Which would you believe is true when a customer comes to your website – the customer sees what they want, then go ahead to purchase? Or that the customer visits several times?
If you said the latter, you get a gold star. Recent Google posts indicate that more customers are delaying their online purchase, and browsing. This has increased the number of days between first arriving on a site and making a conversion (in this case purchase).
The data also confirms what many analytics folks have said for a long time –
Your traffic does not immediately purchase when they arrive on your site.
Your traffic is not monolithic – they come for different reasons. In this case sited, there’s browsing as well as taking action
Your analytics is important for understanding the site behavior
You have an opportunity to provide content that would inform your visitors and potentially encourage conversion
Have you and your marketing team seen a difference in website performance from more browsing at your site? What do you feel lead to more “browsing”? Or is it just client and customer behavior that was inevitable? Feel free to share your insights…
The stream of social media tools seems never ending. Every day a new update or twist of usage comes along, to the point that it becomes difficult to know where to start. To that end, I am posting a presentation as a primer on using social media. It’s a great way to figure how to get the ball rolling.
This presentation was first shown at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis class in November 2009. My client was Eric Anderson, who was conducting a special class on communication. The presentation covers the following:
how social media formed with the internet
a chart of different kinds of social media
great starting place for building a blog or Twitter profile
analytics tools
Since the presentation there have been even newer developments. A follow up to this presentation is being planned shortly, including using rating and Q&A sites as well as new sources for blogs such as BizSugar, and the growing predominance of geolocation tools like Foursquare, so stay tuned for more ways to organize your engagement online!
The business of seeking answers online has become serious business with Google’s recent sneak-purchase of Aardvark, the online Q & A forum that matches members with the posted questions from asking members. If you have not used Aardvark before, I have included a short video explaining the basic features (with some comparing to another well known Q & A forum, Linked In Answers).
There have been two compelling posts on the deal — one from Fast Company and another set of great insights from BlackWeb20. The $50 million purchase, like many company acquisitions, is not an isolated decision. Google has made overtures to get beyond its search and, subsequently, advertising roots. It has a well known ability to add complimentary tools to its offerings — Google’s capacity to scale services is a reason why its stock price has skyrocketed through the years.
So with Google Buzz creating, well, buzz, and now Aardvark, Google has the capacity to reignite its offerings. Seeking answers online in Q & A forums is not new. I have participated in Linked In’s Q&A for years. Yahoo! Answers have been around even longer, as groups such as the Web Analytics Association have posted technical questions for years. AllBusiness.com offers a Q & A forum, and so does a myriad of other sites. Aardvark, though, combines search engine features by seeking members whose expertise or casual interest can best answer a topic. Members indicate their interest via pre-selected keywords added to their profile. The matching within Aardvark encourages timely answers, as close to real-time as possible.
Incorporating Buzz with Aardvark would remove the passive nature of Q & A forum — posting a question at one point in time, and then receiving an answer at some undetermined future point. The timeliness of the Q & A would be more relevant, giving Google a specific search advantage and a niche audience — people seeking solutions to various services. And that audience, with the right analytics perspective, can be narrowed further.
It’s also an business advantage, in some ways, through monitoring the frequency and quality of a product/service/company mentions. Frequently people ask and answer about the usage of products & services. Businesses should consider a representative search and see the responses to general questions (Participating may be possible, as long as there is no direct promotion). Aardvark works on being helpful without spam (This is also a feature of most Q & A forums). Participation can show their capacity for learning customer concerns and addressing them (The Kevin Smith-Southwest affair shows the textbook way to respond to a tough customer efficiently). The participation can help infer customer concerns about products and services.
For example, if there are a large number of queries on transmission repair, automakers can use the commentary to design an improved transmission and highlight the benefits as part of a new car introduction. The same quality of inference can be said for electronic products, home repair, purchases for pets, personal health care, and many other subjects. If Google wants to be really strategic, it should develop a mention measurement solution for small businesses in a manner similar to how keywords are examined — and infuse the solution metrics and data into Google Analytics. Now how sweet would that be?
Ok, I reached a bit on the last point. But the point remains — businesses could potentially have more information to review and act from the Google-Aardvark venture, if Google leverages its acquisition.
What do you think are the advantages of a Google-Aardvark combo (don’t go to Aardvark looking for an answer — no cheating! lol) ?
This is a retweet of an article from Small Business Trends, a Zimana client and a wonderful business information blog. If you are a chamber of commerce or operating a small group, like a BNI, and you want to learn how to leverage Facebook more effectively, you may want to give this free webinar a try.
RT @smallbiztrends: Free webinar: Exploring the capabilities of Facebook for your Chamber or Small Business http://bit.ly/bHaEER
Loopt introduces location based ads — WSJ http://ow.ly/15uVd // This creates more options for local businesses to drive customers, in addition to other tools, such as Happn.in ads (where businesses advertise on Twitter) and Yelp! (where customers rate their service).
This is a retweet from @avinashkaushik: A wonderful info-graphic: The State of The Internet 2009: http://goo.gl/aKj8 Live in Japan, connect with Norwegians!
Having trouble trying to communicate a data-interpreted decision with the executive team? Or maybe a small business client is really resistant to understanding the need for adding analytics to a website? Many professionals run into trouble managing the expectations of others. The difficulty can be a particular pain when the situation applies to a client, be it corporate or small. I call it “client funk”. The following are sources of quick tips that can help analytics practitioners minimize “client funk”.
Michael Bierut at Pentagram presented before 300 creative design students and graduates at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. The talk was sponsored by CreativeMornings, a designer forum based in New York City. His talk offered a balanced view of the client/designer relationship, stating the factors that make or break a designer’s success, as well as what makes a good (and bad) client. His intended audience are web designers, but the perspective is very sound for web analytics practitioners, and furthermore, any service providers who work intimately with a client.
For corporate environments, analytics practitioners must understand financial terms to convince managers and decision makers on analytics-related projects. To sway and convince project skeptics, three metrics must be kept in mind with every argument of a project’s merit:
1. The dollars needed for invest in the project
2. The revenue that can be generated
The third is a metric based on the prior two — return on investment (ROI).
You can also read Avinash Kaushik’s book Web Analytics 2.0. Much of his book addresses the challenges of working with various departments to create an analytics environment. For those with broader analytics application, there is another book, called Analytics at Work, by Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris.
At the annual National Retailer Foundation expo in New York, large vendors offered model digital displays that provide more than store information. These displays offer users the ability to find retail inventory and departments quickly, with touch features similar to an iPhone (or iPad, if you will!). One display providing ability to add a selection to a mobile wallet — with a light touch of a semi-transparent display users can call the image of their selection, just like a selection on a webpage, and then move the image to a virtual wallet linked to a mobile phone. The consumer can then purchase the selection with a credit card.
And who are the leaders who displayed this technology? Adobe? Google?
Try Intel and Hewett Packard.
Yeah.
This development makes a lot of sense in some ways. HP makes plasma screen for home. The increased appearance of plasma screen in commercial environments gives a natural extension opportunity for HP.
Intel can be more of a mystery at first blush, its main product being processors. But Intel’s involvement in digital display shows an end use for Intel-powered mobile devices.
It also means:
Increased need to merge database information on offline retail products with online analytics data to give a full picture of how a business retailing is doing.
Analytic practitioners must be better aware of a business’ operation — more importance for consulting firms to have access to all sources to create solid analysis.
Increased opportunity for mobile purchases to become reality. These offering make credit card purchases on the spot possible.
Potential advantage for Omniture and other analytic tools in managing more real-time data. Increased grannuarity segmentation of data will be possible.
Increased importance of mobile web design & further refinement of app design, to ensure consumer convenience.
More competition for the management tools of data.
Most of all, this development will aid the main battlecry of many analytics practitioners, that analytics unlocks value for companies. Many professionals have become evangelists for analytics within their firms, explaining the importance of metrics to varied departments. The growth of display functionality can only strengthen the case that analytics is essential for consumer satisfaction and profitable operations.
This WordPress.com post on emailing blogposts shows how geolocation can pepper a blog. In simple terms, WordPress.com users can post to their blogs via email. Of course changing a location can stir an author’s creative juices, developing new subjects to share.
And — what analytics blog could be complete without a mention of analytics — you can use the map overlay of an analytics solution to see if an audience continues to tune into the post. Say, for example, you are blogging from Cheyenne, Wyoming after so many posts from the home office in Indianapolis, Indiana or Raleigh, North Carolina. Your Wyoming blog post is related to a local event, and you let your blog audience about it. You can use the Map Overlay in Google Analytics (or any map overlay in any in the analytics solution) and see if there are more arrivals to the site or to a related site mentioned on the blog. This look, alongside the click stats for the blog in WordPress, implies if the post is potentially resonating with readers.
This example relies on inference, indeed. But the point is to gain some indication of your writing influence. The best thing is that this data is free; The cost is in the analysis and review time applied.
How do you use new locations to increase interest in a blog?
