Model Attributes

Answers Question: Why did they come?
Type of Data: Qualitative Data
Intent or Result: Intent

Qualitative Data

Determining motivation, or intent, involves qualitative data. Before getting into the mechanics of capturing this information from the visitor, let’s briefly review the difference between qualitative and quantitative data.

Qualitative data is subjective.  It deals with descriptions that can be observed. In contrast, quantitative data deals with numbers and can be measured.

If you ask a visitor an open question, “Why did you visit us today?” you are asking for qualitative data. By asking the same questions and providing a few “common” answers in addition to a free-form text box, you essentially provide a way to measure “motivation”. The answer is qualitative. Because we can measure it, we can approximate quantitative data from qualitative data.

Make sense? Don’t worry if it doesn’t. All that matters is that by asking visitors to disclose their intent, you are capturing information which can then be used as metrics that can be studied with the rest of your data.

What are the Benefits to Capturing Motivation?

The ability to assess traffic quality and the ability to segment visitors are the key benefits of capturing motivation.

Traffic Quality

It’s not enough to drive traffic to your site. In Analyzing Traffic Sources, I describe how to collect basic web analytics and how the data can be analyzed to measure a source’s rate of success in meeting the site or business goals.

But what about the goals of your visitors?

People come to your site for a reason. When that reason is in alignment with your site’s goals, you’re golden and can move on to increasing satisfaction. When the two aren’t aligned, the first question you should ask is, “Am I driving the right people to my site?”

Establishing intent offers a first glimpse as to whether that visitor will be successful on your site.

As a crude example, let’s say the purpose of your site is to sell photography equipment and film. So you set up a PPC campaign, bidding on the phrase “buy film online” and title your ad “Buy Film Online”. The campaign is generating a high volume of traffic, but you haven’t seen an increase in sales. By analyzing the intent of your visitors from this campaign, you can easily understand the reason for this:

• 2% visited to purchase film
• 1% visited to research the price on film
• 97% visited for another reason

When looking at the “other” information, you can see that the primary reason for visits from this source is to buy movies and films.

Most savy search engine marketers would have been able to tell you this without analyzing intent that “buy film online” wouldn’t yield desired results for a company that sells film for photography. But this illustrates my point that getting the right traffic to your site matters. Capturing motivation from your traffic is a way to measure whether the goals of the visitor and site are aligned.

Segmenting Visitors by Goal

On which visitor would you focus when making site usability recommendations to increase ROI?

Visitor A: The user that came to your site to purchase a tripod, but did not make a purchase.

OR

Visitor B: The user that came to your site to learn more about career opportunities, but did not make a purchase.

While the business or site goal remains the same, the visitor’s intention differs. So does it make sense to group the experience of those looking for career opportunites with those visiting your site to make a purchase? By identifying intent, you can segment users that visit with the explicit intention of purchasing and evaluate their user experience through the purchase flow. With this information you can more accurately make recommendations to improve the site’s usability for those visitors coming to make a purchase.

(Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik has a great video of his discussion with the founders of ClickTracks on the topic of  segmentation at http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2009/01/actionable-web-analytics-tips.html.)

Best Practices for Collecting Motivation

A simple window can be used to collect information about the user’s intent and motivation when visiting your site. The following best practices should be used when implementing a solution to gather this type of information.

1. Instill confidence.

Instill confidence by refraining from asking for demographic or personal information.  Most people have fallen prey (on and offline) to short surveys that inevitably take up more time than they’re willing to give up.  Make it clear through messaging that you are asking to help their experience.

To help improve your experience on {site name}, please tell us your primary reason for visiting us today.

2.  Keep the options simple

Some or all of the options you present will become system goals.  This way, you can determine the rate of visitors completing their intended goals.  But keep them simple and don’t make them think too hard. You want the visitor to answer the question, not skip it. For example:

The reason for my visit is to:

• Make a purchase
• Research a product
• Learn more about {company} and it’s products/services
• Other

3. Respect the experience

Be sure to add the ability to opt out of seeing the message again. If they do not opt out, throttle the message so they do not see this message each time the arrive on the site. For example, set the message to display 1 out of every 5 visits and/or 30 days.

You may also want to delay the display of the window.  I like to set mine to display only after 5 seconds or when the user navigates to the subsequent page.  This way the visitor has an opportunity to consume the page’s content before the intent request is made.

4. Make it optional

Don’t require that the user answer the question.  Make it optional.

5. Make it easy to answer the question

Make it easy for your users to answer the question. One way I’ve done this is by stylizing the options as buttons.  This way, it’s evident to the user that they only need to click once to answer the question.

In contrast, I would require slightly more effort to opt out and close.  By including a check box and a button, you make opting out a two click process.  By strategically placing a downplayed close link in a more difficult to reach location (e.g. bottom left of the window), you also add a bit more effort in finding the close button.  Not much, but enough.

Here’s an example of an overlay optimized for gathering intent.

Sample window optimized for gathering intent

Summary

Motivation is one of four key components in understanding the 360 degree view of your visitors. By capturing and analyzing visitor motivation you are armed with the information needed to make recommendations to improve traffic quality. Further, by asking a user to identify intent, you can segment groups to study to more effectively recommend site usability improvements based on that particular group’s experience.

Model Attributes

Dimension: Source
Question: Where did they come from?
Type of Data: Quantitative
Intent or Result: Intent

Why It’s Important

Collecting data for basic web analytics like referrers or sources provides visibility into how a visitor came upon your site.  While this is a key metric, it does not offer any insight into the effectiveness of those sources.

For example, say you’re a mortgage broker using PPC as your primary marketing effort and banner advertising as your secondary.  80% of your monthly budget is allocated to PPC while only 20% is allocated to banner ads - and your traffic shows it.  10,000 visits a month to your site as a result of the PPC campaigns, but only 200 from your banner ads.  If you stopped your analysis there, your takeaway would be that your PPC campaigns were performing well and meeting your goals.

However, let’s look further.  You’ve established a primary goal - completion of a form to contact you for more information.  A total of 100 visitors complete the form - 10 from your PPC campaigns and 90 from your banner ads.  It’s a completely different picture.  A picture that may lead you to shift more of your budget to banner ads!

Remember… It’s not enough to know how they are getting to your site.  Instead,  it is an important dimension to track as part of the 360 degree view of your visitors.

Web Analytics

From Wikipedia:

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web site usage.

Several free and inexpensive tools are available and are listed at the end of the post.

Web analytics provides the quantitative data you need to understand where your users are coming from.

Standardized Web Analytics Definitions

I always favor standardization.  The Web Analytics Association released a draft on  Web Analytics Definitions for public comment.  The following is a summary of the WAA  standardized definitions as they relate to this post.

Referrer

Referrer is a generic term that describes the source of traffic to a page or visit and are often collected into meaningful groups to facilitate analysis.

Groups often encountered are:

• Internal ReferrerThe internal referrer is a page URL that is internal to the web site or a web-property within the web site as defined by the user. Not all tools report internalreferrers as a group.
• External ReferrerThe external referrer is a page URL where the traffic is external or outside of the web site or a web-property defined by the user.
• Search ReferrerThe search referrer is an internal or external referrer for which the URL has been generated by a search function. Many tools segment and report on search referrers as a group; however the exact definitions vary from tool to tool. Most will include the “big” search engines, such as Yahoo, Google, and MSN/Live. However, they vary in whether or not they exclude mail servers from these sources, or whether they use wildcards to capture any URL containing the word “search.”
• Direct Navigation (aka No Referrer)The referrer value is empty or null. An empty referral string is often assumed to indicate that the user either directly entered the URL or selected from a list of bookmarks, but this is not always the case. Some user agents such as email clients, news readers, ad servers, and others may not set the referrervalue in the request header and thus the referrer is unknown.

Page Referrer

Describes the source of traffic to a page.

Session Referrer

The first page referrer in a visit.

Visitor Referrer

The first page referrer in a visitor’s first session.

Appending Information to URLs to Determine Source

Most web analytic solutions provide the ability to define custom variables like campaign, channel and a pre-defined source.  By appending information to URLs that drive traffic to your site (like on web pages, emails, tweets) you can more easily group data to determine campaign effectiveness.

Summary

Understanding your traffic sources is important in determining the effectiveness of your online campaigns.  Keep in mind, however, that this is just one piece of the puzzle.  Check back this week for upcoming posts to answer the remainder questions:

• Why did they come? (motivation)
• What did they do? (activity)
• What did they think? (perception)

Web Analytics Solutions

I’ve listed a few web analytics solutions below.  It’s not an all-inclusive list so please feel free to comment about others.

Free or Free Trial

• PiWik - http://piwik.org
• Google - http://www.google.com/analytics/
• Mint - http://haveamint.com/
• HitsLink - http://www.hitslink.com
• fusestats - http://www.fusestats.com
• VisiStat - http://www.visistat.com
• FireStats - http://firestats.cc/
• Snoop - http://report.reinvigorate.net/snoop
• Woopra - http://www.woopra.com/
• Grape Web Statistics - http://www.quate.net/grape
• Clicky - http://getclicky.com/
• Trace Watch Web Stats - http://www.tracewatch.com/
• Going Up - http://www.goingup.com/

Popular

• CrazyEgg (these guys just dropped their free trial - too bad)
• ClickTracks (now Lyris)
• Web Trends
• Tealeaf
• Fireclick
• Coremetrics
• Omniture
• Unica

10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design.

In her post, Whitney asserts that user experience design is not:

1. user interface design
2. a step in the process
3. about technology
4. just about usability
5. just about the user
6. expensive
7. easy
8. the role of one person or department
9. a single discipline
10. a choice

Don’t stop at the summary, check it out for yourself.

You can other posts from Whitney on her blog Pleasure and Pain.

…re-allocate the extra dollars to optimizing your website or landing pages to improve your conversion.

I couldn’t agree more.

For over a decade, I’ve struggled with gathering the right tool-set to provide me with the “complete picture” of my site’s traffic in an effort to optimize the site and increase the return on investments from my marketing campaigns.

No Complete Solutions

To my knowledge, there are no solutions that provide the 360 degree view of site visitors, but several solutions may be combined to get it.  This post isn’t about the solutions themselves, but in what I’ve modeled as the information needed to provide optimal conversion.

Note: Obzervant is building software to serve this need and more.  But in the meantime, a good review of the currently available tools  is warranted and planned for near-future posts.

What You Need to Know

To recommend and prioritize changes that improve conversion rates, 4 questions need to be answered about your traffic:

1. Where did they come from? (source)
2. Why did they come? (motivation)
3. What did they do? (activity)
4. What did they think? (perception)

Model Overview

The model requires both quantitative and qualitative information.  It also separates intent from result to achieve the information required to make recommendations for optimal conversion.  Keep in mind that data changes based on your visitors.  Constant analysis and monitoring of the data provides a good basis for perpetual and iterative improvements.

Source

Answers Question: Where did they come from?
Type of Data: Quantitative
Intent or Result: Intent

Web analytics solutions provide information about the domain and exact url that brought the visitor to your site.  You can also define and  append parameters like source and campaign (e.g. sr=linkedin, cm=banner ad) to urls to learn even more about the referring site, creative element, etc.

(Learn more about traffic sources in my follow-up post, “Analyzing Traffic Sources: Where are your visitors coming from?“)

Motivation

Answers Question: Why did they come?
Type of Data: Qualitative Data
Intent or Result: Intent

Understanding your visitors’ reveals purpose… intent.. motivation.

Laboratory usability testing involves participants that are given scenarios and are asked to perform tasks.  And while this type of usability testing is  a very effective tool in some instances, users are not self-motivated.

Quick polls asking the user of their intention is a valid means of determining intent.  Only after establishing intent can we measure whether the user completed their intended goal.

(Learn more about motivation in my follow-up post, “Finding Motivation: Why Did They Visit?“)

Activity

Answers Question: What did they do?
Type of Data: Quantitative
Intent or Result: Result

Again, web analytics provide information about the visitors’ journey while on your site.  Data collected may include page views, time on page/site and clicks.

If the solution provides an ability to set up goals, you can also look at the number of visitors achieving a business goal.  By establishing intent from the user, you can analyze the percentage of visitors achieving their goal as well as the effort involved (time to complete, number of pages and effort).

Perception

Answers Question: What did they think?
Type of Data: Qualitative
Intent or Result: Result

Triggered, exit and follow-up surveys provide key information to understand visitor satisfaction.  There are methods to gathering each of these that are user-friendly.  I personally hate surveys and close them whenever I see them.  However, there are ways to gather qualitative information without the users perceiving that the effort involved in providing you with that information will be arduous.

Challenge the Model

There you have it: a quick overview on a model for gathering information needed to increase conversion rates through site usability and traffic quality recommendations.

Over the next several posts  I will explain each section of the model.  Until then, I’d really appreciate your feedback.  Help me fine-tune the model by challenging it!

What is A/B Testing?

Simply put, A/B Testing is testing a “page” (page A) against another page (page B). This advertising/usability method is used to evaluate the performance of messaging (page text), layouts, images, colors and other elements like forms.

How do I perform an A/B test?

I like to think of A/B Testing like a 7th grade science experiment.  There are steps to be followed, and each step should be conducted completely and accurately to avoid abusing the method.

1. Ask a Question

Ask  yourself what you are trying to accomplish with the test.   It’s important to understand what you want answered  in order to keep the test focused.   A simple  question could be:

“How can I change register button on the current landing page to get more users to click on it?”

The more specific the question, the more focused your test will be.

2. Do some research

Research what has worked in the past or for others.  Are there any documented tried and true ways to achieve your goal in step 1?

Research leads you in the right direction to make a hypothesis.  For our button question,  let’s look at some research: a definition of Fitt’s Law :

Fitts’ Law is a model to account for the time it takes to point at something, based on the size and distance of the target object. Fitts’ Law and variations of it are used to model the time it takes to use a mouse and other input devices to click on objects on a screen.

Broadly, Fitts’ Law can be applied by designers to suggest moving target buttons closer and making them larger for extremely commonly used buttons. In detail, applying the formula can be extremely useful for exact design of time-critical applications.

3. Construct a hypothesis

From the above research, I interpret Fitt’s Law to say that if a button is bigger and closer, it’s more effective.  (This is a very generalized interpretation, but a fascinating topic.  If you’re interested learning more about Fitt’s Law, I suggest that you read the classic AskTog post:  “A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts”.)

Given my research, I make the following hypothesis:

By increasing the size of my primary call to action button AND by putting that button on the right side of the page, more users will click on it.

4. Test the hypothesis with experimentation

A controlled experiment compares the results obtained from an experimental sample against a control sample.  So for my control sample I’m going to use the current page (A) which includes small button in the top left hand corner.  50% of my site’s visitor will be welcomed with page A.

For experimental sample,  I’m going to increase the size of the button to large and place it on the right hand side of the page to make up page B. Everything else on the page will remain the same.  50% of my site’s visitor will be welcomed with page B.

5. Analyze data and draw a conclusion

Once I’ve completed by experiment,  I’ll analyze the data collected through my web analytics solution, and notice (for example) that 40% of the visitors to page B registered compared to 2% entering the site through page A.  This leads me to the following conclusion:

Moving the button to the right and increasing it’s size significantly increases the propensity of visitors to click on the register button.

6. Communicate the results

One of the most difficult tasks of a product manager or user experience manager has is to socialize enhancements.  The data collected from web analytics, along with your experiment notes is evidence to help socialize, drive and prioritize changes.

A/B Testing Abuse

You know the saying, “Opinions are like a-holes.  Everyone has them.”  This is painfully evident when designing applications, marketing pages, etc.  Everyone from the CEO to the guy that empties your wastebasket has an improvement idea.  Some are good, some are bad, all are valid.  However, in organizations where everyone has a say in the design of a product (or landing page) A/B testing is used to see which idea performs the best.

Here’s a classic example.  A very well-known site that gets hundreds of thousands of page views per hour has been rumored to have tested 72 versions of a page element to see which one performed best.  72 versions before the element was officially changed on the site. 72! There are few reasons I can think of that led to this:

• Clear goals weren’t established
• Proper research wasn’t done on the front end to vet ideas that were generated
• No one wanted to tell the guy-that-empties-the-wastebasket that his idea wasn’t going to be implemented or no one wanted to tell the CEO that his/her idea stank
• The design team didn’t have the trust of the organization to implement only the changes they knew, from experience, to be the best

etc., etc.

Simple Tips to Avoid A/B Testing Abuse

Here are a few simple tips to avoid the abuse of A/B Testing:

1. Perform your A/B tests like a scientific experiment ensuring that each step is conducted completely and accurately.
2. Don’t be afraid to “table” ideas that do not address your question or goal.
3. Cite reasons for your hypothesis with documented research.
4. Test specific page elements with a control sample and experimental sample.
5. Implement web analytics and A/B testing tools to easily perform tests and analyze data.
6. Establish trust in your organization by communicating your findings with empirical evidence.

The i.Tech virtual keyboard uses laser and infrared technology to project a full-size keyboard onto any flat surface.  I can just imagine myself in remote places armed with just my mobile device and this keyboard.

This gets me excited mostly because I can’t wait for the day that I have the “Minority Report interface” for my devices.  What I didn’t realize until last year was that the interface was more real than fictional.  The film’s propmaster and production designer visited MIT’s emerging technologies department to play with the Luminous Room systems developed by the founding members of Oblong.  If you haven’t seen Oblong’s g-speak, check it out:

Oblong offers g-speak as a software platform suitable for licensing and embedding as well as turkey systems.  But at this time, I’m not aware of any commerical applications of their products.

i.Tech’s virtual keyboard, on the other hand, is available on the market and affordably priced at $199.  It may not be the full Minority Report UI, but for me it’s the step in the right direction for my dream human-computer interface.

How Heatmaps Work

To generate a heatmap, a script must be installed on each page you want tracked.  In web analytics terminology, this method is referred to as “page tagging”.  In addition to other web analytics data (page views, links, referrers, etc), the script collects X and Y coordinates each time a user clicks.  A heat map program then aggregates the data from all users and displays clicks through an overlay on each studied page.  A legend (typically visualized as a spectrum) is included to show the ”hot” (and cold) areas of a page.

Heatmap Variations

Eye Tracking

Being able to track a user’s eye movement is very valuable as it provides insight into how the user is processes information.  However, collecting this information requires a recruited participant, a lab environment, special software and a test faciliator.  While useful,  the ability to aggregate data consistently from users who are self-motivated to perform a test in large numbers is very expensive.

Vertical Scrolling

ClickTale provides a heat map of how far down a user scrolls down the page.  I don’t find this information terribly enlightening, but there is value in understanding how much content a user will consume.

Total Mouse Tracking

This is my personal preference.  Total mouse tracking collects not only mouse clicks, but mouse movement and activity as well. By studying the heat map of aggregate mouse paths and clicks, one can determine if or where users are having trouble.

Why You Should Use Click Heatmaps

Your website has a at least one goal - whether it’s to communicate information, get users to register or get users to purchase a product.  Each page on your website contributes to users achieving that goal.  By using heatmaps, you can optimize a user’s propensity to reach the goal(s) you have for your website.

Embedding calls-to-action, say a register button, is one way to help your users acheive the goal of registering on your site.  Heatmaps provide visibility to competing calls-to-action or confusing page elements which detract from users completing your site’s goals.  By increasing the size or position of the call-to-action, or by removing or reducing the attractiveness of competing actions, one can improve your site’s conversion rates.

Free and Inexpensive Heatmap Solutions

I’ve compiled a list of heatmap solutions that are either completely free or are inexpensive with a free trial.  I highly recommend testing one out to see for yourself how heatmaps can work for you.

ClickHeat

This solution is free free free.  However, you must have access to your servers to install it.  I personally use ClickHeat for both by own site and my clients’ and have included mods for Total Mouse Tracking.  I’m aware of a report that the installed code may include cloaked links which google’s search engine frown upon.  Whileve I’ve not personally experienced this, it should serve as a warning before installing the software.

Click Density

Click Density is very easy to implement and works well as an excellent alternative to google analytics for an SMB web analytics solution.  A free 30 day trial is available.

Crazy Egg

This is another software as a service provider and their solution is also very easy to implement.  The user interface for the dashboard rocks and they have a Confetti feature that you have to check out!

FuseStats

I have not implemented FuseStats, but they seem to have a solid product.

The Definitive Heatmap by Corunet

Note: The installation instructions aren’t well documented.

ClickTale

ClickTale’s forté is in recording visitor sessions and provide the vertical scrolling heatmap discussed above.

VisiStat (added 01.09.08)

Didn’t realize these guys had heat maps.  I’d certainly give this one a try.

Chalkmark

I also want to highlight a solution that combines heatmaps with surveys.  This solution allows you to upload screenshots and ask questions to users visiting your online prototype.  Clicks are recorded and heatmaps are generated.  No code implementation required - just upload screenshots, ask questions and send to your participant list.

Feng Gui

The heatmap generated from Feng Gui isn’t actual, but inferred.  It basically uses artificial intelligence to simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals.  No implementation is required and it’s free!

Final Note

There are several heat maps solutions available to help optimize your site.  Feel free to contact me at lana@obzervant.com if you need help or advice on the best tool for your specific needs.

Um, yeah…

While it’s unlikely that Steve Jobs will take pot shots at Microsoft’s Zune, he has every right to after Zune’s New Years Eve debacle.

What Happened?

This New Years Eve, the Microsoft Zune 3G owners experienced widespread failure and reported a frozen screen at startup.   Apparrently, the firmware automatically rebooted and froze during the boot process.  The internal clock driver didn’t know how to handle the leap year which is a bug reminiscent of the Y2K or Millenium bug that had everyone so hot and bothered.

What the Heck is a Zune?

Zune, nicknamed the Brick,  is basically Microsoft’s alternative to the iPod which was first released in Q4 of 2006. (Yes, it’s been around that long) It is an MP3 player which differentiates itself as “sociable” because of the ability to share music with your friends while in close proximity via infrared beam.  It also has a built in radio (FM only) and allows for monthly music subscriptions.

In a hilarious ipod vs Zune video commentary, a fictional Steve Jobs summarizes Zune for a fictional Steve Ballmer:

So it’s as big as a boombox, zaps files to nobody, drains energy like an enema and sucks money out of users for the rest of their lives…

 I think he forgot,

…is prone to Microsoft issues like freezing up and losing data.

Premonition of Things to Come

About a year ago, this spoof  on Ballmer’s freak out at the Microsoft convention was posted.  Perhaps the post had a Pygmailion effect on the Zune?

The Fix

The official Z2K9 fix is pretty lame. It instructs owners to drain the battery, wait for the new year, then recharge and turn on.  The site’s faqs also says that you will “most likely” have no problems with your DRM (digital rights management) content, but to follow some additional instructions if you do.  Most likely???

A History of Defects

Remember the Windows 98 blue screen of death demo? What about the XBOX 360 hardware technical problems  which forced Microsoft to provide a 3 year warranty? 

Dean Takahashi over at VentureBeat writes in his article, Xbox 360 defects: an inside history of Microsoft’s video game console woes that

Microsoft knew it had flawed machines, but it did not delay its launch because it believed the quality problems would subside over time. With each new machine, the company figured it would ride the “learning curve,” or continuously improve its production. Even though Microsoft’s leaders knew their quality wasn’t top notch, they did not ensure that resources were in place to handle returns and quickly debug bad consoles. There were plenty of warning signs, but the company chose to ignore them. The different parts of the business weren’t aligned.

Low Consumer Confidence

Consumers are growing tired of the “learning curve” philosophy.  Microsoft’s own ad campaign, the Mojave Experiment, provides real footage of people who won’t try vista because they heard it was plagued with problems.  Check it out:

So, here’s my Dr. Phil-ism (completely obvious advice) for Ballmer:

• Your shares lost about 45% in 2008. 
• Consumers are losing confidence in your products.
• You are rumored to lay off 17% of your workforce in 2009. 

Overhaul the Microsoft culture.  Start with quality and finish with satisfaction.

Here’s an even more interesting tidbit  gleened from the data: although some e-tailers like Best Buy  experienced a decrease in traffic  (17%),  overall online traffic during this holiday retail season increased 5%  over last year. Here’s a summary of what we saw in online retail over the past several weeks:

• A decrease in traffic
• A decrease in sales
• A increase in discounts and promotions
• A decrease in household income
• Virtually no change in traffic conversion rates (see fireclick index - 1 year)

Hitwise: Retail 500 - Household Income % Change 2008 vs 2007

The #1 way e-tailers can increase their profit margins will be to increase their conversion rates. 

How to do this:

1. Collect online metrics and make them visible

You know not what you do not know.  There are free  and paid web analytics programs out there.  Implement one.

2. Define “conversion”

What are your primary goals for the visitors you are attracting? Registration, purchase, referral?  Set up goals in your web analytics framework to define a “conversion”.   Be wary of SEMs that define a conversion as a landing page clickthrough.

3. Evaluate campaign effectiveness

Evaluate your referrers and sources (site your visitors are coming from and the campaign that drove them to your site).  How much are you spending to invite each visitor?  How many visitors converted? 

4. Shift lower performing campaigns to campaigns that are more effective

Duh.  But without visibility to metrics, defining goals and evaluating effectiveness this is kinda hard.

5. Remove barriers to conversion

Don’t get in the way of visitor that has made the decision to purchase, register or interact.  Make it easy for them to fulfill the goals you’ve set.  Improve the user experience.

Increasing conversion rates through site usability and traffic quality improves ad effectivenss and will help e-tailers recover from the worst online retail season ever.

On Christmas Day, when my son was purchasing apps for his new apple iTouch and announced that iFart was the top selling app, I rolled my eyes.

But when my blog reader keeps puking up post after post about the revenue generated from an application that makes fart noises (on Christmas Day alone it netted about $30K ), I can’t help but feel I’m doing something terribly wrong.

For over a decade now, I’ve built software (mostly web) applications to relieve pain.  I’ve trained myself to take a step back and ask, “What is the problem we are trying to solve?” or “What is the pain and how great is it?”

Watch this video and tell me if you can identify the pain that iFart relieves.

 The notion of building an application like iFart - an application that serves no purpose outside a 2 second childish prank - is difficult for me to adopt.  However, I can’t help but feel there are lessons to be learned.  Here are 5 lessons I’m going to take away from the success of iFart Mobile: 

1. Appeal to the lowest common denominator
   Sometimes you need to forget market segmentation and just appeal to the massess.

 

2. Dumb it down
   Assume the masses aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.  Don’t give them features they aren’t capable of using.  Keep it simple.

 

3. Don’t give away the farm
   Even useless applications can generate revenue. 

 

4. Price it right
   Even in a tough economy, anyone can justify a $.99 guilty pleasure.

 

5. Make sure it’s easy to buy
   This is more a learning from the app store vs ifart.  One touch is all it takes to purchase and download the iFart app.

 

While I don’t think I’m going to download the iPhone SDK to develop iBurp (it’s inevitable, if not already available), I will reconsider my approach to software.  Sometimes, no pain is needed.  Sometimes, it’s about a “lack of sophistication”.  Sometimes, you just have to let it out.