Persuasive Scenarios
Google Analytics Updates — Next Stop, “Event Tracking”
The Google Analytics team just announced some nice updates. Yes, the interface has been translated into Thai, Filipino, Indonesian, Czech, Hungarian, and Portuguese, but there’s another story happening between the lines about the switch from “urchin.js” javascript to the new “ga.js” standard, which doesn’t require tagging an entire Web page just to measure a single action. The big news is how the switch to ga.js javascript will change how Google Analytics users plan and optimize their online marketing.
The change in script reflects the fact that “page views” are dead (although some have replaced them with zombie metrics). Additionally, this round of GA updates makes it easier to track ecommerce transactions and see how metrics relate to each other. But you can’t see how visitor actions relate to each other — yet.
Now that visitor action can be called “events” and tracked with ga.js tags, it’s going to be much easier for GA users to see how a series of actions tie together. Fortunately, Google has built an “event tracking” interface to help you take advantage of the more robust ga.js script. For now, it’s in closed beta, but when it launches, the reports will look something like this:
The challenge for marketers, analytics specialists, and anyone who’s a little of both — either by training or necessity — is to realize that standardized metrics aren’t enough. Event Tracking isn’t about measuring how many times visitors complete one-off actions. (If you do only that, the feature will be, in most cases, meaningless — or “cool,” which can be even more misleading.) Nope. Event Tracking is about measuring scenarios.
Since it’s designed to help you measure the relationships between actions and content, the to-be-launched Event Tracking interface should encourage GA users to do a better job of planing the visitor experience and to not be content with the same old generic data.
Looks like 2008 will be good year to be in the scenario planning and optimization business! 
[Image credit: Marketing Pilgrim. If you’d like to learn more about how to use the latest version of Google Analytics, these updates aside, Avinash has you covered. To read more about the use the most recent updates, see WebProNews and ProBlogger.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Scenarios, Spas and Cabana Boys
I was laying on the beach, tropical sun beating down on my brow. I wasn’t glowing. I wasn’t perspiring. I was sweating. “Wow,” I thought, “I need to cool off.”
Just then, the resort cabana boy walks up and inquires, “Would you like some water mist spray?” And just like that, I was cooled down with the fine mist of cold water.
It was a life-altering moment.
I wanted to pack up that cabana boy and take him home with me. (I know what you’re thinking; it wasn’t like that.) It was simply so amazing to have someone anticipate my need and meet it at the same exact moment. This is why planning scenarios [define] is so important. Well-planned scenarios are all about anticipating your customers’ needs at the exact moment that need arises.
Scenarios are important both online and offline.
As long as we’re on the subject of resorts, lets go to my other favorite subject — spas. I was recently at The Boulders near Scottsdale. This place is truly amazing in their ability to get inside customers’ heads, understanding the exact point at which their needs arise, then satisfying those needs. It’s not always the big things that most impress your customers. With all the millions they poured into this resort, the thing that impressed me most was — drum-roll, please — a plastic bag.
Here’s the scenario — You’re a visitor at the spa. The spa area has a lovely pool and hot tub. Every spa visitor gets a locker with a comfy bathrobe and slippers. I’m at my locker, changing out of my wet bathing suit back into clothes to go back to my casita. (Sorry, but it’s just so much fun to say “my casita.”) Anyhooo, I realize that I have a wet bathing suit that I’m going to have to put into my purse to take back to my casita. I’m not happy about this. I take my bathrobe and slippers to the appointed bin to drop them off, and what’s sitting right at the side of that bin? A roll of plastic bags. Exactly what I need to transport my wet bathing suit.
Here’s another scenario — Most hotel rooms have magazines on the coffee table. Makes sense. But where else might you like to have a leisurely read? In my toilet room (yes, it has it’s own separate room), there’s a magazine rack with a lovely variety of mags to peruse. Now, I am no commode Cosmo reader, but I know several people who would much appreciate this anticipation of that need, and the presentation of the solution to that need at the very point they realize it.
One more scenario — You’re returning from the pool or going for a hike around the property. You may require services along the way for which ettiqutte would suggest you provide a tip. But you’re without your purse or any cash on your person. So the resort charges one daily service fee. Now, some people may not like that approach. But I can’t tell you how many times I found myself in that very position receiving a service and not having any money on hand. It saved me from that embarrassing position of looking like a cheap you-know-what when you don’t tip.
Offline, plan your customer scenarios. Anticipate and meet your customers’ needs at every step. Do the same thing online. At the very point a visitor says, “Gee, I’d like to have this,” provide it for them. At the very point they have a question, answer it. At the very point they wonder about returning a product, provide a return policy in plain language, right there on that product page (as opposed to buried in your FAQ). If you know women have a hard time buying bathing suits online, provide more exact sizing than just small, medium and large. (Victoria’s Secret sells many bathing suit tops by bra size so you can be sure you’re getting the right size.)
Anticipate your visitors’ needs and meet them at the very moment that need arises. Every website should have its own version of a cabana boy. It will lead to not only satisfied customers, but delighted customers.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
What You Don’t Know About Form Abandonment
Marshall Sponder shares an interesting comScore study that illustrates what we at Future Now have been saying for many years: shopping cart and form abandonment happens well before people reach the form.
I’m always thrilled when additional evidence surfaces.
The majority of abandonment issues can be fixed if you focus on answering visitors’ questions earlier in the “funnel” or purchase consideration process. Persuasion Architecture™ (define) is designed to anticipate the questions people have and facilitate the momentum required for them to accomplish their goals.
We’ve been solving this problem reliably for years. Do you still have a form abandonment problem?
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Screencast: Shopping for Auto Insurance Online
For this edition of Screencast, we decided to focus on something close to my heart: auto insurance. My teenage daughter is about to be driving for the first time, and I want to know what I’m getting myself into financially. I’d also like to see a bit of information specifically about insuring teenage drivers. I’m sure you parents out there can empathize.
All too often, companies get so hung up on optimizing their sites to convert late-stage, ready-to-buy customers that they don’t realize that creating the most relevant experience is really what helps them in the long term. For instance, I may end up buying the cheapest car insurance I can find, but I’d prefer to do business with a company that’s transparent about teen driving coverage and expenses. I’m not ready to buy today, but that’s fine. Soon enough, I will.
So, for the next few minutes, see what happens as I browse Geico.com, StateFarm.com, and Progressive.com in this early-stage buying scenario:
(For those reading this in RSS, click here for the video.)
As always, we hope to hear more suggestions on websites to cover. We’ll do our best to insure it’s something each of us can walk away with.
We’d love to hear some comments from parents or anyone who’s bought car insurance online. Oh, and don’t be afraid to steal this video. Just stay away from my daughter’s car. 
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Thick Heads, PPC, B2B Demand Generation, and Converting Visitors
I have four kids that range in age from 4- to- 13. I must confess, sometimes being a marketing consultant feels too much like my nagging daddy role.
Anyone with kids knows the routine when you impart your wonderful child with a bit of wisdom.
“Son, do you want to get hurt?”
“No, Daddy”
“Then please don’t jump on the bed!”
“Ok, Daddy”
Simple, right?
Then, about 8 minutes later, comes that ear shattering scream. Your son is curled up on the floor, clutching his thick head, sporting a fresh bump from a nasty tumble. Seems he was jumping on the bed.
Our faithful are likely tired of hearing the same conversion rate rants from us. For the rest, it’s not until after they take a tumble that they decide jumping on the bed is a bad idea.
Jon Miller at Search Engine Land posted a great article describing why B2Bs are typically unsatisfied with PPC agencies, wherein he makes a bold suggestion that B2Bs should abandon PPC agencies altogether. Here’s a nice little nugget from the post:
You know your business better than the agency. One of the most important skills for PPC success is picking the right keywords that your prospects actually use when they search – something you know best. Also, when determining rankings, Google and now Yahoo! care as much about the relevance of your content as they do about your bid (aka “what you say is as important as what you pay”). This means a good understanding of your business and your industry is at least as important as being a search “expert”. Over time, the balance of power between business knowledge and SEM knowledge will shift even further towards business as Google continues to find ways to reward relevant content and discount search agency tricks.
While Jon makes a stunningly accurate diagnosis, his suggested treatment is questionable:
The main value provided by agencies is expertise with SEM, and as I’ll explain, you can bring much of that expertise in-house by using the right kind of pay per click management software. A technology solution can create the best of both worlds: the control and business knowledge of doing it yourself, combined with the SEM best practices and techniques of an expert.
We love technology as much as the next guy, it makes life easier. But in-house technology and SEM best practices will likely still leave you dissappointed. Sure you’ll save their fees, and possibly see some incremental gains but unless you embrace a persuasion methodology, you are just jumping on the bed.
How do you find the right keywords? How do you ensure your prospects are being presented with relevant scent from the ad to the lead form? How do you optimize and measure every variant? What if you don’t have any ‘experts’ on staff?
By giving non-marketing experts a methodology for maximizing demand generation, Persuasion Architecture™ and Persuasive Scenarios are proven to solve this dilemma.
Bryan Eisenberg touched on just one aspect of B2B demand generation last week’s Clickz column.
Sure, it’s hard work, but the only thing harder is ending up with knot after knot on your head.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Below the Tip of the Iceberg
It’s not easy being married to a consultant and an author who travels as frequently as I do, so this Valentine’s Day I wanted to knock one out of the park. I decided to romance my lovely wife with a no-brainer: a pair of diamond earrings.
I started as any modern, connected man would; I searched on Google for “diamond earrings.” I then visited the big-brand diamond sites. After a handful of clicks, I didn’t find what I was looking for. But I did find something else: a diamond mine of e-tailing opportunities.
It should come as no surprise that I’m squarely in the uniformed category when it comes to diamond earrings. So I continued my search, clumsily clicking through category page after category page, site after site. Sooner or later I was bound to find the earrings I’d envisioned dangling from my wife’s ears. I felt trapped in my own ignorance.
I decided to expand my search with more descriptive terms. I began to lose patience. Just as I was losing hope, I found a site with the handle I needed. The style of earrings I was looking for are called drop earrings.
This cycle of ignorant buying repeats itself hundreds of thousands of times a day, in thousands of different product and service categories. Sometimes the e-tailer wins, sometimes the offline seller wins. Sometimes, nobody wins and credit cards remain sheathed in wallets. Just because prospects don’t know how to search the way you hope and expect them to doesn’t mean they aren’t qualified and ready to buy.
Continue reading my column on ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
AdAge on Viral Campaigns…
Scott Donaton’s latest article over at AdAge touches on something I wrote a while back, after the Agency.com fiasco. He astutely writes (emphasis is added):
As with ads in any medium, those that work are those that start with an insight, show an understanding of their target audience, and have an authentic, relevant connection to the brand. Those that don’t smack of having been produced because someone wanted to do a viral video to please himself, his boss or his board. They’re the commercial equivalent of YouTube videos of kids falling off skateboards.
I couldn’t agree more. Too bad the insight part is the key, and plucking those off trees isn’t exactly a viable strategy in 2007.
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
Some Google Advertisers Cutting Spending
From Dow Jones MarketWatch…
Keyword inflation, low conversion rates sending merchants elsewhere
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A growing number of online advertisers are bidding a partial goodbye to Google Inc.
Frustrated by the soaring price of Internet-search advertising and diminishing returns from the ads they buy, mid-sized advertisers say they plan to reduce how much business they do with Google this year — in some cases, significantly.
Last year, for example, eBags.com co-founder Peter Cobb spent between $5 million and $8 million to peddle suitcases, handbags and other carrying cases online. Google got 75% of that amount.
But this year it will get “significantly less,” Cobb said. “The Google percentage has got to go down,” he said.
In many cases, the cost of an eBags.com ad placed on either Google’s own Web site or one of its affiliates now equals 45% of the price of the product it promotes. That’s crimping the company’s own profit margins and forcing it to look elsewhere to market its bags.
“We’re testing print ads right now,” said Cobb, whose company will spend up to $8 million on ads in 2007. Read the rest of the article
The article continues…
Keyword search prices on many terms rose between 40% and 60% last year, according to advertisers like Dan Sackrowitz, chief executive of Bare Necessities, which sells lingerie online. He saw his Google ad budget soar 50% last year.
The problem is obvious, traffic costs are puffing up like a marshmallow in a microwave and advertisers are having a hard time finding ways to increase traffic and lower costs. Simply put, Google advertisers are hooked.
Instead of looking for ways to increase return on traffic investment, the average marketer will look for another traffic fix. We’ve said before that the marketing battleground of the future is not traffic acquisition, it will be traffic conversion.
The exceptional marketer is looking for ways to optimize their keyword and landing page conversion rates.
Optimizing landing pages is something we’ve been doing with our clients for quite some time. We are a premier channel partner with Google and their new testing platform Google Website Optimizer beta. If you are interesting in our landing page optimization coaching service, we are going to take on a few testers over the next few weeks to participate in this beta with us. Contact us if you want to know more.
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
Are You Ready for Traffic?
It was on Fox.com’s “out there” page yesterday.
A local coin dealer in Dover, Delaware pulled off a publicity stunt that got him some pretty good national attention. He "spent" a penny worth $500 and announced it to the world, or at least to Dover. The world was listening however and he got more publicity than he probably imagined. A great investment of only $500, right?
This could be the end of the story, but I wanted to know more.
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Written by:Dave Young
Call To Action - Take Two
We just noticed Amazon is now fulfilling orders for the softcover version of our bestselling Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results (it was due out the end of the month). This isn’t just a reprint of the hardcover, this is more the book we wanted to write when we released Call to Action in May 2005, but had to rush it out early for our friends at WebTrends for their seminar series. We stripped out over 30,000 words and put back 11,000 new words. All in all, it is a much better book and we are certainly proud of the extra work Lisa T Davis and Bill Drew put into it to make it a more cohesive narrative.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
