Analytics Class – Thursday, April 25th @ 11:30am
April 16, 2013 by Ed Reese · 1 Comment
We’re excited to be offering our Google Analytics class this Thursday, April 25th at 11:30am at The Nectar Tasting Room (corner of Main & Stevens). I get pretty fired up when it comes to teaching people how to utilize the power of data and am excited to be teaching my first analytics class of 2013. Understanding analytics is a game-changer for businesses and we love getting people headed down the path of analytics awesomeness!
This year we’ve changed the format of our classes so the lessons really sink in. We want you to be able to immediately apply what you’ve learned in class to help your business. Take a look at the educational support we’re providing as part of this analytics class offering. You’ll be an analytics ninja before you know it!
- 90 minute class on Thursday, April 25th
- 90 minute small group hands-on analytics lab session (dates TBD)
- Unlimited analytics questions for 30 days in our new analytics forum
Measure & Maximize Your Marketing Efforts with Google Analytics!
Date: Thursday, April 25th
Location: Nectar Tasting Room, 120 North Stevens (corner of Main & Stevens)
Cost: $40
Limit: 25 attendees
Seats Available: 0 (Thanks again for another full class 
Here’s what you’ll learn in our 90 minute class:
Goals & KPI’s. What do you want your website to accomplish? We’ll start by showing how to create goals and KPI’s (key performance indicators) for your website. Always start with the end-goal in mind. We’ll measure everything against these business goals. (10 minutes)
The Install. It’s easy to get started with Google Analytics (GA). But there are a few things you’ll need to know to make sure you’re getting started on the right foot. We’ll show you how to install Google Analytics and configure it to your business’s needs. (5 minutes)
A Guided Tour. There have been A LOT of changes in GA recently. We’ll provided a guided tour that shows the wide variety of ways you can look at your data to fully understand how to use Google Analytics to its fullest potential. (15 minutes)
Understanding Traffic Sources. It’s imperative to understand not just where your traffic is coming from but that traffic is causing. Are your marketing campaigns performing? Should you renew your advertising contract with XYZ company? We’ll show you how to use your Google Analytics data to make more educated decisions about your marketing and advertising efforts. (15 minutes)
Measurement = More Powerful Pages. You’ll learn how to use measurement to improve to your homepage, landing pages, interior pages and blog posts. Content is king. You’ll learn how to identify pages that are under-performing and make them better. (15 minutes)
Conversions. There are many ways to measure conversions on a website. We’ll show several ways to create and track that final step of the conversion (the sale, registration, download, etc.) We’ll also show how to create micro-conversions to create multiple smaller steps to purchase. (10 minutes)
Advanced Awesomeness. We’ll end by showing how to take advantage of advanced segments within Google Analytics. Using segments effectively is one of the most valuable ways GA can help your business. I use advanced segments about 20 times a day for my clients (and you should too). Take advantage of the power. (10 minutes)
Questions. We have ten minutes “officially” set aside for questions. That said, I’ve set aside an hour after our class is over to answer questions for anyone that would like to stay after the class. We realize many of you are coming to the class on your lunch break so we’ll be adhering to our 90 minute schedule. That said, if you can stay after class I’ll be there to answer questions for an extra hour
Here’s what you’ll get as a bonus:
This year we’ll be providing 90 minute follow-up lab sessions so you can reinforce your classroom learning experience with hands-on training. What does that mean? I’m glad you asked! We’ll be providing several small group lab sessions where I’ll work with you set up goals, create advanced segments, create dashboards, and much more.
But I want a super-bonus!
You drive a hard bargain, but OK. Here’s your super-bonus. Anyone registered for the class is invited into our new analytics forum for 30 days for free! Ask UNLIMITED QUESTIONS about Google Analytics for a month absolutely free! I’ll even throw in some foosball tips for those interested.
But wait, there’s more!
We’ll also provide an adequate, somewhat nutritious box lunch during your first class session with the choice of a few inexpensive beverages and/or water. Hey, it’s not exactly date-night food. But becoming an analytics ninja for $40 will make you both thrifty and dang sexy!
Our goal is make this most valuable
class you’ve ever attended!
Social Media Measurement, Thoughts & Ideas
April 3, 2013 by Ed Reese · Comments Off
Over 200 people will fill the Jepson Auditorium at Gonzaga tonight to discuss how social media has changed the face of business. It should be a great discussion as social media has evolved to a point where it does positively impact many businesses. But how? What are the businesses trying to achieve? I hear a lot of comments like these:
“I just gotta get on Facebook! I feel like I’m behind the curve.”
“I need a Twitter strategy,… Now!”
But that’s not true. You don’t HAVE to be on Facebook or Twitter. The answer is,… it depends. Yeah, it might be a good idea for your business. It might be a super-duper awesome idea. But where is your audience? What are your goals? My Local University amigo Matt McGee always has the same answer when asked about social media platforms.
Be on the social media platforms where your customers are.
Yep, good advice. For example, Chris Reilly and I performed a social media audit for a client a few years back to measure the effectiveness of their internal social media efforts. Guess what? 93% of their audience was blocked at the firewall. Their particular industry is pretty conservative and the big bosses don’t want their people on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. Blocked at the firewall. Dang. But guess what? They were on old-school technical forums and still go to industry events. Lesson learned: go where your customers are.
But there’s a question even more important than where to go.
Why?
I don’t hear a lot of talk about “the why” so I thought this would be a good opportunity to throw out a few reasons for businesses to put forth a social media effort and how to measure effectiveness.
1) Mitigate Risk
Social media is real-time customer service rocket fuel! Have a potential PR issue? Have a mad customer ready to rant online to the hungry, drooling masses about how much you suck? Social media has an amazing ability to cut that off at the pass. Because guess what,… even with the best of intentions things go wrong from time to time. But now businesses are able to stop PR disasters before they even start. This prevents bad reviews, bad news reports and ultimately helps protect their reputation.
This comes down to delivering awesome real-time customer service.
Where once a bad customer experience would be re-told to ten people it now has potential to reach tens of thousands (or even more if it goes truly viral). Preventing this from happening (in my opinion) is the most important aspect of social media for many mid-size to large companies. As Mike Blumenthal often says, “Once you had to treat the customer right. Now, you have to treat them right-er.”
How do you measure treating your customers right-er? Reviews.
I’ve worked with Paul Warner at Northern Quest for the past year. As part of of his responsibilities Paul has been responding to issues that have come up from time to time via Facebook and Twitter. In addition, he has responded to every online review of the hotel they could find with another member of the Northern Quest team. Here’s a look at that impact on Trip Advisor alone:
4.27 Overall Star Rating for reviews prior to 2012
4.43 Overall Star Rating for reviews in the past 12 months
3.75% Improvement (While this is a smaller percentage 4.43 is almost 4.5 stars. I’ll bet this makes an impact.)
Like I mentioned earlier, things happen from time to time. By addressing them head-on a business can own the issue, whatever it is. It also keeps that review based more on facts and less on emotion. Here’s an example of a response to a hotel guest that wrote in their review that their room was too hot:
After reading your review, we checked into the temperature controls in our rooms. Each room is set to 68 degrees upon a guest’s arrival, but the temperature can be adjusted from 35 to 95 degrees. After a guest checks out of the room, the temperature is set back to 68 degrees.
Now this doesn’t fix the issue for this particular guest. But it shows other that they actually read their online reviews and respond accordingly. Here’s an example of how Paul and the Northern Quest team handled a power outage and unplanned fire alarms:
“We had a bit of anger stemming from a power outage incident on the floor and hotel as well as some unplanned fire alarms. We dealt with them via Facebook and Twitter (in addition to staff on the floor). We had to deal with complaints about tickets not getting cashed out, not being able to check in, having to leave machines, not able to get tickets etc. We were able to respond and share information in real time with them as to how we were resolving issues and to whom to talk regarding concerns on the floor/hotel. We addressed all issues within an hour of the incident(s) and had most people thanking us for info and response.”
Obviously a lot is in-play when it comes to what causes a good hotel review and/or preventing a bad review. Northern Quest has improved top to bottom in terms of providing exceptional customer service. Not all of this can be attributed to addressing reviews and preventing bad reviews via social media. Still, it has a definite impact.
2) Extend Brand
All companies have a vibe in addition to services and products they want to sell. Generating a larger following of people that are aware of, and are interested in your brand is good for business. And by brand I mean everything about your business and the individuals who are publicly a part of it. At Local University our brand is based on our expert knowledge of SEO, Local Search, and how we can help businesses learn more about online marketing strategies and tactics to succeed. We want to be known as content experts. We also want to be known as nice, generous, approachable people. Blogging is a big way for us to extend our brand by creating valuable content. One of the ways we track that is by a dashboard called “Blog Intent.”
As you can see, we know how many visitors read our blog posts, where they come from, what they read, and if they have interest in us putting on a seminar in their city. Nice! That’s a handy little dashboard.
3) Create Dialog
Genuine two-way communication is possible now like never before. In the 90′s most sales people would say “If I could just get them on the phone I’d have a good chance of selling our products/services.” We now have a much better opportunity for that first conversation. But notice I didn’t list the goal as “selling.” Yes, people have sold things via social media, but (in my opinion) often at the expense of chasing others away with their chatter and over-selling. Yet, social media does provide an great first interaction with a prospective customer to learn about what you have to offer. And this can be measured with “assisted conversions” and other techniques. Awesome! Because it takes a team to sell well. You wouldn’t want five point guards or five power forwards. But put them together and you have pure magic. Or Jazz
It’s great that everyone is getting together to talk about the state of social media in Spokane. I hope this helps plant a few seeds of thought around the why and a few ideas how to measure your campaign. For those interested in leaning more about how to measure via analytics we’ll be teaching a Google Analytics class on April 18th from 11:30am to 1pm at the Nector Tasting Room for $39. Fill out our contact form and say you saw about it at the Social Media Event at Gonzaga and the cost is $29.
Black Hole (Not Provided) Keyword Detection Method
April 27, 2012 by Ed Reese · Comments Off
Although we can’t see black holes, we can detect their presence (or at least make an educated guess) by measuring effects on objects around them. That same principle is the basis for this (not provide) keyword detection method. While it doesn’t technically get your beloved keywords back, it will hopefully help fill in the gaps since Google implemented this (sucky change) in reporting.
The purpose of this post is to help business owners and marketers easily get a snapshot of the *likely* keywords they’re missing. There are other more detailed technical posts for those looking for a deeper dive into the keywords (not provided) pool. These posts from Avinash Kashik and Rachael Gerson are great if you’re looking for a more detailed analysis.
Most of the people I’ve talked with have reported the percentage of (not provided) keywords at between 10%-20%. That’s what I’ve seen for the most part, but it really depends on your visitors. Covario has a great post of how (not provided) impacts different audiences. The growth rate is more concerning to me (especially with Google+ and Android adoption). As more and more people log into Google’s products, the less and less we’ll see.
But not to worry Google has made us dance before and they’ll do it again. Yes, we lost some keywords, but we can still see the landing pages these searches are directed to and can *mostly* infer what those lost keywords were. So, if you have a relatively optimized website you can make some pretty reasonable assumptions about what these (not provided) keywords were. Here’s how to do it.
Step 1: Find Your Keywords in Analytics
Step 2: Isolate (Not Provided) Keywords & Select Landing Pages
In the interest of full disclosure this is not my idea. I just added the Black Hole image Rachel Gerson of SEER Interactive first shared it with me at GAUGEcon in San Francisco. Be sure to follow her on Twitter. She is awesome!
Analytics Information, Presentation, & Tips
November 1, 2011 by Ed Reese · Comments Off
My purpose for this post is to provide supporting analytics information, my analytics introduction presentation, and tips so that business owners can use their web data to help grow their business. Analytics takes a bit of time to grasp but is worth the effort. Here’s some information to get started.
Getting Started with Google Analytics
If you have the time (and it does take a while) I recommend going through Google’s Conversion University to learn all about Google Analytics. That said, they’re a bit on the dry side (understatement) and take a while to get through. However, this great Google Analytics installation video from Ian Lurie of Portent Interactive gets you started in just over ten minutes.
What You Need to Know
There’s a lot of advice out there when it comes to analytics. The tips I’m interested have nothing to do with reporting. They’re all about gaining insight from the data and doing something with it to improve your business! And there’s only one name you need to know when it comes to gaining true analytics insight. That name is Avinash. He has done more to advance true analytics insight that anyone on the planet. Here are a few of his essential posts:
The Beginner’s Guide to Web Data Analysis
Web Analytics Segmentation: Do or Die, There is no Try!
Web Analytics Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
The Best Social Media Metrics
Presentations & Examples
Here are my most recent analytics presentation. Please feel free to download or share.
One of the things I really emphasize when I present is the importance of understanding what’s important to YOUR business. Don’t worry about all of the metrics, pay attention to the ones that impact YOUR business. For example, my wife Tine is the Executive Director of a nonprofit called Bloom Spokane. Their #1 business driver is the number of people that attend their in-person classes. So we measure that as a KPI. Here’s how we look at it in a custom dashboard.
My Quick Guide to Using Website Data to Grow Your Business
1) Understand what’s important to measure when it comes to YOUR business. Every business is unique. Learn what’s important to measure, learn from your insights as well as mistakes and make improvements.
2) Get your hands dirty and learn this stuff! It’s powerful, people! I know you’re busy, but your business will benefit greatly from this information once you take the time to learn it a bit.
3) Take action! You don’t need to be an analytics ninja to take advantage of this stuff. You can make improvements to your website today by just taking a few suggestions from the information in this blog post not to mention the mountain of valuable information from my Get Listed friends.
I wish I was in Western New York with all of you today! I know you’re getting a TON of valuable information from the Get Listed crew. Be sure to take full advantage of it!
How to Dominate with Data – A Spokane Ad Federation Presentation
October 23, 2011 by Ed Reese · 1 Comment
Last week I spoke at the Spokane Ad Federation luncheon about how to dominate with website data. It was their Fall 2011 kickoff luncheon and I had a blast! We had a full room ready to gain analytics insight. It was great!
Spokane Ad Federation October Luncheon Attendees
Ed takes a moment to go over a few questions
We went through a lot of real-world examples and talked in detail about ways to gain actionable insight to make website improvements. We looked at ways to measure the effectiveness of blogging, branding, campaigns, and social media.
Here’s the full presentation for those that attended and others that might find if helpful.
For additional questions about topics from this presentation I’d like to recommend:
Best Social Media Metrics – Avinash Kaushik
Google Analytics Training Videos
Awesome Analytics, Local Search, SEO, Social Media, & Converstion Rate Optimization Info
November 13, 2009 by Ed Reese · 4 Comments
A big thank you to The Spokane Club and everyone that attended my presentation earlier this week at their Networking Breakfast! I really appreciated your questions, engagement, and enthusiasm. As I mentioned during our session, I want to provide additional resources for you to continue your education in the ways of analytics, SEO, local search, social media, and conversion rate testing. We covered a lot of topics in a short period of time and as a follow-up I wanted to create an awesome resource library for you. Now it’s time for you to choose your own Internet marketing adventure and learn from the best and brightest in the industry.
ANALYTICS, ANALYTICS, ANALYTICS
As I’m sure you recall from my presentation, I hammered home the importance of understanding analytics. I’m not talking about “reporting” or “monthly reports” for your boss. I’m talkin’ about kick-butt, actionable analytics that teach, provide valuable insight, and inspire action. What’s workin,’ baby? What does the data tell us today? This higher level of attention to your data is not optional… if you want your business to succeed. You must “know thy data.” Here’s how:
Occam’s Razor – Awesome analyics blog from Avinash Kaushik
Web Analytics an Hour a Day – Great introduction to actionable analytics (also from Avinash)
Google Analytics Blog - Resource for understanding Google Analytics (beginner & advanced)
Google Analytics Videos - Educational videos that show how to use Google Analytics
Conversion University – A curriculum of analytics video tutorals
Analytics 2.0 [The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity] (Thanks Avinash!)
MAKE SURE YOUR WEB SITE CONVERTS TRAFFIC
I think it’s great when companies embrace new technologies and ways of thinking. Social media has taken the Internet marketing world by storm and generated all kinds of buzz (much of it well deserved) this year. However, I’m always wary of what I call the “Shiny Penny Syndrome.” It’s a condition where companies throw resources at the latest and greatest marketing techniques without testing and tracking what the shiny penny actually does. I’ve also seen companies completely stop doing what works (like email marketing) just because it doesn’t have that new marketing smell.
Don’t Make Me Think – Great read (really fast, too) about web site usability
Conversion Rate Experts – UK company focused solely on conversion rate optimization
108 Ways to Improve Conversion Rates (from Conversion Rate Experts)
Google Web Site Optimizer Blog (The Official Optimizer Blog)
Always Be Testing - Great book for learning A/B & Multivariate testing
Marketing Experiments – I love these guys. Their webcasts rock!
LOCAL SEARCH = LOW HANGING FRUIT
As an Internet marketer I’m always looking for the low-hanging fruit–”the best bang-for-the-buck in the shortest period of time. And for most small and medium businesses that’s Local Search. Like I mentioned before, this doesn’t mean you stop doing everything else and go local only. It means that it’s time for a dedicated local search strategy to compliment your existing marketing efforts. Learn more from these experts:
David Mihm – Portland, OR Local Search expert & designer
2009 Local Search Ranking Factors – I’m proud to be a contributor to this research project
Mary Bowling – Denver, CO Local Search expert
Understanding Google Maps & Local Search – For those that want details, details, details.
Small Business SEM – Local Search + SMB Advice = Awesome!
Miriam Ellis – San Francisco, CA Local Search expert & designer
Chris Silver Smith – Cartographer & Local Search expert. Again, for folks that want the technical details.
ORGANIC SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
There is a lot of information out there about SEO. In fact, there is so much information that it’s tough to know where you should even begin. These folks provide the best information and their content is always up to date.
SEOmoz - Free and premium levels of membership – Both are great!
SEO Book – Again, free and premium levels of membership – Great as well
Search Engine Journal - Free SEO content from a variety of SEO experts – including me starting next month
Search Engine Land - Center of the universe for all things search – Look through the categories
Vanessa Fox – She has an uncanny ability to explain complex details in very simple terms
Rand Fishkin’s HostingCon Preso – Awesome SEO explanation (and motivation for my art project)
BUT WHAT ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA?
Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about social media. Remember, this socia media stuff is new for everybody so the importance of testing and learning from data is paramount. I think this bit of reading will provide good insight for you.
Outspoken Media - More than social media, but they cover it very well. Many good social media posts here.
Copyblogger – Read Copyblogger now! Writing is so freakin’ important. This is one of my favorite blogs!
7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing – Great new post from Copyblogger
Trackur - Cool way to track social media mentions & reputation
Samepoint – See all mentions of your name or company online. A very cool social media monitoring tool.
5 Facebook Case Studies – Yes, 5 real case studies about marketing with FB.
Twitter, Tacos, & Trucks – The Story of Kogi Bar-B-Que
LIKE I SAID,… WHAT MATTERS IS HOW IT HELPS YOUR BUSINESS
Here’s an example from the presentation. I know it’s hard to believe,… but I didn’t even go to art school!
WANT MORE INFORMATION? HAVE QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? JUST LET ME KNOW.
Please feel from to leave a comment below, send an email, or contact me at my office (509-456-4350).
Phone Call Tracking & Google Analytics
February 18, 2009 by Ed Reese · Comments Off
I haven’t tested this myself yet, so I don’t have much to add other than my excitement. But I gotta say, I’m pretty giddy. If this service delivers, it has the potential to have the biggest impact in tracking offline conversions/sales this year for small and medium sized businesses. Unique phone number tracking has existed for a while. But those packages are pretty expensive for small companies and not easily integrated with existing analytics packages. Getting to see these results within Google Analytics (with pretty easy integration from what they say) sounds pretty sweet. Here’s the complete story from the GA Blog.
The offline phone call tracking is provided by a company called Mongoose Metrics. I’m looking forward to checking this out for myself. Has anyone else tried it out yet? I’d love to hear your feedback.  Offline conversions are one of the toughest metrics to track. This has the potential to fill in those data gaps.
Here’s what they list as their top four questions (and answers) about their services:
1. How many phone numbers do I need to track my keywords?
We have several methods that help track keywords affordably.
2. Is your phone call tracking service expensive?
No. Our phone call tracking service is extremely affordable with our starter plan beginning at $35 a month with no contracts. We also provide pricing discounts with extremely low rates for customers with higher monthly minutes requirements. See $35 A Month Starter Plan Details
3. Do you offer phone call recording?
Yes. Phone call recoding is provided at no extra cost.
4. What tracking numbers are available?
We offer toll free numbers which provision instantly and over 250,000 local U.S. and Canadian numbers which typically provision in 1 to 2 business days or less.
Search Marketing & American Idol
February 11, 2009 by Ed Reese · Comments Off
How will your marketing campaigns be judged in 2009?
Yep, the economy is bad. There is no way to sugarcoat it. Sure, it has impacted some industries and areas more than others. But even if it hasn’t caused a serious downturn in your market, geographic area, or your business in particular, I’d argue that fiscal caution reigns supreme at the moment.
But what does that have to do with American Idol?
Every marketing spend out there is currently being judged by the corporate version of American Idol’s Randy Jackson (as VP of Business Development) , Simon Cowel (CEO/CFO), and Paula Abdul (VP of Marketing) and new exec Kara DioGuardia (VP of Technology). Think of this audience. They are in your meetings. They decide whether you live or die (at least from a project standpoint). In a good economy, Randy (Biz Dev) is given enough rope to risk new products and experiment with new business channels. ”Yo Dawwg, I’m gonna roll with your new Facebook-but-for-lawyers-website-thing. It could be HUUUGE!” Paula (Marketing) can argue that a new emotionally charged TV campaign will have a big impact. “Honey, it’ll be great. Soccer Moms all over the country will be calling in to sign-up. “Kara (Technology) will be allowed to pursue the latest and greatest tech solution to save the day. That’s all fine and dandy in a good economy. Yes, it’s still evaluated and put to discussion. But it’s not quite as tough. In a bad economy, people want a sure thing. And the final (and sometimes only) vote goes to Simon (CEO/CFO). ÂAnd guess what’s he going to look at? Yep, the ROI. What would Simon say about your marketing campaign?
Hopefully, he wouldn’t be this harsh
Search Engine Marketing (both SEO & PPC) Continue to Provide ROI
Fortunately, for search engine marketers, ROI can be easy calculate for the Simon’s of the business world. In fact, a recent article from Enquiro discusses how search engine marketing (primarily from Google’s perspective) is still growing despite poor market conditions. Here’s an excerpt:
Despite one of the worst economic years in recent memory, Google showed 23% growth in revenues. During the same time period every other economic metric went into free fall. Consumer confidence plunged to its lowest levels ever. Retails sales and online sales both hit the skids. Let’s not even talk about home sales. The Dow Jones is down 40% in the past year. The economy didn’t just slow down. It screeched to a halt. But in this same time, search kept plugging through without a hiccup. Did the astronomical growth continue? No, but 23% is pretty damn good in anyone’s books.
The article then went on to say:
So, when we hit bottom and start climbing out of this economic black hole, Search will have consolidated its position as the most accountable of marketing channels. It will form the basis of a new marketing model: consumer driven, immediate, measurable, effective, interactive.
Search Engine Marketing is consumer driven, measurable, & effective.
A completely non-scientific inquiry search engine marketing professionals (myself and people I know and trust in the industry) has shown that we are busier than we have ever been. A big part is due to our unique ability to prove that we are improving business for our clients. It’s not a gut-check. It’s not a demographic guide that says we likely reached 17% of our target audience. It’s detailed analytics showing how we provide value and increase revenue. In addition to the obvious, we are also able to make insightful recommendations to help aspects of your business we aren’t even managing. But don’t take my (somewhat un-objective) word for it:
Marketing Sherpa’s Recent Internet Marketing ROI Survey
Web Pro News’ Top Internet Marketing Strategies
Search Engine Optimization came in first place with 36% of respondents indicating SEO was likely to be the most important online advertising channel. Blogging came a close second at 33% and Pay per Click (PPC) advertising came third with 26%. These three marketing channels, which are the mainstay services offered by search marketing firms, tend to offer the strongest returns on monies invested by the advertiser.
And to give you an idea of the wide variety of options on the table, nearly 500 marketing professionals were polled last November by public relations expert Lee Odden about the Internet marketing strategies and tactics they would be employing in the next six months. Their responses are quite interesting.
All of this data helps me remain confident in my belief that search engine marketing (SEO & PPC) will make it out of Hollywood week and continue its trek to the finals despite the worst economy in decades. Oh yeah, when we win you (our clients) win, too. That’s why we’re in business in the first place.
Analytics + Segmentation = PB&J
February 5, 2009 by Ed Reese · Comments Off
Analytics + Segmentation is the PB&J of web data
I just love a good PB&J. Tasy, tasty, tasty. At least I loved them before the recall. But I digress. It’s just that they remind me of analytics plus segmentation (or maybe I’m just hungry). But it just never fails me. Each and every time I segment important web analytics data I learn something new and am able to make immediate recommendations that helps my clients save money and grow their relevant search traffic.
So what is analytics segmentation, anyway?
It’s really pretty simple. It’s the process of comparing a set of data against a specific variable. Here’s an example that compares traffic sources of a specific web site against individual bounce rates. A bounce rate is recorded when a visitor gets to your web site and leaves without taking another action, so a lower bounce rate is better than a high one. It means that you have engaged your visitor and they are checking out your web site. It’s important to note, however, that blogs typically have high bounced rates and probably shouldn’t be judged by this metric. Here’s an analytic segmentation example:
What can we learn from the data in this example?
In this example, we are comparing the top five referring web sites against the bounce rate average of the web site (22%). In the easy to read chart, green mearures the percent lower than average and red the percentage higher than the average bounce rate (remember, you want low – green = good, red = bad). Let’s find out what we’ve learned that we can immediatelly apply to the web site.
Lesson #1 – Our existing customers are likely a bit bored
Direct traffic comes from visitors that type the web site URL directly and go to the web site (no search or referral). In this example, direct traffic has a 33% higher bounce rate than the web site average. Why is that? We can’t be exactly sure, but we can make some educated guesses. As these are likely returning visitors, maybe they are a bit bored. Maybe they want fresh content. They likely came to the web site, saw that it was exactly the same, and left, thus resulting in a bounce.
Action: Give them some tasty new content!
Lesson #2 – Review your Google CPC campaign conversion rates
Look at that horrible bounce rate for Google CPC! Their Google CPC campaign has a bounce rate that is 87% worse than the web site average. That is a huge waste of money! It’s time to take a look at this pay-per-click campaign and see what keywords have poor bounce rates and throw out the garbage.
Action: Review your paid search campaigs and eliminate poorly performing keywords.
Lesson #3 – Organic search traffic is kicking some serious butt
The organic search traffic has a significantly lower bounce rate than the web site average. The visitors from the search engines are finding their web site and clicking around. Very Nice!
Action: Expand SEO campaign to rank on page one for more long-tail keyword phrases
I hope this helps understand your web analytics a bit more. There are many more ways to segment your data. This is just one example. It’s exciting and powerful stuff. If you have any questions about analytics and what it can do for your business, just let us know. However, for those of you interested in really educating yourselves, I highly recommend checking out Avinash Kaushik’s blog. He’s the man.
We held Stephen Curry scoreless…
November 26, 2008 by Ed Reese · 1 Comment
It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I feel like blogging about college basketball. I just saw an amazing story about the Davidson/Loyola of Maryland game that I may or may not try to relate to SEO. I’m sure many of you remember Davidson. Specifically, Stephen Curry, their sharp-shooting point guard that torched Gonzaga (and everyone else) in the tourney last year until they lost to Kansas, the eventual National Champions.
Anyway, Davidson beat Loyola of MD by thirty points last night. But here’s the thing… Stephen Curry didn’t score a point. Loyola played a triangle-and-2 defense the entire game (meaning that Stephen Curry had two players guarding him at all times, while the other three played zone). So what did he do?
He stood in the corner the entire game! With two players constantly guarding him at the corner, his team essentially had a 4-3 power play for 40 minutes. Talk about not seeing the basket through the trees! I don’t know what the Loyola coach was thinking. It’s one of the oddest strategies I’ve ever seen. There’s a really good write-up about the game on Rivals.
From an SEO perspective (come on, you knew I was going to wrap this into an SEO post) I see this all the time. People are always looking at their trophy phrases and saying “Yes, I’m #1 for my super cool search phrase. Awesome!” But that’s akin to being featured on SportsCenter. Is it super cool? Sure. Are you going to tell everyone you know to search your phrase so they can see you atop Google in all your glory? Absolutely. But, does it really help you win more business? Well,.. maybe. In some cases. But truly understanding your analytics really is the key to getting more clients. It’s just not as sexy. I doubt any of you are going to talk about long-tail organic search traffic, conversions, and bounce rates over Thanksgiving dinner with your family (And you shouldn’t, btw. I can tell you from experience).
Just know that understanding these metrics are what’s going to help you get through this troubled economy.
By the way, Gonzaga is playing in a stacked tournament (with Michigan State, Georgetown, and Tennessee to name a few) that starts tomorrow. This should really let us know if they’ve got what it takes for a deep run come March. Davidson will no doubt look for an encore performance this upcoming March.
I have so much to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
