Compound Metrics in Web Analytics

Should you use a compound metrics in your web analytics reporting? This was a topic of discussion in one of my classes at UBC Web Analytics course.

What is a Compound Metrics?

Before we get into answering the question, let’s look at what a compound metrics is.
Simply stated a compound metrics is when you take two or more simple measures and combine them together to form one metrics.

So should you use it?

Short answer is - why not? Sometimes simple metrics such, such as visits, page views, clicks etc., are not enough to explain a complex concept and that's when you need a compound metrics, e.g. engagement metrics, visit quality measure etc.

But isn't compound metrics hard to explain?

It depends on how you define it but then a lot of people still struggle with
visits, visitors, hits and pageviews. With that in mind, I agree that initially it might be a little hard to grasp the compound metrics. Over long term, compound metrics actually helps simplify the measurement of a complex concept.

Some of the common uses of the compound metrics are

1. Credit Score (Everybody has one and it affects them every day but how many actually know how it is calculated?)
2. Google Page Rank
3. Twitter Resonance (it will use several factors such as retweets, clicks on links etc.)
4. Twitter measurement. Many twitter measurement tools use compound metrics since it is not easy to explain Reach, Impact, Engagement in simple metrics.
5. Facebook's "Likeability Index". Ok, I made this one up but I am sure that's coming soon.

Example

Let's look at an example and see where such a metrics will make sense in your current web analytics reporting.

Lets take an example of a product information site. The products are sold offline via 3rd party retailers and since this company does not want to compete with its retailers it doesn't sell anything online. This site provides information about the various products that this company sells. It provide white papers with pre-purchase information and post purchase information/support. The site has some videos and some stories that are published every now and then. Well there is a sign-up form to allow users to save their product information.

The whole goal of the site is to provide information to current and future customers.

Now your big boss asks "We spent thousands of dollars to build this site, is this site working?".

You reply, well... Visits are down but repeat visits are up so seems like people like it and are coming back. However, page views/visit are down. More white papers are downloaded as compared to last month. However, video views are down and sign ups are also down. Seems like some things are up and some things are down.

Boss goes...."What does that mean? Is it working or is it not? Are customers finding information?"

How do you measure that?

As an analyst you can look at all the metrics and come to a conclusion but you have to be able to convey the end result to the VP of marketing. He needs to know if the site is successful or not.

This is where a compounded metrics comes in handy.

A simple formula for this could be

(% of visits viewing X pages or more + % of visits viewing video + % of visits downloading white papers type 1 + % of visits downloading white papers type 2)/4

we used 4 in the denominator because we are using 4 different metrics with equal weight

Now you can add other metrics that matter to the business and also assign different weight to each, so your formula could be something like:

(1*% of visits viewing X pages or more + 4*% of visits viewing video + 1*% of visits downloading white papers type 1 + 2*% of visits downloading white papers type 2)/8

1,4,1 and 2 are the weights assigned to each metrics based on their importance to the business.

Once you develop a baseline for your metrics, you can confidentially tell you boss if the sites performance is better or worse than the last month. Keep in mind that you are an analysts and you should always get under the hood to analyze each component and find opportunities for improvement.

What do you think?

Questions? Comments?

Other articles on similar topics are

• http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/franken-measuresor-how-construct-useful-composite-/
• http://www.usca.edu/polisci/apls301/compound.htm

---

Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?  Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board.

Current Open Positions

• Marketing Strategy Research Analyst at Magnani Caruso Dutton New York
• Digital Strategist at Magnani Caruso Dutton New York
• Sr Data Analyst at Capella University, Minneapolis
  
• Landing Page Optimization Analyst at Red Ventures Armed Forces - Europe

Web Analytics is Money

How do you convey the value of Web Analytics to an organization that has never used web analytics or has used it but at a very elementary level? This is one of the questions that I constantly get from students of my UBC Web Analytics classes, where I am an online tutor.

My answer to them is they should start the conversation with something like, “Web Analytics is Money” or “Web Analytics helps companies make more money” etc.

When you say those words, you are very likely to get audience who want to know more. Money invokes curiosity.

You should not tell the CEO how web analytics can help the company understand customer behavior, find bottlenecks in the site, improve bounce rates etc. You should show him/her the impact in terms of dollars (or Euros, Rupees etc.).

Every web site analysis can lead to actions that have an impact on the money. You can tie web analytics to:

• Additional revenue
• Cost Savings
• Profit
• Doing more with less money (particularly for non-profits)

Example:

Let’s take a simple example to illustrate this.

Reducing Bounce Rate

If you are not getting any traction, I assume your analysis might look something like:
“Home page is the top most landing page with 80% of the visits entering through this page. However, 60% of the visits bounce i.e. leave the site immediately, after landing on this page. 60% bounce rate is very high as compared to the industry average.* There is a huge opportunity for us to lower the bounce rate on this page by testing the page layout…..(you provide your reasoning on what should be changed and why).”
Great. As an analyst I can understand and you can understand it. But what about CEO of the company? Will he/she understand it? Why should he/she care about the bounce rate?

*Typical Bounce Rates by Anil Batra

Now, try the following:

Generating More Revenue

“Our analysis shows that there is an opportunity for us to increase our revenue by $300,000 for the year by optimizing our home page. Home page is the top most landing page with 80% of the visits entering through this page. However, 60% of the visits bounce i.e. leave the site immediately, after landing on this page. 60% bounce rate is a very high number compared to the industry average.* There is an opportunity for us to lower the bounce rate on this page by testing different page layouts. Lower bounce rate will help us drive more people to the purchase funnel and even if our funnel completion rate remains at 20%, by sending more people to the top of the funnel we will have additional 3000 sales leading to $300,000 in additional revenue for the year.”

Tying your analysis and recommendations to money makes it easier to understand the benefit of Web Analytics. Money will make it easier for you to overcome organization barriers and make you a hero.
Web Analytics is money!!!

What do you think?

---

Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?
Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board
Landing Page Optimization Analyst, at Red Ventures (Fort Mill, SC)

Three Paid Search Lessons Learned from Topeka Tourism Board

This morning I read a blog post titled "How Topeka Capitalized On Google's April Fools' Joke". In my opinion the only company that capitalized on this was Google not Topeka Tourism Board. There were three big mistakes Topeka made in trying to cash in on the Google’s April fools prank.

Hopefully, they did not lose a lot of money on this campaign and generated some awareness of Topeka. At least they got free placement on my blog.

There are three lessons to be learned from their mistakes:

1. Determine the goals of your paid search - What is the purpose of your Paid Search Campaign? Make sure you are not attracting a lot of unqualified clicks. In this case the purpose of buying paid search was not clear. Just because a high volume on a keyword was happening does not mean all that traffic is qualified for your business.
2. Define KPIs before you start spending money - Figure out how you will measure success. In this case they did not have any way to measure success. They listed number of impressions and clicks. So they paid for clicks but don’t know how many of them generated into anything of value? To me it seemed like that the visitors were tricked into clicking something but had no intention of visiting Topeka site. In other words they got a lot of unqualified visitors. I bet you that the bounce rate is huge (see my next point).
3. Make sure your analytics setup is correct – “Google” Mike, an Implementation Analyst on my team verified that the Google Analytics on their site is broken. One of the most glaring issues he found was the home page fires 2 page views per page view (i.e. it fires twice) so the reported bounce rate is lower than the actual bounce rate, which means it is wrong. In this case they are not getting the correct stats. Wrong web analytics implementation leads to wrong data and that leads to wrong decisions.
   
   
   
   

Comments? Questions?

---

Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?
Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board

Free Tools for Web Analytics, Search, Social Media & Competitive Analysis

Last week I was on a “Measuring Success” panel at PR+MKTG camp in Seattle. Someone from the audience asked if there were any tools for a newbie to start measuring PR & Marketing efforts and learning. I uttered the names a few tools that came to my mind.

Considering that there might be many others in the same situation I decided to write this blog post. In this post I am listing some of the tools that you can start using for free. Please note that this is not the most comprehensive list of the free tools.

Side Note: All the panelists unanimously agreed that you need to first figure out your measurement needs based on your business requirements and KPIs and then find the tools that meet your needs. One of the biggest mistakes most companies make is that they pick the tools first and then try to modify their measurement needs according to the tools they have in place.

However, I recognize that someone who is not familiar with the various measurement tools needs some exposure to the tools to really think about the questions they might want to ask before making an investment in a paid tools.

With that, here is the list of tools that you can start using today for free:

Web Analytics

For monitoring the on-site behaviors of your users and the performance of your site, use the following free tools

1. Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics
2. Yahoo Web Analytics – http://analytics.yahoo.com/

Search

Use the following search tools to learn what keywords your customer/potential customers are searching for so that you can optimize your site accordingly.

1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2. SEOMOZ has set of Free tools - http://www.seomoz.org/tools
3. Google Webmaster Central – Provides you data on how your sites in crawled and indexed by Google.
4. Bing Webmaster Center - Provides you data on how your sites in crawled and indexed by Bing.
5. Google Trends - http://www.google.com/trends
6. Google Insight for Search - http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

Social Media

I already mentioned two tools in my blog post titled “Free Social Media Monitoring Tools for Small Businesses”, here they are again (and two new ones) :

1. Google Alerts – http://www.google.com/alerts
2. SM2 by Techrigy – http://sm2.techrigy.com/
3. Twitter Search – http://search.twitter.com/
4. Yelp.com – Good for small and medium size businesses. Find out what customers are saying about you and your competitors.

Here are some more but I have not used all of them, http://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools/

Competitive Analysis

Want to know how your competitors are doing compared to you? Use some of the tools listed below. Keep in mind that all of these tools use different ways to collect the data and hence the actual data you get from one tool will differ from the other but overall it should provide you good competitive information.

1. Search and Social Media Tools – Many of the tools listed above can provide you competitive information as well. E.g. Set SM2 to monitor the keywords that describes your competitor and you can start to see what customers are saying about your competitors
2. Alexa - http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo
3. Compete - http://www.compete.com/
4. Quantcast - http://www.quantcast.com/
5. Google Trends for Websites - http://trends.google.com/websites
6. Google Ad Planner - http://www.google.com/adplanner. Here is my review of Google Ad Planner

Like, I mentioned above this is not the most comprehensive list but it should get you started. Do you have a favorite free tool that is not on this list? Leave a comment on this blog post or send me an email with the name of the tool.

Comments? Questions?

---

Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?
Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board

• Senior Data Analyst
  at Looksmart (San Francisco, CA)
• Senior Manager, Business Intelligence & Web Analytics
  at Freshdirect (Long Island City, NY)

Is Your Conversion Rate Wrong?

According to Web Analytics Association (WAA) standard definition, a conversion is a visitor completing a target action.

Conversion rate is calculated by total number of visitors completing a target actions divided by a “relevant denominator” (Sometimes it is total number of target actions divided by a “relevant denominator).

The key here is “relevant denominator”. This is often ignored by many organization and they tend to use the default denominator provided by their Web Analytics tool provides. The most common denominator used by most of the tools is either total visits or total visitors.

If you are an eCommerce site then potentially every visitors or visit is a target for conversion and “Total Visits” or “Total Visitors” as a denominator might make sense. However if your site is a non-eCommerce site and conversion to you means getting people to register on the site then using a denominator like total visits or total visitors to calculate conversion rate, wrongly assumes that all of the visits to sites have not previously converted (registered) and hence are potential conversion worthy. We all know that’s not the case. These sites get a mix of visitors, visitors who have registered in past and are not going to register again and, visitors who have not registered yet and hence are a potential target. Examples of such sites are facebook, WSJ.com, espn, yahoo etc.

Calculating the Right Conversion rate

In my examples I will assume that number of visits is equal to the number of visitors.

Hypothetical site in our examples is a portal that requires visitors to login (register) for some actions but also has content that does not require a login.

This sites gets an average of 1000 visits a day and gets 50 new registrations (conversions) a day. By most common way of calculating the conversion rate, the conversion rate for this site is 5% (i.e. Conversion Rate = Conversions/Total Visits = 50/1000 = 5%)

Let’s assume that every day this site gets 50% of the visits from the people who have registered in past. So that means 500 (50% of 1000) are registered and won’t register again. Since they are not going to register, why do we even consider them when calculating the conversion rate? By removing them from the calculation of conversion rate, the new conversion rate becomes:
50/500 = 10% (Immediately you doubled your conversion rate)

Why is this important?

Let’s look at two scenarios to illustrate the importance of choosing a relevant denominator.

1. Scenario 1
   One day the customer retention department sends some emails to previously registered visitors that result in 500 more visits from people who had previously registered. As a result the site got 1500 instead of 1000 visits it used to get every day. Considering that nothing else changed on the “not-registered” visitor base, the site got 50 conversions, just like any other day.
   
   Using “Total Visits” as the denominator, it appears that the conversion rate drops to 50/1500 = 3.33%
   
   It looks bad, and might cause you to panic. Won’t it? However if you choose the right denominator you will find out that nothing really changed. The pool of people who had not previously registered is still 500, so the true conversion rate is still the same
   50/500 = 10%.
   
2. Scenario 2
   The “customer acquisition” department bought a new email list and sends emails to this list which resulted in 500 extra visits. Overall the site got 1500 customers, 1000 who had never registered and 500 who had registered previously. That day the site got 60 registrations, resulting in a conversion rate of
   60/1500 = 4%.
   
   Look like our email list did not work because it caused the conversion rate to go down.
   
   This might cause you to wrongly assume that the email list that the retention department bough was not as good as the other traffic that you have been getting. However when you calculate the true conversion rate, it turns out that the email list actually worked; it resulted in a conversion rate of 6% (60/1000).
   

Note: Some might argue that why won’t this company tag all the emails with proper campaign identifiers so that we can track the performance of the emails. In theory this sounds great and that’s how it should be. In reality though, many departments work in isolation and never interact with the ‘Web Analytics” or follow their best practices. Now you know why marketing departments should share the marketing calendar/activities with “Web Analytics” group and involve them before running any campaign.

Hope this gives you an a reason to investigate what denominator you are using in your conversion rate.

In the next post, I will show you how you can calculate the “True Conversion Rate” using Google Analytics.

---

New Job: Analytics Associate at Huge (Brooklyn, NY)

Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?

Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predictions 2010: Web Analytics, Social Media and Digital Marketing

This is the time of the year to make few predictions for 2010. Here are my 5 predictions for Web Analytics, Social Media and Digital Marketing.

1. Website Testing – What’s the point of creating a cool looking site that does not engage or covert the customers? Website Testing (A/B and Multivariate testing) is the key to those conversions, Website Testing won’t be optional in 2010. Website testing will become an essential part of website design and development. Website designs will make it easier to change the elements of page and hence make it easier to test them. Jobs in A/B and Multivariate testing are about to rise. For your reference there are currently 252 jobs for “A/B testing” on simplyhired.com.
2. Web Analytics - I have two predictions about web analytics (generally known as web analytics):
   
   1. Adobe will start incorporating Omniture into its products.
   2. WebTrends will be sold this year.
   
   
3. Mobile Analytics – Mobile usage will continue its upward trend and so will the number of mobile sites and mobile applications (apps). Just like a website, mobile sites needs to be analyzed and optimized and same goes for the mobile applications. There are already tens of thousands mobile apps and this number will continue to grow. It is critical that users download your apps, number of downloads is an important measure of success. But number of downloads do not equate to usage. If your app does not get used then what’s the point of paying thousands of dollars to develop them? Usage of your apps is even more important metrics. As the market gets crowded with all the apps, app providers would want to know if there apps are getting used and what features are getting used. The need to learn from the data and optimize the apps will rise this year. See above, Optimization is not optional.
4. Twitter – Twitter will need to prove its value to the businesses. There is a lot of noise on twitter, most of the clicks (and I have proof) on twitter links are not from real people. Is anybody reading those tweets? Yes tweets are now appearing on search engines but are they adding much value to the search results? This will be the year that will define the future of twitter. Twitter will either be sold or dead by the end of this year.
5. Privacy – Privacy will become a very hot topic putting a lot of pressure on behavioral targeting. Mobile Tracking will also be scrutinized. Privacy watchdogs will start looking at the data collection by Mobile apps (e.g. iPhone apps), desktop widgets/pass etc.

What do you think?
Related Posts

• Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting Predictions for 2008
• Predictions for 2007

---

New Job: Analytics Associate at Huge (Brooklyn, NY)

Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?

Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

All That Bounces Is Not Bad

If you have any connection with web analytics then, I am sure, you have heard about the bounce rates (see Bounce Rate Demystified and Typical Bounce Rates). A lot of analysts and a few web analytics tools are obsessed with the bounce rates. High bounce rate is considered bad. If you are one of those who is obsessed with the bounce rate or think that all that bounces is bad then this blog post is for you.

I do believe that bounce rate is a great starting metrics when you are trying to optimize your site but be careful and make sure that you are measuring the true bounce rate. Below are the three factors that lead to the misreporting of the bounce rates

1. Links to external sites - Many sites have links to the external sites such as sponsors, micro sites etc. Considering those external links as exits will count visits as bounces even though the visitors are doing exactly what you want them to do (e.g. click on those links that you provided them). See below a screen shot from First Tech Credit Union, there are few external link s contributing to the bounces.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Online Ads – If you serve ads on your site you are providing links to external sites. Visitors who land on your site, see an ad that grabs their attention are going to click on it (isn’t that what you want so that you can command higher rates for the ads?). It is not really a bounce because visitors are taking the action that you want them to take. See the screenshot from Techcruch which is full of ads and I bet this page (and other article pages) has a very high bounce rate.

3. Destination Pages – Pages that provide the information that the visitors are looking for is what I call destination pages. Usually you will see the visitors arriving from bookmark or search to the internal pages on your site that provide the visitors with the information that the visitors are looking for. Since those pages serve the visitors’ need you are likely to see high bounce rates on those pages. Those bounce are not bad. Some might argue that you should try to drive visitors into the other sections of the site but I can bet that in most of the cases you won’t see significant drop in bounce rate no matter how hard you try. Below is an example of a page on First Tech Credit Union that could have a very high bounce rate. I arrived at this page by searching for the “Phone number for First Tech in Redmond”. When I arrived on this page I got what I was looking for and I bounced.
   
   
   
   
   

Are you considering these factors when analyzing the bounce rates on your site? Questions? Comments?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Web Analytics Jobs
Web Analytics Implementation Engineer at Topspot Internet Marketing (Houston, Texas)

Find Web Analytics Jobs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7 Ways Of Handling 404 Error Messages

Last week I wrote about 404 errors and how to track them in your web analytics tool. In this post I am going to look at how various sites are dealing with 404 error messages and provide your 7 ways of handling 404 pages on your site.

The best way to handle the 404 error messages is to not have any by properly setting redirects in case of a redesign, proper sitemaps etc. But despite your best efforts there will be cases when your visitors will get the 404 errors so you just have to be prepared. This post will show you how other sites are doing it so that you can decide what will work for you.

I looked at few of the top converting online retailers and few others random sites to see how they are handling 404 error messages.

Here is what I found

1. Schwan.com
   
   
   
   
   Schwan.com, the site with the best conversion rate, notifies the visitors that the page does not exist and then provides a link back to the home page. It also keeps the top navigation intact on the 404 page so that the visitors can easily navigate to the other pages on the site.
   
2. FTD.com
   
   
   
   
   FTD.com, does a nice job of providing products recommendations to the visitors on the 404 custom error page. It also shows the top and left navigation on the error page for easy navigation.
   
3. Proflowers.com
   
   
   
   
   Proflowers redirects the visitors to the home page of the site. In some cases it displays a message notifying the visitors that the page was not found but in other cases it just redirects the visitors to the home page. Lack of an error message might confuse the visitors who intended to go to a particular page and not the page they were redirected to (home page).
   
4. Coca-cola.com
   
   
   
   
   Coke adds little humor on the 404 error message page. You can’t avoid reading the page.
   
5. Microsoft
   
   
   
   
   Microsoft makes an attempt to understand where the user intended to go. It parses out the “Not found” url and then runs the internal site search to show relevant results. Good attempt by Microsoft on Microsoft.com, however I did not see the similar attempts at Bing or MSN sites.
   
6. Google
   
   
   
   
   
   The company that tries to understand user intents on it’s search engine makes no attempt to understand what the visitor is trying to do. It could have used something like “Did you mean…..” but it does not.
   
7. WebTrends
   
   
   
   
   Webtrends does a nice job of providing a site map on the 404 error page. Omniture does similar thing on their 404 error page.
   
8. Adobe
   
   
   
   
   Adobe even asks the visitors to send them feedback on the broken link. Like many other site it provides several links back to other content on the site.
   
9. RedEnvelope
   
   
   
   
   RedEnvelope goes one step further and provides an error message, product recommendations and a 10% off coupon for the inconvenience that a missing page might have caused.
   Go ahead and try it and get 10% off on RedEnvelope.com.
   

I also checked Roamans, QVC and Coldwater Creek, few of the other sites listed in the top conversion rate list and did not find any custom error pages.

7 ways of handling 404 error messages

Let’s recap and look at the various ways you can handle 404 error messages.

1. Redirect the visitors to the home page. Make sure it is clear to the visitors that the page was not found and so they are being redirected to the home page. (Proflowers.com)
2. Have a basic custom error page that notifies the visitors that the page was not found and then provides a link back to the home page. Make sure you have your navigational elements on the page. (Schwan.com).
3. Add humor in your 404 message just like coca-cola.com.
4. Show the sitemap (links to various sections and pages on the page for easy navigation. (WebTrends)
5. Make products recommendations. Recommendation could be targeted based on what you know about the visitors (past purchases, current browsing behavior etc.) or simply show the best sellers list. (FTD.com)
6. Interpret what a visitor might be looking for and show the possible results/links. You can use the internal search similar to what Microsoft does. (You have to be very careful with this solution as there is always a possibility of misinterpretation).
7. Provide a coupon for instant conversion. (RedEnvelop)

Do you have any other example to share? Send them to me.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?

Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Job Board
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Web Analytics For 404 Errors

404 errors are a fact of life on the internet. 404 error is a message returned by a server in response to a request for a page that does not exist on the server (http 404 error code).

Let me illustrate this with an example:

A visitor comes to a site, bookmarks a page and then leaves the site.
Next week the owner of the site decides to launch a new site completely replacing the old pages with the new pages (urls were different).
Next month the visitor comes back to the site via the bookmark but the page she bookmarked does not exist as it was removed during the site redesign.
She will get a 404 error message from the server.


Reasons for 404 Errors

404 errors can occur due to numerous reasons:

1. Misspelled links – A misspelled URL in a hyperlink on the site can causing a broken link and hence a 404 error message.
2. Bad Site Map – A site map is an xml file containing a list of all the pages on the site. It is usually meant for the search engines to index the pages on a site. A misspelling in a site map can cause the search engines to look for the pages that do exist on the server. Generally theses pages (broken links) won’t be visible to the visitors but they will show up in the search engines indexing report such as the Google webmaster tools. Some sites also show the site maps to the visitors as a form of site navigation; in those cases the visitors will see the 404 errors.
3. Site Redesign – Site redesigns are a leading cause of the missing pages. Site owners redesign the sites, completely replacing the old pages without thoroughly thinking about the pages that might have been linked all over the web, indexed by the search engines, bookmarked by the visitors etc. Visitors who clicks on old links, bookmark etc. are greeted with the 404 error messages when they click on those links to arrive on the site.
4. Sever Unavailable – 404 error messages can also occur when the server is unavailable.

Below is an example of a standard 404 error message

If standard 404 error page is the first page that a visitor sees when she arrive on a site, what will her reaction? As shown in the picture above, you can’t even tell which site this page belongs to. It is a dead end. Visitors don’t know where to go. What would a visitor do in this situation? She will most likely leave the site. She will go back to where she came from. The site has just failed to engage her.

Let’s imagine a similar situation in the offline world. Think about how you would feel if you enter a local supermarket looking for a toothbrush and are immediately taken to the location in the store where the toothbrushes aisle is suppose to be. When you arrive at that location, not only that you don’t find the aisle because the supermarket recently rearranged the store and move the aisle but also that the whole supermarket goes dark and all you see is the exit door. You will, for sure, run towards the exit door. That’s what a standard 404 error pages does, the site goes dark and the only thing a visitors sees is the back button or the close button on the browser.

Custom 404 Error Pages

Now imagine that instead of the store going dark, the customer sees a friendly associate who politely says “Sorry, we recently rearranged our store and the aisle you are looking for have been moved. May I show you the new location of the aisle” (or some flavor of it). Friendly associate on the web in this situation is called “Custom 404 error page (message)”, which will say “Sorry the page you are looking for does not exists anymore or has been moved, here are few links that might help you” (or some flavor of it).
A custom 404 error page allows the site to provide a message other than a generic server error message (Figure 1). A custom 404 is an opportunity for the sites to engage the visitors whom they might have lost otherwise.

How do you create a custom 404 error page?

Create a page with a message that you want your visitors to see when they encounter 404 error messages and save it as 404.html (you can use other names and the page extensions as well). Web servers have a setting which allows you to set the page that you want the visitors to see when they encounter the 404 errors. In this case you might set it to 404.html. (Contact your IT department or hosting companies to get further details).

Here is an example of a custom 404 error page

There are several ways to customize your 404 error page. Be creative when designing the 404 page, this is your last chance to reengage a visitors. (I will show you some more examples in a future post)

Web Analytics and 404 error page

Another benefit of creating a custom 404 page is that you can put your web analytics tag on the page to report and analyze the 404 pages. Web Analytics reports can show you the pages (links) that are causing 404 error messages on your site. You can also find out which pages have the bad links, what keywords, external links etc. are driving users to those non-existent pages.

Tracking 404 pages in Web Analytics

Here is an example of Google Analytics Code to track the 404 pages

This code appends “404:” in front of the page name that triggers the 404 error so that it is easy for me to filter the Google Analytics reports for the 404 error pages.

The same concept can be used in the other web analytics tools such as Omniture, Webtrends, Unica, Coremetrics etc.

There are two reports that I frequently use to analyze the 404 pages

1. Top Content
   
   
   
   Since I prefixed my 404 pages with “404:”, I can easily filter out the 404 pages in this report. This report gives me all the pages that are triggering 404 error messages. This report also shows me how big the problem is and if I am losing visitors on these pages or not.
   If your custom 404 page is unable to engage the visitors (high exit rate or bounce rate) then you should consider changing the content/design etc. of the page. (I am looking into how you can conduct A/B testing on a 404 page).
   
   You can also drill down into each of the page and do further navigational analysis to see the pages that the visitors saw before they got the 404 error page.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   This leads you to the pages that have old/misspelled links. To track down the external links and sources, that have bad links to your site, you will need to look at the top landing pages report.
   
2. Top Landing Pages
   
   
   
   
   A filter on “404:” in this report will show you the landing pages that result in the 404 errors. Use this report to drill down to the external sources of errors e.g. the external links, keywords etc. Below is an example of a report that shows that most of the 404 for a page on this site occurred from links in the emails.
   
   
   
   
   Further analysis of the emails led me to the malfunction links.
   

Do you have 404 error messages stories, examples to share? Send them to me.

Questions? Comments?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?

Post your open jobs on http://webanalysis.jobamatic.com/a/jbb/find-jobs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Are You Wasting Your Advertising?

I hope you have heard the famous words of John Wanamaker "I know half of my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half."

Today the phrase should be something like “Half my Advertising is wasted because I do not advertise responsibly” or “Half of my advertising is wasted; I can stop that but I fail to use the data”.

Yes that is correct. We have an abundance of data today to help us save the wastage. There is no shortage of tools that will collect all sorts of data. Yet many marketers fail to act responsibly and use this data to stop advertising waste and also save customers from unwanted ads.

Here are some examples that will show you what I mean

• Newsletter – Nordstrom - In my blog post on email and relevance, I showed an example of an email from Nordstrom that had irrelevant offers. As result of this, not only did Nordstrom waste time, effort and money but also lost a subscriber. Advertising was wasted.
  
• Newsletter – Drugstors.com – Same as Nordstrom. Not only did Drugstore lose a subscriber, but a high profile marketing guru “Seth Godin” wrote about this on his blog. Adverting was wasted and resulted in negative publicity.
  
• Paid Search – I searched for ‘iPhone Charger” on Google and saw an ad from “Walmart” titled “iPhone”.
  
  
  
  
  
  I could take one of the following two actions
  
  1. Ignore this ad as it does not have relevant copy, which results in lower CTR on the ad and hence higher CPC that Walmart will end up paying in future. (Google punishes you if you don’t have high performing ads).
  2. I click on it and Walmart pays for the click.
  I chose to click on the ad and landed on a page that showed me results for “ipod” instead of “iPhone chargers”. Wow!!! What a mismatch. Net result: My time was wasted with irrelevant results, Walmart wasted its money by paying for click that did not generate any value. Advertising was wasted.
  
  
  
  
  Here is another example: Search Pay Per Click Tip : A Simple Way to Increase Profit.
  
• Offline Advertising – Netflix recently sent me two snail mail pieces on the same day.
  
  1. Offer to join Netflix and get first month free – Great, I like it, I think I should join Netflix. Wait…I am already a member and receive my movies from them all the time. So should I cancel my subscription and join again to avail this offer? Netflix is known for movie recommendations it makes to its customer based on their past history. Can’t they tie their database to see who is already a member so that they don’t send junk mail to that subscriber? Advertising was wasted.
  2. Offer to recommend Netflix to my friends – They have done it several times now. I have never referred any of my friends as most of them are already subscriber plus who has time to save a print coupon and give it to a friend. The web is full of coupons and they can get it from there. Netflix should have looked at my referral history, I have never referred anybody. Stop sending junk mail and avoid wastage.
• Display Advertising – We all know the web is full of irrelevant ads. An example is an ad from Air Linus of NYTimes.com for flights from New York to Ireland. I think this works for those who are in New York, but not for me. I live in Seattle. Just because I am browsing NYTimes.com does not mean I live in New York or interested in going to Ireland. Advertising waste could have been avoided by just checking my Geo location. Money Wasted. Advertising was wasted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Are you advertising responsibly? Are you using data to make sure you are not wasting your adverting?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?
Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Jobs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why Did Adobe Buy Omniture?

The news of Omniture Acquisition by Adobe came as a big surprise to me. I was not surprised that Omniture got acquired just the fact the Adobe acquired them.

I always thought that Omniture would be a good fit for Oracle as an extension to their CRM tools. Adobe was not even on my radar as a company who could potentially acquire Omniture. I was also surprised at the valuation Omniture got. 1.86 billions for a company that is still in red and had 335.5 Million in sales in last 12 month (source: MSN Money) is way too much in my opinion.


So why did Adobe pay such a premium to acquire Omniture? What does it bring to Adobe? I am not entirely sure what Adobe has in mind. Following are the ways that I think Adobe might use Omniture:

• Measurement Ready Interactive Media – Flash, PDF, Adobe Air application will all come ready with Omniture tags for measurement and optimization.
• Self optimizing flash widgets/ads – Designers will be able to put all assets (copy, images, etc.) in a flash file/Adobe Air application and the application will automatically arrange them on the fly based on customer’s interest, intent, day part etc. This will be driven by both Site catalyst and Test&Target. However designers might have a hard time dealing with this concept.
• Self optimizing landing pages – Same as above but will be more on site. Flash on the landing page will change based on who the customer is.
• Self guiding PDF – Ability to modify/adjust the pdf content on the fly based on who the customer is, what have they done in past on site or with other content etc. Think about A/B testing or Targeting within a PDF document.
• PDF Tracking – Creators of pdf content will not only be able to see how many people downloaded a particular piece of content but they will also be
  
  • Find out about the circulation of the content. Did a person who downloaded the paper sent it to others?
  • Find out, how far did the reader go through the file?
  • Find out, if reader searched for something in the pdf? What were the keywords?
  • Tie the content analytics with site analytics to optimize and target the site side experience as well as arm the sales force with the information.
• Adobe products as SaaS- Omniture brings SaaS expertise to Adobe which adobe might be able to leverage to sell their products as SaaS.

Other Players in Web Analytics

Coremetrics and Webtrends are the only two large Web Analytics companies that are still independent. The whole industry is talking about when and who will acquire them.

I have long speculated that Webtrends will be acquired by Microsoft. I still believe that it is possible. Given that Microsoft and Adobe have a few competing products, why would MSFT continue to use Omniture on their web properties and provide that information to Adobe? Microsoft might decide to part ways with Omniture and once again seriously consider other options e.g. buy Webtrends.

Some of the other possible candidates to acquire Web Analytics companies are
AOL
IBM
Oracle
Cisco
APPLE
Big Interactive Agencies
Ad Networks

I think Webtrends will be acquired in less than a year, possibly in next 6 months. Coremetrics might remain independent for a while.

What do you think?


Few other blogs that you might want to read:

• Gary Angel on Adobe & Omniture Deal
• Eric Peterson on Adobe & Omniture Deal
• Alex Yoder, CEO Webtrends on Adobe and Omniture Deal
• Long Live Web Analytics
• Web Analytics Industry - Consolidation Continues
  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?

Post your open jobs on Web Analytics Jobs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 Roles in Web Analytics

Despite slow economy many companies are hiring web analysts. A quick search on Simplyhired.com, a site that powers the Web Analytics job board on my blog, shows that there are currently 2,007 open positions and indeed.com, another job sites shows over 4800 open positions. That is a huge number.

However, many job seekers I have talked to feel frustrated because most of the jobs have a laundry list of requirements and they don’t feel that they are a right fit for most of these open positions. A lot of “Web Analytics” job openings ask for many of the following:

• Experience in online marketing


• Experience in Web Analytics


• Experience in – Google analytics, Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrics etc.


• Experience in implementing Omniture, Google Analytics, WebTrends etc.


• Experience in A/B and Multivariate testing


• Experience in Search engine optimization


• Experience in search engine marketing


• Experience with SQL


• Experience in email marketing


• Experience in Social media

The mismatch in what a company really needs and what they are asking in the job requirements is a cause of frustration on both ends. The issue really stems from lack of understanding of what web analytics is and what role a web analyst need to play in the organization.

Most of the companies looking for a “web analysts” are in one of the following three stages of web analytics staffing

1. They don’t have any tool but they realize the need and are looking for someone who can help them with “web analytics”.


2. They just installed Google Analytics or were sold one of the other paid tool but are not getting much value from their web analytics tool. They need an analyst to help them do “web analytics”.


3. They already have a web analytics tool installed and have a web analytics team. Since the company is now using web analytics to made business decision they need to hire one or more analysts to support the growing demand.

Companies falling in the third stage know what they are doing and usually narrow down the requirements. They are usually clear on what kind of person they are looking for.

Companies who fall in stage 1 and 2 above are the ones who are usually not clear on the role of a “web analyst” and hence create this laundry list of skills. Hiring manger looks at few job openings posted by other to get an idea of what a “web analyst’ should do. She then includes all the buzzwords and sends the requirements to HR or the recruiting company. HR screens the resume and if the keywords shown above do not appear on the resume the resume is rejected. As a result, companies loose several good candidates while candidates loose many good job opportunities.

3 Roles in Web Analytics

If you are a hiring manager, you need to understand and thoroughly evaluate your need before opening the job req. This will help you remove the noise from requirements and find the best candidate for the job. To make your job easier I have categories web analytics work into 3 job roles.

1. Implementation Specialist/Engineer – If you are looking to implement a web analytics tool then you will need an Implementation Engineer. Implementation Engineer is usually the one who manages implementation of the web analytics tool and/or maintains ongoing implementation changes. This is a technical role. For this role you will need a person who has experience in implementation of the web analytics tool of you choice (Note: Tool Selection is a complex process and you should hire a 3rd party consulting company to help you with it if you have not already selected the tool). An implementation engineer generally takes the business requirements and converts them into technical requirements for the web development team to implement the code on the pages. Implementation Engineer works closely with “Web Analyst” (described below) web development and QA to ensure that correct data is collected. The right candidate for this role understands how internet technologies work. She needs to have a good grasp of JavaScript (most of the web analytics implementations require JavaScript tagging). She might also need to understand how to integrate various data sources together. For many companies, once the tool is implemented there might not be a daily need to make changes to the tool so it might make more sense to outsource this function to a web analytics vendor, agency building/maintaining your site or a web analytics consulting company instead of hiring a fulltime person.


2. Reporting Analyst – If you are looking for someone to pull the data from your web analytics tools or other reporting application then you need to hire a reporting analysts. A lot of the companies confuse “web reporting” with “web analytics”(See my blog post titled Are you doing web reporting or web analytics). Reporting analysts usually understands the interface of the various tools and can pull the data that is required by other stakeholder. A reporting analyst might need to have SQL skills to pull the data from databases. Some organizations might need a person who can make pretty scorecard and charts. For this role, it is good to have a person who has experience with the tools of your choice but don’t make it a deal breaker. If the candidate has worked on any of the web analytics tools then she can usually get trained in other web analytics tools. Determine what other tools do you have and what skills might be required to pull the data from all these tools, that you might need for you reporting and then write the job requirements.


3. Web Analyst – This is more of a business role and truly a web analyst’s role. This is a person who can make sense of the web data and drive insights to impact the bottom line. She will provide business requirements to the Implementation Engineer to work on and will use reporting analyst to get the data for analysis. Web analysts are inquisitive and analytical, they question the data to come up with the story that the data is telling. Web Analyst has the ability to understand and analyze various data pieces such as competitive, qualitative, web analytics, social media, financial etc and drive business changes. Web Analyst should also be able to run A/B and Multivariate tests to improve website performance. Depending on the size of your organization and A Web Analysts will not be afraid to stand in front of executives to explain and defend their findings. If you are looking to get actionable recommendation and drive business changes based on web analytics data then you need a Web Analyst.

Hope this will help you in properly wording your job requirements and avoid the frustration of not filling the position.

Comments? Questions?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?
Post your open jobs on http://www.web-analytics-jobs.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Individual Visitors Tracking v/s Aggregate Data

Should web analytics tool track visitors as unique individuals or at the aggregate level? John Squire, Chief Strategy Office of Coremetrics says that tracking at Individual level is the way to go and this is how his company is differentiating itself (from Google analytics). Brian Clifton, former heard of Google Analytics in EMEA, responded by saying that aggregation is the way to go.

In my opinion both of them are right. Which route to go really depends on what you want from the web analytics tool?

Aggregate Data

If you are new to web analytics or you just want to track and analyze the overall health of your website, aggregated data will work for you. If you want to know how your marketing efforts are performing in terms of driving traffic or online conversions than aggregate data will just work fine for you. If you want to know which pages of your site are bleeding and then conduct A/B testing or Multivariate testing to improve them then aggregate data will work for you.

Individual Visitor Tracking

However as companies mature in their use of web analytics data they will need individual level tracking.

A company which is ready to do personalization will need to understand each individual browsing/purchase behavior to put the right offers/products in front of her. That is not possible with aggregated data.

It sounds perfectly ok to know that 75% of visitors abandoned the shopping cart but won’t it be nice to know who those 75% are or a way to convert at least some of those 75%? This is where individual tracking will come in handy. If visitors, who abandoned the shopping cart, leave an email during the process then you can send them a targeted email based on how far along they were in the shopping process, what products they had looked at, what product they had in shopping cart, etc. You don’t need to analyze every single data point but you can have business rules that can trigger those emails. However, to do so you will need to track at individual level. Even if you don’t want to send an email if you know the cookie id of the visitors you can put a personalized offer in front of them when they return back to your site and this will require tracking at individual level.

Individual tracking also comes in handy when the sales people call the lead that they just got from the website. Knowing what the person, who filled the contact us form, did on the website could provide a lot of information to sales person who can then tailor their conversation based on this information.

There are several more scenarios where aggregate data just won’t work. You will need individual level tracking.


I agree that tracking individual has privacy implication that need be properly addressed before tracking each person. However privacy issues also exist when you anonymously track visitors at aggregate level and those need to be addressed too.

So should you choose a tool that aggregates the visitor data or the one that tracks them individually? It all depends on what you want to do with that data. If you need help in figuring out what tool will work best for you feel free to email me at batraonline at gmail.com

Comments/Questions?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position? Post your open jobs on http://www.web-analytics-jobs.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you used Clop.in a URL shortner with real time analytics? http://clop.in/C6ZWAL

Hits, Page Views, Visitors and Visits Demystified

This article is an introductory level and the intention of this article is to clarify few terms that you constantly hear in Web Analytics. Why am I writing this article? I hear some confusion about these terms from people new to field, so I thought I will write this blog post to clarify some of the common terms.

I am going to explain, Hits, Page Views, Visitors and Visits in this blog post.

Hits

Back in the early Internet days, Hits was a term commonly used to measure websites traffic. This term was mainly used by IT folks, early users of web analytics tools, to get an idea of the load on the server. As Web Analytics has moved into marketing and we have move to JavaScript based solutions, this term does not hold much meaning today as terms such as Page Views, Visits and Visitors have taken over.

So what is a Hit anyway? Let’s take an example of a simple web page shown below


This page is an html file with one image embedded in it.

When a person browses to this page (in her internet browser), she is requesting this page from the server to be downloaded to her internet browser. She views this page as one entity. In return browser is actually requesting 2 items from the server

1. The actual HTML page


2. The image embedded in it

When server returns these items, the browser assembles them and makes them look like one page to the person browsing this page.

This is what the log file of the server might look like (I have removed several items to make it simple)

291.111.276.23 - - [16/Jun/2007:11:17:55 -0400] "GET /samplepage.html HTTP/1.1" 200 3225 "http://www.anilbatra.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT XP; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/3.0.0.7"

291.111.276.23- - [16/Jun/2007:11:17:55 -0400] "GET /batman.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 3225 "http://www.anilbatra.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows XP; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/3.0.0.7"


That means there were 2 hits on the server, one for the html page and one for the image. So with one page request there are 2 HITS (in this example)

All the above items will show up in your analytics reports if

1. You use log file based solution


2. You do not filter them out when setting up your reports

If you use a JavaScript solution then the only thing which is tagged (contains the JavaScript code) is the HTML page and that’s the only thing which will show up in the Web Analytics report.

Now let’s take a look at this sample again but this time we will look at the source to make sure there are no items hidden behind the HTML code. Sometimes (read most of the time) there are files that are not visible to the individual but still need to be downloaded from server and count towards the hits.

Here is what the source code looks like:



You will see there are two more files that are embedded in the page. One is a style sheet (stylesheet.css) and the other is a JavaScript (myjavascript.js) file.

So when a user requests this page, a total of 4 files are being requested from the server

• The actual html page


• The image embedded in it.


• The .css file (stylesheet)


• The .js (JavaScript File)

This is how the log file will look like

291.111.276.23 - - [16/Jun/2007:11:17:55 -0400] "GET /samplepage.html HTTP/1.1" 200 3225 "http://www.anilbatra.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT XP; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/3.0.0.7"

291.111.276.23- - [16/Jun/2007:11:17:55 -0400] "GET /batman.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 3225 "http://www.anilbatra.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows XP; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/3.0.0.7"

291.111.276.23- - [16/Jun/2007:11:17:55 -0400] "GET /stylesheet.css HTTP/1.1" 200 3225 "http://www.anilbatra.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows XP; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/3.0.0.7"

291.111.276.23- - [16/Jun/2007:11:17:55 -0400] "GET /myjavascript.js HTTP/1.1" 200 3225 "http://www.anilbatra.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows XP; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/3.0.0.7"

If you are counting the Hits then there are 4 Hits on the server. It is evident it does not make a lot of sense to count Hits. Let’s look at what make sense (at least for now).

Page Views

According to Web Analytics Association Standards, “Page is an analyst definable unit of content”. Page Views is the number of times a page (an analyst-definable unit of content) was viewed.

So what does it mean? It means you can define type of file, Module, Flash interaction, PDF etc as a page and when a user views them they can be counted as Page Views.

Let’s use the above example and define a valid page as the files with .html extension only. When using a log file solution we configure the tool to filter out the other types of requests and only count pages with .html extension as valid pages. In a JavaScript based solution, all other types of files mentioned above (except .html in this case, if it has the JavaScript tag) will be automatically excluded from the Page View count.

So how many pages will the analytics report show? One, as there is only one html page. (You can configure your JavaScript based web analytics tool to track other forms of files as page views too but that requires customization).
The one page that is showed in the reports is a page view.

Visitors or Unique Visitors

Visitors or Unique Visitors, sometimes also referred as Unique Users is the number of unique individuals visiting a site. The most common way to identify an individual is via an anonymous cookie. Keep in mind that this is a close estimate of unique visitors and not an exact measure. Here are four examples on how unique visitor count can be wrong

1. If two people use the same computer and same browser to visit a site, that identifies users by an anonymous cookie, both of them will be counted as one unique visitor since their cookie will be the same.


2. On the flip side, if one individual uses two different computers to access the same site, the individual will be counted as two unique visitors because the new anonymous cookie will be issued on both the computers and show up as two different cookies in the analytics tool and hence will count them as two different visitors.


3. If an individual uses the same computer but two different browsers (say IE and Firefox) then the person will be counted as two unique visitors because each browser will have its own cookie.


4. If the individual visits the site, she will be counted as one visitor. Then if she clears her cookie and then visits the site again, she will be counted as two visitors.

Note: Visitors are calculated over a period of time e.g. day, week, month, year etc. and a visitor count from two periods can not be added together to get a total visitor count. Let’s take the data for following 2 days
Day 1 - 30 visitors
Day 2 – 45 visitors

The total visitors count for day 1 and day 2 is NOT the sum of the visitors count for the two days i.e. it is not 75 (30+ 45). Why?

For simplicity let’s assume that all the visitors who came to the site on day 1 also returned to site on day 2. In that case we will have 30 visitors from day 1 and 15 (45-30) on day 2 as unique between those two days, making the total unique to be 45 for the two day period and NOT 75.

The calculation I showed above has been simplified for this example. My advice is to let the analytics tool do the calculation for you and not sum the visitor count from separate period to come up with the total count of unique visitors.


Visits

Visit is also known as session. Visit starts when a visitor interacts with this site. In most case the interaction is the first page view by the visitor. The visit ends when user does not interact with a site for specified period of time. Most of the web analytics tools set 30 mins of inactivity as the end of the visit, however in most tools it is configurable and you can set it to whatever makes sense for your business.

Unlike, unique visitors, total visits to the site can be summed across time periods to get the total visit count for the period.

Hope this clarifies some of the confusion surrounding these terms.

Questions? Comments?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?Post your open jobs on http://www.web-analytics-jobs.com/

Latest Job: Senior Web Analyst at Vml (Kansas City, MO)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Site: AnilBatra.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/anilbatra
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you used Clop.in a URL shortner with real time analytics? http://clop.in

What Is Your Conversion Rate?

When most marketers and analyst talk about conversion rate they seem to quote around 2 to 3% as the average conversion rate. Bryan Eisenberg wrote a great article on this subject titled The Average Conversion Rate: Is It a Myth?

In this article he writes:
“The sites that should convert 2 to 3 percent of their traffic are the exception, not the rule. I've long stated that sites that convert less than 10 percent should be concerned. Consider this along with the rising cost of online traffic, and the concern becomes a nightmare. Too many online marketers are spending too much money and time throwing too much unqualified traffic at their sites, then tweaking their traffic quality trying to reach the 2 to 3 percent mythical conversion rate.
If more online marketers focused their efforts on studying visitor intent and site optimization, instead of just driving traffic, their average conversion rates would be much, much higher.”

To inspire you or to make you depressed (the choice is yours) here are some of the top conversion rates for e-commerce sites as reported by Marketingcharts.com.



Source: Marketing Charts (via Nielsen Online)
Note: To be considered, e-commerce sites must have had a minimum of 500K unique visitors during the month. Conversion-rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates: i.e., No. of unique customers/No. of unique visitors.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?
Post your open jobs on http://www.web-analytics-jobs.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Site: AnilBatra.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/anilbatra

Conversation with Barry Parshall, VP of Product Strategy, WebTrends

Continuing my series of conversation with Webtrends executives at Engage conference here is my conversation with Barry Parshall, VP of Product Strategy at WebTrends




Also check out

• Conversation with Alex Yoder, CEO of Webtrends


• Conversation with Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, VP of Marketing Webtrends


• Conversation with Casey Carey, VP of Products, WebTrends

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?
Post your open jobs on http://www.web-analytics-jobs.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Site: AnilBatra.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/anilbatra

Anil Batra for WAA Board of Directors

I am running for the Web Analytics Association Board of Directors position. The voting for the position is now open. I will appreciate if you can support me and vote for me. If you are wondering why you should vote for me then please read my answers to the question WAA nomination committee asked me (below). If you have any questions, you can always reach me at 425-442-2036, batraonline@gmail.com or @anilbatra on Twitter.

Thank you for your support.

WAA nomination committee Q&A

Anil Batra Chief Analytics Officer, Ascentium

I have over 13 years of experience in Online Marketing, Web Analytics, Behavioral Targeting, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Product Management, Team Management, and Consulting. I am a team leader with proven skills in building, leading and managing cross-functional teams, and tackling complex key strategic issues. I bring a unique blend of Marketing and Technical Skills.

I hold a B. Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from India and an MBA from University of Washington, Seattle

My blog is one of the top Web Analytics, Behavioral Targeting and Online Advertising Blogs in the world. I am also a speaker at various web analytics and online marketing conferences and events and contributor to leading industry research.

What major contribution will you bring to Web Analytics Association and its membership?

I have been active in Web Analytics community via various activities that include

• Blog on Web Analytics, Online Advertising and Behavioral Targeting to help spread the knowledge I gain from working with various clients and tools


• Online Tutor for UBC courses – My interest in educating got me interested in this program


• Contributor to UBC course work


• Speaker and panelist at various conferences including eMetrics


• Organizing and participating in Web Analytics Wednesday in Seattle area


• Free Seminars on Web Analytics


• Contributed to last year's CMS Watch Report


• Wrote a paper on Bounce Rates to help companies understand what to expect from bounce rates


• Whitepaper on Website Optimization Landscape


• Active on Web Analytics Yahoo group, helping people resolve their issues related to web analytics


• Started a section called “Ask an Expert” on my site to get some free advice on various topic in digital marketing


• Instructor for various WAA Base Camps

Why should members vote for you?

I have been contributing to the industry and will continue to do so. I am dedicated to the field of Web Analytics.

I have worked with people/organizations that are just starting to use web analytics to companies who have been using web analytics for years, involved with optimization and now looking to bring other data sources together and other thinking about or working on personalization, behavioral targeting, predictive analytics, social media etc.

Being involved in the conversation with people at all levels and different countries I hear various views and I will make sure your voice is heard at WAA board.

Having been worked on both IT and Marketing sides I understand the needs for both of them and will represent both sides.

I am open-minded and always solicit feedback. I am enjoy new challenges and am ready to take on the challenge take WAA to next level.

Where do you think the Web Analytics Association should be in the next two years?

Many organizations that have already been doing web analytics for some time and now are looking at web analytics can be extended or enhanced to help them get a 360 view of customer and hence optimize their marketing efforts. This includes CRM systems, Social media etc.

On the other hand many organizations are still getting warmed up to Web Analytics and learning how web analytics can help them improve their bottom line.

In light of these two developments, education at all levels will continue to be a key initiative for WAA.

WAA is already an international organization but continued focus on expanding internationally will be key for WAA. Since business spans continents these days, we will need to make sure international voices are heard as we develop standards and best practices.

New media, tools, technologies will continuously need to be taken into account as we develop education, standards and best practices.

What is the biggest challenge facing the digital marketing industry?

New technologies and new form of media is emerging. The challenge will be to interconnect different customer touch points and get a comprehensive view and optimize accordingly. As we connect these data points it will be critical to makes sure we do not compromise the privacy of visitors/customers.

CMS Watch Report on Web and Mobile Analytics Tools

CMS watch various web analytics tools in their yearly report. This year they expanded the scope to include Mobile analytics vendors as well. It evaluated a total of 20 commercial tool and 4 open source web analytics tools. This is the most comprehensive report on this subject.
Here is a list of tools that this report evaluated:

Web Analytics

Coremetrics - Online Analytics

Digital River - Fireclick Advanced Warehouse

Yahoo! - Yahoo! Web Analytics

Nedstat - Sitestat

VisiStat - VisiStat 6.0

Omniture - SiteCatalyst

Intellitracker - Intellitracker Enterprise R6

Google - Google Analytics

Foviance - WebAbacus

Auriq Systems - RTmetrics

Lyris - ClickTracks

Unica - Affinium NetInsight 7.2

Google - Google Urchin 6.5

WebTrends - Analytics 8.5

Mobile Analytics

Mobilytics - Mobilytics

AdMob - AdMob Mobile Analytics

Amethon Solutions - Mobile Analytics v1.5.3

Bango - Bango Analytics 3.0

Video Analytics

GlanceGuide - my GlanceGuide

Visible Measures - VisibleSuite 209


Open Source Analytics Tools

Analog

AwStats

phpMyVisits

Webalizer


Yahoo Web Analytics came close to Omniture, Webtrends and Coremetrics in feature set. (I came to same conclusion in my blog post last year on Yahoo Web Analytics.)

Comparing Yahoo Web Analytics and Google Analytics, Yahoo is clearly the winner.
However, I would like to make it clear that you need to look at your needs and determine which tool will work best for you. For example, Google Analytics clearly works better than Yahoo Web Analytics when you spend a lot of money on AdWords and need easy integration of web analytics and Adwords.

This report has done all the research for you and will defiantly save a lot of time and headache. You can buy the report at CMS Watch’s Site

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?
Post your open jobs on http://www.web-analytics-jobs.com/
Sr/Lead Analytic Warehouse/Java Engineer at Saas Company In the SF Bay Area (Emeryville, CA)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Site: AnilBatra.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/anilbatra