Web Analytics Pulse

Omniture Summit 08 Coverage

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:40:00 +0000

It was my first Omniture Summit, and was an amazing experience. It's always a great pleasure to see, hear from the industry experts. It is great to meet folks whose blog you read, listen to Seth Godin! and also Lance Armstrong.

Although i admit i could not meet all of them i wanted to! but it was great networking at Omniture Summit 08. I tried covering the summit live but with so much less time and so many things to do! i had to wait to come back to India ( after a long 28 hr flight) to write about my experience and share some of the important session learning from Omniture Summit.

Here's the Series of Posts i've written on Omniture Summit 08.

Omniture Site Catalyst 14.0 Launched

Omniture Summit Day 2

Power Strategies for Web Analyst Using Omniture SiteCatalyst

Omniture Site Catalyst Excel Client Update

Using Web Analytics to Make Smart Business Decisions

Omniture Summit Day 3 and Future Change Request

Web Analytics Blog Updates Feb 08

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:08:00 +0000

Here are the updates so far for the month of Feburary

Web Analytics Team structure and Web Analytics communication startegies.

Confused on deciding on if a metric qualifies as Key performance indicator for your business.

How to decide if a metric qualifies as KPI

June Dershewitz presentation on Web analytics Career Management.

Web Analytics Career Management Guide

Google Recently announced the release of Urchin Software in beta.

Urchin Software now available to download

Accenture recently acquired Maxamine and Memetrics

Maxamine and Memetrics Acquired by Accenture

Web analytics Basics revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:38:00 +0000

It was a while ago that i wrote about the importance of web analytics basics knowledge and how it forms the foundation for a web analyst. I also started with series of posts labelled Web Analytics Back to basics.

This was thanks to a great discussion on the Web Analytics forum about What makes a great web analyst or the traits one look for.

The Web Analytics back to basic series will now be continued (thanks that now i have couple of folks to help me) on the Web Analytics India blog. So here are the topics to be covered!

We would love if any of you would like to contribute with any of the topic below, I would be more than happy to publish it on both blogs with full credits. Drop in a mail and we can disucss.

Topics to be covered.

1) Terminology

2) Methods of tracking

3) Creation of KPIs

4) Implementation

5) Conversion analysis

6) Referrer Analysis

7) Path Analysis / Drop off/Fall out Analysis

8) Multivariate Testing

9) A/B Tests

9) Communicating Results

Web analytics India Blog Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:35:00 +0000

Happy new year! to the readers of this blog! here's wishing a great new year ahead to all the readers!

The first post in this new year! Here are few updates and latest from Web Analytics India Blog.

Web Analytics Popular Blog Posts 2007.

A list of Popular Blog post compiled by Alex Cohen and Dennis R Mortensen.

Omniture kickstarts 2008 by sponsoring India Digital Summit

Omniture in India sponsors one of the biggest event to start year 2008

Web Analytics Wednesday WAW Chennai

Continuing from Bangalore WAW, here's the next WAW Event in India.

CMS Watch 2008 Predictions

Web Analytics Predictions 2008

Web Analytics Wednesday WAW Bangalore

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 17:49:00 +0000

Web Analytics Wednesday is all set to happen in Bangalore, a great event for web analysts to network and share their knowledge and experience.
Read more about event and registration process

Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) Bangalore

And also there's a Web Analytics webinar you might be interested in.
Web Analytics Webinar Event: Best practices from Leading Financial Institution

Keep Track of Web Analytics Events, Web Analytics Events in India and Web Analytics Webcasts/webinars

Launching - Web Analytics India Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:10:00 +0000

I am glad to announce the launch of a site dedicated for web analysts in India and around the world.

Web Analytics India - The Knowledge Sharing Platform for Web Analysts

This site aims (via blog) at being a platform for web analysts in India and around the world and also getting latest web analytics industry information. The site also aims at getting latest information on web analytics industry in india, web analytics india events information to its readers.

You can contribute to web analytics india by being a author yourself, so if you are willing to contribute you can contact the Editor for more information.

Thanks to few of folks from web analytics fraternity in india who helped me with feedback and suggestions! and made this site possible.

Thank you Naveen, Ravi Pathak and Girish. You guys rock!

This ofcourse would have not happened without the help of web analytics association support and also the WA yahoo forum members! Thanks to all of them.

and a "HUGE THANKS" to the readers of my blog without whom i would have not been able to come up with such a idea! a big thank you :)

I would "love your feedbacks" , so please go thru the site and if there is anything iam missing, or you think should be included! give me a shout! and i'll ensure it's up there..

and dont forget to Subscribe to Web Analytics India :-)
oh yeah! i'll keep blogging here

Web Mining Seminar - Yahoo R&D Bangalore

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:24:00 +0000

I've been crazily busy! for past couple of weeks, but this is something which i had post for the benefit of the readers. I have couple of things due, one is to share the experience of "Web Analytics Collective" which happened at Indian Institue of Business - Bangalore which was amazing and also the latest on my new project! :-) .

However there's a Seminar happening hosted by Yahoo! India Research & Development Team Bangalore. Here are the details and register link.

Leave me a note below if you plan to attend:)

In this ocean of hyperlinked data there is explicit and implicit information and knowledge. Web Mining is the task of analyzing this data and extracting information and knowledge for many different purposes. We walk through this process and give specific examples.

Yahoo! India Research & Development invites you to the Big Thinkers India
Series, where Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Vice President at Yahoo! Research for Europe and Latin America will share his insights and experience on ‘Web Mining: The Wisdom of the Crowds’. Ricardo is the co-author of Modern Information Retrieval (Addison-Wesley, 1999) among other books and publications. He is also a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Mathematical Society (AMS), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
(SIAM), and senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Register HERE

Web Analytics Collectives at BCB5

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:50:00 +0000

Barcamp Bangalore is all set to happen again, 5th Version of the Barcamp Bangalore has now evolved into a great unconference since it started.

Date: Nov 17/18 Venue: Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

For the First time, i was able to gather a "small" crowd (hoping it'll get bigger) to have a Web Analytics Collective - Bangalore in this two day event.

You can register for Barcamp5 Here, and you can meanwhile also join Web Analytics Inida Group on Face book to discuss more.

You can follow the Web Analytics Discussion on Bangalore Barcamp forum Here

Here's what Web Analytics Collective at BCB5 will focus on

Introduction to Web Analytics
Using Web Analytics to get a front row look into hearts and minds of your customers and prospects
Web Reporting vs web Analysis
Web Analytics Vendors.
Other Adhoc Topics

So are you a Web Analytics Analyst in Bangalore or surrounding city, Barcamp is a must attend to keep yourself updated with latest in India internet and technology.

See you there, meanwhile if you want to pitch in you can drop me a mail at anil dot umachigi at gmail.

Web Analytics Industry shakeups

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:30:00 +0000

Last Couple of weeks Web Analytics Industry has been rocked with big news, starting with Omniture Acquisition of Visual sciences and the latest about Management Shakeups in Webtrends another leading Web Analytics service provider.

There's been lot of discussion about both of the happening by the web analytics industry experts. You can follow both these discussions on the Web Analytics Yahoo Forum.

Managment Shakeups Discussion Here
Omniture Acquitions Discussion Here

Meanwhile here is a excerpt from article from clickz about the Web Trends Management Changes.

Big news rocked the analytics industry for the second time in two weeks as WebTrends's board of directors ousted CEO Greg Drew and three of his top executives.

"We're in a high growth industry, and we're performing quite well and growing
double digits, but the board would like to see us do even better," said Kopp.
"We're fortunate to have a deep enough bench that we can make some changes."

Released along with CEO Drew were Jason Palmer, vice president of product management; Tore Steen, vice president of business and corporate development; and Hamid Bahadori, vice president of product development and hosted operations. Replacing Drew as CEO will be Bruce Coleman, former interim CEO at Websense, while John Rodkin and Leo Chang will lead product management. Both joined through the acquisition of ClickShift last December.

Prior to the executive dismissals, several non-executive staffers fled the company recently, according to Eric Peterson, founder of consultancy Web Analytics Demystified. "Certainly that, combined with Greg, Jason, Tore and Hamid all being asked to leave… raises some concerns," he said.
Peterson added, "This has been one of the weirder weeks in Web analytics ever. One of the biggest publicly traded companies gets acquired, and another lets its executives go. Now I'm afraid to wake up tomorrow and find out what else might be going on," he said.

Complete Article Here

Microsoft Gatineau in beta Phase

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:06:00 +0000

Following a series of Web Analytics industry News, October has been a Significant month. Microsoft finally relased it's Web Analytics Product in beta phase, In competition with other ASP's Gatineau allows users of Microsoft adCenter to analyze their site.

Here's a overview of what's in the Beta Phase:

1.) Demographic Segmentation: the ability t0 compare the behavior of men vs women, or different age groups who are using your site - is a key feature of Gatineau.

2.) Custom taxonomies: A neat feature of Gatineau beta 1 which hasn't had much air-time is the ability to define a custom taxonomy (i.e. site structure) as you're instrumenting your site

3.) Outbound link tracking: beta 1 provides automatic outbound link tracking.

4.) Inbound referrals: Same as Referral Traffic

5.) ROI reports: Looks pretty neat, includes Campaign Overview, E- Mail Campaigns, Banner Campaigns and Offline Campaigns.

6.)Goal Analysis:

7.) Client System Reports:

Microsoft Gatineau is only available for US Users as of now. You can view the complete details about the tool and it's features with screenshot at Ian Thomas's Blog .

Source: liesdamnedlies

Two Word Search Phrases used most on google

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:29:00 +0000

Here's an intresting research done of number of words used to search on google, as per the research done by onestat, Internet users who type two words for on a search engine query account for 31.9 percent of searches worldwide while three-word phrases are used for 27 percent of searches. A single word accounts for 15.2 percent of queries, and four words are used for 14.8 percent of searches.

"Search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo can drive a lot of
traffic to a Web site," said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat. "It is
important that a Webmaster or SEO expert knows what kind of search phrases they
have to use."

Instances with five (6.5 percent); six (2.7 percent); seven (1.1 percent); eight (0.5 percent); nine (0.2 percent); and 10 (0.1 percent) words are used in fewer searches.

OneStat.com collects data through its Web analytics services. Numbers are averages. Research is based on a daily sample of two million Web visitors from 100 countries.

Courtesy: Clickz

Tailored ads to suite your experience

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:05:00 +0000

Media giant AOL recently introduced "do not track" service links thru which constumer can opt out of the list run by large advertising networks.
A new step in behavioural advertising helps gaining insights of visitor behaviour and intrests.

In the Survey done by Avenue A Razorfish on Attituded and Behaviour of US Online shoppers and toward personalized product recommendation on E-commerece website july-07.

72% found personalized recommendation helpful
62% purchased an item as a result of personalized recommendation
34% were concerned about privacy when receving recommendations.

Signing up does not actually stop ads, but it prevents advertisers from tracking surfing habits. The service also explains the benefits of behavioral targeting.

Instead of having interruptive ads ... things are hopefully tailored to be
suitable to your experience, said Jules Polonetsky, chief privacy officer of
AOL, in a statement.

Providing links to opt-out of tracking—while promoting the benefits of tracking—makes AOL's marketing practices more open. It says to consumers, "If you tell me something about you, I will tailor the content of my advertising to you." It also makes clear that such personalization is optional.

Content Courtesy: emarketer

Effective Keyword Research Method

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 16:50:00 +0000

In a recent article on Clickz, Julie Batten wrote about Effective Keyword SEO Research.
This is a great article which covers the basics of keyword research in 2 parts. Here's a quick wrap up of the 2 article.

SEO - Short for search engine optimization, the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine.

Why do i need SEO? - The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.

Keyword Research?, yes that's the one of the most fundamentals of SEO activites.

Keywords are the building blocks of SEO. Although the days of the keyword meta tag being the golden ticket to top rankings are undoubtedly over, keywords themselves are still one of the most important aspects of good SEO. Just their application has changed. It's not about stuffing a hundred keywords into meta tags or your copy to get rankings. It's about uncovering the keywords that make the most sense for your business and using them in a way that drives targeted, qualified traffic to your site

Defining Keyword Research

The process of uncovering and selecting the appropriate keywords for your site is called keyword research. Very simply, it involves undertaking an often painstaking investigation to discover what terms people search for, how often, and how many and which other sites appear for those terms. Keyword research is a strategic exercise that enables you to determine which queries your site is most relevant for and for which you can feasibly expect a return, then optimize your site accordingly.

Doing It Right

The best keywords have the following qualities:

Strong relevance to your site: terms for which you have content to support

Relatively high search volume: terms people are actually look for

Relatively low competition: terms with a small number of search results

Without the above criteria, you'll typically land in one of two scenarios:

You choose highly popular -- and competitive -- keywords. You end up with terms so broad that about a billion other sites are competing for them. You don't stand a chance of getting a top ranking.

You choose very narrowly targeted or niche keywords. You end up with terms that are so specific that no one actually searches for them. A top ranking is wasted because no one's there to see it.

When you select keywords that meet the three key criteria, you exponentially increase your chances of ranking high in SERPs (Search Engine Result Page).

Helpful Tools

Two free tools to try:

Google's Adwords Keyword Tool provides a long list of related terms and indicates search volume based on a five-point ranking.

Yahoo's Keyword Selection Tool provides actual keyword volume for the most recent month it has data both for the term you type in and for related terms.

No matter how much time is invested, the knowledge you'll gain from conducting keyword research will be invaluable for any SEO initiative.

Understand Customers' Information Needs

Each person in your audience may have a different motive for searching. If you sell a product or service, people likely undergo a decision-making process before they make their final selection. For some products, this can be very quick (e.g., buying shampoo). For others, it can be very extensive and drawn out (e.g., buying a car or a house).

A simplified decision-making process involves:

1. Initial research

2. Consideration

3. Evaluation

4. Election/purchase.

Knowing these steps, we get an idea of the type of information needs users may have at each stage. Let's revisit the real estate example from part one. Say you're a home builder trying to determine what type of information users might search for. You might come up with the following:

1. Initial research:

What type of house do I want?

What area do I want to live in?

What size home can I afford?

2. Consideration:

Which builders offer my desired attributes at a price I can afford?

Which builders have communities in my preferred area?

3. Evaluation:

Which builders have the best reputation?

How long must I wait for my new home to be built?

4. Selection/purchase:

How do I purchase a home?

How much will my mortgage be?

Develop Initial Keyword Lists

Once you have a good idea of what your audience might look for, you can start to think about keywords they might type in a search engine.

Some sample keywords to answer a couple questions from earlier:

What type of house do I want?

Detached homes

Semi-detached homes

Townhouse

What area do I want to live in?

Toronto area homes

GTA homes

Homes in Toronto

How much will my mortgage be?

Mortgage calculator

Mortgage amount

Home mortgage rates

By undergoing this exercise, you begin to formulate lists of keywords that may interest your target audience. You might later decide some aren't relevant to your site, but the point here is brainstorming, so anything goes.

Try to build out these themed lists by brainstorming with a variety of methods:

Scan your site page by page for potential terms.

Look at your analytics to see which search terms are actually used to find your site.

Poll coworkers and the sales team.

Interview your customers.

You should emerged from this process armed with multiple lists of keywords that could be relevant for your business. If you started with step one, these lists should be somewhat themed by information need. You may want to begin to group the terms into more focused topics. Loosely aligning these lists with the various content site areas can help down the road.

Employ Keyword Research Tools

Now that you have a good idea of what keywords your audience might search with, enlist the help of an online keyword research tool to find out what keywords people actually search with. (Some useful keyword research tools are suggested in part one.)

Copy and paste your themed lists one by one into the keyword research tool. If you do hundreds of keywords at once, you'll likely miss some important niche terms because they'll be overshadowed by the high-volume terms.

Each time you run a search, the tool will return a variety of different queries that relate to those initial terms (plurals, misspellings, related terms, synonyms, etc.). Some will be well suited to your business; others will be irrelevant. Don't try to scrub the results now. Instead, immediately export the results to an Excel spreadsheet.

Scrub the Lists

Armed with your results spreadsheet, go through the lists to narrow them down to the most appropriate and desirable terms. There's some manual labor here, but use Excel's many sort and filter functions to help automate some tasks. Some tips for scrubbing the list:

Filter results to show only unique records, and eliminate any duplicate keywords.

If you used a tool that gives you search volume and competition data, set a threshold for each metric and eliminate any keywords that don't meet them. You might immediately eliminate any terms that have less than 50 searches and more than 1 million searches (competition), for example.

To target longer tail terms, eliminate any single keywords.

Manually skim the lists and delete anything that jumps out as inappropriate, out of context, or irrelevant. Keep misspellings, however; you don't want to miss potential customers just because they can't spell.

Remove any terms that are grammatically awkward that you don't see fitting into your site's copy.

Once done, you should be left with a relatively decent list for each area. Depending on how popular your market is, you could be left with 10 terms in each list or 100. If it's 100 in each, you'll need to be more ruthless with your scrubbing.

Make Selections and Allocations

Start to determine which keywords you'll actually use for SEO (define). That means choosing which keywords you'll target for which pages on your site. Check out "Doing It Right" in part one for help with selecting the best terms.

You ideally want two or three terms per site page. Create a new column in your spreadsheet called "URL or Page," and enter a potential page that may be a good fit with each keyword. Then sort by page, and see which pages require more or less keywords. Further edit and refine until you get to the final list.

Read the Entire post (A must read)
SEO Keyword Research Part 1
SEO keyword Research Part 2

Optimizing Landing pages to impact conversion rate

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:17:00 +0000

I got an email today to register for an webcast hosted by American Marketing Associtaion, the agenda looks intresting so for the folks who are intrested to join here's the details and the register link.

Event Date: 20 Nov 07
Type: Webcast

Small changes to your landing pages can have a dramatic effect on conversion rates and, ultimately, revenue. Google Website Optimizer and Marqui will show you easy ways to create, test, and optimize your landing pages for better results. All marketing professionals interested in getting more leads out of the same marketing dollars should take notice. In this session you will learn:

Agenda:

How to easily create effective landing pages
How to test and optimize your landing pages
How optimizing landing pages can make a big difference to your bottom line

Catch you on the Webcast :)

Landing Page Optimization

Tracking International Web Analytics Pulse

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 07:13:00 +0000

The Web Analytics Association is organizing a webcast to understand and bring together international web analyst outside U.S to discuss over various challenges and status of web analytics industry.

Are you a Web Analyst in India, Europe or other parts of Asia?, if yes this one is not to be missed.

Event Date: 15 Nov 07

Here's the Excerpt of the WebAanalyticsassociation article.

Our panel of experts will consider the “international” challenges of web analytics today; how web analytics is being used by multi-language/multi-country sites; and we'll take the pulse of web analytics maturity in different regions. Attend this webcast in order to:

Understand the challenges international web analysts currently face
Learn practical examples of how analytics is being carried out "differently," but successfully, in non-US countries
Better understand the international maturity curve
Discover why you can’t afford to ignore the unique characteristics associated with various regions and countries

WAA article and registration link Here

Meanwhile, if you are a Web Analyst from India/Asia attending the webcast, let me know i'll be glad to discuss of things we could talk about in the webcast! Leave your comments here.

Subscribe to Web Analytics Industry, Marketing and Technology Updates by Email

Omniture Acquires Visual Sciences

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:30:00 +0000

In a strategic move Omniture Inc has acquired Visual Sciences, one of it's competitor till yesterday. Visual Sciences was taken over for approximately $394 million.

It will be exciting to see how Omniture integrates VisualSciences into it's current features, with Offermatica also under it's belt, Ominture is sure going great guns.

Here's the Excerpt from the Press Release.

The combination of Omniture and Visual Sciences creates a company with substantial scale and resources to deliver industry leading products and services that address the rapidly expanding online business optimization market. The combined company will be able to accelerate investments, meet a wider set of customer needs through a richer solution set and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets.

“With the tremendous growth opportunities we see in the online optimization market, we believe that in addition to being financially accretive to our shareholders, this is a strategic investment that will drive increased value for customers and partners,” said Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture. “We are facing a very significant opportunity defined by the rapid growth of online advertising and online business in general. This acquisition enables Omniture to accelerate our investments in advanced solutions that drive customer success as well as create further opportunities to cross-sell our growing portfolio of products to a combined customer base of more than 4,000 customers.”

Complete Press Release "Omniture buys Visual Sciences"

Are you a Customer of Omniture or Visual Sciences? well iam waiting what value addition can omniture can give us as a customer!
Pen down your views as comments.

Online Banking Fraud in UK Reduces by 67%

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:23:00 +0000

According to research study done by APACS - the UK payment Association, Online banking fraud losses by 67%.

According to the study, The introduction of chip and PIN has made it more difficult for fraudsters to commit card fraud in the UK.
Online banking fraud losses fell by 67 per cent from £22.4m in the first six months of 2006 to just £7.5m in the same period this year. This decrease occurred because online banks have successfully implemented a range of measures to detect and prevent fraud, coupled with the fact that there was an unusually high level of online banking fraud in the first few months of 2006.

Sandra Quinn, director of communications at APACS, says:

“The banking industry also continues to work with law enforcement, card accepting businesses, the Home Office and organizations such as Crimestoppers to help deter and prevent the fraudsters"

So we continue to urge people to register with the secure online payment systems - MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa - which help prevent cards being used fraudulently over the internet.

So above was the excerpt from the APACS (Complete Article here).
There's two points to ponder or rather to be taken notice (highlighted)

It's Very important to include "Security Features" if you do have a finance related sites and show how well equipped you are to fight Fraud (Example "Chip and Pin" technology in UK)
A Security Logo like VeriSign for Finance related Site and "MasterCard SecureCode" and Verified by Visa for E-Commerce are huge bonus to gain Visitor Confidence.

Finally, With E- Servicing being one of the Top Priority for choosing a card/services, Brand, Trust, and Security icons, which are clearly visible on the landing page will help deliver confidence message.

Have i missed anything, please let me know via comment.

Search Marketing Strategies for Holiday Season 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:13:00 +0000

With Holiday season 2007 approaching fast, Online retailers are gearing up and making changes to campaigns and their marketing strategies.

The yahoo search marketing team shares their finding from the research and also few pointers to optimize your site for the upcoming holiday season. Here's the excerpt from the post.

Holiday Highlights
According to comScore, online consumer spending grew 26 percent in 2006 to $24.4 billion. More than 80 percent of consumers did at least some shopping online (BizRate and Shop.org Holiday Mood Study 2006), and 50 percent of shoppers bought more stuff online in 2006 than 2005 (NielsenNetRatings research). It’s a pretty telling trend. (For what it’s worth, last year I did all of my holiday shopping online for the first time.)

The Yahoo! Search Marketing team has prepared some tips for advertisers based on the holiday data we gathered:

Engage the bargain hunters—According to the BizRate and Shop.org Holiday Mood Study 2006, nearly half of the consumers polled named “free shipping” as a primary motivator to purchase. Other shoppers named “online only sales” and “repeat buyer discounts.”

Primary motivator to purchase is indeed a great input from yahoo marketing team, Using terms like these on campaign landing page would be a huge bonus during the Holiday season.

Keywords count—According to our internal data, “Christmas” was, not surprisingly, the most holiday-related search term in 2006 with more than three million average monthly searches. Other popular terms included “Christmas decoration,” “Hanukkah,” “holiday gift” and “gift for dad.” Make sure that your keyword selection includes holiday-related keywords and seasonal products and promotions.

Holiday related, seasonal related, and seasonal promotion related keywords is what one needs to optimize/ensure exists on respective product/service page.

Titillate with titles—Titles and descriptions can drive relevance and clicks, so it’s a best practice when creating specific holiday ad groups to place the holiday term prominently in both the title and the description, and include any special seasonal promotions in the copy.

Review your current titles and making appropriate changes to both title and description to include the seasonal and holiday related keywords will help increase relevance.

Clear for landing—Make sure that your landing pages are relevant to your keywords, ad copy and any promotions. Nothing’s more frustrating for a consumer to click on an ad that says, “Get 10% off” something and then land on a page where that information is either absent or buried. Prices and promotions should be consistent with ad copy.

By ensuring the above two criteria are met, a clear landing page will help drive conversion. A clear "headline" and a visible "Conversion Exit" will help smooth flow of the conversion.

Combine search with display and offline advertising— Make sure you include your keywords and consistent copy in your display and offline marketing material.

Content courtesy: Yahoo marketing Blog

Factors that influence lead generation from landing page

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:49:00 +0000

In a recent article on marketing experiments folks wrote about Synchronizing Value Proposition and Page Design on landing pages to increase conversion.
The post is about
Importance of Value Proposition

Conversion Formula

Read more about Conversion factors for lead generation below
conversion formula shows that after motivation, clarity of the value proposition is the most important factor in determining whether a customer buys from you or not.

Essentially, value proposition is the primary reason the ideal prospect—the people you serve best—should purchase from you rather than your competitor. You must match your competition on every point or dimension of value except one, and on that point you must exceed them. This secures you in the market, this is the reason your business deserves to exist.

In essence, companies need to spend more time building a great value proposition than marketing a poor one.

After identifying a unique and compelling value proposition, you must ensure that you express it throughout your sales process in a clear, consistent, and compelling way.

Eliminate disruption and you can maximize conversion.

Read the complete Article with Example Here

The Conversion Formula Explained.

The Marketing experiments team way back came up with factors that influence generating a lead from landing page down to a mathematical formula

C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) – 2(a)

C = probability of conversion
m = external motivation
v = clarity of value proposition
i = incentive to continue
f = friction element
a = anxiety

Elaborating a bit on these, adding to what Roy from Customer Driven marketing blog says

In simple words, you have more chance of success if you

Generate quality traffic to your site.

Doing a primary research and competitive analysis of the market to understand who would quality referrers

Explain clearly what you have to offer

A clear and simple message that showcases your product/services

Provide ample incentives.

Let your visitors know the benefits/incentives they receive using action words and appropriate images.

Have a quick and easy registration/sign up/application process.

An easy navigation and usability features to reach the complete conversion cycle

Have reassuring feedback comments, ratings

Customer reviews, ratings, can be huge bonus if used in the right way

Security credentials to reduce customer anxiety

Security logos like VeriSign and showcasing Security features is always a plus

Is there something else that can be considered as factor?
please feel free to add on via comments.

Tesco (UK) launches financial price comparison site

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 06:16:00 +0000

TescoCompare.com is a joint venture between the supermarket and The Royal Bank of Scotland and offers financial services from RBS companies, Tesco itself and other providers. It is currently only offering car insurance quotes.

A comparison for Car insurance quote from TescoCompare and the two major players in the UK market, confused.com and moneysupermarket.com
helped find following details.

Data entry
This is the most painful and time consuming part of the process, and the key here is to make it as easy as possible for the customer. All three sites have managed to do this part of the job well, though Tesco seemed to have difficulty recognising my car registration.
Range of quotes on offer
On this score, TescoCompare trails behind its two rivals, though it's early days yet, and it did at least have 15 quotes for me to choose from and another 15 were unable to quote.

Confused.com could display 25 quotes, while Moneysupermarket gave me quotes from 43 different insurers.

Which site has the best deals?
This will of course vary depending on type of car, age, no claims etc, but moneysupermarket and confused.com both managed to beat Tesco's lowest quote by at least £40, though it's not always easy to compare when you have to take into account the amount of excess, whether a courtesy car comes with the policy, and so on.

One useful feature of the Tesco site was the facility to select and compare up to four quotes side by side and look into all aspects of the policy, something which would have been useful on its rivals' sites.

Tesco doesn't have the same range of insurers on offer as its rivals, and the fact that many are from the RBS group may concern some. It currently offers access to just 25% of the UK insurance market, and visitors can compare financial products from 25 brands on the site.

content courtesy: e-consultancy
Complete article Here

online financial product applications - abondonment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:16:00 +0000

For all those who work in the financial services sector this is a great article which explains form/application abandonments from the financial services/product pages.

In a study conducted with Forrester Research, Inc. that examined consumer motivations in abandoning applications for online financial products, including checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, auto insurance, brokerage accounts, mortgage loans, home equity loans, and personal loans.

The study, which revealed that 54 percent of online financial product applicants abandon applications prior to submitting, examines some of the reasons why these abandoners chose not to complete the application online. The study was based on behavioral data from comScore’s panel of more than 2 million people worldwide, plus an email survey of 568 applicants who had abandoned an application for a financial product online.

Of those who initiated an online financial application but did not submit it, 49 percent said that they had no intention of completing the application. This percentage was higher for deposit product applicants (58 percent) and substantially lower for credit card applicants (32 percent).

The top reasons cited by those who did not intend to complete the application included:

Wanted more product information (23 percent)
Not ready to apply (19 percent)

Wanted to see if they qualified for the product (14 percent)

Those who started an application with the intention of completing it, but who ended up abandoning the application cited the following reasons for not completing the application:

Changed their mind about applying online (12 percent)
Had privacy/security concerns (11 percent)

Wanted to speak to a sales person regarding the product (11 percent)

“As more consumers research and purchase financial products on the Web, the importance of understanding application abandonment will increase,”

said Forrester Research Senior Analyst Brad Strothkamp. “This study provides clear evidence that today’s financial services sites have a ways to go at both understanding and solving this important issue.”

Content Courtesy: Comscore
Complete article with full report link Here

Web Analytics Report surfing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:50:00 +0000

Web Analytics Report surfing? well yeah right now that's a interesting term coined by "Dennis R. Mortensen"
what does it mean?
it's the unfortunate behavior in the usage of Web Analytics tools and one of the greatest sins one as a Web Analytics practitioner can do.

In my early days and probably every analyst experiences this, all the major web analytics tool offer gig/tera bytes of data and an analyst keeps surfing from one to another to look for the "right" reports. Dennis addresses this problem with some great tips which no doubt will save lot of time and get what you wanted!

Here's the link to the article!
VisualRevenue | Web Analytics Report Surfing and how to avoid it

Thank you Dennis :-)

Web Analytics Standards Definition Released

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:48:00 +0000

Although iam late in posting this, but certainly important!

Web Analytics Standard definition is a GREAT step for uniformity among all web analytics practitioner's, A must have on your desk for a daily user.
Web Analytics Association recently released list of 26 "foundational Web analytic metric definition" here's the excerpt from the article and download link for the PDF file.

The Web Analytics Association (WAA) announced a major accomplishment and milestone with the publishing of standard definitions for 26 foundational web analytic metrics covering the areas of visits, content and conversion. The result of a collaborative effort between WAA members, vendors, agencies, practitioners and thought leaders, the new definitions provide consistency of the most widely used terms across the analytics industry.

Web Analytic Association Article Here

Download the Web Analytics Metrics definition Here

Importance of Screen resolution report

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:17:00 +0000

Does monitor/screen resolution matter? do you make use of the monitor resolution report for analysis. If yes great! if no you should!. It gives you a great insight on what resolution monitors are used by your visitors and gives you a opportunity to go back and test how your pages look and does it actually display all you wanted to.

In the past month, we've worked on creating/optimizing our pages for all kind of resolution users. our motto was
1.) Deliver our Value proportion (USP)
2.) Call to action copy/button clearly visible
3.) Product/service details displayed

and not but not the least use the K.I.S.S Formula :-) (Keep it Simple St...d)

The above holds great importance for landing pages and product related pages.

I also recently read an amazing post about this by Jonathan from optimizeandprophesize
A must read, he talks in detail about the same, Complete article here

Google Sites Capture 27% Online Video Market Share

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:51:00 +0000

In a recent comScore Video Metrix report for July 2007, revealed that nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of three hours of online video during the month. Google Sites topped the July rankings with both the most unique video viewers and most videos viewed.

Google Continues to Dominate Online Video Market

July saw Americans view more than 9 billion videos online, with Google Sites once again ranking as the top U.S. video property with nearly 2.5 billion videos viewed (27.0 percent share of videos), 2.4 billion of which occurred at YouTube.com. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 390 million (4.3 percent), followed by Fox Interactive Media with 298 million (3.3 percent) and Viacom Digital with 281 million (3.1 percent).'

In total, nearly 134 million Americans viewed online video in July, or approximately three in four U.S. Internet users. Google Sites also captured the largest online video audience with 67.8 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 35.8 million and Yahoo! Sites with 35.3 million.

Other notable findings from July 2007 include:

Online viewers watched an average of more than three hours of online video during the month (181 minutes).
The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes.
Nearly three out of four (74.2 percent) U.S. Internet users viewed video online.
More than one out of three (36.7 percent) U.S. Internet users viewed video on YouTube.com.
The average online video viewer consumed 68 videos, or more than two per day.

Entire figures and article here

Content Courtesy: Comscore