Successful Web Analytics: Google Convention

A very long video, admittedly, but Avinash Kaushik is THE authority on web analytics. This video is him at a Google convention. Great stuff regarding web analytics.

(Shared via Google's YouTube)

Web Analytics Look Forward: 2013

(Shared via: InfoTrust)

Analytics: What it all means with profit in mind (Part I)

This blog has delved into some of the the theories behind, and features of, Google Analytics and its importance in today's digital world. With the ease of set-up, and number of resources available to master the the data collection and information, a brand is absolutely behind the curve if they are not utilizing some form of analytics to track and assess how their website is doing.

But as we have touched on and discussed, it is important to know the goal or mission of your website to determine what type of success it is that you are looking for. As Adam Egbert, discussing web analytics at Adobe points out, “There are obvious distinctions between sites that have different objectives. A site selling products is different than a site showing videos which is different than a technology discussion forum.”

It is crucial to know these distinctions because as has been a frequent topic on this blog, the sheer amount of data collection and analysis available to a brand is only useful if they know what it is they are looking for, and looking to get out of said data. While page views and content sharing may be the end game for a personal blog related to photography or animals, conversions and ROI information are the most critical for eCommerce.

Egbert notes, “The Online Retail industry is a $135 billion behemoth that will grow to $234 billion by 2014 in the US. E-commerce represents 3.7% of all retail sales in the US and is expected to increase to 5.5% in 2014. It is one of the few segments that enjoyed a positive growth rate in the year 2009. (U.S. Census Bureau, William Blair and Company estimates).”

Every trend or new piece of news seem to all say the same, obvious thing: the move away from brick-and-mortar retail is a very real, very quickly transitioning beast.

Ecommerce makes the buying and selling process easier on both the supplier and the consumer, and as costs continue to plummet online due to decreasing overhead, the trend will continue forward. Having a brand that requires eCommerce, means having a legitimate and real need to be able to track and predict out of that eCommerce regardless of the competing market that brand finds itself in.

As I have been fortunate enough as of late to use my new employer as a prime example of the analytical theories and practices we discuss in this blog, I will get to do the same once again. My employer is an international safety equipment retailer and has their eCommerce portion of their business synced up and tracked with Lead Lander.

Lead Lander is an automated, user-friendly analytics system specifically with eCommerce in mind. While it tracks the general data that other services like GA do, everything fed back to the user by Lead Lander has ROI and profit as the clear goal. After spending some time with it, I do see the benefits that my employer gets out of the service.

Establishing new markets and assessing old ones

Without a doubt, this particular goal/topic, the competitive safety equipment market, is a shining example of the importance of analytics on commerce.

“One of the most striking examples of differing objectives directly relates to online retail sites. While many other sites may be more concerned about content consumption or customer engagement, online retailers say, “Show Me the Money!” Due to differing objectives, there should be a corresponding difference in Key Performance Indicators and data dimensions used to analyze those sites, respectively,” says Egbert.

The Lead Lander analytics program has allowed my employer to successfully address that distinction and incorporate it into the brand's future plans and expansions. The biggest way that the analytics have aided the company is through the data feedback of physical location of every individual site user as well as the company and industry within which the site user is a part of.

Over the last five or so years that the company has had eCommerce set up and some form of analytics relegated to product conversion and sales, the information has allowed my employer to determine which international markets are perfect for expansion, and which should not be focused on.

For example, it has been concluded that countries such as India and China are not viable marketplaces for our products because of the varying levels of safety standards. In countries where safety requirements are lax, those corporations have no incentive to rent or purchase safety equipment worth thousands and thousands of dollars. Now, a country like the United States or any in the European Union, companies are far more likely to embrace and use our eCommerce website because penalties and fines for safety violations are astronomical.

The analytical data supports the findings. Countries with lesser safety-focused workplace cultures and regulatory commissions are blips, few and far between, in the visitor information and behavior portion of the data. Whereas companies located in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the growing South America, flood our website with visits and catalog and storefront perusals.

To use an example from Egbert, “consider a page from a content-centric site (perhaps a blog post) compared to a page from a retail shopping site (let’s say a product detail page). Both are at a similar level of granularity in their respective sites. However the data we want to collect around each differs substantially. For the blog post we may want to know if a user is engaged with the content, indicated by how long they spent on the page or if they read or wrote comments.

For the product detail page, we are more concerned about what the product is and how the user got there (Browse, Search, etc.). We want to know if the visitor adds this item to their cart or if they share the product with their friends. Most of all, we want the visitor to purchase!”

It cannot be stressed enough that step one, regardless of which analytics software a brand uses (but they must use something!), is having a clear and defined goal. For my employer, as things continue to take off more and more and the brand expands, all analytical data is driven by the overlying goal of pin-pointing new international markets for our products and safety culture.

The company does not exist in a marketplace that relies on quantitative sales solely as the equipment is not cheap, so continuously acquiring new leads in non-competitive geographic marketplaces is the primary goal. Knowing this has allowed me the ability to cater an analytics bundle proposal specifically to what the company's aspirations are, and without that level of focus and clarity, no amount of analytics can help a brand continue taking steps forward.

In the next post, we will follow up with tools that can aid in analyzing and deciphering goal-oriented data with my employer as an example, once more. 

A quick crash course in SEO by Google!

(Found via Google Webmasters Help)

Google Analytics Key Features, Part I: Goals and Funnels

As can be determined from this blog, analytics are quite important to a brand's success in today's competitive marketplace when eCommerce is concerned. As television commercials and radio spots had their rating systems to determine the success of a particular ad for a brand, so too does analytics provide that information online.

We have gone into the important of analytics; why it should matter to your company, the value in search engine optimization, and some of the options that are available out now. In today's post, we will dive a little more into some of the actual functions that a service like Google Analytics can provide a brand's website.

According to Google's support site, two of their analytics program's greatest functions—goals & funnels—are described as “a versatile way to measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives.”

It seems like a simple concept, one that any brand would consider when setting up its analytics but it is one that is often overlooked.

Many companies understand what the value is that analytics holds, but they do not put in place tangible objectives to show them if the information the analytics shows them is of value or not.

It is unbelievably easy to set up, say, Google Analytics on a website but merely pouring over the data that is collected, serves what purpose without knowing why you wanted that data to begin with?

Goals

“You can set up individual Goals to track discrete actions, like transactions with a minimum purchase amount or the amount of time spent on a screen.”

“Each time a user completes a Goal, a conversion is logged in your Google Analytics account.”

These are two aspects of GA goals mentioned on the Google site and while they happen to be broad, they do delve into the gist behind the goals aspect of Google Analytics.

The service has individual goals that the user can set up like Visit Duration, URL Destination, pages or screen views per visit, or an interaction event. These goals can be applied to a website or a mobile application.

The value in setting up goals is, as mentioned before, to give a tangible objective to a campaign to better determine if the website is providing the value that the brand believes it should.

An example may be the best way to showcase Google Goals.

I have had the fortune of acquiring a new job recently which has me re-doing the online marketing for a workplace safety equipment and education company. Multiple pages of the website are dedicated to instructional videos. Each one clocks in at least eight minutes in length.

One of the goals that I will be setting up through the analytics for these video pages is the Visit Duration goal. First step will be getting with my new employer and figuring out what viewing time they deem as successful, but I would be willing to venture these videos are not being watched, let alone the viewer staying on the page, for eight minutes.

This goal would allow my employer to see if they are spending their time and efforts in the most efficient way, continuing to tweak and update these videos and making them an integral part of their web site visiting experience.

Funnels

“A Funnel lets you specify a path you expect traffic to take to reach a Goal. Combing Goals and Funnels helps you analyze how well your site or app directs people towards your target.”

That is via Google. The funnels portion of GA is the how to the goal's where and what. Funnels allow you to track and analyze your various delivery methods for your brand message.

The funnels will allow the analytics to inform you how features you implement on your website (with a goal in mind!) are actually driving consumers to that goal. The value in this is huge.

To use my new job as another example, let us explore what funnels can do for their website.

Part of my job will be re-vamping their catalog online into a fully-functioning eCommerce location through their website. By applying monetary and sales figures goals to each of their product lines, and then applying funnel analytics to the specific catalog pages, I will easily be able to decipher if the catalog is increasing and benefiting sales in any new ways.

“A Funnel lets you specify a path you expect traffic to take to reach a Destination Goal. When you specify steps in a Funnel, Analytics can the track where visitors enter and exit the path on the way towards your Goal, giving you valuable insight about your site. You may see, for example, a page in a Funnel from which a lot of traffic exits before completing the Goal - indicating a problem with that page.

 If you see a lot of traffic skipping steps, you discover that site navigation or a certain path to conversion is too long or contains extraneous steps.”

Now, funnels can only be applied if there is a destination goal value selected but I believe this is a great feature as it will force those involved with the website and the analytics to get in the habit of setting goals and tracking legitimate progress from one campaign to another.

What it does, is it stops a brand from simply going, “oh, 8,000 unique page visits this month. Our website is doing great.”

Quickly, the red flag, should be, “great when compared against what? That last month had 2,000 unique visits? The goal for this month was 6,500 unique visits?”

It prevents a reliance on the data alone, and forces the analyzer's hand to actually work through the data and get to the bottom of what it all means.

In a post later this week, we will dive into one or two other features that GA offers us as marketers, and where those features' value lies in our marketplaces (Filters, and others). The world of analytics can be daunting at first, even for the most seasoned marketing vets. There is A LOT of information out there.

While the case could be made that all of that is vital to any web site, the truth is, certain aspects and valuations are going to be far more valuable to that specific time period or campaign or objective. Knowing what those are, going into the campaign, could make all the difference in the world.

Efficiency and value drive today's digital marketplace.

(A visual relationship between Funnels and Goals available in your GA Account)

A Complicated Relationship: SEO & Google Algorithms

There is a new trend running through Search Engine Optimization channels associated with Google, brands using the company's famous, complex algorithms to tarnish the search results of competitors.

But let us not put the cart before the horse.

Search Engine Optimization, in online marketing, is broadcasting your content in such a way, that you increase the likelihood that your targeted consumer sees your search result. This often done through keyword tagging, and making relevant connections with searchers.

An example: I typed in a random product search into Google web search, “fly fishing lures.” (I have never fished in my life.)

Within .5 seconds, about 4,560,000 organic search results were presented to me. Organic search results are the results we see that are not paid for or promoted. The organic results are where the mom-and-pop bait shops compete with Bass Pro Shop and other large chains for your business.

Search engine optimization allows said smaller e-commerce websites to level the playing field. By 'tagging' their website content with specific and relevant keywords (in this example, keywords such as “fly fishing,” “metal lures,” “bass,” “outdoors,” “hunting,” “fishing,” etc.,) the Google algorithm may potentially place that site higher in the organic search results.

Now, there is, outside of paying for ad space, no way to guarantee that your website can be higher in the organic rankings, as Google is constantly changing their algorithms, but the more specific and relevant your keywords, the higher your chances climb.

In theory, this is a wonderful tool for businesses and websites of all sizes and popularity to improve their odds at reaching their target consumer.

In reality, the algorithms that go into the organic search results, are being exploited to negatively affect a competitor's search result success.

Tom Foremski, at ZDNet, talks about Google's ability to create an ethicalalgorithm so that the marketplace remains fair andcompetitive:

"Negative search engine optimization was rare until Google changed its algorithm over the past two years and started paying attention to the quality of the links to any web site.

It has led to a huge erasure of hyperlinks as web sites try to clean up large networks of their back-links on sites that Google has ranked low.

But it has also added masses of new hyperlinks designed to tarnish the reputation of a competitor and to flag it within Google as a potential scam or spam site."

To me, this is a very interesting spot for Google to be in and I'll be following closely as this becomes more and more of a present issue.

On one hand, Google prides itself on being user-driven and not necessarily policing who uses it. On the other, companies are using unethical practices through the Google products to knock down competitors in a supposed even and fair digital marketplace. So as it stands, Google is somewhat condoning unethical behavior.

By allowing the algorithms to be manipulated in such a way, companies' hands are being forced to cheat the system. As opposed to creating rich content that will attract people, they can simply attack their competition.

It is far easier than putting in the hard work yourself.

Until Google can implement into its algorithm some form of organic reward for companies that use ethical business practices to top their competitors, it will continue to be a race of who can simply bury the other into the search results, the quickest.

There is be money to be made!

[INFOGRAPHIC] Groupin.pk

The two most recognizable digital platforms. Two of the most visited sites each day. Both are frequented with such astronomical numbers, it's imperative that marketers continue to work on making both platforms ideal for reaching the desired consumers.

Both platforms have their strengths, and based strictly off of volume, it's hard to say that either has a weakness. There is no single factor on this comparison chart that would ruin either platform's ability to be a successful tool for marketers. Reason being, other aspects of Google and Facebook more than make for any shortcomings with sheer volume.

That doesn't mean, however, that neither brand could stand to improve in some areas but here is a general rundown of some of the key points presented and their benefits to marketers:

Google AdWords

Keywords – An extremely important feature of Google AdWords because it allows for a much more targeted set of results for the marketer. An example: Instead of merely showing up under the category of jackets, a clothing manufacturer can be more specific and increase its visibility within the ski jacket category during the winter season.

Purchase Intent – This is a key factor for Google AdWords because searches mean the consumer is actively seeking something (duh). A purchasing or researching intent means the likelihood of the consumer clicking your ad is inherently increased.

Sales Cycle – Related to purchasing intent, a consumer actively searching for a product and product information, is wanting the right deal to present itself while conveniently shopping online. This is the one key difference between Google AdWords and Facebook Ads; while consumers may be open to seeing ads on Facebook, they're not seeking out the products so it will be harder to entice them and make a connection.

Facebook Ads

Likes – A big boon to Facebook advertising, a brand can be helped immensely by large numbers of likes on their product pages and in-news feed advertisements. The more people that like a page/ad, the more friends lists the ad can be spread throughout. The more friends' eyes that are exposed, the increased chances of a click.

Psychographics & Demographics – In my opinion, the single, greatest factor of Facebook Ads. With Facebook, consumers are practically begging you to advertise to their interests with the amount of information they willingly give up on the social network. Within minutes, you're able to know a consumer's age range, gender, music interests, movie tastes, favorite hobbies, and things they despise.

Facebook does the difficult task of figuring out how to get a consumer's attention, for us, by having the consumer present it all to you on a silver platter.

Jon Loomer Marketing