Swamp People and Analytics??

I could not for the life of me understand the lifestyle, but I’m sure they could say the same about living in a climate that has well over 100 degree temperature swings from summer to winter.

That got me thinking about the types of visitors we have on our clients sites.  There are certainly visits from both LA and MN, but more than that, visitors from across the globe.  How much do we really know about their click path, their struggles (language, vernacular, etc.).  After all, our lead form page says “Contact Us”, not “Git’r done”.

Spend some time this week going through the subtle differences in user experience via your analytics package.  I bet you will find something of value that could allow for some changes in your site to better assist people from different states or different countries.

You can even try to find a Bubba or Sven to help you out. 

Let me know what you find ~ sharing is good.

Jeff Nordeen

NordicClick Interactive

Enough Already!

during President’s day in Minnesota.

We had several local clients trip their Google Alert settings for spikes in traffic (primarily consumer brands) as web surfing became an all day break from the monotony of working from the home office, coffee shop, etc.

Did your site see any peculiar behavior?

Also, if you had any great pics from the storm feel free to send them in.  It’s always good to look back on these days when it’s 90 degrees and humid.

Jeff Nordeen

NordicClick

As a Search Engine Marketing Specialist you will leverage our Interactive set of tools along with your knowledge to add value to NordicClick and its clients. Our Search Engine Marketing services aid our clients in the implementation and optimization of robust Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization. This position is permanent for full time employment.

Click here for more information.

Mike McAnally

The Marketing Optimization Summits typically bring out some of the best and the brightest speakers and industry thought leaders and the 2011 San Francisco summit is no exception. Featured keynotes from founder Jim Sterne, Eric T. Peterson from Web Analytics Demystified, and Guy Kawasaki from Garage Technology Ventures are planned.

Topics covered will include website optimization, search analytics, campaign optimization, web 2.0 optimization, public sector metrics, behavioral targeting, competitive analysis, customer experience, statistical analysis, business implementation, and multi-channel marketing metrics.

Adam’s panel is called “Free and Cheap Tools”  and will be held on Monday, March 11 from 11-12 PST in the Web Analytics Fundamentals track.  He and his fellow panelists, John Marshall from Market Motive, and Benjamin Rudolph from Relevance Advisors,  will share 30 free or low cost tools they’ve used in their marketing efforts.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money on search and analytics tools to plan your media, test your offers, and optimize your site.   Session attendees will learn about the best survey, analytics, social media, and competitive intelligence tools and will walk away armed with new knowledge.

Early Bird registration is now open through January 28, 2011 and can be found here.  We look forward to seeing you there.

Visit the new NordicClick Web site and let us know what you think of our new design. We’ll be updating the rest of the website in the coming months and would love to get your feedback.

Last week I wrote a post about the four kinds of data (Actionable, Interesting, “Who Cares?”, and Golf Course Executive Brag” data).  At the Pubcon Vegas Conference a couple of weeks ago, I showed a slide which stated quite simply that Social Media Metrics can provide the ultimate in actionable data.

Here’s why: Forget trying to measure Social Media ROI for a second – that’s a topic for another post.  The obvious point I want to make here is that your customers and prospects are telling you something. They may or may not be directly talking to you, but in either case, they’re talking about you and it makes sense for you to listen.  You have the ability to take action immediately because those who are talking are telling you:

• What they want…
• What they need…
• What they think they need, but may not know for sure…
• What they like…
• What they hate…
• You suck…
• Why you suck…
• How to not suck…
• You rock…
• Why you rock…
• Why you’re better than a competitor…
• Why you’re worse than a competitor…
• What their intentions are…
• They have questions …
• They have a concern causing them to hesitate…
• They’re indifferent to your brand, products, or services…
• They just became mayor…
• If they’re physically at your business …

You get the idea.  Granted, at best social media conversations only provide a sampling of how your customers feel and those that do tweet or post my be more passionate or opinionated than those that don’t.  However, as a brand you would be making a mistake if you’re not open to treating  the data you get from these metrics as something that is actionable and potentially representative of your customer base.

Thanks for reading. Feedback is always welcome.

adam@nordicclick.com

@adamproehl

Hopefully I don’t need to ask you if you have a web analytics package for your web site. With the myriad of both free and paid tools available, it’s an absolute no brainer.  Not using Web Analytics to measure your site is about as smart as owning a retail store without keeping books.

When you look at web analytics, not all data is equal. I like to break analytics data into four distinct buckets:

1) “Actionable” Data: There is no better type of data. When you have data that actually tells you that you need to do something to improve your site or that you should leave it alone,  your measurement process is working at its best.  A great example would be traffic from a particular keyword phrase that doesn’t convert. You may show up on the front page of Google and get a lot of visits to the site from that phrase, but if the conversion rate is atrocious compared to the rest of the site, that’s telling you something.

Either you’re going after the wrong keywords, your landing page sucks, your site experience sucks, your price is too high, etc.  With proper analysis, you can understand the site behavior from those specific visitors and take the appropriate action. Even with free analytics tools, you can drill down to get a deep understanding of this particular traffic source. For example, when looking at the keyword phrase in question, do searches originating from one geographical location outperform another as far as conversion metrics are concerned?

2) “Interesting” Data: There’s an overwhelming amount of data that you can get from analytics and not all of it is actionable. Some of it’s plenty interesting, though.  There is no defined list of what data is “interesting” vs. “actionable”. It varies depending on your business needs, how you drive traffic to your site, what’s on your web site (content, products, subscriptions, etc), and your ability to actually affect change.  Interesting data is obviously not as good as actionable data, but it’s not necessarily bad either. To be honest, sometimes you’re just expected to know your numbers. Why?  Well,  a board member in a suit may be demanding to know so that means you better.

3) “Who Cares?” Data: Let’s be honest, some data is just useless.  It doesn’t have to be, however. If I tell you that your site got 10k visits last month, that is pretty much a useless figure.  Is 10k visits good? Is it bad? I have no idea.  The numbers are what the are.  Now  the “visits” metric taken by itself may be a “who cares?” data point, but add some context then it becomes interesting – maybe even actionable.

So you had 10k visits to your site last month. What was it a year ago? Are you up or down? If you’re up, what sources are causing you to go up? How is that additional traffic converting? Is it better, worse, or the same as the rest of your site traffic? If you’re down, which source of traffic is causing the downturn? Did you lose some positioning in search? Did you lose some links from other sites?  Has the market demand changed for your product or service?  All of these (and more) are valid questions to consider that can give you context for your data. Without that, you just have numbers.

4) “Golf Course Executive Brag” Data : Two weeks ago I was at Pubcon’s Annual Vegas Conference as both a speaker and attendee.  One of  the things I love about conferences in general is the great hallway/bar/dinner conversations that happen with my fellow industry peers.  One of those conversations with  my friend and colleague, Alan K’necht from Digital Always Media, inspired me to write about this fourth type of data.  He is spot on.  Imagine the site of a couple of C-level friends out on the golf course. The first guy says “My site got a million hits last month”. The second guy says “Well  that’s nothing, I got 2 million hits last month”.   The numbers bear no real relevance to the performance of your website much less your overall business. Also, if you’re still using the word “hits” when talking about your website metrics, stop immediately and seek professional help.

Thanks for reading. As always, I’d love your feedback.

Adam Proehl

adam@nordicclick.com

Twitter: @adamproehl

PubCon is supported by the industry’s leading businesses, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors involved in Social Media, Affiliate marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEO & PPC)  and Web Metrics will offer a week-long look at the future of technology presented by many of the world’s top speakers.

Our own Adam Proehl will be presenting on Social Media Measurement and Signals.

Feel free to follow us on Twitter (@adamproehl, @mmcanally, @NordicClick @karensams, @BlindSideSEO).

Mike McAnally

Last week I wrote about blocking and tackling 101 of how a brand should direct a prospect or customer to their social media profiles (click here for article).  It was real simple: show them the link! Don’t just display an “F” or a “T” or a cute little bird.  We need the address.

This week, it’s a little more complex. To use the crude example of a guy in a bar: giving you my phone number is easy – giving you a reason to call me is the hard part.  When I see brands try to build their social media following, I’m reminded of email list acquisition from 1998. Back then, it was about building up the sheer volume of subscribers. It was awesome to have a 100k list. It was even more awesome to have a list of 1 million. Then we learned to go back to good, sound, direct marketing practices and apply them to the online world.  Now, the smart email marketer recognizes the true value of a segmented list based on a variety of different criteria – including the very nature of why this subscriber is on the list to begin with (i.e. newsletter, purchase, free trial, etc).

Fast forward a decade later.  Brands have clearly recognized that there is value in building up their base of followers. It’s currently a gold rush to get the most followers, likes, fans, etc.  In doing so, a handful of brands are clearly stating the benefits upfront of engaging with them. Last week I held up Davanni’s as a good example and they make the grade again this week. When they ask you engage with them, they clearly tell you why you should. See below:

“Free food and really good deals”… Not to mention “whitty rhetoric”. If you’ve been to their facebook fan page, they hold true to their promise and they engage their followers:

Unfortunately for every Davanni’s, there are numerous examples of brands that don’t follow this practice. They expect that you’ll just want to follow them if they pave the road for you. Sometimes they get followers and likes and sometimes they don’t. What’s worse is what happens once that “follow” or “like” occurs.  There’s nothing but broadcasts like “Hey, here’s a coupon for 25% off!” followed by no engagement when someone asks a question.

So, the bottom line  for brands is that if you want me to like you, first tell me why I should. Thanks for reading.

Adam Proehl

Twitter: @adamproehl