If you aren’t using the new ga.js javascript on your website you are missing out.  We have most of our clients transferred over, and the new features are pretty sweet. 

Additionally, the updates to the user-interface are amazing and fun…and useful.  Google Analytics just keeps getting better.  I haven’t jumped in the debate about whether or not you should share your data for comparative analysis, but I think that will be a good topic for a future post.

Last thing about Google Analytics updates — I have been able to do everything I could do with urchin (multiple domains, download tracking, etc.) with greater ease.  So, if you have a really complex Google Analytics implementation it will still be a bit of work to move over, but at least it will be easier than the first time you did it.

We get this question a lot from our clients and friends.  Like everything there isn’t a simple answer, but let me shed some light on how we work toward getting a good answer to this question.

The primary consideration is usually how you monetize your website.  In many cases it is hard to draw a line from a paid search visit to cash in your hand, however, you should get as close as you can.  Once you have your best effort to track that in place (probably with web analytics) you will have to make some assumptions that you can test over time. 

For example, we may assume that 1 out of every 100 persons that sign up for the newsletter eventually purchase our product.  If the average product price is $1000, we would presume that a newsletter sign up has a value of $10.  This analysis is not perfect, but it does reflect the reality that leads who buy “subsidize” the leads who do not buy (more on that in a second).  Your number will get verified and refined as you evaluate it from week to week.

Businesses who do the bulk of their business online will not have to make these leaps of faith, and therefore will have better information for making marketing decisions – lucky!

One last note on monetizing your site, if you make your money via advertising you need to determine how much you make per pageview.

Now that you have some semblence of how your site value you can start to analyze whether you should increase your AdWords budget.  Get the following information from your analytics and from the computation discussed above:

• AdWords cost
• Number of conversions resulting from AdWords (separate different types of conversions)
• Value per conversion type (each type of conversion will have a different value)

Using this information you can calculate how much each conversion type costs (AdWords Cost/AdWords Conversions).  Now compare the cost to the value (Total AdWords Conversions Value/Total AdWords Cost) — this number, I call it Return on Ad Spend, tells you how much money you make for every dollar you spend on AdWords.

Now, be careful not to bet the farm on your ROAS, because it doesn’t take into account your overhead, variable costs, or paid search management fees.  It also doesn’t account for people that were introduced to your website via AdWords, left, and then came back by Organic Search or Direct URL, they will overwrite the original source :-(.  So, your ROAS is an approximation, but it gives you a better feel for cost and value.

Notice I didn’t say anything about optimizing your ads or campaigns, because that is next….  If you are pleased as punch with your ROAS, increase your budget to the point of diminishing returns, which may come sooner than you think. 

If you aren’t confident that your ROAS is optimized start by improving your quality score on the expensive words and eliminating non-performing words.

I promise if you start looking at this information you will get a feel for how your AdWords campaign is really performing.  As a general rule, when we do this sort of analysis for our customers we end up optimizing their AdWords account rather than increasing the budget, which increases their ROAS, and it usually ends up that they don’t need to increase the budget to increase profitability!  When we do recommend a budget increase it is typically because their AdWords efforts have higher conversion rates than their other online marketing efforts, not just because they have a high ROAS.

So, I hope this helps at least a little bit.  I know it isn’t the silver bullet, but it is a start :-).

Here as an obvious statement — The web data you pay attention to should link to business strategies.  While the statement is obvious the application can actually be quite challenging.  I intend to explore the entire process (yes, it is a cyclical process, not a single event) of linking data to strategies and vice versa through this blog — but not today.  Today I just want to hit a few of the assumptions required before you can do ANYTHING with this simple concept.

First, you have need to know your business strategies.  That should be obvious, but quite honestly, it is the most overlooked step in the entire process.  Lots of people jump into web analytics excited about knowing where their visitors come from and how long they are on the site with no thought about whether it even matters to their business. (more…)

Web analytics in a vacuum is not effective.  I would even go so far as saying that “analyzing” your data without some sort of context is actually harmful to your ability to make good business decisions.

One of the problems I see beginners (and even novices)  have is basing success on some nebulous concept of personal fulfillment.  It smacks of the feel-good approach people take to ad design — the highest paid person likes it, and therefore it is good.  I am being a bit over the top, but the reality is:  making decisions without context is dangerous.

So, here are three suggestions for getting some context on your data.

1- Compare Recent Data to Prior Data

This is sort of a no-brainer, but that’s why it is the first one; it is the easiest too.  Some web analytics packages don’t allow you to easily compare two time periods (if you have one, nuke it and get Google Analytics or ClickTracks Appetizer).  If you had 8,000 visits this month one way to tell if that is good is to compare it to prior months. (more…)

Well, I had a fantastic chat with Barry Teppola from the Legend Company today (he is one of the most progressive home builders in the Treasure Valley, IMHO), and I left with a big smile.  Why?  Because he gets it.  He gets web analytics.

We helped Barry get rolling with web analytics a few months ago, and followed up with him today to see how things were going.  As he explained how they were using the data the analytics provided warmed my soul (no kidding).  You see, the decision makers in the company meet once a week to review the data, and use it to shape their forward progress.   (more…)

A year ago the search marketing space in Boise wasn’t extremely crowded. In fact, when Marc and I first embarked on our venture (2005) I think there was basically nobody in the space. Well, over the last few months I have met several people in the industry that are specifically “search marketers.” Granted, some of the people reading this are saying, “Well, I have been doing search marketing in Boise for years.” And, they probably have. I think there are few things at play here…

First, have you ever noticed how when you buy a car all of a sudden you see the same make and model all over the place. I bought a Chevy S-10 Blazer when I was in school, and the next thing I knew they were the most popular car on the street. Was it because I was so cool everyone wanted to be like me? No, I was just more aware. So, I freely admit that is one possible reason why there seem to be more search marketers in Boise than there used to be. (more…)

Well, here is the last piece of my website optimization positioning posts. If you feel like all of the posts were kind of squishy and non-specific, you’re right. Over time all of the ideas touched on will be developed in more detail, so I guess I am saying be patient.

Now, regarding database development. I know less about the actual implementation of this piece than any of the others, but to really get an optimized website and Internet marketing effort you need to touch this topic. Here is why — even the most expensive web analytics solutions cannot provide all of the information you will need to make data-driven decisions. A few months ago I was at a wonderful conference put on by Web Trends (one of the web analytics pioneers), and one speaker talked extensively on the 360 Degree view of the customers (here’s what my traveling companion at WestSlope Design had to say about it). Simply put, the speaker acknowledged that in order to get the 360 Degree view they will need to tap into your CRM, E-Commerce, Phone Records, Survey Results, etc.

Not every website optimization effort requires all of that, but alternate sources of data can provide you with valuable information. Ultimately, getting all of your analytics package data and other data sources in a central location and then dissecting it and analyzing it will require some serious database work.

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Well, we are winding down on our “lay of the land” topics and then we can start getting into the real fun stuff. Today’s topic is Data Analysis. This can be a really nerdy (not to be confused with geeky) topic. Let me just touch lightly on a few of the high points that you should be aware of, whether you are doing your own website optimization or have a consultant doing it for you.

Perhaps the most important point here is that if you are going to analyze data, you need sufficient amounts of data. What is sufficient? Well, it depends on your tolerance for error. More data will generally lead to more accurate decisions. In your college statistics classes the minimum sample size is 30, or something like that. In the real world 30 is very deficient. 100’s are good, 1000’s are better, and 10’s of 1000’s are great. Now that I have scared small businesses into thinking their web data is useless let me share a brief story.

I have a good friend that is a data analysis expert. He did some work for a local company regarding their media placement. He ran an online survey and within a few days had 200 results (not optimal). He did his regression analysis, and massaged the numbers in SPSS and concluded that the primary market for the client’s service was working moms and that they should advertise on three specific radio stations.

The advertising/marketing agency working for his client was quite upset because they had already determined that stay-at-home moms were the primary market. When a “discussion” ensued the ad agency argued that 200 responses was not a sufficient sample size and that because the survey was web based it was likely biased. My friend simply responded that a base of 200 customers is certainly more reliable than 4 “marketing guys” sitting around the table pulling ideas out of thin air.

(more…)

We will be posting more about paid search marketing, so I will keep this fairly brief and high-level (again, just giving an overview of the website optimization space). 

Paid search, strictly speaking, is simply paying to have text advertisements appear on search results pages.  Now, not surprisingly, there is a lot more to it than that.  For example, the major search engines have extensive “content networks,” which means your ad can show up on websites.  And, you can create image ads and video ads in addition to the classic text ads.  The key, regardless of how sophisticated you want to get with your paid campaigns, is to keep your message consistent and relevant.

Website optimization has to extend to the ads your marketing and design team puts out because if they are saying one thing and the website is saying another you could have a serious image problem.  Additionally, the search engines reward consistent themes from keywords, through ads, and on to your website.  A well structured paid search campaign will have lower cost-per-click and higher conversion rates.  Typically, with any website optimization effort you will need to extend beyond the website and look at the message in your ads and on referring sites.

You will be able to track the success of message alignment via your web analytics solution.  A measurement of single-page accesses will start to give you a feel (although it is not a perfect measurement) of the effects.  Also, the data you collect from your paid search efforts will give you a little glimpse at the “why” people visit your site, as opposed to just knowing that they do. 

Here is what I mean:  The keywords your visitors search for represent questions, or needs, they have.  You can test key terms with paid search that will give you insight to their questions, which you will not get via organic search.  Also, you will get a better feel for search volumes by looking at paid search impressions.  See, now you are starting to understand your web visitors a little better.

My philosophy is that paid search marketing, even if you are not interested in the pure advertising part of it, is a relatively inexpensive way to conduct some market research.  In terms of website optimization, the critical role of paid search marketing can totally ignore the advertising function, if it makes sense to do so.

Marketing, as it relates to web optimization, is Valitics’ area of expertise. That being said, Marc and I could write a book on the subject, however, I will keep this blog post short. There will certainly be plenty more to come in future posts.

The primary point I want to address in this broad overview we are walking through is that your message has to be consistent from the initial “touch” to the customer satisfaction follow-up. This principle embodies many of the elements discussed in the other disciplines related to website optimization. Here is an example:

Let’s say you meet a potential client at a leads group. They immediately get an impression of you from your conversation, they have expectations. One of two things will happen when they visit the website on your perfectly designed business card — it will either validate their expectations or it will not. A general measure of that will be your entrance page bounce rate (not super scientific, just a question of did the visitor find what they were looking for). I am not claiming that it is a perfect measure, but coupled with additional measures can give you some insight to your “wow factor” as Marc likes to call it.

The same process will occur if visitors come from your paid search campaigns, organic search results, or referring websites. Make sure your message is consistent whenever possible, and you will see increased results from your web marketing efforts. One point to consider is that you need to know your value proposition prior to creating ads and web pages.