Web Metrics | Search Marketing | Site Strategy

Test Results: First vs. Last Touch Keywords with Google Analytics

2010-07-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

The idea of what the value of topical search is in a situation where branded phrases clearly dominate the conversion metrics is not a new one. This is a big motivator for multi-touch tracking. I wrote about SEOMOZ's article on multi-touch keyword tracking previously, and this got me thinking through how you would actually implement first and last touch tracking in the current Google Analytics platform. So, I made some changes to the tracking script and pushed it live.

The results of my first and last touch keyword attribution test were not as robust as I'd hoped. The usable data set was much smaller in the end than I was looking for. After filtering out all the things you can't use, you find this type of analysis really applies only to a small group. Mostly this is becuase I was primarily interested in the cases where the first touch keywords as different than the last touch keyword. The ones that were the same were not as interesting to me. that being said, seeing the difference in volume was eye-opening.

A custom Google Analytics tracker was created and placed on a website for 30 days.

The test was to see:

1. How often visitors returned to the website on a different keyword.
2. How often topic initial keywords led to brand keywords on repeat visits
3. How first vs. last keywords differed in general.

During that time, 860 visits were tagged from google search with a custom variable that captured the first visit's keyword. 57 visits were scrubbed for weirdness.

459 visits were recorded as 100% new and were filtered out.

After filtering 100% new visits and funky data, the working data set was 344 visits.

264 visits were tagged as having identical first and last touch values.

80 visits showed different first and last touch keywords. (23%)

Of these, 61 showed a branded first touch keyword and 19 showed a non-branded keyword.

Branded First Touch Keywords
19 out of 26 distinct first touch keywords were some kind of branded keyword with many mispellings. Of these, the second touch keyword was set by google analytics as "not set" in 16 cases. In 100% of the remaining cases, the second touch keywords was a branded phrase of some sort, usually very related to the first touch phrase.

Stacked bar showing the volume of visits relative to each other.
The visits that were most relevant to this test turned out to be a very small percentage of the total.

Non-branded First Touch Keywords
In the remaining cases, "not set" as the last touch keyword became more common (12 out of 19). In the remaining 7 cases, a little more than half (4) had a branded last touch keyword.

Summary and Next Steps
Overall, when thinking about how topical phrases and brand phrases interact with each other, you're really talking about a strick minority of the overall visits to a website. This perspective raises the question of how much this type of analysis really worth at the end of the day. But if you are really interested in web traffic behaviour like I am, you do it anyway because:

1. Finding out that people are most likely to keep finding you in the ways they have already found you is interesting and helpful. They are unlikely to change the way they think and find you.

2. Understanding that if you do want to change the way they think and find you, the path of least resistance is moving from topic to brand, not from brand to topic. No one who used a branded phrase returned on a topical phrase, but the other way did show some movement. This can be important for how you position a product in marketing because, in my mind, this represents more of a bottom up approach, rather than a top down approach.

Next steps are really to get a bigger data set. Reliable conclusions are hard to claim when looking at such a small group. Also, I want to factoring in conversion rates to determine traffic value would add more context. So, more testing is on the way!

Brand Marketing, Web Analytics, Social Measurement, and the Future

2010-07-08T16:47:00.000-07:00

So often the topic of branding and marketing is coming up for me that I almost can't believe it. It seems like this is the thing everyone is trying to understand right now. I think it all started with social media and people trying to get their arms around what the value of it is. If there are 28 million tweets flying across the internet every day, that must represent some kind of value, right? The answer was assumed to be YES, and analysts when to work trying to find it.

But the answer has been elusive because it is a different answer than what people expected. Tweets can skyrocket. Visits from Facebook and Twitter and jump. Sales can stay flat. Sometimes there is a direct correlation with sales, but a lot of time there isn't. I don't think this is what many people expected. I know it is not what I expected.

But no one stopped there. If social doesn't drive sales, and we believe that it has values, then we just have to keep looking for what that value is.

The Social Media Situation
Jim Stern's book on Social Media Metrics is wonderful at working through this. For all us bean counters, he gives exhaustive lists of metrics that can be used to measure social media. But, to be honest, there are so many metrics it is almost like a sarcastic joke saying "You can apply almost any metric to this". There is just no guarantee the numbers will be what you want to see.

But there is a way to make more sense out of it. In talking through measuring outcomes, Sterne mentions that social can be used to see "storm clouds on the horizon" (p.115). In this way, tracking social sentiment is like weather forecasting. Although everyone knows how unreliable weather forecasting is, it is still useful as an early indicator of where things may be going in the (near) future. This is important because when that future becomes the present and you need to engage in actual revenue generating activities, your results may be better or worse than expected. If you can get some advanced warning of performance, then you can plan accordingly. This, of course, is very useful if there is negative sentiment to be overcome. New messaging can be created in the next campaign and hopefully the tide can be turned and that campaign will do better than expected. Sterne goes on at length about this in his book, several times.

How Branding Fits In
Branding seems to fall strongly in line with this approach. Brian Lesser wrote an interesting article on branding measurement and expectations that perplexed me at first. He writes:

A variety of branding campaign goals can be measured, including how a campaign reaches an audience beyond the advertiser's core customers, how it lifts brand awareness and recognition, and how it drives traffic to the website...

More importantly, the click-through and conversion metrics that are central to measuring direct response campaigns are almost irrelevant for most branding campaigns.

I have to say it was a bit perplexing to me, because you can't pay the bills with good intentions. At the end of the day, revenue and profit keep the lights on. Avinash Kaushik recognizes this in "A clear line of sight to net income." Stern devotes more than one chapter to it.

If you own an apple orchard, it is great to know how the summer weather is going to help or hurt you, but at the end of the day, no matter what, you need to sell apples.

This last part seems to be not only left out of so many of the conversations on branding and social media, it is almost violently ejected from the conversation. This seems like a huge mistake to me.

Business intelligence needs a business to support. It cannot be an end unto itself. But the conversations are seeming so polarized to me, especially lately.

Why does Lesser disconnect brand from conversions? I'm not sure, but my guess is that he intends it to be seen only as a part of a bigger picture, and not be mistaken for a complete approach unto itself.

When I think about where to go with this and how to use it in a cohesive way, it seems that there are a couple takeaways:

Don't ever forget that revenue is the goal. Conversion metrics matter. You gotta sell apples.
People will not buy your product if they do not like your company (usually).
Understanding what people think of your brand is like weather forecasting and there are new tools coming on the market almost everyday that can help you read the horizon.
AFTER you have an idea of what is on the horizon--what the marketplace thinks of you--use branding to build on strengths and address weaknesses. Continually do this--monitor and message--as long as you need to and/or can afford to. Measurement is critical.

This stepped approach seems to make a lot of sense.

Measuring sentiment leads to brand messaging (and social outreach) which helps fertilize the ground for response marketing that drives sales.

When used in this way, brand and social activities fit nicely into the revenue generation process.

The Google Adwords Sandbox

2010-06-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

When a new search campaign starts out, many clients are totally impressed by how well it works and what a great regurne then are getting. The search campaign seems like the best thing they have done so far--it drives traffic and leads, it doesn't cost too much, and their ad is possiitioned right at the top fo the search page just as they always imagined. things are great.

Then, two weeks later, the drop happens. Their costs go up, they get less visitors, and their amazing search ad does not appear every time they search for it in Google. "What happened?!" they ask.

What happened was that they reached the end of the Adwords testing period. The honeymoon is over, and google has collected its data and made its judgements. Your ad moves down 2 positions, your CTR goes with it, your CPC goes up, and your traffic slows down. This kind of shift in behavior is normal, but an unpleasant surprise to most clients. What they frequently don't understand is that Google has been super-charging their account for the past two weeks in order to see how it will perform. During this time, they get lots of impressions and strong ranking. Google is watching the Click through rates. Measuring the landing page relevance. Making judgements.

A less dramatic example:

In accounts where a lot of changes are going on in the first couple weeks, this pattern may not be as evident. But that does not mean that Google is not doing the same type of testing in the background. Consequently, changes made in the first 2 weeks of a paid search campaign may be premature. Unless you are trying to correct an obvious miscalculation, it may be better to wait for the dust to settle and the humps to start before you start reconfiguring your SEM plans.

Boating and The Value of Web Analytics

2010-05-04T10:48:00.001-07:00

There is a fundamental value system inherent in the basic concept of even having analytics at all. At the very bottom of it all is the idea that knowing what your marketing and website are doing--how they are being recieved and utilized--is important to know because it can help you make better decisions. This is many times called "data driven decision making". It is also called "informed decision making". It is the idea that doing, then learning, then adjusting course is good. I have not met a single decision maker who would ever admit to not wanting to make data driven decisions. Everyone says information is important. Absolutely everyone.

But not everyone really lives that out in their actual process. I veiw this as one of the biggest tasks of the analytics consultant. Perhaps you have been faced with this situation also. You present a report. You have solid findings. You start talking about it in a group. The conversation goes seveal directions. The action items at the end are a little data driven, but mostly whatever seemed like the most attention getting.

Many marketing organizations operate like they are playing boats. Imagine you are sitting on the shore of a small pond. On the other side of the pond are little boat slips. The game is to get as many boats into the slips as possible. There are two ways you can do this. The first way is to push as many boats out there as you can and hope for the best. Just keep launching; something's gotta hit. The second way is to launch fewer boats and take the time to guide them into the slip--adjust course along the way.

The basic principle of any analytics implimentation is that it is better to take the time to guide the boats home.

Many organizations operate by pushing as many little boats out there as they can and hope for the best.

In order to be successful in analytics, it is the highest priority of the analytics worker to change the culture of the organization to a "fewer and better" one. Show that better results are gained from taking the time to drive that little boat, steer it, give it a motor and keep it going, make a longer term plan for it than just the launch. This is especially important for SEO and social, but all marketing campaigns need this kind of attention.

This shift of culture can be the hardest part of the work, because it can involve retraining the thinking of the people you work with/for in a way that does not make it seem like you are trying to be a "know-it-all" pain in the ass. Many of these people are good at what they do, have been doing what they are doing for years, and have a lot of confidence in their judgement and their abilities. It may be impossible to shift their thinking and planning processes completely. But with enough patience and time and honest intentions, you can make a difference.

What are some ways to get this shift happening? Here are some ideas:

1. Always push for analytics whenever you can. Get a data driven foot in the door as much as possible.

2. Present the results in as user-friendly and understandable way as possible, even if you have to sacrifice "best practices" at first.

3. Think through what needs to be done, summarize it, write it down, and reference it as much as needed.

4. Be as helpful as possible. Make new ways of doing things painless.

5. Have a lot of patience. It will take a long time for people to actually start changing behavior. It is much easier to say you want to be data driven than it is to actaully be data driven.

6. Remember the end goal. It is about bottom line performance and even the best analytics cannot always predict that.

Those little boats need to get home. We can help them.

Which Touch? Going Past Last Touch Attribution in Google Analytics, a response

2010-04-15T18:04:00.000-07:00

The guys at SEOMOZ have done some great thinking in their article "How to get past last touch attribution with Google Analytics" describing how to tinker with Google Analytics to get more than last touch attribution out of organic search referrals.

Referencing Avinash's post on the value of "Upper funnel" keywords and several very interesting articles on how to build custom filters, they lay out a theory for how this could work.

"First touch attribution" is the first topic they take on. Here the theory is that first touch keywords (upper funnel keywords) are the real stars. Since they do the introducing they should be getting conversion credit. Repeat visitors who use branded phrases and convert are only there because of the topic first touch. This accounts for the higher conversion rate of branded search repeat visitors, but credit should really be given to the first touch. The SEOMOZ guys do an interesting job of showing how to create the filters and settings to show first touch attribution in Google Analyics.

This is an interesting proposition and worth investigating. However, I am skeptical. In my experience, low priced products convert better from topical search while high priced products convert better from branded search. For topical search conversions, we don't need to dig any further. But branded higher priced purchases speak to the power and improtance of brand in the psychology of the buying cycle. This is ignored (maybe even discounted) by first touch attribution and the SEOMOZ article. Even if topical search is attracting new visitors, brand is an undenighable influencer in big ticket and/or multi-touch purchasing decisions. If you were to start taking your eye off your branded, repeat traffic in favor of first touch metrics, you could very well misunderstand your audience and their motivations.

The only way to work out the value of this and how to weight the metrics would be to run a test and see the results. The test would have to collect all touch data so it could be evaluated. This gets to the second part of the SEOMOZ article--multi-touch attribution.

"Multi-touch attribution" is involved collecting all the referral data and then, normally, weighting it. First touch and last touch are the main points of interest. The content and quality of the touches in between are informative. Everything is given an "assist" value to weight its importance.

Here the SEOMOZ article has an interesting, but most-likely unworkable solution, especially if your website has any real volume of traffic.

I appauld them for pointing out how it is possible by using a combination of filters and scripting to collect this information. I also applaud them for recognizing that this would absolutely require a data export and external manipulation. However, where they say a pivot table, I'm betting it would be more like a database and some creative SQL if your website has any volume at all. This is because by concatenating the sources together into the _setCustomVar value in Google Analytics, you are essentially creating automatic segmentation and your variations are going to multiply uncontrollably. Eventually you could have a quantity of segments equal to the number of visitors you have. Only those who followed exactly the same series of keywords and sources could be aggregated together. Because of this, I have a hard time seeing how this could be applied in any way outside a test environment unless more software and infrastructure was inserted into the mix to handle the post-processing of the GA data.

They also mention the concept of assigning value to the assist visits, but this is more completely thought through in C3 Metrics' whitepaper.

Overall, I think the guys at SEOMOZ have done a great job in starting to unravel the intricacies of crediting multiple sources and how that might work with Google Analytics. And, honestly, I'm thinking about how to start working some of this into my own clients' analytics. However, there are a lot of assumptions going on here, some untested theories, some early summer dreaming, and implimentation in a production environment seems pretty far away.

But then, isn't that how everything great starts out?

Social Media is Changing the Game for Small Business

2010-04-04T13:41:00.000-07:00

Contributed by Tom Bennett

Small businesses often need to focus marketing that creates immediately measurable results, usually focused at having people take action (buy or sign up, or call). Historically this has created a very tactical approach to marketing. It’s about spending dollars to make things happen. Now with the rise of Social Media, there is a new opportunity to use low-cost tools to engage in more sophisticated activities like customer engagement and brand development.

You might be hearing a lot about Facebook and Twitter, and all might seem a bit silly. How can a small company take advantage in this space when it’s all grannies and frat boys? Why would a company want to “invest” time and effort? How does this help my small business?

Social Media is especially good for small business

Think of it this way: If there was a town square, where everyone went to have a huge party, share ideas, ask for referrals, and talk about their favorite solutions for things, wouldn’t you want to be part of that conversation? If you didn’t go, and you later heard that people were actually talking about your business anyway, and it wasn’t very flattering, is that worth your time to correct? People are out there talking about everything you can imagine. They are talking about you. No one can speak better about your company or brand than you can, so participate.

When someone goes to a social network like Facebook asks their friends for a referral for a good plumber, (and this happens, believe it.) they’re essentially looking for an easy way to know and trust a partner. They don’t want to spend time calling around for a plumber, hoping that the first guy that shows up knows how to wear a belt. They want a shortcut to a good relationship with a pro. Consumers are 78% more willing to believe recommendations from friends, or even from other consumers before they will believe advertising. Small businesses that can recognize this need and make it easy will win.

So how do you get started? Starting with an email address, it’s free to setup a Facebook account. Get on there and look around, and try it for yourself. Be a consumer, and ask friends for information. See how they react and share. If you want to get started with marketing, there are lots of resources on Facebook itself, or ask us we can give you pointers.

The important thing is to start. It costs nothing, and you’ll learn a lot quickly. It is about sharing and contribution, being present in the networks, and fostering a relationship with customers and prospects before they need to call you. That kind of work can build brand equity for your business: and that’s worth real money.

About Tom
Tom is a Marketing Strategist at The New Group in Portland, Oregon, where he guides online marketing for major brands in B2B and B2C. Besides pursuing the latest in communication and marketing technologies, he is a big fan of how Social Media will bring changes in how we communicate and collaborate.

Attain SEM Success Through Authority

2010-04-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

Build authority and improve ROI for your brand by combining SEO, PPC, and Social Media

Contributed by Ben Lloyd

A lot of the thinking we do about search these days revolves around this concept of authority. As the SEM industry has matured, we are beginning to understand that the interplay of PPC and SEO and Social Media enhances the perception of your brand as an authority and improves results.

The driving principles of SEO have always been content and authority (in the form of links). Since Google came around – this principle has never changed even as the tactics have. As the search results page has gotten more competitive, and social media has started shedding light on a brand’s strengths and flaws - it has become more important and difficult to cut through the noise and capture attention. Improving the perception of your brand as an authority can help you do this.

THE SYNERGY OF ORGANIC (SEO) and PAID SEARCH (PPC)
To command more authority – combine a well-executed paid search campaign with your organic presence and experience the pay off with better results from both. When your site shows up for your targeted terms in both the organic and paid portions of the results page – you’ll experience increased click through rates and conversion rates from the search results page. Not only do you own more of the search results page real estate, which gives you a better shot at capturing a click, but one could argue that there’s a gain in brand perception and credibility as well. When your brand appears in both organic and paid listings, users are more confident in your brand and therefore more willing to click through and buy from you.

Both of the following charts reflect data uncovered in a 2009 NYU Stern School of Business study on the effects of having an Organic (SEO) and Paid (PPC) presence in search engines

Figure 1: Click Through Rates increase for terms where you have both an organic (SEO) and paid (PPC) presence.

Figure 2: Conversion Rates increase for terms where you have both an organic and paid result. Perhaps having a presence in both improves your credibility?

THE SYNERGY OF PAID SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Building on this idea of authority, a 2009 eMarketer study “The Synergy of Search and Social Media” demonstrated two key points.

Consumers exposed to a brand in social media and paid search were much more likely to search on the brand.
That consumers exposed to paid search along with influenced social media had a 50% increase in click through rate on paid search ads.

Demonstrating your command of and authority in the space enhances the perception of your brand and encourages click through.

Figure 3: Searchers exposed to your brand on social media and paid search (like Google PPC) are MUCH more likely to keep your brand in mind and search on it again.

Figure 4: The effect is even more pronounced when it comes to product terms rather than brand terms.

SEO and SOCIAL MEDIA
When it comes to SEO – authority is the name of the game and links = authority. Social media has been a godsend for SEOs. Any SEO will tell you that link acquisition is the hardest part of the job… A solid Social Media strategy can make the job easier. Not only have search engines started to incorporate social media signals into their ranking algorithms, but social media also makes it easier to put your content in front of people who can and will link to it. The publicity that social media can give your content can help your site acquire links AND influence those social media signals that search engine algorithms are looking for. As a result, your SEO should be a key stakeholder in your social media strategy.

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER
Let’s take a look at the relationships here:

SEO and PPC both benefit when your listing shows up in both
Users exposed to PPC and Social Media are more likely to keep your brand in mind and search for it again
SEO and Social Media can work hand in hand to drive links and create the signals that search engines are looking for

To sum it all up – when you properly execute and leverage SEO, PPC and Social Media, you can enhance your brand’s perception as an authority and help it stand out above the crowd.

About Ben Lloyd
Amplify Interactive is a boutique firm focused on search engine and social media marketing with clients ranging from the high-tech B2B sector to lifestyle and consumer goods companies. Ben is also a co-founder and the current President of SEMpdx.

Is Your Brand Ripe for Community Building?

2010-04-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

If a bunch of surfers could do it, why can’t you?

Contributed by Kris Larson

Brand communities are about lifestyle and affiliation and they are nothing more or less than a place where people of like mind, with a shared passion or interest, can go to affiliate with each other and be a part of something bigger than themselves.

With that definition in mind, I point to one of the first brand communities built in the 60’s by surfers, of all people. Although this may be a surprise to some people, brand communities do not rely on social media to exist. Nor are social media communities necessarily the same thing as brand communities.

Surfers created one of the first lifestyle communities that evolved over time into a series of brand communities. Magazines and movies showcased a laid-back lifestyle that featured amazing images of big waves, and bold surfers with exotic names like Duke Kahanamoku, and Greg “Da Bull” Noll. Surfers even had their own music with bands like Dick Dale and the Deltones, The Ventures, and of course, the Beach boys.

Movies like “Endless Summer” let us in on how surfers lived, traveled, and viewed the world. “Gidget” made surfing the most popular sport in America when it came out.

Surfing (founded 1964) and Surfer (founded 1960) celebrated a counter-culture lifestyle and become the voice of a “tribe” of surfers and surf enthusiasts: people who just wanted to look like, sound like, and hang out with surfers.

Early marketers like Greg Knoll and Dewey Weber used their surf “cred” to build and sell surfboards with their custom marks that every surfer wannabe had to have. Even Mickey Dora, AKA “Da Kat,” who supposedly rued the commercialism created out of the surfing lifestyle, was cashing in with his name-brand surfboards.

Smart marketers took notice and started leveraging the community to promote their lifestyle brands. Early adopters included Mr Zogg’s Sex Wax, Billabong and O’Neill.

So what can we learn about building a brand community from these people who did it so well?

First of all, marketers did not create the community. The community existed first, before anyone even thought about using it to sell stuff to people. The community was actually created by the enthusiasts. The marketers just found a way to cash in on it.

And this tells me that maybe brand communities can’t be created by every single company in the world who has something to sell. Maybe it only works well for those companies with a product or service that are already catering to an active and engaged community base. Take Harley Davidson, for example. There is a great case study of how they reinvented their entire business based on the brand their community of enthusiasts created for them. Source: Harvard Business Review: Best Practice Case Study: Harley-Davidson (April 2009).

Ideas of places where community and engagement make sense (and therefore social media makes sense) are those that contain an element of passion, hobbyism, or intellectual interest.

Companies that are providing products, services and events (engagement) in these areas may be prime candidates for creating or leveraging a brand community:

Industries that require ongoing learning and development to stay current such as:

IT
Internet Developers
Marketing
Social Media Consultants
Education
Healthcare
Etc.

Products or Services that appeal to enthusiasts who share a love or passion for a sport, hobby, or activity such as:

Surfing
Skiing
Boarding
Rock Climbing
Knitting
Sewing
Cooking
Art

Or products or services that can tie-into a community with a mission

Cancer patient support
Weight loss motivation
Political action groups
Youth ministry

However, if you or your client do not have a strong brand and is not affiliated with a big idea, lifestyle, or interest of your core customer-base, I’d recommend spending your limited marketing resources elsewhere. Because after all, who cares enough to spend their precious moments signing up for your Facebook page, Twitter account, and multiple blog feeds just to see the latest announcements about your product or company? What’s in it for them?

This is the question marketers need to be thinking about the next time they’re tempted to plaster a client’s home page with social media buttons. What exactly are you offering customers? Are you turning off prospects, or engaging them? Are you only doing it because the boss says its cool? What is your strategy?

If you’d like to test your company’s readiness to build a brand community, there’s a nifty little online quiz created by the Harvard Business Review called “The Community Readiness Audit”:

http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2009/04/getting-brand-communities-right/ar/1

I’d love to hear your feedback on how you and your clients are using social media -- either successfully, or not so successfully. I’d also like to hear your thoughts on other types of companies, industries or products or services that could tap into a lifestyle and create a brand community. Kris Larson’s blog is currently under construction, but I’ll be following the conversation here.

About Kris Larson

I’ve been building brands and creating integrated marketing solutions for companies for many years. Some of the companies I’ve worked with include: L.A. Gear, Computer Sciences Corporation, Technicolor and AnimationMentor.com.

Lose 10 lbs. with Google Analytics

2010-04-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Let me start off by putting two ideas out there:

1. I don't think I'm alone in admitting that winter usually brings with it a little extra. Holiday dinners and cold rainy weather have a tendency to keep me home and sedentary. But spring is here, and I'm ready for some outdoor activity. With my Droid, I have an abundance of apps that are made for tracking how far and how fast I can go.

2. There is a thing in analytics called "onclick tracking". Onclick tracking is when you make a call back to the analytics platform and tell it to record an event when something is clicked. This is really important for finding out things like how many people clicked on links that took them off your website. Onclick tracking is also good for recording how many people submitted a form when there is no "thank you" page. Onclick tracking is essential in AJAX environments. Onclick tracking can help you understand what people are reading when you use CSS to hide and display information on a page. Overall, onclick tracking is amazingly versatile and important.

One day these two ideas combined in my mind: Why not use Google Analytics to track and trend how much exercise I do? A simple web interface, a little math, and some creatively named onclick calls could bring it all together.

Select the activity.
Start the timer.
Stop the timer.
Do some math to get the number of minutes.
Send those minutes up using an onclick call that records each minute as a specially named page view.
The date is automatically recorded by GA, and the info will be aggregated and trended effortlessly.

By nesting the names correctly, you could even track and set alerts for how much of each kind of exercise you want to do.

Re-purposing Page Views is the Key
For this you need to use page views. Why? Because, then we can configure GA to track our calories and/or minutes of exercise as "goals". Once we track them as goals, we can use Intelligence to send us alerts if we are not keeping up with our routine. Want to do 30 minutes a day of exercise? Set a custom alert to look for a value of less than 150 per week of Goal 1. You'll get a nice reminder from Google, letting you know that you are falling behind on your routine.

"Events" (the other basic unit of measure in GA) won't work because it cannot be used to set up goal tracking.

You could track and set goals for all your exercise needs--calories burned, miles jogged, buckets sweated.

Track Anything with Google Analytics
You could open the horizons even further and track almost anything you need tracked--miles driven, client hours billed, dollars spent on groceries, phone calls received. Anything that can be distilled down to an integer recorded over time can be tracked. The opportunities for what you could do with Google Analytics Life Tracking are huge.

Build a web interface for your call center and integrate your incoming phone calls with your online campaigns using shared campaign codes and custom parameters. With a bit more work, web to phone tracking in one unified analytics view becomes possible.

All you need is a good web programmer, a solid analytics strategist, and some creativity to start looping those page views.

Before you know it, you'll have lost those 10 lbs. and have the analytics to prove it!

Creating a Marketing Performance Dashboard

2010-03-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

Most managers are in love with the idea of an information "dashboard". The appeal is universal--a wonderous little view into how things are going that is easy to understand and quick to access. The promise of easy, meaningful information that auto-magically updates itself is a siren song to busy managers who are trying to make decisions on the go.

I don't know how marketing dashboards got this reputation, but they seldom live up to it. And I don't think they ever will. In order to make well informed decisions you need more than a snapshot. Drill down reports are required. Distilled analysis plays a large part. Balancing options, understanding variables, fuzzy forecasting, and internal politics are the real ways decisions are made and priorities set. Most everyone wants to be making "data driven decisions", but usually data is only one component in decision stew.

Seeing this for what it is, I have had an on again-off again relationship with marketing dashboards. There was a time when I thought they were wonderful and tried to make them for everything. Then I was struck by their limitations and turned away from them. But now I'm finding some room for them again.

It is the understanding of what a marketing dashboard is that is important. In client services, we call this "managing expectations". When dashboards are involved, there are a lot of expectations that need to be managed. This can be difficult. Romantic dashboard daydreams are not easily dispelled. But, it is possible.

What a Marketing Dashboard Is Good For
What a marketing dashboard is good for is finding problems and successes. Like key performance indicators (KPIs), the dashboard is really just a temperature gage. You'll not get any complete answer from a dashboard, but you will get some idea of what the landscape looks like and where to go hunting if there are problems.

Your marketing dashboard is only the starting point. It is a summary. It is a paraphrase. It is the elevator pitch. It is a news brief. It is a 10,000 foot view. It is shallow and superficial. Most importantly, it is a short-cut.

When you see things moving in a positive way on your marketing dashboard, celebrate. Then provide additional information on what worked.

When you see things moving in a negative way on your marketing dashboard, cringe. Then provide additional information on what went wrong.

It is the additional information that is the real stuff to help decision-makers. The marketing dashboard simply gives some help to decide what to talk about.

A Marketing Dashboard Example
Here is a screen shot of the general traffic section of a dashboard I recently created for a client.

You can see that the information is by no means complete. However, in one view you get a very good feel of where their traffic comes from, what the value of that traffic is, what the 6 month trend is, and what the successes and opportunities are. From here we talk about specifics.

How to get more traffic from social.
How to improve organic topical search.
How to get all traffic to convert better.
How to get campaign traffic to bounce less.

So many additional topics to cover, all guided by a single view that is quick and easy to digest.

Now I have formed a new, more mature relationship with dashboards. And I think this one will last.

The Value of Adwords Local Paid Search

2010-02-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

I have consulted with many small businesses about their local search needs. These are businesses who live off the local market--attorneys, tradesmen and other service providers that cannot sell their services nationally. They want to use the internet to help them. They are building or upgrading their websites. They are interested in some local advertising and they are thinking about local paid search. We talk. I find out about their business, where they want to go, how they want to use search, and then I get back to them with some estimates and some hard realities.

The truth is that I have not found a local, small business that would get any real value out of Adwords local. Depending on their industry other services might work--CitySearch, Angie's List, etc. But because Google is synonymous with search, Adwords is invariably what they are looking for. After using the Google tools, we may set up a test account with a reasonable budget for a reasonable time. At the end we review the results. 90% of the time the answer is the same: "You can use Adwords Local if you want. It won't cost you much. But it won't deliver the volume of business you are looking for either." In the end, it becomes a question of do they want to put the time into managing it when they may only get a handful of leads every month. It almost never makes financial sense for me to manage it for them, and I tell them that right up front. The low volume keeps click costs down, but management time and energy are costs that need to be considered too.

We also have a conversation about bridging the online-offline gap for lead tracking. Local businesses almost always do better when someone calls them, rather than fill out a form on their website. How do you measure this? They may have anecdotal information about the number of calls they get that come from their website, but that is not really good enough for ROI calculations. When we get into topics like unique phone numbers and call tracking (most of which a small business does not have in place already), then the burden becomes greater.

There is a lot of promise in local search and many people forecasting it to be the future of search. This also means it may be the future of search marketing dollars. However, I can't in good conscious sit down with a 2 person law office and sell them the benefits of local paid search without also being realistic about the insignificant impact it will most likely have on their business.

Like I said, other services like CitySearch or SuperPages may be a better fit for them. Unfortunately, half the time these businesses have already tried this and been turned off by the costs and poor results.

So, when is paid local search a good value?

1. Get the tracking in place to measure it correctly.
2. Have almost no expectations around the volume of business it will produce.
3. Be willing to try some short term testing campaigns with a reasonable budget.
4. Be willing to learn to manage it for yourself.

If this sounds okay, then Adwords Local may be just right for you!

Social Media and SEO Webinar by Webmarketing123

2010-02-03T17:46:00.000-08:00

Here are my notes from this webinar I attended today. Overall, I gave the webinar a 3 out of 5 but there were some key problems with it.

SEO Benefits
1. Very high ROI (1st page = free marketing)
2. No direct cost for unqualified clicks (a big worry in PPC)
3. Stability--good sites that rank well stay ranking well.
4. A Google serp listing is essentially a trusted 3rd party endorsement.

My comment
The key here is " no direct cost". SEO normally is an indirect cost. One of my clients is spending a ton of money on a new website and one of the primary motivators is to get more benefit from SEO. That is certainly a cost, but what kind of cost? And how do you measure ROI for it? In fact, it is almost impossible to truely measure ROI for an SEO effort. The points about stability and endorsement are good ones. The issue of cost is a complicated one that is being over simplified and maybe a little mis-stated by Webmarketing123.

Social Benefits
1. Humanizes your business, creates relationships and dialogs
2. Encourages loyalty and brand trust
3. Provides a way to be responsive to concerns

Website Optimization
1. Onsite Factors:

Keywords in the title,
Keywords in the URL
Keywords in the visible page content. Keyword density is not as important as creating a keyword theme across several pages.
Keywords in your internal links.

2. Offsite Factors:

Keywords in the anchor text of links coming from credible websites.

My comments
This is all pretty basic SEO stuff. One thing I think they were soft on was the value of the keywords in the URL. The examples for this were of users reading the URL and understanding where the link went. Considering this section of the presentation was about SEO and algorithm influencers, using a human example was not relevant. Sure, it's nice that people will understand the URL, but how do the bots understand the URL? That is the SEO factor.

How to Twitter -- Social Media Example 1
They used Zappos as an example.

1. Use @ replies
2. Re-tweeting content is flattering to the original tweeter.
3. Include casual tweets along with your business tweets. This adds personality and makes your tweeting more interesting.
4. You don't always have to include links in your tweets, but use a lot over all.

How to Facebook -- Social Media Example 2
They used Betty Crocker as the example.

1. Wall posts engage your fans.
2. "likes" are viral because they get reposted.
3. Comments become viral because they get reposted.
4. @name references become viral because they get reposted.
5. Pictures, vids and events are more engaging and appealing than just text posts.

For B2B, Facebook offers higher qualified leads, but not high quantity like B2C might. This is a key differentiator B2B users should understand.

My Comments
Calling the Facebook spam-house "viral" seems like a stretch to me. It can be viral if it is propagated by other users, but I wouldn't say it's viral by default.

How to Linked In Groups -- Social Media Example 3
1. Discussions get the most activity
2. The News tab has updates
3. You get more comments if you make more updates.

There was a question from the audience about how to reach "C" level people (CEO, CIO, etc.) with social media. The answer was that even though these people are doing social media, you probably won't be able to reach them (what!?). Who you should shoot for are the "gate keepers" and decision influencers who can take your message to the "C" level decision makers. I really didn't find this answer helpful at all.

Tracking Social with Google Analytics
Pros -- You can see which websites refer traffic.
Cons -- Can't see what they do when they get to your website. Can't see who they are or what they are saying.

My comment
What?!? They went so fast through this section that I doubt these people have ever used Google Analytics. This analysis is completely wrong. So wrong, in fact, I'm wondering if I misunderstood what they said. I tried to go back and listen to the webinar on their website, but the link was broken. 123-Fail.

Brand Monitoring
Measuring sentiment is extremely important. Use tools to measure volume of positive and negative comments. Make sure to double check what the tool says, because tools can't recognize sarcasm.

The only tool they mentioned was www.socialmention.com, even through they were emphatic about the need to measure and monitor comments.

My comment
This section on measurement was full of emotion and emphasis but had very little substance. Also, tools don't recognize sarcasm thereby requiring you to double check their findings, how useful is that tool?

Social Helps SEO
Blogs were the main reason that social helps SEO by optimizing inbound links to your main site.

If you start your own blog, there are two ways to do it and they each have a different benefit.

blog.yourdomain.com. Using a sub-domain helps create inbound links to your main website.

yourdomain.com/blog. Using a sub-folder helps with content development.

Use social listings and your main site to own the whole 1st page for your keywords.

Real Time Search is coming and catapults social commenting into prime SERP position.

My Comment
This is a valuable thing to point out because most companies that want to start blogs have no idea about the different kinds of value a blog can represent.

My Overall Summary
This webinar was good for beginners, but lacked any real substance for people who work in this industry. The section on measurement was particularly weak to the point of being misleading. The section on SEO costs was incorrectly stated. They did make a few good points though, and provided some good (very general) guidelines for how to use social media. In general, the relationship between social and SEO was pretty superficially stated. I rated it a 3 for basic info about social and SEO. As someone who has a special interest in measurement, it would score lower.

Web Metrics Are Not Right for Everyone

2009-12-30T11:35:00.000-08:00

In reporting, there is a constant tension between giving too much data and not giving enough. To tell the story, we pull numbers from all over the place. Because, as analytists, we need to know all of it, sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that everyone else needs to know all of it too. This is simply not the case.

One of the most important functions of an analyst is to be a filter. Knowing who needs to know what is very important. Not everything is salient to every person. In Stephen Few's book, he identifies this distinction by identifying different types of dashboards--executive, analyst, and operational. Even if you are not building dashboards, it is critical to know which peices of the data puzzle to show to whom. To this end, the most important distinction to recognize is that there is tactical information and there is strategic information.

Strategic information is what you show at a business review. Strategic information is what you show to the VP. Strategic information is the support for the direction you want to take. Strategic information answers the question "I gave you $100, why did you spend it that way?"

Strategic information helps you answer the question "If I gave you another $100, where would you spend it?"

Tactical information is how to get the most out of your $100.

Tactical information is useful for optimizing a campaign, not the justification for creating a campaign. Weekly performance reviews are full of tactical information. This is where web metrics is strongest.

Web metrics are almost always tactical metrics.

Click through rate has no strategic value, but it is tremendously useful for optimizing a campaign.

Time on site is only a means to an end.

Ranking #1 in Google may drive traffic, but won't guarantee sales.

These are the metrics that often get confused for strategic information. Then they get reported up the food chain. Next thing you know, the VP is editing ad text and dictating landing page design. This is not a good situation! These situations can be helped by realizing who needs to know what. Let's admit it--senior managers can get a bit control-freaky. There is nothing most MBAs like better than to sink their teeth into a big bite of data and figure it out. Because of the amount and complexity of tactical data, this stuff is like a big juicy peach to them. If you show it, they will grab on with both hands.

Analysts must have a backbone

This brings me to my last critical function for an analyst. Analysts must have a backbone. I have sat through too many meetings (and have occasionally been guilty of this myself) where someone is called on to present some findings and they show a whole stack of charts and tables, disescting the information from all sorts of views. It is all very confusing, so a senior person makes some requests of what to see next time. This sends the analyst off to do more research and at the next meeting they are back with a whole stack of different slides that are all very confusing. So a senior person makes more requests, and it goes around and around. This kind of tail chasing can be stopped by the analyst, if they only had some backbone.

Here is what backbone gets you:

A concise story to tell that is not full of tangental information--decide what is important and leave the rest out.
Meetings that are on time and fulfilling--cut down on confusion and cut down on questions and cut down on time.
More room to do your work--if you present with confidence and knowledge, you gain respect and people don't muddle around in your stuff as much.

If you have backbone and you understand the difference between tactical and strategic information, your job as an analyst will get a lot easier.

A SEO Content Development Framework for Every Company

2009-11-15T14:30:00.000-08:00

I want to put a few observations out there:

Observation #1: Everyone is looking for organic search engine rankings. Is it the down economy? Is it the hype created by SEO firms? Is it the odd marketing report with an ambiguous "organic" lead source category and outrageous conversion rates? Probably all these things. Maybe other things. Regardless, at the start of the day, everyone is asking "How can I get my website to #1 in Google?"

Observation #2: Everyone says they understand the importance of written content. "Content is King!" is plastered into reports and presentations. Businesses are blogging and posting newsletters on Facebook and tweeting updates. Everyone is turning to their copywriters and asking for more.

Observation #3: It is common knowledge that search engines use keywords to categorize and rank their content. Everyone knows it. Everyone agrees with it. Very few businesses understand it. So they hire SEO firms to come in, recommend keywords, tell them what edits to make, and they get billed over and over again for something they don't understand and don't know how to measure.

The truth is, more and more I am finding a fundamental lack of strategic thinking which is being perpetuated by SEO firms which keep their clients in the dark about how to develop content in a search friendly way that is designed to meet business critical needs. This perpetuates a broken system designed to create dependence on SEO firms.

So many times I sit down with a company because they want to rank well in Google organic listings, and they think there is some black box of secret knowledge around keywords and how to use them. Why? Because that's what the last guy who was collecting a monthly paycheck from them led them to believe. The client has no idea where the keywords came from or why they were recommended. It's all just "SEO", and they are not the experts. So they pay out lots of money every month to someone to tell them what to do for reasons that are never well explained and results that are usually poorly measured.

It's time to break the cycle.

SEO firms have to start educating their clients on how to strategically develop content that is designed to rank well in search engines. It is not hard to do. It is not secret knowledge. It is something any company can manage. They just need a little education. They just need to shift their thinking small amounts. They just need a slightly different way of seeing. Any SEO firm out there knows what this looks like. But so few SEO clients do.

Every company with a website should have a strategic content development plan that includes keyword relevance. I starts with this:

What does your company do?
What do you want to be known as an authority on?
How do your customers talk about (and search) for your products?
How does your voice in the market place relate to the above three questions?

If a company can answer these 4 questions, then all they need is some discipline in the form of a Strategic Content Development Workflow for Search Engine Performance.

SEO firms should stop charging their clients for monthly keyword updates and help them get a solid content creation workflow in place. This is the difference between being a keyword vendor and a strategic partner. It makes good sense for the business and it makes good sense for the SEO firm.

SEO firms, it is far better to be a valued partner who is an important contributor to helping businesses grow rather than simply being a human keyword look up tool.

Businesses, you will be much better served by having a content plan that is rooted in your strengths and cognizant of your audience's voice rather than sprinkling some keywords here and there because your SEO firm told you to.

Web Analytics Strategy Part 3

2009-08-31T20:56:00.000-07:00

Another post for the folks at Amplify Interactive.

Here is an except:

Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) are two of the best examples of how to use Web analytics to improve your website's and your business's performance. Search engine marketing (SEM) and Web analytics are made for each other. Once you understand how search marketing metrics work, you will have insight into almost every key measurement aspect of any online marketing program...

Beyond the Basics: Goals and Conversions
"Goals and conversions" should be included in the basic metrics for every marketing campaign. Determining how many people become a lead or customer as a result of a marketing program is critical to knowing if your they are successful. However, I did not put "goals and conversions" in the basics group for two reasons:

It's surprising how many organizations do not have clearly defined goals and conversion points identified in their websites,
and if they do, Many times the Web analytics platform is not configured correctly to capture this information.

Understanding your conversion paths and setting up your Web analytics platform to capture the important information about your visitors as they travel your conversion paths is a key benefit of using an analytics specialist. When goals and segments are defined and combined, you can find a wealth of information about how to make your website more valuable and profitable. It is absolutely worth your time and effort to properly implement goal & conversion tracking.

Read the whole web analytics strategy article.

Web Analytics Strategy 2

2009-08-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

The nice folks at Amplify Interactive have posted another short article from me about web analytics. Here is an abstract from it:

Analyzing marketing results takes time, more time than most people anticipate. Creating a regular schedule and setting aside time specifically for reviewing & analyzing results will help you manage that time better. If possible, get a marketing analyst to help you with this. You’ll have more time to think through the results and make more thoughtful plans.

You can read the entire web analytics post on the Amplify blog.

Eight Search Metrics You Should Always Look At

2009-08-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

Lots of businesses have paid search and organic programs, but not everyone knows how to measure them and how they are different. Because these two types of marketing are so different in many ways, it's good to know what key performance indicators are specific to each.

There are some generic metrics that are important for both Organic and Paid search. Metrics such as keyword conversion rate, bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit, form abandonment, etc. Most of these look more at user behavior patterns associated with a specific traffic driver than the program itself. But when we are looking to evaluate the performance of a particular initiative, there are some additional and unique key performance indicators to keep in mind.

Organic Search Metrics
Organic search is traditionally what people want when they think of search engines. Referrals from organic search are perceived to be higher value and the medium is perceived to be free. But it could take months before you realize the benefits of your organic optimization efforts, which are normally ongoing. Because of this, determining if your organic search initiatives are a success requires looking for metrics that speak more to the idea that your website is gaining awareness. Here are four unique performance indicators to look for in your analytics:

Total visitors from organic search. If the total volume of organic search visits is increasing, then your organic optimization efforts are probably working.

Percent of traffic from organic search. Combine this with the first item and if you are getting a greater percent of your traffic from search engines after doing an optimization effort, that is a good sign your efforts worked.

Percent of organic search traffic from topical phrases. Organic optimization normally focuses on increasing a website's presence on phrases that are topical, rather than brand specific. When you look through your referring keyword report, how many of them do not contain your brand or specific product name in them? This is your topical traffic. One rare example of when this is not the case is if you work for a company with an extraordinarily well-known name. In that case, you may be competing for your own brand!

Bounce Rates for Organic topical search vs. Organic branded search. This one is subtle, but important. Visitors who know your company name or the name of your product are generally considered to be higher value. They also tend to have better engagement (lower bounce rates, longer time on site) and higher conversion rates. If you do a good job at topical optimization for your website, you can increase the engagement of visitors who come to your website and know nothing about you. A good first indicator of this is the bounce rate. If your topical bounce rate starts moving toward your branded bounce rate, that is a very good sign. It's a great sign if it does even better!

Paid Search Metics
Unlike Organic search, Paid search is primarily an ad buy. Because of this, there are several performance indicators that are bottom line key numbers to evaluate. One thing to note is that most Paid search key performance indicators require a goal to compare to. Working with a marketing analyst to establish the goals of the campaign is an important first step to having a successful paid search program. Here are four metrics to keep an eye on:

Cost per conversion. Conversion will mean different things to different people. In general, I am talking about conversion as the most important action item a visitor can do on a website. I am not talking about the final sale that happens in an office somewhere off line; I'm talking about the web lead that got the person into the office in the first place. Knowing how much each lead/online sale is costing you and if that number is too high is key to knowing if your Paid search campaign is a going great.

Total leads generated. A paid search campaign is an investment with expectations. These expectations normally revolve around a desire to generate a particular amount of business. How well your paid search campaign is tracking to meet this end goal is key to determining its success. Failure here could cast doubt on the efficacy of paid search in general for you, your team, and/or your organization.

Conversion rate (conversions / visits). This is a generic number, but I'm calling it out here because paid search campaigns normally have custom landing pages that they drive traffic to. Having an analyst evaluate this number can be key to optimizing a core part of the paid search visitor experience. A landing page that turns people off can kill your effort.

Percent of budget spent, either daily or weekly. Not a metric people think of first, but how much of the budget is being utilized periodically is important to knowing if your paid search campaign is maximizing its potential. 100% utilization may indicate your ads are turning off earlier than you think, your keyword selection is too broad, your ad text is too generic, or the market demand is stronger than you anticipated. Less than 100% could indicate weak ad text or that the market is not as robust as anticipated. Percent of daily budget spent is one of those numbers that keeps you on your toes and can really help you right-size your program. If budget is fixed, shoot for 90%-95% utilization. If you can grow the budget and your other numbers look good, go for 100%!

Search Metrics in Summary
All online marketing programs share some metrics that are very helpful in determining what is working and what isn't. However, if you are trying to optimize your website for organic search and also running paid search ads, it's important to know what metrics are helpful to understanding each of these efforts. Organic metrics that look at how prevalent your website is becoming to search audiences are very important. Paid metrics that measure your program against predetermined goals are also very important. Having a marketing analyst work through these numbers with you can give you great insight into the health of your campaigns. It can even help you chart a course for your next campaign!

Web Analytics Step 1

2009-08-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

Some friends over at Amplify are expanding their service offering and asked me to write a piece on using web analytics for their blog. Here's an abstract:

Building a Web Analytics Strategy
This situation can be avoided, and the first step is to step away from your website analytics tool. Instead, sit down with yourself and the other business decision makers and decide what information is key for you to make a good decision. The services of an analytics consultant can be very helpful in facilitating this conversation. Some people will need the same information, some people will need completely different information, and some people will need similar but not quite the same information...Once you know what the key pieces of information are that you need to make well informed decisions, your analytics consultant can take those generic analytics reports and turn them into very valuable, actionable chunks of information.

>>Read the whole article

Information Dashboard Design Conclusion and Summary

2009-06-24T13:55:00.000-07:00

The final chapter Steven Few's Information Dashboard Design is really just a wrap up and final thoughts for dashboards. It is a short chapter and much lighter than the pervious ones. It mostly consists of him giving both good and bad examples of dashboards. I'm skipping his dashboard critiques, simply because I'd have to scan in all the images.

Chapter Eight

Come up with a lsit of questions about how the dashboard should function and ask the user what s/he thinks.

Sparklines show trends when just up or down is good enough.

Bullet bars show aggregate performance to goal.

Text shows actual value and is used to call out particulars.

Line graphs show more detailed info over time when time is especially important.

"To design dashboards that really work, you must focus on the fundamental goal: communication." (p. 201)

Information Dashboard Design Part 3

2009-06-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

Chapters six and seven of Information Dashboard Design talk about various considerations when putting a dashboard together--how the elements are percieved, what the best uses are for each, and how they work together to convey information.

Chapter Six

Display data based on the nature of the information, the nature of the message, and the needs and preferences of the audience.

Language is always understood serially--one word at a time.

The strength of written words and numbers is their precision. Numbers draw attention to individual numbers, but don't work good for comparisons of multiples and "bigger pictures".

Tables are good for looking up data.

Text is for values.

Graphs are for patterns.

Effective dashboards combine text and graphics to support meaning:

What the viewer needs
How the data is to be used
What the message is

All of these are effected by:

What is the best display
What will fit in a small space

Six types of display--graphs, images, icons, objects, text, organizers.

Graphes are:

bullet graphs--comparitive to goal
bar graphs--start at goal, used for descrete instances, are better than pie charts for showing parts of a whole
stacked bar graphs--effectively similar to small multiples, best to show contribution to a whole.
combination graphs
line graphs--used with intervals, emphasize continuity and progression, patters and change instead of values, do not need to start at zero.
sparklines--for historical context only, not values.
box plots--show high, medium, low
scatter plots--show correlations
tree maps--comparisons within hierarchies

Icons have three uses: to alert, to show up or down, to show on or off.

Ogranizers are tables, maps, and small multiples.

Chapter Seven

Dashboards must be easy to use and visually appealing.

Group items by business function and use.

Minimal boarders
Keep groups together
Support meaningful comparisons
Discourage meaningless comparisons

"When organizing data on a dashboard, start by learning precisely how the information will be used and how the pieces ought to be arranged to best serve these uses." (p. 164)

"Measures of performance come alive only when you compare them to other measures." (p. 165)

Encourage comparisons by:

combining items in a single table or graph
placing items close to one another
linking items with color
use comparitive values (ratios, percents, etc.)

"Anything that means the same thing or functions the same way ought to look the same...aesthetically pleasing dashboards are more enjoyable, which makes them more relaxing, which prepares the viewer for greater insight and creative response...aesthetics, when not in conflict with a product's usability, possesses intrinsic qualities that also contribute to usability." (p. 168)

Keep bright colors to a minimum, except when highlighting
Use less satuated colors, except when highlighting
Use pale background colors
Use legible text fonts
Use consistent action items.

Only the user can judge if the design is effective.

Information Dashboard Design Part 2

2008-10-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

Chapters 4 and 5 of Steven Few's book deal with the research on how people percieve information, how memory works, and how that can be used by information designers to most effectively show the data. I was hoping to chunk the book up into, say, 3 pieces, but because there is so much information in these chapters, I want to deal with them as their own post. Here are my notes on chapters 4 and 5 of Information Dashboard Design.

Chapter 4

2 greatest challenges:

Make the most important information stand out.
Arrange everything so it makes sense and gives meaning.

Three stages of memory:

iconic = visual based. "preattentive processing".
short term = temporary, partially visual, limited capacity
long term

"Preattentive processing" is things that we don't think about, we just recognize immediately. Categories are color, form, spatial position, motion.

Short term memory can hold 3 to 9 chunks of information at a time. Because of this, dashboards should seek "optimal chunking" of information. Chunks are "big visual gulps". Short term memory is out of sight = out of mind. Because of this, limit fragmenting data on multiple screens or scrolling.

How to use these concepts in dashboard design:

Note: the brain can only recognize 5 distinct expressions of any item (except length and 2D location).

Based on iconic memory, these are the things to work with for maximum absorption in a minimum of time. These can be used to highlight or group information. Use sparingly for maximum effect:

Color: Hue and intensity. Max of 9 hues can be understood at once by short term memory.
Position: 2D location
Form: orientation (italics/tilted), length, width (line weight), size, shape. added marks (simple icons like astricks), enclosure
Motion: flicker.

Use size to show ranking or importance.

Use shapes to differentiate data sets.

Use width for highlighting, like bolding.

Use enclosure to group information.

Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

How we group visual information.

Proximity. Group based on location can be used to direct eye movement by organizing (i.e. rows or columns).
Similarity. Things that look the same. Can be used to draw connections between info in different groups.
Enclosure. any type of visual border will cause that info to be perceived as connected.
Closure. People will always try to connect loose ends or close open objects. This allows people to understand distinct regions even if borders are not completely defined (x and y axis as opposed to full borders). Allows for less non-data ink.
Continuity. Things that are alligned are understood as part of the same group--i.e. indentation, number columns, etc.
Connection. Things that are visually connected are understood as part of the same group. Only enclosure is a stronger grouping mechanism.

Chapter 5

The guiding principle of dashboard design is simplicity.

"The fundamental challenge of dashboard design is to effectively display a great deal of often disparate data in a small amount of space." (p.97)

Include only absolutely necessary info and display in easy to understand ways.

Necessary means an overview that can be quickly understood but doesn't give all the in depth info.

Quickly understood means the dashboard makes you aware of problems for further investigation.

Summaries & Exceptions. Summaries are usually sums and averages. Exceptions are unusual data that leads to problems and opportunities.

Customizable--communicate in the audience's vocabulary and the right granularity.

Group info into two types (creates multi-focal displays):

1. Info that is always important (static emphasis).

2. Info that is only important now (dynamic emphasis).

Visual emphasis:

Top left and center = most important.
Bottom right = least important.

Two principles of choosing media (chart types):

Best display of the data.
Must still make sense when shrunk down.

Aesthetics of Charts:

Remove extra lines, images, decorations, gradients, dimensions.
Standardize what is left and de-emphasize.
Navigation and instructions go way to the side (out of the way).

What is NWSEM About?

2008-10-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

So, I found this website called Wordle where you can feed it information and it will do a nice word cloud of whatever you give it. People put in their music libraries, email accounts, all kinds of stuff. I thought I'd put in NWSEM. I think I know what I write about on this blog, and I can see what Google Webmaster Tools thinks of my site, but what does Wordle think? Well, here it is:

Pretty cool. I had no idea navigation was such a hot topic on my own blog!

Notes on Information Dashboard Design

2008-09-19T16:09:00.000-07:00

Previously, I'd written about Tufte's great book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. While Tufte is the master of how to visualize information, what I needed was a way to put together several pieces of information to communicate business progress. To do this, I had to go past the chart and into the dashboard territory.

Dashboards are essentially short collections of key information presented visually for maximum absorption with minimal effort. One of my favorite books on the topic of dashboard design is Steven Few's Information Dashboard Design. Here are my notes on Few's book for anyone who is interested.

Note: I'm going to break my notes up into several blog posts because the book covers a lot of ground and I don't want to make one ginormous post that covers everything.

Information Dashboard Design Notes 1--introduction to dashboards

Chapter 1

"A dashboard's success as a medium of communication is a product of design" (p. 4).

Dashboard definition: "A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives, consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance." (p.34)

Main points of the definition:

Visual = emphasis on graphics
Specific info for one or more objectives = KPIs (primarily)
Single computer screen or view = easy to digest all at once
Monitor at a glance = abbreviated

Supporting points:

Small, intuitive display
Customized to meet the objective

Chapter 2

Roles of Dashboards:

Strategic	Analytical	Operational
The "executive dashboard"	Comparative	Real-time required
Performance at high level	Richly historical	Shows activities and events
Forecasting is good	Real-time not required	Simple display for quick response
Extremely simple display (not subtle)	Drill-down interaction very good	Connect to detailed info
Real-time data not required	Show Causes
Interaction not required	Rich Display

Showing Info on Dashboards:

Show info as:

Totals*** Most important
Averages
Distribution
Correlation

Common time frames:

Year to date
Week to date
Quarter to date
Yesterday
Month to date
Today

Trends are comparisons

By time (sales now vs. sales in the past)
By objective (sales vs. goals)
By prediction (sales vs. forecast)
By average / norm (sales vs. average sales)
By comparison (sales A vs. sales B)
By related metrics (sales vs. leads)

Evaluations are important. Flag the good and the bad somehow. Use colors or mark up.

Including other info is sometimes useful--"Top Issues", schedules, upcoming tasks, etc. These can add a context for the info.

Chapter 3

13 types of mistakes

Too big / off-screen data
Not enough context
Excessive detail
Wrong type of measurement (i.e. counts instead of percentage)
Wrong type of display (bars vs. trend lines) "The truth is, I never recommend the use of pie charts." (p.59)
Meaningless variety
Poor chart design (see Tufte)
Inaccurate or misleading measures (scales)
Poor arrangement (important things need to be prominent)
Poor or lack of highlighting
Useless decoration
Color problems (red = bad)
Just plain ugly

After Chapter 3, Few gets into the research on visual perception of information and how much data you can stuff into an eyeball. So, until next time...

A PPC Landing Page Success Story

2008-09-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

One of my primary focuses at my work is to manage the PPC spend as well as the website, in general. Well, as anyone who does PPC knows, there are a whole bunch of different ideas about what is the best way to get good results. So many, in fact, that I frankly have stopped trying to keep up with it. So many examples are industry and website specific, that it makes it hard to tell what is actually working in general, and what is just working for the example.

So, the method we were using for our PPC was very similar to our technique for organic search--create high relevancy topical and category pages and point search engines at them. For PPC, this meant using them as landing pages. For organic, this meant keyword optimization and time. Visitors would land on a category page, for instance, then click into a product from there and request info or read product support documents if they wanted to learn more.

Overall the results were not stunning. The first half of the year averaged somewhere under 4% overall conversion rate for PPC pointing at the site in general on pretty strong volume. This conversion rate improved slightly over the months, moving up from about 2% to just under 4%. Normally, I would not think this is too bad. However, it was very expensive and the ROI models were hard to prove.

How one PPC landing page changed everything

So, we took another tack. We came up with a specific promotion that was guaranteed to catch attention and built a dedicated landing page with the request info form right there. We also limited any links to things that were absolutely necessary thereby limiting the opportunities for visitors to jump off.

We pointed all our PPC at this page and the results were outstanding. We instantly went to a 15% conversion rate on our spend in the first week and got it up to almost 17% by the end of the campaign (8 weeks later). The ROI models came back down to earth and the sales team got the activity they were looking for.

The campaign was such a success, we converted it over to a perennial offer, reworked the keywords and ads, built new landing pages, and sent it back out as our default PPC campaign. After making a few small tweaks based on things we learned, our onsite conversion rates are now hovering around 20% with some important keywords converting at 30%-35%!

Of course, I can't give specific information, but you'll just have to trust me on this. The whole program has turned into one of the most successful marketing efforts we've run in the last couple years at least.

What we learned

How did we make the jump from fump to lead pump? Here are some key learnings:

Targetted, single purpose landing pages are way, way better at converting campaign traffic than multi-purpose interior website pages. This may seem like a no brainer, but I learned it the hard way. Plus, landing pages typically don't have the same content review process that product pages do which makes it easier to be flexible and effective.
Limit navigation on the form to almost nothing. If the purpose of the campaign is to generate leads, then absolutly everything on that page has to be geared toward getting leads. This is not the time to be expansive. This is the place to be very targetted and direct.
If there are high bounce rates and low conversion rates, then test messaging to figure out what visitors are looking for. Provide a PDF download. Offer one link to more information. Very limited message testing is a good idea as long as it is very limited.
Put the action item on the page above the fold. Not the call to action, but the action item itself. Embed the form above the fold and make it seem like the best thing any visitor can do. Make the PDF sing. Make conversion a very simple, one step process.
Make your forms short. 4 fields, not an interview. Let sales do the interviewing.
Put some sort of segmentation indicator on the form. An annual revenue drop down list. A number of offices drop down list. Industry focus checkboxes. Whatever your key segmentation is, put a simple interactive item on your landing page so you can tell the difference between different types of visitors. Then look at the behavior of these segements.
Benefits are more important than features.
People like to get things for free more than they like to get discounts. If you are giving 20% off a product or service, find a feature of that product that is worth the value of a 20% discount and call it "Free". People will pay more attention.

Overall, we've rewritten almost every benchmark for successful performance of a marketing campaign. As we continue to tune up the PPC campaign, I'm looking forward to even better successes as we continue to optimize.

One Year

2008-08-28T16:09:00.001-07:00

A year ago today I posted my first real work blog post (I know there is one from 2006, but that one I don't really count).

I started posting to a blog because I wanted to be more thoughtful about the work that I spend my days doing, rather than just working, working, working and never really taking the time to wonder about things beyond my particular deliverables. So, this blog has been a good place for me to get out some thoughts, even if just for myself.

I looked at my analytics account the other day and this blog gets about 1 visitor per day. That visitor is me on some days. I'm my most regular reader!

So, happy one year to me! And in the unlikely event that someone else actually stops by to read my mental wanderings, thanks for stopping by!

Maybe I'll make another year.