There has been plenty of hot air blown into the bubble that’s getting ready to burst on Internet marketers again. I watched it happen the first time. With all the financial chaos crashing around us now, the last we need is the blind ignorance of the “new economy” happening again.

Earlier last month some hot air came from Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO Randall Rothenberg, who wants to prevent the Internet advertising economy from becoming “performance based.” This week provided another more…

...continue to read "Building An Optimization Culture"

If you offer a subscription based product or service, you may find that your “direct traffic” is above average. This could be an indication that your existing customers/members are coming back to your site for additional information they need.

If these customers aren’t tagged somehow and you don’t have in depth analytics in place, you probably aren’t effectively separating their behavior from the behavior of new visitors to your site. This makes it difficult for you to point out stumbling blocks…

...continue to read "Are Your Existing customers Messing Up Your Analytics?"

Jeffrey and I were having a discussion about Twitter. Mind you, Jeffrey doesn’t Twitter. I do. He says he has never felt comfortable at small talk. Even though he does do Facebook updates occasionally. Help us settle our discussion (read brotherly argument) about whether or not Twitter would have worked with 70 characters, 210 characters or any other number.

...continue to read "Is 140 Characters a Magic Number?"

I guess it was professional curiosity, but I actually clicked one of those facelift-in-a-bottle ads while visiting some blog.  And hell if I wasn’t intrigued by the landing page’s sleaze-bag persuasive techniques.

Take a look at the screen shot I took of the landing page.  What do you think most caught my eye?  Here’s a hint: think layout and bolding.

Straight out of The Ogilvy Playbook

Here are two relevant quotes taken from pages 73 and 90 of Ogilvy on…

...continue to read "Ogilvy-inspired-but-Sleaze-ified Tricks"

As a young teen I heard Mark Knopfler sing about “money for nothing and chicks for free” and I remember fantasizing about how good that sounded but even then I knew that it was too good to be true.

I’ve noticed from many of my marketing colleagues that money for nothing is the order of the day; maybe it’s the hard times. Seth Godin blogged yesterday about getting rich quickly, Brian Clark blogged about making money from blogs, and just this…

...continue to read "Money For Nothing & Clicks For Free"

Here are the top 10 converting websites for January 2009*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by toolbar user to final conversion. Conversion-rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates: i.e., No. of unique customers/No. of unique visitors.

1. Schwan’s 52.50 2. ProFlowers 27.30 3. Quixtar 22.40 4. Blair.com 21.80 5. Office Depot 21.10 6. Vitacost.com 20.40 7. DrsFosterSmith.com 20.30 8. FTD.com 20.20 9. Amazon 17.20 10. CDW 16.90

*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts

This month big surprise came from first time…

...continue to read "Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: January 2009"

If you can make it to Search Engine Strategies in New York, March 23-27th, you may have a chance to win an extreme makeover and work with Ethan Giffin of Groove Commerce, Tim Ash of SiteTuners, and me of FutureNow.  This may be the most fun of the three sessions I will be involved in at SES.

Other events:

On March 3rd, also in New York, you can catch me at The “New” Rules of Engagement featuring Patti Freeman Evans of JupiterResearch. During this…

...continue to read "Need an Extreme Conversion Makeover? Come Meet Us Live"

Every visitor comes to your site in their own personal “buying stage.”  The buying stage is a wide spectrum, but we generally break it into Early, Middle, and Late stages:

Early means that the visitor has a problem, and is looking for a solution.  They may not know who you are, or that your product/service solves their problem. Middle means that they have an intention to buy a product or service that solves their problem, but not necessarily from you. Late means…

...continue to read "The Diagnosis? Buying Stage Schizophrenia"

Yesterday, I posted the Missing Google Analytics Manual. That was relatively easy to put together since there are so many wonderful resources already written about it. However, as I tried to put together this post, I realized a real gap in the knowledge base available. I’ll be posting this as an ongoing series, that I might turn into a best practices whitepaper.

The “Voice of the Customer” (VOC), can be obtained in many ways: surveys, reviews, customer requests, interviews,  focus…

...continue to read "The Really Missing “Online Voice of Customer” Manual (Part 1)"

Get the most out of your Google Analytics with this collection of links to implement, configure and get insights from Google Analytics. * Last updated 6/10/09.

Initial Setup of Google Analytics

Google Analytics Setup Checklist

* Google Analytics IQ Lessons from Google’s Conversion University with videos

A Video Tutorial to Google Analytics Setup

Google’s Support Installation Guide

How to speed up your website when using Google Analytics

8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics

How to Link Google Analytics to your AdWords Account

Video: How…

...continue to read "The Missing Google Analytics Manual"