Reading Atlanta Analytics

All of this business about paid tools vs free tools, and dare I say the whole concept of #measure, all boils down to the fact that today, we are a tool-centric industry, often to the detriment of being an expert-centric industry. — Stop giving web analytics tools the credit YOU deserve

Atlanta Analytics is a quite interesting blog – however, there aren’t so many posts. The author, Evan LaPointe, does have some nice visions and an interesting perspective, because he comes from a finance background.
I think he makes some important points, these are:

It isn’t about page views or uniques – it’s about money
Drive actions not data
Be a business person not a technologist
Demand your share – if you increase your company’s profit by $500,000 per year, you should demand a share of it

What is web analytics?

Quantify today’s success and uncover usability, design, architecture, copy, product, advertising, pricing and marketing optimization that will breed even more success tomorrow
Web analytics isn’t:

WA is not the measurement of something
WA is not defining success but translating it
WA is not Omniture, Google Analytics or Clicktracks

Web analytics answers the following questions:

Who is coming to my web site?
What are they trying to do?
What is the gap between what they are doing and the ideal?
What are some concrete ways we can close the gaps?
How can we get more of these people?

These answers should be answered in context of growth and profitability
Analyst shouldn’t become married to one discipline otherwise they are losing the big picture
They are central and recommendations are driven by company impact and not by personal impact
Even if you cannot solve a problem by yourself, you have uncovered an important problem

Three enormous wastes of your web analytics time

Analytics isn’t implemented in the dev process but afterwards
You care about the correct unique visitors count
You are trying to match two numbers from different tools: Trends not accounting

3.5 things that keep you from finding good web analytics people

1: Good WA can be in your company
2: A lot of experienced WAs are actually reporting writers
3: Your interview process prevents you from hiring good people: if you fear change / that your flaws will be revealed and the application is able, then you probably won’t hire them
3.5: Your salary is too low: increasing your conversion rate by 0.3% can mean hundreds of thousand of dollars additional revenue per month

Web analytics sucks, and it’s nobody’s fault

This is a handmade description for yet another propellerhead analyst who will sit around and run reports for people, get in arguments with other people (or those same people), “agree to disagree” with other departments, and will eventually call everyone else an idiot and will recede into their cave before ultimately quitting for a director-level position at a different, big, resume-enhancing company where the process will repeat itself.

It’s not their fault because a good position for a web analytics person does not exist in the companies that can use these people most. The bigger the company, the more important a small difference becomes. For a site with 10,000 visits a month, an analytics person would have to improve conversion by double-digit percentages to scarcely pay for themselves. For Wal Mart, moving the conversion needle a tenth of a percent probably pays their lifetime salary in a week

The effective web analytics person knows usability, they know some design, they know information architecture, they know HTML, they are good communicators and can thusly write good web copy, and ultimately they are businesspeople who realize the purpose behind all of these crafts is cash flow […] Rather than being careful, politically aware employees, effective analytics people are data-driven, quickdraw decision makers because they have two key assets:

1. Cold, hard facts in the form of data (and I don’t mean just Omniture data)
2. The ability to not have to decide: they can TEST

Big companies are ruled by coalitions of opinions, meetings, conference calls, and semi-educated executives. Data is actually a threat. Data is what gets people fired in big companies, not what gets them bonuses. Data is scary.

What are the REAL web analytics tools?

Question: How can you improve the long-term cash flow?
Where you need a decent degree of competency:

Usability
Information Architecture
SEO
Web marketing (PPC, display, email)
Social Media
Design
Copywriting
Website technology (HTML, CSS, SQL, JS, PHP/Ruby/Python/whatever)
Communication skills

Learn business goals -> department goals -> campaign goals -> personal goals

Have you lost faith in web analytics?

Make decisions as often as possible – aka fail faster
It isn’t about the newest technology – it’s about money
Don’t live in a vacuum – interact with different people and viewpoints

The purpose of web (or any) analytics

“We talk about being data-driven businesses. But these aren’t businesses built around a culture of measurement. They’re built around a culture of accountability.”
“The purpose of web analytics, or any analytics, is to give your organization the confidence needed to accelerate the pace of decisions.”
“We’re talking about being accountable to outcomes, not to some Tyrannosaurus on a power trip. That’s a big deal.”
“It’s about making big decisions often.” – Iterate, iterate, iterate

Reading Adobe’s Digital Marketing Blog (Part 2)

Avoid “anticipointment”: bridging the gap from ad to site

Ads and web site work together – don’t just invest a ton in one medium
Marketeers fall easy into the ad trap because it’s easier than creating an usable, engaging web site
People expect that the click from the ad will be of even more value than the ad
Online Marketing Value Chain: Basically Customer Lifetime Cycle

Click ad, engage deeper in the landing page
Make their way through conversion opportunity
Become loyal customer

Most of these steps will be on the web site!

Creating a Successful Lead Nurturing Strategy, Part III: When Should I Call?

Call within 5 minutes of the initial contact
Call early at morning or late in the afternoon
Call on Wednesday or Thursday – I personally tried this against Monday and Friday and it was highly effective
Call them up to four times and send one email in the first 24h
Test these tactics

Creating a Successful Lead Nurturing Strategy, Part IV: Your Long-Term Strategy

The main is not to sell but to maintain a relevant conversation
Offer relevant and personalized content – recent study showed that most content simply sucks, so watch out

Email – automated, personalized and relevant; reports, tips, guides, best practices
Phone – Follow up; provide deeper information, answer questions
Direct mail – reinforce what you’ve talked about; again personalized and relevant

This process should be repeated maybe once a month

Optimization Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

Testing & Targeting are greater than just once
however often they are siloed
Start with testing and segment the results
This helps you to find better content for targeting

Building a Business Case for Optimization

Biggest problems are processes and politics
They hadn’t ownership over the site

Testing generates positive ROI!
Optimizing landing pages increases off-site ROAS (Return On Ad-Spending)
Test to fail faster – some of your assumptions are probably wrong
Dig into analytics, segment and provide insights

The Collaboration of Testing Ideas

Include other people and departments in your testing
Often people in development, IT, creative, etc. have ideas – just ask them
Test Ideas:

Test different landing pages: home page, product page, internal search, etc.
Reinforce ad text/graphics on the landing page/multipage setup
Test ads
Test incentives for submitting to your email database
Test emails
Build a story with the ad and following pages
Test different viral/referral elements: coupons, vouchers, …
Test different forms

Test % Off vs. $ off
Test your CTA copy, size, color, style
Test scarcity on offers
Test different copy approaches: informative, funny, benefits oriented, etc. and analyze segment behavior
Test signs of trust: security message, shipping info, return policy, etc.
Test geographical targeting
Test simple content vs. rich media
Test content vs. no content

Test free shipping vs. % off vs. $ off vs. guarantee vs. …
Test promotion tresholds: 10% on $50 vs. 15% on $100
Test different internal search results – hand picked, automated, editor picks, big brands, cheapest first, best selling first, highest rating first, etc. and segment(!)

Strategies

Understand your goal – what are you’re trying to improve?
Start with the bottom in your funnel – it’s easier to get more impact
Try to understand why alternatives work better
Try to improve one theme at a time, e.g. decrease registration drop off, copy style, etc.
Focus on big things: product shown, pricing, primary copy, images, offer, CTAs

Five Times to Test: 1 — When you need to optimize beyond the click

Data without analysis and communication is not very useful
Even then without taking action, it’s practically useless
Often lots of money is invested in driving traffic but less in converting the traffic
Example: large business $100MM PPC budget, less than $200k for optimizing landing page/website
Mark Typer, Wunderman: 15% Optimization, 85% Ad spending

Five Times to Test: 2 — To resolve internal disputes

Do you have a dispute? Just test the idea
Similar things can work different on different websites, e.g. CTA wording

#56/111: Permission Marketing

What is it about?

How do you advertise? Seth Godin differentiates between interruption marketing (e.g. banner ads, TV ads, magazine ads) and permission marketing (sending information directly to people who accepted to send your information).

What can I learn?

Leverage interruption marketing: Permission marketing is often a bit mis-defined. It’s not about stopping your advertising, it’s about using it better. You have basically two options in advertising: a) You try to make a sale directly or b) You try to get the permission to give them more information. Seth recommends b) because it’s a less expensive step for your prospect (giving away their email vs. giving away twenty bucks) and you have a less expensive channel for frequent information (sending emails vs. buying magazine/tv ads).

Build trust: After the first step is done, it’s time to nurture your prospects. If you aren’t a big brand, you probably want to build trust first. Send them some relevant information: Articles, Top X Lists, How-to instructions, etc. After some time, you can sprinkle advertising in your emails. However, if you actually sold to them, don’t stop providing relevant information. This will increase your customer lifetime value.

Conclusion

At first, I was a bit unsure about actually reading this book, because I read Purple Cow by Seth Godin and wasn’t really impressed. Though, this book is impressive. Seth Godin wrote it in 1997 and it was incredible visionary. Today, it is unsurprisingly a bit outdated though the basics are still useful.