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Increase your patience, retailers! Online Shopping is becoming Online Browsing

Posted in Business, Marketing, Social Media, Web Analytics with tags , , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2010 by pdebois

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).

You can see a bar graph of the average number of browsing days by product catagory on the Google Retail Advertising blog.  This data is based on the 2009 holiday shopping season.  Electronics, home appliances, home furnishings, and  had the longer average number of browsing days (16 days), while beauty items, gift cards, and pet supplies had the shortest periods (7 days).

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…

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How to organize your social media usage – the beginning of analytics

Posted in Analytics, Business, Marketing, Social Media, Web Analytics with tags , , , , , , on February 22, 2010 by pdebois
social media communication

social media communication

This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback.

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!

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How to Troubleshoot Low Traffic From Your Microsoft adCenter Campaigns

Posted in Marketing, Web Analytics on February 10, 2010 by pdebois

This post from the Microsoft Ad Center talks about four great starting points for low traffic — technical difficulties such as dead links, increasing the keyword coverage, improving the position of the ad, and the usage of broad match.

You can check out the retweet below for more information:
RT @adCentert: SEM Intermediate Series: Troubleshooting Low Traffic From Your Microsoft adCenter Campaigns http://bit.ly/c6M1so #PPC

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Avoid The Client Funk: How to work with clients — be it corporate, medium, or small biz

Posted in Analytics, Business, Finance, Marketing, Web Analytics on January 31, 2010 by pdebois

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).

This post on creating an analytics corporate culture (by Top Rank’s  Jolina Pettice) offers more on how to convince executive management as well as best practices to establishing analytics as an integral part of a business.

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.

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Analytics + electronic store displays + mobile purchase = next step in retail (and analytics)

Posted in Analytics, Business, Marketing, Web Analytics on January 30, 2010 by pdebois

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.

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What Spock and Kirk Can Teach Us About Analytics Measurement

Posted in Analytics, Marketing, Web Analytics with tags , on January 6, 2010 by pdebois

Picture of Spock and Kirk from 2009's Star Trek

Okay, you’ve probably overheard this talk at some cocktail party somewhere during 2009 — Is the new Star Trek movie as good as the past Star Trek movies? But you probably never heard a debate about whether Spock and Kirk are the best examples of how to approach analytics. You have? Well you’re well ahead of many folks, then.

Spock epitomizes a rational, logical character that constant tries to suppress human emotion, an archetype woven into many of the ST storylines. In the 2009 movie, the rational demeanor comes to a particular head as he and Kirk, a more impulsive character, butt heads. Both men come to a point where working together balances the personalities and their downsides.

Analytics specialist must strive for a Kirk-Spock balance. Spock is proof that analysis is essential, while Kirk shows that a sensibility of a given situation is important to get to an ACTIONABLE result. Web analyst can refine their sensibility by being a student of their given industry. If one is in an auto industry, for example, he or she can continue monitoring articles on consumer taste in vehicles. The insights can later help support examination of, says, visitor engagement-related data and guide the analyst to which metrics would best provide actionable insight for a given request.

An analyst will never have all the answers in play — and seeking so can be an opportunity cost. However, analysts should use analysis to increase efficiency and reduce risk, and use intuition to imagine a result beyond the data received.

I now return you to the mother of all debates — Kirk vs. Picard…. :-)

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The Microsoft Store unleashed…is it a wise move?

Posted in Marketing, Web Analytics with tags , , , on January 5, 2010 by pdebois

Microsoft Store

Touch Screen Gaming at the Microsoft Store

Touch Screen Gaming at the Microsoft Store

This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback.

While in California during a surprise visit to a friend, I got a surprise of my own. Spotted at The Shops at Mission Viejo, a mall in the Los Angeles suburb of Mission Viejo, is one of the first two Microsoft retail stores; The second store is located in Scottsdale Arizona. Despite my best attention to news and recalling drips of information and rumor, I had not seen much fanfare on a Microsoft grand opening, so I walked in and took a quick look around.

Now one can make a strong argument that the Microsoft store bears a lot of resemblance to a typical Apple store. A number of Window-based computers abound, with expert helpers and user training sessions, all at the ready. So on first glance, it just seems as though there is not a real difference beyod the product itself.

One interesting arrangement is a table size tablet with touch capability. Cameras allow touch response similar to the hand gestures seen in movies such as Minority Report, Matrix Reloaded, and Star Trek. In the video above, gamers move defense satellites against alien probes, with play similar to Missile Command.

Microsoft has a long build out, when compared to Apple, which now has 180 stores worldwide. But it is a wise move from a business standpoint. First, Apple has proven that combining a great retail consumer experience with compelling electronics (iPhone, iPod) alongside equally compelling computers (iMac, MacBook) has provided a strong revenue base and consumer buzz. The result? A stock price that exceeded the $200 mark for the first time in 2009. Of course Microsoft has also introduced consumer products, like Zune and Xbox, and still has the lions share of computer software share and retail space.
But adding retail stores allows Microsoft to continue its appeal to customers and manage its image, as industry interest has shifted from an aw-shucks-it’s-just-software focus to developing a number of products that must enhance customers’ entertainment and utility.

The introduction of the Google Nexus smartphone also confirms that the big three of software and computing must have a gadget that is potential gateway to other services and product offerings.

Running a retail channel is not easy, as sales must justify the overhead and staffing. Witness the Warner Bros Studio stores, which like Disney, provided clothing and merchandising with themes based on beloved characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, as well as then-new characters from the WB network. Started in 1991, Warner closed its stores ten years later.

Do you think Microsoft’s entry into retail outlets is a wise move?

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New review of Web Analytics 2.0 at Small Business Trends

Posted in Analytics, Marketing, Web Analytics with tags , , on January 5, 2010 by pdebois

Web Analytics 2.0

A review of Avinash Kaushik’s book Web Analytic 2.0 is available at the Small Business Trends blog. Small Business Trends is one of the largest business blogs online, with 250,000 monthly visitors receiving tips and insights from many expert practitioners. This book review is the first of many reviews from Zimana founder Pierre DeBois. These reviews will include analytics books as well as other books well suited for small business.

There is also a review for a great business book on Israel called Start Up Nation which you can read here.

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Retailers must adopt to how shoppers perceive value – web analytics can yield some insights

Posted in Web Analytics with tags , , on December 22, 2009 by pdebois


A Retail Traffic magazine article talks about how value is not a function of price but a function of utility, how much potential use a customer sees in a given item. The commentary is a reminder of Warren Buffett’s quote — “Price is what you pay for; Value is what you get.” The point of the article is understanding how value is defined differently for Generation Y and Baby Boomers.

For online retailers, the puzzles pieces needed to create the picture can lie in a review of web analytics data. Defining segmentation and inferring the consumer interest at the website can help develop a fully picture of what items appeal from a value standpoint.

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“It’s Complicated” — but simple to engage your audience (and segment, too!)

Posted in Analytics, Web Analytics with tags , on December 22, 2009 by pdebois

The New York Times posted an article on Nancy Meyers, writer-producer of the Meryl Streep-Alex Baldwin-Steve Martin movie “It’s Complicated”. Nancy is also the creator of the movies “What Women Want” and “Something’s Gotta Give”.

The article focuses on Meyers’ ability to tap an ignored market, middle aged women who are past their child bearing years, are living very active lifestyles, and feel confident about themselves.  The article also points out Meyers’ sensibilities, showcasing how creating content that connects with a demographic can reflect the real heart of a product or service. A movie has always been a means of escapism for its viewers, and Meyers delivers by providing an on-screen “fantasy” of a woman’s second acts, all without male-defined sexual-only characterization (Cougars) or marginalized old characters in a supporting role. Many women are living the second act but do not see themselves reflected in movies and television. This should concern not only social philosophers and gender issue critics, but businesses as well — It is difficult to sell a product without a related medium to show or remind the audience of its usage.  With women as an influence on major household purchases, business has a clear need for movies that show women in a much more prominent role.

An analytics takeaway is to develop your instincts for your target audience and then use your metrics to confirm the segmentation, never relying on just single analytic metric for a business decision. Meyers proved her instincts for “listening” to a growing demographic, and subsequently confirmed through ticket sales not only how she can connect to her market, but that the market can be energized for a given media as well.  Tyler Perry is also an example, as he has energized an African American demographic who enjoy “dramedies” with some spiritual overtones and a  predominantly African American cast.

E-commerce retailers can do the same through first creating content for its audience, then confirm the effectiveness by tracking its traffic, diving into the traffic data to understand the demographics. The success from insight discovery will be based upon understanding the audience for your own “movie”…your business.

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