Web Analytics World: Internet Marketing & Analytics

Google Passes 74% Market Share - Hitwise

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:53:40 PDT

Hitwise announced today that Google accounted for 74.04 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending June 27, 2009. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 16.19 percent, 5.25 percent and 3.15 percent, respectively. The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.36 percent of U.S. searches.

Searches among leading search engine providers
Domain	June 2008	May 2009	June 2009	Year-over-year percent change
www.google.com	69.17%	73.66%	74.04%	7%
search.yahoo.com	19.62%	15.55%	16.19%	-17%
bing.com*	5.46%	5.64%	5.25%	-4%
www.ask.com	4.05%	3.81%	3.15%	-22%
Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending June 27, 2009; May 30, 2009; and June 28, 2008) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
*Includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.
Source: Hitwise, an Experian company

Google Analytics and User Defined Reports

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:11:46 PDT

The Google Analytics blog had a great post yesterday which discussed how to leverage the user defined report and custom variables. Below are some technical notes about Custom Segmentation:

When a person visits a page calling the _setVar function, the __utmv cookie is set on their computer. This is a persistent, first-party cookie that has a lifetime of two years. This means that every time a user with a __utmv cookie returns to your site, the label assigned to the user will continue to identify them as such until they either delete the cookie or visit another page with another call to _setVar with a different label.
The purpose behind something like a User-Defined report - and Custom Segmentation in general - is that it is not designed to be updated very often. This label, for the most part, should be a permanent one for a visitor. You should only use _setVar on pages like a receipt page of a shopping cart, or an account registration “success” page for a visitor who becomes a member of your site. You shouldn’t use _setVar on your homepage, or use several different _setVar’s with different labels scattered across many pages of your website.
Google Analytics - at this time - only has the capacity to store one custom segment at any one time for one website. So if you are using multiple calls to _setVar on your site, Google Analytics can only store the latest value that a visitor runs into in the __utmv cookie. John Henson at LunaMetrics – a fellow Google Analytics Authorized Consultant - has created a custom version of the Google Analytics Tracking Code that can support multiple custom segment labels at any one time.
On the other hand, Google Analytics uses what they call the “first association” of the session for visitor session calculations. If you are using multiple calls to _setVar on your site, be aware that if a user runs into the first one, and then runs into the second one in the same visit, their Goal Conversion and Pages per Visit metrics would be attributed to the label of the first encounter with _setVar.
For page view calculations, Google Analytics uses the most recently defined value. So if a person runs into the second instance of _setVar on your site, all of their pageviews afterwards - including the current pageview - will be attributed to the second _setVar’s label, even though as we just learned in #4 above, visitor session information is attributed to the first encounter of _setVar.

Veeple and TubeMogul Reach Agreement

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:23:54 PDT

Marketers and agencies as well as social media leaders using Veeple’s Interactive Online Video (IOV) platform (.com) will have greater distribution choices for their online video campaigns as a result of an agreement with TubeMogul (http://www.tubemogul.com/), the most popular online video distribution platform.

The agreement allows Veeple customers the use of TubeMogul’s signature “Load and Track” service which gives users the capability to upload videos once and automatically deploy them with as many of the top video sharing sites as they want, within the users’ specified accounts.

“Veeple is all about enhancing, engaging and measuring online video campaigns. Our customers expect not only simplicity in our service but also a platform that quickly evolves with their needs. As we evolve the Veeple service we knew that syndication was a top priority for our customers who are increasingly adding online video to their marketing mix.” said Scott Broomfield, CEO and co-founder of Veeple.

“Veeple understands the needs of today’s marketer who is responsible for telling a compelling story while building a well-respected brand through the powerful tool of online video,” said Brett Wilson, CEO and co-founder of TubeMogul. “TubeMogul is pleased to enhance Veeple’s service offering through the ability to help increase the distribution of the interactive videos that Veeple’s customers are creating.”

SEMPO Institute Intros 2 New Courses: Link Building & Social Media

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:28:17 PDT

SEMPO Institute, the distance learning division of SEMPO, (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), http://www.sempo.org/, today announced it is adding two new courses to its popular Effective Search Marketing online classes: “Linking and Brand Management” and “Social Media.”

Both courses are live online and available for immediate registration at https://www.sempoinstitute.com/search-marketing-enrollment/default.aspx
The courses are part of SEMPO Institute’s Effective Search Marketing series and are $299 each.

“SEMPO Institute’s growing menu of short courses fits the demands of busy search marketers who want to hone in on a particular topic that correlates with their job responsibilities, in order to increase their skills and add even further value to their client work,” says Adam Cohen, partner in Rosetta, a leading U.S. interactive agency, and a member of SEMPO’s Social Media course review team.

As an organization, SEMPO is addressing the impact of the proliferation of social media, from an education and editorial perspective. SEMPO recently released the first in a series of point-of-view opinions, this one focusing on social media. It is accessible at http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/editorials.

“The SEMPO short course on Social Media is a must for all marketers who need an efficient way to learn how search and social media are increasingly intersecting,” says Noah Elkin, senior analyst, eMarketer, and co-chair of SEMPO’s Emerging Technologies Committee. “Social media’s impact on search is growing exponentially, as consumers now find search results in a number of formats, from text to images, video and user-generated content. SEMPO’s social media course will help marketers learn how to leverage different forms of social media and integrate them into search campaigns,” he adds.

VisiStat Analytics Releases v7.0

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:35:00 PDT

VisiStat, Inc. has announced the public release of VisiStat 7.0, their newest version of the VisiStat Web analytics and Website performance management service. Along with new features, such as the live lead generator, LeadCaster™, they are focusing more specifically on helping businesses turn their Websites into successful revenue-generating tools.

“Version 7.0 is our biggest release yet. We are very excited to be a leader in the development of a service that allows a business to successfully bridge the gap between sales and marketing—using their Website. And with LeadCaster, VisiStat offers an elegant lead generation tool powered by, and fully integrates with, a world-class analytics engine. No one in this market space can make this claim, or offer what we can," said Tina Bean, Director of Sales and Marketing for VisiStat, Inc.

The stand out feature of VisiStat 7.0 is LeadCaster, a real-time lead generation application that provides immediate access to the contact information of companies visiting a Website, while they are onsite, and after. By integrating Jigsaw® and LinkedIn® with LeadCaster’s sales management tools, users can build current, active contact files, build watch lists, set up alerts and notifications, divide and allocate sales territories, receive executive level daily summaries, utilize filtering abilities, and a variety of other dedicated options. LeadCaster makes VisiStat the first Web analytics service to offer live leads within an analytics environment.

In addition to LeadCaster, VisiStat 7 includes a variety of upgrades, feature updates, and enhancements.

Their advertising campaign management module, AdCaM 3, has even more reporting and a higher level of conversion focus.
The SEO Analyzer provides varying levels of information, designed for SEO/SEM development and management, or to offer search engine keyword tracking and page rank numbers.
VisiStat's new Local Search feature allows Websites with search functionality to track, in real-time, what visitors search for on their sites.
The Daily E-mail Reports, which deliver a thumbnail look at an accounts basic reporting, are now customizable, allowing each account user can select what reports they want summarized in their daily e-mails, and can designate where, and to whom, the e-mails are sent.

All of the tools mentioned, and the entire VisiStat 7 service, are available to try in a full-featured, free, seven-day trial. Learn more at VisiStat.com

Screenshot of SEO Analyzer

The TwitTruth About Your Twitter Activity

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:51:53 PDT

TwitTruth provides all sorts of interesting statistics on how you use your Twitter account. Below is the Truth about @WaWorld

Web Analytics World is a promoter. More than half of their tweets do not communicate or engage individual users.	Promoter
Chances of Web Analytics World responding to a direct message	Very Good
Direct Messages sent to Web Analytics World every day on average	0.04
Response sent from Web Analytics World every day on average	0.25
Time it takes Web Analytics World to read their direct messages everyday Based on taking 4 seconds to read 140 characters. If they actually read them.	0 mins
Time it would take Web Analytics World to reply to all messages recieved today Based on taking 20 seconds to reply	0.00 mins
Time Web Analytics World actually spends sending direct messages every day Messages that start @	0.08 mins
Direct Messages sent to Direct Messages Recieved	Infinity Sends more than receives
Percent of tweets that engage a user	14% 28 out of 200 tweets.
Tweets that contain a username but not a direct reply	7% 14 out of 200 tweets.
Percent of tweets that aren't replies	79% 158 out of 200 tweets.
Percent of tweets that mention other users in the top 1000	4% 8 out of 200 tweets.
Percent of tweets that contain a hashtag	21.5% 43 out of 200 tweets.
Percent of tweets that are retweets (start RT)	1% 2 out of 200 tweets.
Percent of tweets that contain a link	67% 134 out of 200 tweets.
Time since last tweet by Web Analytics World From when this test was carried out	15.43 hours

Geo Location and Search Engine Rankings

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:16:46 PDT

Matt Cutts Answers: "Could you confirm whether the geographic location of the web host has any significant ranking factors for organic SEO?"

Using Google Analytics and Website Optimizer Together

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:23:35 PDT

Selecting which pages to test in Google Website Optimizer can be made simple by using Google Analytics. We will walk you through which reports to focus on first.

Buzzom Brings People Search in Twitter

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:56:09 PDT

It’s strange, it’s weird and it’s inevitable – the technology to connect people. In the process of innovation, people have found that the need to connect to people is the most successful business model. Traditionally, social gathering like party, picnic, pub etc were the places where people got an opportunity to connect with new people and increase their network. In the 21st century, its face book, My space, You-tube and yes off course the new buzz, twitter.

Suddenly, no one is telling you “Don’t talk to strangers.” People are excited, more than ever, to connect with people located at the opposite of hemisphere and share their knowledge and interests. This has given rise to new global sentiment where people react to new incidents in unison. In this midst of connecting to new people, we have been welcoming all kinds of people in our network hoping that we find that one individual who is the possible customer or employer or friend or business partner.

Twitter, along with other few applications based on twitter, allows you to search people based on the name. But with user’s number increasing to millions, how do you suppose to find your choice. So, how do you make choices? Off course, user’s interest is the priority isn’t it? If you can enter the kind of people you are interested in than off-course it would be easier than following people in random. With these concern and need, Buzzom (http://www.buzzom.com) – a Twitter Account Management Tool – have come up with a feature to let you find people of your interest.

There are two ways to follow a targeted people in Buzzom:

Cross Follow – Following the people who are followers or following of some third person.
People Search – Following the people by entering a keyword which will match the people’s profile.

Cross Follow: Twitter is not only about people but is also about services, news, technology updates and celebrity updates and so on. Cross follow allows you to find the list of people who are following a particular Twitter ID. This lets you find people who are interested in similar subjects. Allowing me to follow people who are following, let’s say - @nwearth will allow me to have people in my network interested in environmental cause. This is very similar to going to a pub – dedicated to particular team - to watch a football; you know you are on the right side.

People Search: Finding people of your interest has never been so easy. How often have you myself spend time through going to profile and blogs to find the right people to connect and share. Well, now those times are slowly vanishing. Through people search you can type a key word to match to the profile of people allowing you to get a list of people who are more targeted to your user. Ways in which you can use People Search:

Finding the relevant people related to particular technology.
For hiring a people for particular field.
Reaching out to the active groups.
For marketing to targeted group of people with similar interest.
For creating a segmented list of users to carry out survey and promotions.
For making new friends of related interest.

These are only few ways in which you can use people search to extend your network.

What People Search is Not?

People search is not a way to find friends whom you already know. People search is not dependent upon your network but searches people beyond the reach of your network. Right now people search is independent of geographical locations but soon Buzzom will be implementing features to allow people to search based on locations and other criteria.

The Benefits of People Search

Will all the talks on how you can search people and get connected with them. Also how you can use them to your benefit. Let’s see the actual value it adds to your twitter account. As for today, there are many people following people randomly hoping to generate lead on their sales. As a result, people turn up spending 2 hrs times online without any turn back. Following itself is not the key to successful operation. It’s only one action which you can perform, if it’s not done with strategic plan then the loss is yours. Therefore, people search allows you to utilize that time and let you concentrate more on your strategies rather than wasting time following people which will add no value to your network.

Why the Adwords Top Spot Should be Your Bottom Priority

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:38:19 PDT

In pricing PPC keywords, competing for the top spot could be your biggest mistake. Capturing the #1 position is not always realistic, and it is a likely waste of your money. The waves of information we see for search marketing has clued us in to smart concepts that pay off when put into practice. We’ll show you exactly how to stretch your ad dollars without sacrificing exposure to your domain.

Often, search marketers spend hours carefully pouring over data in a concentrated effort to hit that trophy—the top ad position. There is value to that position, but that value usually means more to a deep-pocketed advertiser, fighting to close the gap against an aggressive competitor.

For most advertisers, shooting low is smart. Position 6 or 7 is the better answer. Not only does a lower bid still bring in respectable traffic, but it stretches your budget once clicks start adding up.

Devote your attention instead to building your click through rate (CTR) with relevant ads for the keyword. This carries more weight with Google and allows your ad to show up at a higher position than what your bid alone would have delivered.

By analyzing SpyFu data, we found that advertisers getting clicks in these middle positions are usually paying between 35-45% of the top domain’s bid. (You will want to determine the difference in your specific niche between the two, but 35% can be our working model.)

When you reset your bid prices to reflect this play on the top money-guzzlers, you have a more competitive strategy that keeps you in line with a mid to low range position.

Follow through to the end of the post to see how to get a better idea for the range of keywords that you use.*

Experienced Adwords managers are starting to cringe at where this is leading. The idea of calculating new pricing for dozens or even hundreds of terms might start to sound like a task that isn’t worth the pain.That could be, but there is an easy solution.

SpyFu has constructed a new interactive keyword viewer to manage strategies just like this. With a built-in export function created specifically for Adwords users, it takes the pain out of practices that savvy search marketers rely on most.

You can enter your pricing pattern as a multiplier of the max bid price.In one move, your entire ad group is individually priced and ready to start getting you results. For our example, your multiplier is ".35" for 35% of the max bid price. Don’t worry about one size fits all.S hould you spot few keywords where you’d like to rank higher, you can make individual updates. The built-in multiplier just helps you buy time when you are setting up your group.

As you start to get clicks and results, you can always measure your CTR to determine if you need to adjust your bids up to take advantage of more competitive keywords and ads. Starting low and raising your bid is a better position to be in than wringing your hands over lost dollars you’re trying to salvage.

Try it for yourself:

Enter your own domain into SpyFu to pull up your paid keyword list, or choose about 5-8 PPC keywords that represent the niche where you plan to advertise.

Choose a term where you ranked about 5, 6, or 7^th. In our example, candyfavorites.com ranked 5th for saltwater taffy.

Select the keyword to retrieve its stats, and find the cost per click in the top left corner.

Divide the top end of the range by the low end of the range. Here, the CPC ranges from .28 to .60. The low end is about 47% of the high end. Continue this pattern on selected terms until you come up with an average percentage of low range bid trends you would like to use.

Kampyle Introduces Stronger Integration with Google Analytics

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:27:00 PDT

How effective is knowing that a user from California referred from Bing abandoned their shopping cart with $283 of merchandise after visiting 12 web pages over 6 minutes if you have no clue why?

According to John Lovett, Senior Analyst covering web analytics at Forrester Research, “the problem [with web analytics] was that the complexity and inability to take action on the data largely inhibited success.”

The Kampyle – Google Web Analytics integration, solves the challenges associated with web analytics while providing the only website feedback solution fully integrated with Google Analytics API.

Kampyle, the pioneer of online feedback analytics, enables websites to collect, analyze, manage, act on and respond to user feedback in real-time through the company’s feedback forms. Kampyle is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution which can be implemented onto any website in minutes and enables gathering and analyzing actionable, feedback from users. To close the feedback loop, Kampyle includes the option to respond directly to a user’s feedback.

The Kampyle – Google Analytics Integration enables website owners to add business critical information alongside their website analytics: users’ feedback. Now, website owners can not only measure website activity, as presented through Google Analytics, but they can also see what the users are saying about these website activities in real-time. Kampyle facilitates tracking the number of feedbacks submitted and the grade showing user satisfaction for every web page, product, service or activity, all in the Kampyle interface.

“Merging the qualitative data of products such as Kampyle with the quantitative richness of Google Analytics is a powerful combination that is just waiting to be exploited,” said Brian Clifton, internationally recognized web analytics expert and author of the book ‘Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics’.

Kampyle customers are able to get a better understanding of their user’s behavior, improve usability, customer satisfaction and close more sales immediately via feedback and alerts. For example, when HostelBookers.com relaunched their website, Kampyle integrated with Google Analytics “enabled us to immediately resolve issues based on instant customer feedback,” said Kerry Harding, User Experience Manager at HostelBookers.com (www.hostelbookers.com). “Kampyle helps us to ensure that we meet our customers' needs, keep our priorities focused, our conversion rates high and our users happy and satisfied!”

Click image below for full screenshot.

Google Analytics iPhone Apps

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:12:16 PDT

Analytics App by Michael D Jensen

Quick Overview Reports for at-a-glance data
More Detailed Reports for deeper analysis
Supports Multiple Accounts, Multiple Sites, change login anytime
Change date range, chart granularity by Day/Week/Month
Custom Reports and Goals

The Google Analytics for iPhone App by Sergej Mueller

Statistics from Google Analytics on your iPhone.

Multiple Accounts
Switchable
Statistics as Diagram
Work in progress

Ego App by Garrett Murray

Ego gives you one central—and lovely—location to check web statistics that matter to you. With support for Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint, Squarespace and Twitter, you can quickly view the number of visits to your website (including daily, hourly and monthly numbers), feed subscription totals and changes, and how many people are following you on Twitter.

Data Driven Discussions: How to Segment Your Data

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:17:27 PDT

Unrehearsed discussions about web analytics, marketing, web design and testing with experts in the field. In this episode, web analytics experts and Googlers Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski talk with Jeff Gillis from the Google Analytics team about the best ways to segment data.

Veeple Partners with BitGravity

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:13:00 PDT

Veeple, Inc. (http://www.veeple.com/), today announced an agreement with BitGravity (http://www.bitgravity.com/), a global leader in online video, as well as several new service enhancements to its platform.

Under the agreement, BitGravity will offer Veeple's simple and innovative video solution to content owners and businesses to easily upload, manage, deploy and measure interactive videos across the Web. Veeple, in turn, will standardize its offering on BitGravity, providing best-in-class video delivery capability to its customers.

"BitGravity's focus on fast, high-quality video delivery is of primary importance in working with them," said Scott Broomfield, co-founder and chief executive officer of Veeple. "BitGravity truly understands high performance video delivery, ensuring a fantastic online video experience for our customers," continued Scott.

"Veeple is an excellent example of the type of service we envisioned supporting when we designed BitGravity's CDN. Veeple's focus on offering a simple customer experience for uploading, managing, hosting, and best of all, making online video actionable, were the deciding factors in our working with Veeple," said Chris Turner, VP of Worldwide Sales at BitGravity.

The new enhancements to the Veeple service include:

Branded Player - The ability to upload company logo, graphics, Favicons (favorite icons) and watermarks directly into the player.
Syndication - Creating a new feature that significantly broadens video distribution capabilities through customizable URL links and resultant RSS feeds.
"In Video Contact Us" - The ability, in real-time to collect contact information from potential customers.
Affiliate Program - Marketing, video and web development firms now have the opportunity to participate in Veeple's referral program, which includes monetary rewards.

State Sales Tax: No Time To Sit Still

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:50:30 PDT

Guest Post by Smokey Burns, CEO, Epicenter Network

Last week, Amazon announced that barring any last minute reprieve, it will be forced to sever ties with its North Carolina affiliates once that state’s new sales tax law is passed. The law—not unlike ones being debated in other statehouses around the country—declares that online marketers with affiliates in the state are deemed to have a local “physical presence”, and therefore must collect state sales tax on all purchases made by state residents.

For Amazon the decision, while regrettable, is clearly the lesser of two evils. Perhaps the more critical question is, what will other companies do? Will they bow to local laws and collect the tax? Or will they follow the lead of the world’s largest online marketer and abandon their local affiliates?

Considering the cost/benefit equation set by the law, it’s unlikely they will do the former, spelling a dire situation indeed for North Carolina affiliates. So what should these unfortunate individuals—as well as others throughout this industry—do in response?

It’s important to note that this controversy will likely drag out in the courts. In New York, where a similar law was passed, Amazon is currently appealing a lawsuit it lost to block passage of the law. Some precedent has been set supporting Amazon’s position—in 1992, in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a similar “physical presence” test imposed by North Dakota (Quill Corporation v. North Dakota).

In the meantime, if you’re in a state moving toward such a law—and even if you’re not—it’s critical that you lobby your legislators NOW. Lawmakers need to understand that their drive to provide fairness for local tax-paying brick-and-mortar retailers (as well as their drive to generate additional state income) threatens the earnings of thousands of their constituents. The loss of income tax paid on such earnings could equal, if not exceed, any sales taxes collected.

And what about affiliates in North Carolina, New York or other states who are victims of such draconian laws? If this is you, consider your options. It’s possible to exclude your state in your online marketing campaigns, and while it may be difficult finding advertisers who don’t do business in your state, they do exist. The Internet is the ultimate global connection, and you can be of value to, and generate revenues for, regional or foreign marketers. Another option is affiliate networks like Epicenter Network, Commission Junction and Clickbooth, who may be able to structure suitable relationships.

Finally, regardless of where you live, continue to educate yourself on this issue and others that impact your livelihood. External influences abound in business—if you anticipate those circumstances and your alternative courses of action, your business will always have a better chance of surviving.

LeadCaster, Real-Time Lead Generation from VisiStat

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:00:06 PDT

VisiStat, Inc. has announced the release of LeadCaster™, their newest add-on module. LeadCaster, a real-time lead generation application, marks VisiStat as the first Web analytics service to offer live leads within an analytics environment.

“The development of our LeadCaster technology successfully bridges the gap between sales and marketing. LeadCaster identifies the companies on your Website ‘right now,’ providing warm leads to sales organizations," said Tina Bean, Director of Sales and Marketing for VisiStat, Inc. “Through our seamlessly integrated platform, LeadCaster can utilize all of VisiStat’s functionality, such as our powerful AdCaM advertising suite, to provide full visibility into the origins of lead sources unlike any other service out there.”

“By crossing directly into the B2B space, VisiStat can successfully take businesses where no real-time Web analytics company has taken them before. Our real-time analytics coupled with real-time lead generation makes us the comprehensive tool for any small to medium-sized business."

LeadCaster has the unique ability to identify the companies visiting your Website in real-time, whether they are registered or identify themselves or not, without violating anyone’s privacy. LeadCaster provides immediate access to direct, public contact information with its integration of Jigsaw® and LinkedIn® business databases. With LeadCaster’s sales management tools, users can build watch lists, set up alerts and notifications, divide and allocate sales territories, receive executive level daily summaries, utilize filtering abilities, and a variety of other dedicated options. You can read more about LeadCaster at http://leadcaster.com.

Webinar: Using Google Analytics to Increase Website Conversion

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:43:44 PDT

Google Analytics is a great web analytics service for tracking website visitors, but many people only use the basic functions. Consequently, website abandonment remains a persistent problem affecting all websites, including sites running Google Analytics. Between 35 to 70 percent of onsite conversion processes are abandoned, causing lost revenue and missed targets. Small changes to conversion rates can have a big impact on sales, so a little effort here brings big rewards.

In an upcoming webinar, SeeWhy, Inc., will cover what users need to know about conversion funnels. This 30-minute, “best practices” webinar will look at why they're useful, how to interpret the data, what to do to increase conversion rates, and how to complement Google Analytics with SeeWhy to remarket to website abandoners. Remarketing to website abandoners can convert up to 50 percent of abandoners into customers, so this simple extension to Google Analytics can have a big impact on conversion rates.

What: “Conversion Academy: Using Google Analytics to Increase Website Conversion” webinar

Who: Charles Nicholls, founder and chief strategy officer, SeeWhy

When: Tuesday, June 30, 2009, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time (10:00 a.m. Pacific time)

How: Register for this free event at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/931085441. Attendance is limited to the first 1,000 registrations.

Attendees will learn:

What Google Analytics conversion funnels reveal (and what they don't)
How to use the data to improve conversion rates
How and when to follow up on abandoners
The results you can expect from following up, and its impact on conversion rates
How to track the effectiveness of remarketing campaigns in Google Analytics
Best practices — how to ensure that customers will love remarketing

Will Google Consider Yahoo! Directory as a Source of Paid Links?

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:56:26 PDT

Matt Cutts Answers: "Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BOTW as source of paid links? If no, why is this different from another site that sell links.

What Age Is Your Customer? New Webinar Explores the Digital Age Divide in B2B

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:33:05 PDT

Since the beginning of April, Enquiro has been building an amazing package of webinars and research papers as part of its B2B Expert Series, research and analysis which goes to the very core of B2B marketing. Experts from Google, Business.com, Covario, Demandbase and Marketo have also contributed their unique experience and marketing advice as presenters. If you’ve missed them so far, the recordings and white papers are available at www.enquiro.com/b2bresearch.

Enquiro's final webinar in the series is shaping up to be one of the most fascinating and thought provoking. We’re calling it The Rise of the Digital Native: B2B Buying in Flux. Gord Hotchkiss and his panel of experts are taking a look at a very basic but fundamental question: Does age play a role in marketing? What does the latest research show us about B2B buying behavior as it relates to the buyer’s demographic, and more specifically, how and when the buyer grew up?

For the first time ever in an Enquiro webinar, we’re also joined by Danny Sullivan and Rand Fishkin, two very big hitters in the Search Marketing industry. They will be part of the panel along with Enquiro's own Gord Hotchkiss, Ben Hanna (Business.com), Chris Golec (Demandbase), Matthias Blume (Covario) and Mark McMaster (Google).

As an attendee of the live event, you will hear the discussion as it happens, plus be able to send the panel your marketing-related questions. In the webinar we will also be touching upon highlights from the rest of the series, so if you’ve missed previous webinars, this is one to catch.

The Rise of the Digital Native
Live Webinar
Wednesday, June 24 2:00pm Pacific
Register now –>

The webinar explores:

The differences between a Digital Native and a Digital Immigrant
Why the brain gets wired differently in Digital Natives
How this impacts interactions with technology and the web
What are the implications for B2B buying
How the landscape might shift in the next decade

Panelists:

Gord Hotchkiss - President and CEO, Enquiro
Rand Fishkin – CEO and Co-Founder, SEOmoz
Danny Sullivan - Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
Ben Hanna - VP Marketing, Business.com
Mark McMaster - Senior Planner of Technology/B2B Markets, Google
Chris Golec - Founder and CEO, Demandbase
Moderated by Bill Barnes, EVP Business Development, Enquiro

Rand Fishkin, CEO and founder of SEOmoz, and Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land will be special guests at the wrap-up to the BuyerSphere webinar series, June 24.

Google Adsense: Business in a Slow Down

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:42:37 PDT

Last week the Google Adsense blog kicked off a five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown. This past Thursdsay Avinash Kaushik, Google's own Analytics Evangelist, discussed the importance of understanding your traffic, analyzing how your site performs, and using data to make decisions.

Search Engine Marketing in 2009: Reality Not Matching Expectations

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:22:47 PDT

A new report on search engine marketing from [x+1], http://www.xplusone.com, found that while organizations are investing in SEM despite the down economy, they have been unhappy to date with the performance. To access the full report, click here: http://www.xplusone.com/surveyreport/semsurveyreport.pdf

The [x+1] report, “Search Engine Marketing in 2009: Reality Not Matching Expectations When it Comes to Performance,” was based on a March online survey of senior-level SEM professionals from a cross-section of industry sectors.

Among the report’s key findings:

Nearly two-thirds of respondents -- 65.4% -- said they would spend the same or more on SEM in 2009 than in 2008, with 13.1% looking to increase spending by more than 20%.
Almost half the 48.6% said the economy had no impact on their SEM budget.
Most respondents (59.8%) said they are using SEM to drive leads more effectively, another 16.8% said they were using it to reduce the overall marketing budget.
More than half (57%) gave SEM performance in their organization a low ranking (1 or 2 on a scale of 1 to 7). Only 20% gave it a high rating (6 or 7).
15.9% said they had not noticed a big difference in conversion rates through use of SEM; only 10.3% said they consistently saw lift rates above 20%.
Less than one-quarter (21%) were satisfied or very satisfied with their company’s ability to optimize sites for 30-100 keywords and redirect searchers to dynamically created landing pages; 42% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied
Only 23% were satisfied or very satisfied with their ability to continuously improve the performance of their landing pages in response to keyword searches.

Import Google Analytics Goals and Transactions Into AdWords

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:19:10 PDT

If you use Google Analytics, you can now import your Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into your AdWords account to use as conversion actions.

To do this you need to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts and create at least one Google Analytics Goal or track at least on Google Analytics Transaction. You'll also need to enable data sharing in Google Analytics by completing the following steps.

Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
Click "Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings."
Make sure you've selected at least the "With other Google products only" options under "Share my Google Analytics data."
Click "Save Changes" to finish.

Import your Goals into AdWords

Navigate to the "Conversion Tracking" page from within your AdWords account.
Click "Link your Analytics goals and transactions" from the Conversion Tracking table.
Select the Goals or Transactions you want from the list.
Edit the action name so you can identify the goals in your AdWords reports.
Select "Link" from the bottom of the table to finish.

Unica Takes on Fox Sports

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:59:18 PDT

Unica Corporation (Nasdaq: UNCA), a leading global provider of enterprise marketing management (EMM) solutions, today announced that FOXSports.com on MSN will utilize Unica NetInsight™ OnDemand to better analyze and act on visitor behavior, and create more powerful and relevant marketing programs.

FOXSports.com is a leading sports site that delivers breaking news, real-time stats and fantasy games, reaching more than 15 million users per month. The site will use NetInsight OnDemand to gain greater visibility into how content and features resonate with its millions of users.

With NetInsight’s next-generation ‘soft-tagging’ technology, FOXSports.com gains tremendous flexibility in analyzing its ever-changing site while reducing the cost of maintaining and re-tagging. NetInsight’s “drill anywhere” capability gives FOXSports.com the ability to understand their Web visitors at an unprecedented level of precision, which opens up new opportunities in site optimization.

“Leading sites like FOXSports.com want to better understand their passionate and loyal users and recognize that web analytics helps them accomplish this goal,” said Yuchun Lee, CEO, Unica Corporation. “NetInsight provides the multi-dimensional views and comprehensive data that organizations—with anywhere from hundreds of thousands of page views to more than one billion page views—need in order to make intelligent decisions about how to improve their users’ online experiences.”

Available both On Demand and On Premise, Unica NetInsight delivers unique self-service capabilities built on an open data model that allow marketers throughout the enterprise to perform in-depth analysis of website visitor behavior. NetInsight's role-based flexibility enables business users to streamline exploratory ad-hoc analysis and custom reporting for a quick view of trends, success indicators, and visitor behavior.

Google Adwords Segmentation Video

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:55:57 PDT

The latest Google Analytics in 60 Seconds video shows how to create a segment that includes only AdWords traffic and then how to refine that segment to include only a specific set of keywords. Google's team illustrate how to isolate brand related keywords in the video, but with a little experimentation, you can create the AdWords segments that are most relevant to your business.

XiTi Analyzer II Prepared to Take on North America

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:44:00 PDT

Last week I had the opportunity to catch up with Dennis Varganyi, Country Manager, of AT Internet (maker of XiTi Analyzer II, web analytics software). XiTi Analyzer II is emmensely popular in France and is now expanding into North America. I was quite impressed with the quality of the on board reports XiTi Analyzer comes standard with. Check out my conversation with Dennis below:

[Manoj]: Why has XiTi Analyzer II has been so successful in France and different parts of Europe even though there are other options such as Omniture, WebTrends and Google Analytics?

[Dennis Varganyi]: When we began, it was with a free solution called ‘XiTi’. It became very popular as a no cost, dependable and supported (for free) web analytics platform. This strategy allowed us to quickly capture a lot of mind share in France, and develop the tool based on user feedback into the high end Analyzer II solution. Our solution has remained popular in France and parts of Europe due to our commitment to technology, our aggressive pricing structure, free support, strong Professional Services organization as well as quick and simple implementation processes. Today, Analyzer II is the most complete web analytics solution and the only one to be available / fully supported in French, German and Spanish as well as English.

[Manoj]: XiTi Analyzer II offers numerous ways of slicing and dicing every report, how important has this feature been to your clients

[Dennis Varganyi]: Offering a customizable interface has always been a priority for us. We offer advanced filtering capabilities and custom reporting through choice of indicators or table elements or event interaction with the graphs. In addition to all the report customizations, we have a segmentation module that applies segments to all the interface and using all variables available. Segments can be based on a combination of different indicators. Example : All the Ontario visitors that came from a specific campaign, and also did see a specific page before subscribing to the newsletter…
Our DataExplorer module offers unlimited, on the fly segmentation. It is very important for our clients as it is not necessary to:

Think of which segments to configure during the installation phase
Raise a Purchase Order when we think of a good segment which was not configured at Implementation.
Build the segment in the tag. Our tags are light and powerful; the fact that the segment is not built into the tag is another reason why our solution is fairly easy to implement.

Given how important it is to get segmented data on demand and quickly, minus the hassle of finding budget, our ability to slice and dice every report is a very significant feature for our clients.

[Manoj]: Please tell us more about your Behavior Quotient metric and websites can leverage it. (please provide a screenshot, preferably the one with the radar charts/referrers)

[Dennis Varganyi]: The Behavioral Quotient (BC) is an algorithm which assigns a value to the quality of a visit. This algorithm takes into consideration 5 KPIs:

Pages per Visit
Entering Visits Rate
Pages per Entering Visit
Average Duration per Visit
Average Duration per Page

This is a relevant metric when comparing different sources of traffic or different periods of analysis or different categories of visitors (male vs female, Canada vs US …).

[Manoj]: Why is the “Degree of Implication” report so useful?

[Dennis Varganyi]: This analysis is very useful for sites who would like to assign a weighted value for specific pages of content or actions.

For example, we can imagine a car manufacturer which has a ‘Design Your Vehicle’ process on their website. The first action is to choose a car. The second is to choose a colour. The third is to choose another option, etc. The last page is to submit a request to be contacted by a dealer. Each action has a degree of (visit) implicated associated with it.

The value is in the application of the results. For example, I can create a segment (on the fly) of all visitors who requested to be contacted by a dealer (highest degree) versus those which only went to the first degree (choose a car, then left). It could be interesting, for example, to understand which source of traffic … or even bought keyword… is associated with visitors which go to the highest degree. Inversely, the source of traffic (or bought keyword) which is associated with the lowest degree is also quite valuable. Both analysis are very valuable for SEO efforts..

[Manoj]: How does your click heat map differ than Google’s or WebTrends solution.

[Dennis Varganyi]: Our Clickzones module offers many features:

Heatmaps represents mouse clicks with color codes, Red being the most clicked zones (based on mouse coordinates). This module works with all technologies, even full Flash sites. It is also possible to upload page templates to track all product description pages or a news section …
Heatmaps analysis shows clicks on the page even on non clickable zones, flash movies…
Overlay gives detailed stats for the clickable items: number of clicks, evolution over the period of analysis and reactivity (Average number of seconds spent on the same page before the click).
Clicked Zones analyses will show you interactions with zones or page divisions no matter what content is displayed within those sections. It is useful for sites with frequent content changes.

[Manoj]: Your solution also offers the ability to monitor conversations about your brand through a feature called Buzz Watcher, tell us more about that.

[Dennis Varganyi]: Buzz watcher is coming up soon it is still being tested on our development environment. The module will allow you to monitor conversations around your brand or products on big social media networks: twitter, facebook, myspace… as well as your favorite blogs and/or forums.
It will give you general stats on the presence of your brand online, and also show what is being said (analyzing the neutral, positive and negative comments). Because it is also important to know if people are saying good things or bad thing about you.

[Manoj]: Tell us about XiTi Analyzer’s ability to track video, podcasts & RSS

[Dennis Varganyi]: This module measures all types of rich media content: video (including streaming and VOD), music, flash, podcasts, RSS feeds... It tracks all the different actions, play, pause, forward, backward, share... and it allows to create several levels of analysis.

All types of measured contents (audio, video, animations, podcasts…) whatever the format (swf, mp3, mp4…)
14 performance indicators for exhaustive analyses (durations, readings, actions, diffusions, uses…)
Recognition of diffusion modes (clip or live), even on “external” sites (blogs, sites of video divisions…)
Thorough analysis of visitor actions (sharing content, put in favourites…)
Personalization of analyses on 5 levels of tree structure (possibility of integrating personalized measurements)
Automatic check of content reading (by sending of a hit of every five seconds)
Segmentation of data and real time
Fast and easy Implementation whatever the technology of the multi-media reader (Javascript, Flash, AS3…)