or incentivised email signups pre-launch (ex: a discount voucher for all new signups to be used on the new site) – plus special prizes for existing subscribers
• Run launch specials on site for a limited time after go live (similar to a ‘grand opening sale’ at a retail store)
• Run a ‘treasure hunt’ on the site for a limited time post launch where obscure information or unique coupon codes are hidden throughout the site – encouraging visitors to look at pages deep within the site to get a prize, reward or discount at checkout.

Why This Matters

It’s sometimes a relief to finally get your new website live but to assume your existing customers will come back and love it can be high risk – especially if the site has undergone extensive changes that may cause some visitors to wonder if they’ve arrived at a site that isn’t yours.

Why not leverage your existing customer base and get them excited about the new site? The moment your new site is live you want your existing customers to flock to the site – marvelling at the improved online experience.

Through a structured launch strategy, you can drip feed pieces of the new site to your most loyal fans, encourage interaction, and build hype and anticipation.

Start NOW

Are you currently considering or implementing a new site build, re-build or re-brand for your business? If so, now is the time to start planning how to best communicate this to the market. The better planning you do, the better you can budget for and plan costs as well as return the best ‘bang for buck’ for your business.

What We Do

Exceed Online have extensive experience with launch strategy consultation and implementation. If you want a hand implementing your ideas or developing new ones, contact us today as we have the expertise to help ensure your site becomes an online success story.

I’d love to hear some stories from out in the trenches so feel free to comment and share away!

Jason Greenwood
Digital Account Manager
Exceed Online

Exceed Online is a full service eCommerce and Online Marketing agency serving clients throughout New Zealand and Australia.

Google Remarketing has been around for some time. Up until a few months ago it was terrible. Unusable. Unwieldy. Complicated. Then Google updated their display network settings and made it a lot easier for people to understand how to use remarketing.

What is remarketing?

Basically remarketing allows you to tag people who view certain pages on your site. These people are then placed in remarketing lists. Some examples of lists you might have are “viewed any page on the website”, “started checkout, but didn’t complete” or “viewed ‘X’ category”. You can define the time people will remain in the list (30 days, 60 days etc), and during this time these people will see specific ads you’ve created. It sounds creepy, and it has the potential to be quite invasive, but through careful planning you can use remarketing to produce very positive results.

How can I use remarketing to make money?

That is the question on everyone’s lips. The tool in theory is great. But you need a bit of skill and patience to really reap the benefits of Google remarketing.

Get Customers

The first step is to work out what groups you want to target. You could look at most popular/appealing products, potentially something with a low conversion rate (give it a helping hand), or if you wanted to get really technical, you could look at conversion paths and target products that are not purchased upon first visit. Once you’ve got your remarketing groups, and the tags are in place on your site, you wait. And wait. And wait. Google require you to have 100 people or more in the list before your ads will be delivered. Sometimes this might happen quickly. Sometimes it may take weeks.

Get Creative

While your lists are gathering people you can create your campaigns, and attach the most appropriate list. The most important element of remarketing is the creative. You need to create compelling ads that will draw the customer back to your site to convert. Boring, ugly, or unappealing banners do not usually translate into sales well. You need to remind the customer of your branding, and the products they were browsing. Show them what they are missing out on with USPs like “Free Shipping” or “30 Day Money Back Guarantee”. Put these ads live and see what happens.

Because it’s on the display network you can’t expect click through rates like search campaigns, so make sure you are evaluating with typical display network performance in mind. Continue to work on your ad creative, lists, and landing pages to boost the performance of the campaigns.

Get Clever

The final step is where you can really start making the most out of Google Remarketing. You need to get clever, and think about how to best use remarketing to make money. This is where you really demonstrate your brains ability to be something more than a hat rack. Think about how/when people will be added to your list, and how you can then retarget appropriate ads to them.

An example may be if you know you have a big sale coming up, create a remarketing list that captures everyone who visits the site. To do this you will need to put the remarketing tracking code on EVERY page. Do this 1-2 months before the big sale event. 1-3 weeks out, start trickling ads out making people aware of a big sale coming up. Then during the sale have ads showing them the sale is on, and demonstrating the deals they might get. Powerful, powerful stuff.

These are just a few different things you can do to take advantage of the Google Remarketing Network. It can be confusing, frustrating, and costly (if done poorly), however if done correctly it could easily become your most powerful online marketing tool.

To find out more about our Google Adwords services contact us today.