How to Use Any Tool to Optimize Better
As a self-professed tool junkie, I’m a sucker for shiny new tools. I love tools of any kind — Web tools, software tools, and on a Sunday morning you might even find me in the Brooklyn Home Depot wiping the drool from my mug as admire this fine kosher beef grilling tool.
No doubt, these are exciting times if you love Web tools. For the many folks who are dizzy trying to sort out conversion optimization tool choices, it might be a little frustrating.
In “The Interactive Marketer 2.0,” I made the case for improved optimization in interactive marketing and to think outside the campaign. I listed several steps to get started, including the first step: Get good at free tools, then pay for them. Tools aren’t the indicator of success, but having a process and the people in place to take action are.
The good news in this barrage of 2.0 goodies is that many believe we’ve finally reached tool parity in the Web analytics space. JupiterResearch states the following:
“Despite some small skirmishes over capabilities like video and audio measurement, the Web analytics feature race is largely over,” explained John Lovett, Senior Analyst and lead author of the report for JupiterResearch. “Leading vendors will forge ahead by making data accessible and actionable while expanding offerings into adjacent marketing technologies.”
I agree.
Several people have accused me and my firm of having a Google bias. (Full disclosure: FutureNow is an authorized Google Optimizer consultant.) This simply isn’t true. A sizable percentage of our clients use other tools like Omniture, WebTrends, and Coremetrics. Our policy has always been to work with the analytics/tool vendors of the client’s choice. For many who are just getting started or are experiencing a marketing budget squeeze, the free and robust Google offerings simply make sense. Others have found a need for features available in other tools, and we’re happy to help them use those tools better.
A tool is just that, a tool.
A tool doesn’t persuade your visitors to take action, nor is it exclusively responsible for a company’s success in optimization. So when a client approaches me requesting a tool suggestion I always answer the same. If you have a tool in place now, use it better. If you don’t, start with something free and get good at using it.
A free tool may be all you need. While certain analytics vendors offer what are considered enterprise-level tools, the free and lower priced solutions are typically labeled for use by small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Still, you’d be surprised at the number of large clients who are satisfied with free or cheaper tools. And, we also have several SMB clients that have more sophisticated needs.
Bottom line: don’t get hung up selecting a tool. Any business, no matter the size, that isn’t optimizing today can extract great value from any tool on the market today. The important thing is to get started optimizing and measuring more effectively. There are no more excuses, not even a lower optimizing budget.
Which brings me to my next point. How does one use a tool effectively? You must operationalize it. Your process must lead your team to take an action, e.g., make a change that you can measure. Lastly, you must be able to gain insight about customer behavior from the data. And, you must do this over and over again. Without those three things in place, no tool will usher in the success you seek.
You must always do the work of optimization. A better treadmill won’t, all by itself, trim your love handles. Likewise, a cheap camera in the hands of a skilled photographer will always take better pictures than one used by a clumsy newbie.
A tool is a tool is a tool. Pick one, learn how to use it effectively, and you’ll see optimization success. Then we can talk about what other tools you might need.
Then we can all afford drool worthy gas grills in our backyards.
*Cross-posted on ClickZ.
. .
Editor’s Note: If you’re buried in data and looking for a better process to keep your campaigns customer-focused, accountable and metrics-driven, contact us today for a confidential and free consultation.
Technorati Tags: coremetrics, Google Analytics, google website optimizer, Jupiter Research, Omniture, optimization, WebtrendsRelated Posts:
Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Reality - Rapidly Shifting Media Mix
As the economy is changing so are advertisers media placement efforts. According to Bloomberg, USA Today’s ad sales fell 27 percent in June, the steepest monthly decline this year and worse than the 16 percent drop reported for all Gannett publications. During the quarter, Gannett’s national advertising slid 14 percent to $168.9 million because of cutbacks by retailers and carmakers. Are they all moving to more accountable media?
At the same time, Microsoft is concerned about Google/ Yahoo and their ability to control the prices on close to 90% of advertising online. According to Microsoft senior VP-general counsel Brad Smith, said “Not in television, not in radio, not in publishing. It should not happen on the Internet.”
David Drummond, Google’s senior VP of corporate development and chief legal officer, countered Smith and explained that the partnership will benefit consumers and advertisers by enabling Yahoo and Google to deliver targeted ads that are more relevant to those who see them. “The whole system becomes more efficient,” Drummond said.
I’m giving it all some thought. Do you believe Google’s assertion? Is it better for consumers? Is it better for advertisers? What do you think?
Technorati Tags: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!Related Posts:
Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
4 Principles of Walmart.com Merchandising Exposed
I just returned from Shop.org’s Online Merchandising Workshop in Huntington Beach where I presented the second keynote. I want to tell you more about the first keynote speech where, Raul Vasquez President and CEO of Walmart.com. shared some meaty details about his team’s continuous optimization efforts.
The presentation was remarkably transparent. Raul is an engaging presenter, who established a wonderful rapport with the audience. I obviously cannot share everything in his presentation (you just need to attend next time), but he did put forth this elegant framework of principles which apply to many companies who want to present better online.
Value: Immediately upon arriving to a page a visitor must see the value that you offer. For Walmart, it is there brand promise and they use various techniques to do this.
Assortment – Highlight the best and then show the rest of their wide assortment.
Easy – Everything about the experience must be easy. They want it to be easy to find and easy to buy. Raul showed examples of all the efforts they make to keep their categorization consistent and improve internal search.
Content – Have great product info, multiples images, etc. He spoke about the value of Rating & Reviews (they work with Bazaarvoice on this) and the importance of showing product availability across channels.
Simplicity is what makes these four concepts so powerful, and obviously Walmart.com has been achieving outstanding results because of it.
Continuous improvement is what it is all about.
If you need some help getting that process working effectively in your organization, I’d love to talk to you about it.
Congratulations to Scott, Larry, Artemis and the rest of the Shop.org and NRF teams for putting on another great event.
Technorati Tags: Raul Vasquez, shop.org, Walmart.comRelated Posts:
Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Great (Customer) Expectations
Expectations.
For every site you visit there are certain expectations that you bring with you. Because of these expectations, shopping carts should be as simple and straight forward as possible. You’ve already convinced your customer to buy so don’t deter them at the last moment. Instead, fulfill their expectations.
Recently our Conversion Analyst team came across this shopping cart:
Despite the fact that the error was in bolded lettering, it stumped several people when they came to the point of checking out and forking over their money. Many of us immediately clicked the “Update Total” button only to return back to this screen. Others tried valiantly to find this illusive “Proceed to Checkout” button mentioned at the top of the page, but to no avail. The problem was I had not entered in the minimum number of bottles of wine into my cart, but rather than focusing on the message that was in plain English in front of me, I, and the rest of the team (all smart folks), focused upon the lack of a call of action button.
Bottom line: Visitor expectations were not met. Give your customers what they want, even if it’s “wrong.” If the “Proceed to Checkout” button was made available, perhaps, I would not have spent more time reading the error message rather than searching for something that I was prepared to buy.
Technorati Tags: customer expectations, shopping cart abandonment, shopping cartsRelated Posts:
Written by:Natalie Hart
What Your Bounce Rate is Trying to Tell You
Are you measuring your bounce rates? These are the visitors who are landing on your site and are leaving without making a second click. Bouncers to your website should be considered a negative statistic: the site failed to engage them enough to entice even a second pageview.
How much did you invest to get them there? Did you get your money’s worth out of that visitor?
Usability expert, Jakob Neilsen, recently indicated that one of the biggest findings from his latest user research was a huge increase in “deep dips”. He describes this as more traffic arriving deep within a website rather than entering through the website’s homepage. He found that for many sites, this increase in “deep-dips” has resulted in much higher bounce rates.
Average Metrics Produce Only Average Results
When working with our optimization clients, I frequently hear them report their average site-wide bounce rate is. This overall bounce rate is rarely telling us anything at all. If the number is fairly high (above 40%), they assume that they just aren’t answering people’s questions. How do they know where their problems exist? Are all of the pages bouncing people off of the site equally?
Don’t pay too much attention to this average bounce rate. Bring it a step further. Find out what your top bounce rate pages are and try to analyze why visitors are bouncing off of them.
Breaking Visitor’s Momentum
Look at all of your top traffic driving points (search, ads, emails, etc) that are sending visitors to these top bounce rate pages. Is there a disconnect between the motivation the visitor had when beginning their journey and what they found on the page they landed on? Did they not get what they expected? Are you not offering links on this landing page to move the visitor forward in his buying process to answer some of his other questions?
When we see this happen we tell clients that they have a break persuasive momentum and the principles of scent. Either a page has the content our visitor is looking for or links to the page the visitor is looking for. Usability expert Jared Spool calls this the “move forward till found” rule.
Getting Past What’s Wrong and Working on Why
Neilsen says that “Web Analytics is a dangerous game. If you measure the wrong thing, your metrics won’t just be weak — they’ll be directly misleading and might cause you to pursue an erroneous strategy that reduces your design’s business value.”
He suggests that you analyze your bounce rates for different sources of visitors. The point from which the visitor was sent to your site will indicate the level of interest they have for finding what you have to offer. Web analytics is great at reporting what happened, but you need a process to help you figure out why.
At FutureNow, we’ve been educating clients and readers that sources of traffic demonstrate a certain level of intent. If visitors are coming from a source that indicates that they have very low interest and almost “accidentally” land on your site, you should not be concerned about higher bounce rates.
But, if visitors click on a link, search for a keyword, or click on an ad that is specific to what you have to offer, this could indicate that they are middle or late stage in their buying process and are interested in your offering. If you have high bounce rates from these traffic sources, you should be more concerned and analyze why this may be happening, and do some conversion optimization to help reduce this bounce rate.
If you’d like help reducing your bounce rates, let’s talk about how we can do it together.
Technorati Tags: bounce rate, Jakob Nielsen, Web AnalyticsRelated Posts:
Written by:Melissa Burdon
Can You Bring Fireworks to Your Business?
Fireworks are synonymous with July 4th and celebrating the day. While watching the festivities this year with my family, I wondered why do we keep coming back year after year? Why do we feel we haven’t properly observed Independence Day until the last spark dissipates from the sky?
How can we market better by learning from the attraction principles of fireworks and how it has been anchored to July 4th? What if anything can we apply to our businesses.
Technorati Tags: attraction, fireworks, July 4thRelated Posts:
- No Related Posts
Written by:Peter Lee
Learn Web 2.0 Copywriting Strategies in an Evening of Enjoyable Reading
Want your website to sound open, uncontrived, and authentic? Keep reading! In our previous compendiums on copywriting advice, most of the links to Roy Williams’ Monday Morning Memos never made it into the post due to some kind of technical glitch. So to fix that, I started compiling most of my all-time favorite MMM’s that dealt specifically with writing.
Yet as I was compiling these links and re-reading the Memos, a central theme seemed to emerged: many of the Roy’s memos dealt with “The Feel of Real” and how to capture that in your copy - what many of us might call Web 2.0-style copy. With this in mind, I began sorting and grouping those Monday Morning Memos to further highlight this theme.
Read through this collection of Memos and you’ll come away with a sounder idea of the voice of “new marketing” than 95% of the folks hyping that term. And if you want the executive summary, just read the first 2 links in each category - and then let yourself get drawn into the other titles as they spark your interest. Either way, enjoy…
Framing and Understanding the problem:
Hello and Goodbye from John and Jane Doe
Pricing Value, and Saleability
The Solution – How To’s
Facts vs. Value-based statements
The Solution – Advanced Techniques & Examples
Revealing the vivid unexpected
The Language of Shadow and Silence
Magic WordsCan You Make It Talk?
Mental Images, Emotions, and Word Associations
The Magnetic Power of the Mental Image
Visual Images vs. Mental Images
Persona-based Copy
I hope this bit of reading has left you with a strong sense of what authentic, respectful copy sounds and reads like. Better yet, I hope you came away with some great techniques for producing this style of copy. Please feel free to add your own experiences, comments, and links via the comments section.
Technorati Tags: Monday Morning Memo, online copywriting, persuasive copywriting, Persuasive Online Copywriting, Roy H WilliamsRelated Posts:
Written by:Jeff Sexton
Survey Results & a Question: Marketing Analytics in Action Part 1
There is a lot of interesting information to report from our Marketing Analytics in Action survey from about a week ago. The first thing that really caught my eye was the fact that 96.85% of people are running web analytics, and out of those, 26.56% have a full time analyst and 53.12% are already testing. The thumbnail will show you how often are people looking at their web analytics.
I’ll be filling you in shortly on the rest of the results, but my question relates to the full time analyst and why more people don’t have one.
Is it because:
A. You don’t think you need one.
B. I need one, but can’t find one.
C. I want one, but can’t afford it.
D. My organization won’t let me justify one.
E. We outsource it.
F. Part-time is enough.
G. Other. Please let us know why.
I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below.
Technorati Tags: marketing, optimization, survey, Web AnalyticsRelated Posts:
Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Marketing to Women Event in NYC
Would you like to join me at a marketing to women event here in New York City?
About.com and Brandweek are presenting a roundtable and cocktail party Thursday, July 17, starting at 3pm. You can join me as part of the exclusive in-person audience for “Online She Trusts… or Does She? “- an expert roundtable discussing women’s interactions in the virtual world - where they go and what and who they believe, what they respond to, and what they steer clear of.
Featured speakers:
Mary Lou Quinlan - Founder/CEO Just Ask a Woman
Ritu Trivedi - Managing Partner and Media Director, Mindshare Interaction
Grant Schneider - CMO Time, Inc. and author of She Means Business: 7 New Rules for Marketing to Today’s Woman
Danielle Vona - Director of Marketing, Carbonated Soft Drink Flavors, Pepsi-Cola North America
It should be an informative event and it’s free. If you’d like to go, respond in the comments below and I’ll get you the details and registration information. But hurry, space is limited.
Technorati Tags: About.com, Brandweek, holly buchanan, Marketing to womenRelated Posts:
Written by:Holly Buchanan
Tapping the Power of Social Media to Advertise to Women
Social media is exploding. Everyone’s talking about the huge advertising potential. I see companies and marketers getting positively giddy:
“Think of it! Millions and millions of people we can hyper target with relevant messages and offers, contextual targeting, behavioral targeting - THINK OF THE VIRAL OPPORTUNITIES!”
Um, you’ve got a little bit of spittle there at the corner of your mouth…there, yeah, you wiped it off.
Yes, the potential is huge. But some companies have been disappointed with the results in their early efforts. They have some great ideas, but aren’t always sure how to monetize them. (Read this insightful article on the challenges of monetizing Facebook applications.)
I couldn’t agree more - the opportunity is huge. But how can you really make money from social media?
Go Into Relationship Mode
I was fortunate enough to get to spend some time the other day with Joseph Carrabis of NextStage Evolution. (Are you jealous? You should be.)
One of my many questions to him was about social media - it’s all the rage, but can advertisers really tap into that power to sell their products and services? I was particularly interested in advertisers hoping to reach women. Women are huge consumers of social media. A recent rapleaf study found, while both men and women are using social media in increasing numbers, women far out-pace the men.
Joseph pointed out that social media is about building relationships - if advertisers want to reach her in that medium, they have to be in relationship-building mode.
I thought this was interesting. I was at a recent marketing to women conference where two presenters talked about the “mode” women are in on the Internet and how you need to match that mode. Shopping, communicating, and entertainment are just a few modes she might be in.
Which brings up an important point. If she is in relationship mode, respect her space. She may not want to deal with anyone who is too pushy or does not respect her space. For example, look at women on MySpace decorating and customizing their pages. This is their private sanctuary - just like decorating their room in a house. Be aware of that. It’s one thing to barge into a website she is viewing (with your ad). It’s another thing to barge into her “room.”
Another idea we discussed in relation to women and social media and building relationships is the importance of the concept of fair value. As Joseph says, “You have to give as good as you get.” Is there something of value you can give to her? Are you giving more than you are asking for?
And how do you build that relationship? A great way to start is through a conversation. Social Media is often a great way to have a two-way conversation with your customers and potential customers. Just keep in mind, does she actually want to have a conversation with you? And if so, what does she want to talk to you about? A good place to start would be to answer her questions.
Use Persuasion Architecture to Get The Most Out of Social Media
Some of the best advice I’ve heard on the subject came during a recent podcast interview with Forrester’s Josh Bernoff. Josh points out that you can’t start with the technology. You have to start with people and objectives FIRST. What a great point. I can’t tell you how many times someone has come to me and said, “I need to start a blog,” or, “I need to tap into the Internet,” or, “I want to create a discussion forum.” My reply is always, “Who are your customers and what do they want?” THAT’S the first question. What do they care about? How can you make a difference in their lives? What are your objectives? Next, you can come up with which technologies can help you achieve those objectives (i.e., blogs, forums, Facebook, etc.).
It’s a novel idea - start with the consumer and what she wants. (This is the entire basis for Persuasion Architecture.) It’s also about communicating with customers in the manner they want to communicate.
How Do Your Customers Want to Interact With You?
FutureNow recently put up a Facebook page. As our Director of Marketing, Brian Bond said,
“The way I see it, technology evolves to better facilitate the needs of consumers, to have their questions and motivations addressed. The evolution of tools like Facebook is an answer to a need to communicate differently. Just like letter writing was largely replaced by email as a more efficient communication method, I see apps like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., all evolving as alternatives to email and other current communication methods. For marketers and businesses, this represents a great opportunity to communicate with their audience with the method their audience chooses. This change is something we have to embrace because it’s how our audience wishes to interact with our brand. Who are we to tell them they are wrong? The beauty of the Persuasion Architecture approach, in my mind, is that is that it applies equally well to all marketing/communication methods. It’s all about communicating with customers the way they want to be communicated with and addressing customers’ motivations. If there are technologies that better support this communication, then we must embrace them to be relevant to the customer.”
How do your customers want to interact with you? How can you provide genuine value to them? Remember, relationships are a two-way street. You can’t always ask ask ask - you have to give in return. Think about what you could give your customers that would be of value to them.
Do Facebook Ads Relate
Here’s a Facebook ad that got my attention:
Now, I deleted the header because it was “(my age) year-old-woman.” That creeped me out. I don’t like someone calling out my specific age. It’s not that I’m that old (I’m barely out of my twenties, really). But screaming my personal information at me like that made me feel a little violated.
Despite the header, the ad got my attention because it was for free samples of products - many of which I recognized in the image. The fact that this company was willing to give me something first appealed to me. It felt like a welcome gift. It felt like the way I’d like to start a relationship. (Rather than flashing the usual banner ad at me, screaming at me, “Buy our stuff! Give us your money!”) Remember, I’m in relationship mode right now, NOT shopping mode. Offering me a gift appealed to me more than offering a percentage off a purchase.
I know some people would joke that women are always in shopping mode. But ads like this one to the left are a big flop; a belly flop. Ads like this make me want to ban all advertising on Facebook.
Want your social media ads to work?
Start with People
By all means, embrace social media. But start with people, in particular, your customers. Who are they? What do they want? Start with their goals first. THEN bring in technology to achieve your goals. And remember, conversations are a two-way street. Don’t just ask…listen. You’ll form stronger relationships. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
Since I’ve focused so much on Facebook, I’d love to hear from you - Advertisers - have you had success using Facebook? Tell me about it. Facebook Users - how do you feel about ads and applications on Facebook? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em? Sound off in the comments.
If you are doing social media advertising, would you like to do a research project with FutureNow to see how you can make those efforts more effective? If you’re interested, let’s have a conversation about it. You can start by leaving a comment below.
Technorati Tags: advertising, FaceBook, join the conversation, relationships, Social MediaRelated Posts:
Written by:Holly Buchanan
