Analytics installed what next?

My friend has just set up a small site, selling high end goods, asked me: "OK I have Google Analytics installed, what's next?".

I recommeded the book Web Analytics an hour a day by Avinash Kaushik.

While they wait for that to arrive, as a starter for 10 here are some key questions I proposed.

Along with what they should be recording to help plan for the future months and measure the success of their site and their on and offline Marketing efforts. Define and measure are key.

Key questions to ask of your Analytic Package

1. Firstly start to discover how people are using your site, where do they go (may need custom reports, filters set up), review words they use in search to find you, do they all relate to your offerings? Note the key entry points, can you fine tune online material to assist conversions, possible communication opportunities. Reviewing your popular exit pages, could these indicate that the shopper is comparison shopper and can see better offer elsewhere ie: Paid Search ad - review your competition on product pages where exits are quick and often.

2. Find out what volume of site traffic was unique, what was the source of this traffic, and on a individual source basis what is producing the most conversions or quality leads?

3. Import to keep track of your new and returning customers, should you enter a new content area and from launch of that find people keep coming back for more, do more of that.

4. Are you tracking every type of conversion, call us, sign up to a newsletter, what value do you give to those leads?

5. What are the current blockages in your customers online recruitment experience, reviewing conversion funnels, where do the customers get distracted or where are they engaged/staying longer?

6. Are customers buying what they searched for, or is the site leading to other purchases, can a colleration be seen between products purchased.

7. You have a sister site, consider how you can leverage off this?

8. What online creatives do the customers like, what offers lead to conversion?

9. What is the ratio between your PPC traffic and Organic traffic how can this be changed for improved ROI ?

10. Have a look at the Geographic report, any suprises there? anything you can do E-Marketing wise to increase reach to specific country or region ? Could understanding customer demographics assist in any way to fine tune creatives.

Writing Commentary Analytics

1. Executive Summary

Include your overall thoughts on performance based on insights in Analytics.

Inc: Key insights on the customer propositions

Section1: Visits here increased by X due to...
Section2: ""
Location1: Increase to visitors from France this month due to
Location 2: ""
Sales/Potentials:

2. Key Performance Indicators

New v Returning customers:
Visit to Sale/Lead ratio:
Target Ratio:

3. ROI

Marketing spend: Total spend per customer:Average spend per customer:

4 - 10 Overview of leading figures and ROI.

4. Website performance
5. Customer Journies
6. E-channel performance - on and offsite creative
7. Multi channel behaviour
8. Feedback on new creative
9. Feedback from shops / offices / branches as appropriate - top sellers or site content
10. Cross Sales (off plan/on plan)

Finally remember the 80/20 rule - 80% analytics/understanding - 20% reporting

Search Engine Approx Submission Lengths as at Aug 08

When designing Titles and Meta Descriptions for Search engines, note the recommended averages on title and description length below:

Google

Title: 65 characters with spaces
Description: 160 characters with spaces.

Yahoo

Title: 70 characters with spaces
Description: 160 characters with spaces

MSN

Title: 70 characters with spaces
Description: 180 characters with spaces

Averages - recommended

Title: 60 – 70
Description: 155 - 180

Making sure tracking is Robust

I love the word Robust, remembering back to when I was at School we were tasked on Enterprise week with a Marketing project to name, design, package a new AfterShave, my group called our AfterShave "Robust". It seemed to sum up men at that time, who knows what the word would be now !!

It is important to make sure that your Web Analytics package is 'strong', to add weight to what you will be presenting at the top table. The below is something relatively simple, but often a formula that is overlooked, sharing with you now.

When comparing one months data to the previous months data for volume figures such as volume of traffic, conversion rates - make sure that you work out the percentage increase or decrease by taking into account the days of the month.

The below outlines the forumula to use, and is based on visitor figures:

Step/Column 1:
Current month visitor figure 'divided by' days in current month (July)
1030/31

Step/ Column 2:
Previous month visitor figures 'divided by' days in previous month (June)
1000/30

Step 3/ Column 3:
Working out % change adjusted for days in the month
Current month 'take away' Previous month then divide by Previous month

Answer: Despite indications that visitor numbers have increased there is a % descrease in July in visitors to the site of around 0.32%.

Online biggest driver of brand engagement for Retail brands

Newsflash: Retail

A recent study from IAB has identified that online ad spend delivers the biggest impact for retail brands within the media mix. Online was seen to drive 40% of brand engagement, whereas Press received 31% and TV 19%.

Another interesting statistic was that the retail brands surveyed spend 2.5% of their marketing budget online, seems pretty low considering these statistics.

See further details on the brand engagement study from the IAB here:

Brand engagement measurements for the store brands reviewed are listed below, the results indicate that store reputation and whether they could associate themselves with the retail brand (Affinity) provided the highest %.

If it is affinity they want (only women surveyed) then it is my opinion that online is place to give it to them, with opportunity to segment, talk in their voice, get them chatting to you (Blogs, Facebook Fan pages etc etc).

I am confident that we will see the brand engagement level for online rise this year, as more retailers turn to the web for their online promotions.

It was only yesterday that I found myself completing an online competition for Primark to win a £200 shopping spree (times are hard!).

Interesting brand engagement measurements and results from the New IAB study on retail brands:

Affinity (24.3%) - whether the store has a good reputation, and is for 'people like me'

Quality (19.3%) - that the store sells well known, high quality brands ·

Fitting one's needs (16.5%) - relating to store convenience, and whether it suits a consumer's particular tastes ·

Presence (14.7%) - a readily available, traditional store, with a national high street presence

With recession looming and purse strings tightening, businesses may want to cut back on marketing spend and for retail sites, this study indicates that online is the way to go especially as you have the ability for tighter targeting and of course have the ability to truly measure the ROI of your marketing efforts.

All about Affiliate Marketing

Introduction

The below provides an introduction to Affiliate Marketing, outlining the key considerations when setting up an Affiliate Marketing campaign. I wrote it a while back, but all still relates.

What is Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a practice where other sites advertise your products or brand. These are called “affiliates” and in effect can be classed as an ‘online sales force’, a secret army to increase your conversions. Should a user then click through to your site from an affiliate site and make a purchase you pay the affiliate a commission on that purchase. Commissions vary from sector to sector, but I would expect to start at 2% to 5%.

Management, tracking and payment to affiliates can be handled direct with the affiliates but it is best practice for management to take place through an independent 3rd party; an affiliate network.

Affiliate networks handle all of the day to day tasks involved with operating an affiliate program. Along with you they make sure the ‘online sales force’ are happy.

They usually operate on a tiered management system, where you decide the level of involvement you require, from “basic” where they host your product information feed, pay the affiliates, provide an online management control centre, and then leave you more or less to it, to a managed account where they also provide an account manager who will dedicate time each month to optimising your program, acquiring high quality affiliates for you, Basically, actively promote your program.

There are a number of Affiliates networks out there each with a varying number of Affiliate clients. They all perform a similar function to a greater or lesser degree. They are generally judged or measured by the number of affiliates they have, the commission level they charge, and the service they provide to you.

Set up Costs:

Networks usually require a one off setup fee – usually £1,000 to £2,000.

Operating Costs:

Commission - Starts at around 5% - this is what is paid to the affiliate site and is percentage of the sale value.

Override fee - This is paid to the affiliate network – usually 30% of the commission paid to the affiliates.

Management – Depends on level of service required and network, but for a reasonable network £220 per month for basic package and £500 for managed.

Affiliate programs take time to become established but in the long term can be a highly cost effective method of customer acquisition.

Affiliate Marketing campaign goals

Consider the purpose/aim of your affiliate campaign:

• Bring new customers to the site• Deliver incremental business• Compliment existing advertising for brand recognition.• Build relations with your secret sales force

Choose approach

• Incremental sales and brand awareness – campaign structureUse Affiliate marketing to fit in with current campaigns, offers, top sellers. Maximise HALO effect of other marketing media

• Steady sales – flat structureProvides consistent volume of traffic from the affiliates based on small number of ads. Disadvantage of this is that Affiliates can become complacent and tiered commission level remains the same even if products become uncompetitive.

Compliment existing advertising

When using Affiliate marketing to integrate with other online activity and when looking for incremental sales, consideration needs to be given to the below:

• % AD spend: Fixed budget versus unlimited
• Channel conflict: Agency PPC vs Affiliate PPC
• Brand Management: Volume v Control
• Measuring effectiveness: Cost per acquisition and Return on Investment

Monthly reporting can include

• Success of creative and changes required, creative held on central hub
• Sales funnel analysis
• Review quality of customers by each affiliate
• Long term profitability by individual affiliates
• Maintain creative consistency across all affiliate sites
• 30 – 90 day review of affiliate sites.
• All the above working to a 90 day plan from launch – and into the future, be ready to surprise your Affiliates with some great offers.

Another tip

Set up a twitter account to shout about your promotions to your affiliates. Make your Affiliate link shorter using tinyurl.com.

Web Analytics – It’s simple really !

I learnt something new today when reviewing my analytics report. Not sure why the thought hadn't come to me previously, I will call it Analytic Evolution. Blogging about my experience to help me understand it further.

I noticed that my own domain was appearing in the ‘top referring sites’ and ‘top referring page’ in my Analytics reports.

Firstly considered what a referrer is:

“It is a site/page that refers a visitor to my site by linking to it”

Secondly looked for answers as to whether this is normal, good news it is. Great... but why is it good ? mainly becuase I understand the reasons, these are listed below:

The reason why my domain was appearing as a referrer can be due to a number of reasons, outlined some key findings below:

1. A user of your site may browse then leave to put the kettle on make a bit of lunch, leaving the browser open. On return they start to browse again and since the user session has timed out, the referrer to the site will be the page they were on before they left.

2. Could occur if IP switching occurs, which basically means the users IP address changes when browsing your website. As a new IP appears then the Analytics will treat this as a separate user and thus the referrer will be the previous page (of your site). However this only happens if tracking definition is set to use IP/User Agent.

Also would like to blog that I found out that ‘No referrers’ often appear in the analytics, typically due to the below reasons:

1. User accesses site directly
2. Site could be made home page by the user
3. User may access via a bookmark or favourite
4. Or they access via an email link
5. The event that started the visitor session was a hit to
something other than a page, such as an image.
6. User came to your Web site by way of a java-script-based
Redirect ie: a pop up.

Also some duplicate URLs, (same page different URL dependent on function on site) were appearing in my report, so off now to use a tool called URL search and replace to tidy up the log files.

Integrated Marketing Communications

I have always been a fan of integrated marketing and the joined up approach, and have seen as a marketer and customer the benefits of a joined up consistent message.

It is all about delivery of a cohesive message across all sales and marketing media, rather than them operating on there own. Having this consistent message enables the marketing campaigns to work harder towards a common set of measurable results.

It is surprising through that many industry leaders are not following this practice. I have just Googled a few companies who have an obvious strapline – finding out that these straplines are not presented to me in paid or natural search ads, sometimes the message isn’t even present on the main website home page. Strange !

I just Googled Halifax – they have another repetitive ad on the TV at the moment all using their common term “Extra”.

Good news is that they are following the practice as shown in search in their natural and paid search ad – both of which mention – “extra”. Great. See below:

Halifax Online Banking - UK Banks, Finance, Personal, Telephone ...Halifax Online Bank UK - Our online banking service always giving you extra with your finance and money - mortgages, savings, current accounts, credit cards ...

Unfortunate news is that the strap line isn’t doing them much favours, with people in forums and review sites using the “Who gives you extra” term – as a way to highlight what they believe to be their limitations. Should Halifax read this then suggest that they should put the story straight on these forums, it can only build trust in the long term with the current or ex customer and potential prospects finding your response.

The negative feedback on these review sites is a good example of why you should give consideration to your multi channel behaviour of your customers. For example, it is estimated that a finance customer will touch 14 sites before committing to registering with a new finance product, it is also likely that they will visit the comparison and review sites for advice before this commitment (especially with Credit cards).

Putting a positive spin is that the ads that Halifax produced, have gone Viral, with Howard (from the ads) receiving his own fan base. However how many You Tube video pass ons will lead to a new customer is limited. You Tube.

Another good example of integrated message is:

Car insurance and home insurance - Sheilas' WheelsSheilas' Wheels - Cheaper car insurance and home insurance online for women.

On arriving a their site – the heavily advertised on TV “Car insurance for women” product, is more prominent than what they also offer (home insurance) – even the Get Quote sign is bigger. They have given consideration to their brand name and that most people will arrive looking for the ‘car insurance’. Also as they have stuck to the name and not advertised “we have the best deals ever” they have (maybe without thought) stopped the possible critique in forums.

I came across quite a good process for measuring and thinking about customer behaviour in a multi channel environment from the book Web Analytics and hour a day by Avinash Kaushik, 2007. The diagram which can be also found in a section called non line here: It’s a flash site ! So quite contradictory as this section 'non line' which I wanted to find, will not appear in search, spiders have trouble reading flash.

Below paragraph explains the diagram quite clearly taken from Avinash’s book as quoted above:

“The diagram provides a simple representation of customer behaviour on two different channels. The physical acts are different but it is essentially the same process of moving from research to selection to qualification to purchase”.

The diagram highlights how customers move at their own pace across on and offline mediums before making their decision. The process can work for both services and products, it is one that I will be revisiting again, when highlighting the importance of the intergrated message, so thanks to David Hughes of Non Line Markeing for producing and apologies for the ‘quite contradictory’ point, but it is true.

As I find good examples of the integrated message, will revisit and post them here.