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Posts Tagged ‘campaigns’

Analyzing Traffic Sources: Where are your visitors coming from?

January 10th, 2009
2 comments

In my post, A Model to Improve Traffic Conversion, I refer to four questions that must be answered to effectively recommend and prioritize changes that improve conversion rates. In this post, I go into depth about how to analyze your traffic sources.

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
Popular

A Model to Improve Traffic Conversion, Internet Marketing, Software Product Management, User Experience, User Experience Jobs, Web Analytics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Zune Defect: Are We Surprised?

January 3rd, 2009
5 comments

In a January 2007 interview, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed at the announcement of the apple iPhone.  He  asserted that a lack of a keyboard (?) and an expensive price tag ($500) would keep apple at bay as competitors in the mobile phone market.

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.

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How to recover from the worst online retail season ever

January 2nd, 2009
2 comments

comScore reports online sales declined 3 percent this holiday shopping season making this the worst online retail season - ever.  With aggressive price slashing and free shipping promotions after CyberMonday (the first Monday after Thanksgiving),  one shutters to think about their profit margins.

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

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.

Internet Marketing, User Experience , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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