Web Analytics World: Internet Marketing & Analytics

7 Best Practices for Landing Page Optimization

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:42:18 PDT

In this webinar Tim Ash, a leading landing page optimization specialist and author of "Landing Page Optimization," covers the "7 Deadly Sins" of landing page design... and how to correct them. I watched the entire video (a little over an hour) and found it highly engaging and recommend it to anyone wanting some solid best practices in regards to Landing Page Optimization - nicely done Tim.

Unica: Are You Just Reporting or Are You Actionable?

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:09:51 PDT

Guest Blogger: Lee Isensee (@OMLee)

Hello Web Analytics World followers! It is a great honor to join our friends and competitors on the Web Analytics World blog, there have been some fantastic posts and comments here thus far and we hope to continue the trend in our own little corner of the site.

When Manoj originally approached Unica to blog on the site there was an immediate interest amongst multiple people within the company that wanted to reach out to the community so we have decided to take a bit of a team approach to engaging with the community here. Every two weeks or so Unica will dip into our pool of energetic marketing professionals and have them address topics that are either "hot" in the market or issues that they are continuing to hear from other industry professionals, customers and/or prospects.

As with any successful blog, we hope this does not become a one direction conversation - no one likes a preachy vendor. Therefore we are asking you, our fellow web analytics enthusiasts, to comment (good, bad and ugly) about what you are reading and in response we will do our best to be as frank and honest with all of you.

With this being said, I wanted to keep our first blog short & sweet and with what, in my 10 years of experience in this industry, I consider one of the most frustrating points of a "successful" web analytics deployment. This question is something that, in all my years consulting, customers and prospects always avoided or at the very least had a hard time defining.

"When deploying solution X, what are the 'business must-haves', 'business needs' and 'business nice to haves' that will help the team influence the success of our company?"

This simple question harkens back to the fundamentals of actionable web analytics and KPI's which is; for any report you consider important, if the numbers go up or down, what are you going to do with that information that will influence your business. Many times organizations get caught up in the feature / function specifics of a particular web analytics solution or the pretty colors or the simplicity of the interface.

At the end of the day, whether the application creates a graphic that blows your CEO's hair back or offers data in a basic text file format so that it causes even your most technical statistical analyst to fall asleep at their desk, what is the importance of the data that you are looking at?

Given this topic, what are some of the most interesting 'must-haves' that you have seen that ended up cluttering your web analytics solution?

Thank you for checking out our first of many blog posts and have a great web analytics day!

Lee Isensee / @OMLee
Marketing Solutions Architect
Unica Corporation

@Unica / @Unica_WA

20% of Mobile Users Using WiFi - Bango

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:53:47 PDT

According to Bango, over 20% of people visiting web sites to purchase content using their mobile phones are now connecting via WiFi. This presents a major challenge to both content providers and operators as these mobile visitors are unrecognized by the networks, making it difficult to sell and market mobile services to them and significantly impacting mobile content revenues.

Smartphones and high end mobile devices with WiFi, such as Blackberries, the Apple iPhone, Windows Mobile devices, Google Android and Nokia Series 60 (N95, etc) represent the fastest growing mobile phone segment. This means that WiFi is appearing more frequently as a primary connection method across a growing range of handsets, according to data recorded in Bango Analytics.

“The use of Wi-Fi on mobile handsets is becoming pervasive,” said Frank Dickson, Vice President of Research with analyst firm In-Stat. ”By 2010, In-Stat anticipates that 20% of the total WiFi chipsets will be used in mobile phones as manufacturers, currently led by Nokia, continue to ship an increasing number of WiFi enabled handsets.”

To access mobile services, customers can now easily connect via WiFi at home, in the workplace and in a variety of public spaces, meaning they are not going through their operator network and are therefore unable to automatically access operator billing and other common network services.

“An increasing number of phones automatically recommend WiFi as the preferred connection choice when available,” continued Dickson. “The result is that subscribers are using the WiFi benefits of high bandwidth and often free access to take advantage of mobile services that were formerly only accessed via the cellular network. The market has spoken and the market likes WiFi.”

Bango measures connection methods and conversion rates using its ground-breaking mobile analytics technology. Tracking these different connection methods over the last year has revealed that on average one in five connections is now via WiFi or other non-operator network. Customers connecting in this way cannot be authenticated to pay using simple operator billing which results in an inconsistent payment experience that slashes conversion rates and kills marketing ROI. The statistics also reveal that many customers that access their operator portals via WiFi are blocked, which prevents them from accessing or purchasing operator approved content and services.

In response, Bango is working closely with mobile operators and content providers to develop a unique mobile billing technology that allows customers connected over WiFi, and other non-operator networks, to continue to benefit from fast, consistent, operator billing.

“Operator billing delivers the highest payment conversion rates for mobile content,” says Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango. “These Bango statistics are both a warning and an opportunity for mobile businesses to ensure their mobile billing solution can secure the same high conversion rates from the growing number of WiFi connected customers.”

Ovum projects that smartphone shipments will grow by 18.7% this year and represent 29% of the market by 2014, while Gartner reports 36.4 million smartphones were sold in the first quarter of 2009. Bango predicts that by 2010 over a third of all mobile internet connections will be via WiFi.

To download a full copy of Bango’s WiFi market stats, visit www.bango.com/wifi

SES San Jose 2009 - Interview: Alex Bennert of The Wall Street Journal

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:47:11 PDT

Late last week I caught up with Alex Bennert who is an SEO Strategist at the Wall Street Journal. Alex is scheduled to speak at the upcoming Search Engine Strategies in San Jose on the topic of "How SEO Can Help Save the Publishing Industry" so I decided to get her insight on this topic. Check out conversation below:

[Manoj]: What are some of the most significant differences working as an In House SEO vs. an agency.

[Alex Bennert]: As an agency SEO you are usually managing several clients at once, each one with very different strategies, resources and goals. As an in house SEO, my energy and my skills are completely devoted to a single client. I still juggle multiple projects and work with various internal departments but ultimately there is a symbiosis between these goals.

[Manoj]: Are there unique SEO opportunities available to online publications compared to other sites?

[Alex Bennert]: A SERP today displays multiple content types such as news, video, images, stock quotes and blog posts. This opens up a lot of potential real estate on the search page because many online publishers generate all of these kinds of content. Say for a given query, you have a video, a news story and a blog post that are all relevant. You can actually rank in 3 different places on the first page of a search result. Before the advent of universal search, you had to spam to accomplish multiple placements.

[Manoj]: How important has SEO and Internet marketing become to your industry now that more people look online rather than physical newspapers.

[Alex Bennert]: I’m certain that Internet marketing has become crucial to this industry however as an SEO, I consider myself more of a technologist than a marketer. Search, at its core, is simply a conduit for people looking for specific information. My job is simply to know how search engines access data so that whenever we have information, it can surface on relevant queries. Beyond that, the feedback loop of search data provides us with a lovely little window into the heads of our audience, what they’re thinking about and what words they use to express this in a search box.

[Manoj]:I am assuming duplicate content is a major concern for your online publishers?

[Alex Bennert]: You have no idea! Duplicate content was one of the first and most challenging problems to address when I came to WSJ. It was like a Hydra…every time I cut off one head, another would grow in its place. We implemented the CLE tag immediately after Google announced it, and so far it has been a huge blessing to me in this regard. It’s still a little buggy here and there, but for the most part I’ve been able to reallocate a significant amount of my time away from dupe content issues.

[Manoj]: How do you go about creating a strong SEO culture so that writers/staff are better aware of best practices before publishing content.

[Alex Bennert]: I schedule ongoing training sessions every month so that new staff, people that missed previous sessions or people that want a refresher don’t have to wait long before another session. I have different training sessions for different groups of people…the SEO for my editors/ writers/ bloggers is different from my session for IT. I also have a session for the business team that talks about understanding SEO in the context of syndication deals or microsites as well as a (less-frequent) session for management that keeps them apprised of the big picture so that I can be sure there is always top-down buy-in for SEO.

How to Maximize the Lifetime Value of Subscribers

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:08:59 PDT

Online services now generate more than $110B in revenue from subscriptions. This number is poised for growth as fueled by the move toward software-as-a-service delivery models, the limitations of ad-only revenue models, and increasing demand for content via mobile devices. The SaaS and information providers that will thrive in this market are those that can maximize the profitability of each subscriber by lowering acquisition costs, eliminating unlicensed use, preventing churn and growing revenues from up-sells. And while there are a broad set of tools focused on acquiring new subscribers, online services overlook billions in untapped revenue because they lack the tools to monetize demand within their existing subscribers.

Understanding Your Customer
The first step to maximizing revenue is having detailed insight into each subscriber’s behavior, usage patterns and preferences. Vendors must know: What content has the most up-sell potential to whom? Is there unlicensed use? Which subscribers show low usage and are at risk of churn?

The good news is that online services are especially well-suited for aggregating, analyzing, and acting on usage data in real-time to optimize revenues. Ironically, however, content and service provider companies historically haven’t made use of the data flowing through their networks: when faced with having to choose between investments in value-added services to subscribers vs. internal analytical tools, the internal tools typically lose.

Sales and marketing teams are still relying on cumbersome, legacy approaches to data analysis such as monthly e-mails containing spreadsheets of unprocessed usage data. Today instinct and intuition—rather than evidence—are the basis for answering business-critical questions such as:

If 10-30% of users are unlicensed, how do I identify which accounts are being shared?
If it takes 18-24 months to make a subscription profitable, which subscribers are at risk of churn?
Knowing that it’s is 80% less expensive to up-sell than acquire a new subscriber, where are my up-sells?

Optimizing Revenue Potential
Subscription analytics is an emerging category of solutions that maximizes the lifetime value of a subscriber by providing deep insight to access and use of a service. By proactively aggregating and analyzing data from a subscriber’s session over time, companies can customize offerings, identify at-risk subscribers, and fully maximize the revenue potential of every subscriber. Subscription analytics can provide a breakdown revenue opportunities by company, by type (e.g., unlicensed use), and by estimated value. Armed with such actionable information, sales productivity has increased 15% or more among companies using subscription analytics.

The screen shot above provides a detailed view of shared account activity

Until recently, online services have had few options on how to tackle the trade-offs between the expense of subscription analytics and investing in the service itself. At one end of the spectrum, the Internet has spawned a broad range of web analytics products, and at the other end of the spectrum, business intelligence platforms have created many advances in slicing, dicing, and visualizing data. Both approaches employ generalized tools that require significant customization and on-going administration. With the evolution of the subscription business model, there is a new breed of analytic solutions emerging specifically designed for online services. Because the new subscription analytics solutions are domain-specific, hosted, and subscription-based themselves, they have a real potential to monetize the billions of untapped revenue that exist in today’s subscribers.

By Matt Shanahan, senior vice president of strategy at Scout Analytics

5 Fast & Easy Reports to Optimize Your Site

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:30:01 PDT

ClickTale users have been optimizing conversion rates and running usability tests by watching their visitors’ actual browsing sessions and analyzing Attention Heatmaps™ since 2006.

Now ClickTale has released brand-new Page Reports that offer 5 different ways to identify which pages engage visitors, which pages don’t function properly, and which pages cause visitors to behave in unexpected ways.

Most Engaging Pages Report
The Most Engaging Pages report is based on ClickTale’s Engagement Time™ measurement (the amount of time visitors are really active on your page), which allows you to find which pages visitors have the most, and least, interaction with. This is a quick and easy way to figure out which content is sticky, and which isn’t.

The blog post “8 Brilliant Tips That Boost Conversions” (marked in yellow above) was very interesting to visitors since 4 different versions of it are among the top 10 Most Engaging pages.

Most Clicked Pages Report
When designing a website, we usually make assumptions as to how visitors will interact with the site. The Most Clicked Pages report will help you test these assumptions. Find out if visitors aren’t interacting enough with your pages, or if certain pages are confusing or otherwise cause too many clicks and lower conversion rates.

Posts with fewer pictures resulted in the least number of clicks.
Adding pictures to your blog post will increase interaction!

Most Errored Pages Report
Wouldn’t it be great if you could constantly monitor how many JavaScript errors your visitors encounter? Most sites depend on JavaScript for navigation, galleries, login forms, etc., making it crucial to have an error free site. Server side monitoring can’t detect errors, but ClickTale’s session recordings will pick up these missed errors, and display them for you.

It was easy to discover and fix errors in ClickTale’s product features pages that prevented visitors from watching demo movies.

Least Scrolled Pages Report
What good is content if no one scrolls down enough to see it? The Least Scrolled Pages report lets you know how much of your pages are being read. This way, you know if important content is too far down the page to grab attention, and how long your pages should optimally be.

While the average scroll reach across all pages was 86%, scroll reach drops by about 50% when page height doubles in length. Read more about visitor scrolling behavior here.

Slowest Loading Pages
Slow loading pages cause visitors to leave your site. Page loading speeds need to be constantly monitored to ensure enjoyable browsing experiences for your site’s visitors. If a page has an abnormally slow loading time, this is a red flag for potential issues.

Looks like ClickTale's blog post pages were the 10 slowest loading pages by a wide margin, speeding up the WordPress blog will certainly benefit readers.

Usability from the Top Down
So there you have it, 5 fast ways to analyze your content, page layout, site usability and dependability. These reports are available to all registered ClickTale users, so if you’re not yet using ClickTale, sign up now for free and try them out for yourself. Your site's usability and conversion rates will benefit from your new found insights.

Webinar: A/B Testing for SEO Landing Pages — How to Avoid Risks

mjasra@gmail.com (Manoj Jasra) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:09:52 PDT

If you're interested in learning more about optmizing your landing pages then we recommend you check out Anne Holland's webinar next Wednesday, July 15 on How to Avoid the Risks of A/B Testing SEO Pages. It's inspired by a pet peeve of hers where so many marketers think if a page is SEO-ed, then it is human optimized too... usually which couldn't be further from the truth. Also, so many marketers will A/B or multivariate test their PPC landing pages, but not touch SEO pages because they're so terrified of what could happen.

Register Here: http://whichtestwon.com/?page_id=1260

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.