Week 6 assignment: Traffic parameters

For this week’s assignment, I set up three goals on my blog. The first goal measured visitors to a specific page (last week’s post); second was visit duration over 30 seconds; and third was pages visited. My rationale for these goals stemmed from measuring the popularity of new content; whether that content was interesting enough for visitors to feel engaged; and whether the content interested visitors enough to visit other posts and read more.

For my new position at a community bank, I am interested in creating traffic parameters for an online banking page on our website, which is currently being built. To start off, I believe measuring URL destination and traffic sources will be most important for understanding the effectiveness of related marketing campaigns. Enlisting funnels will allow me to determine the success of the user experience through the process and filters will pinpoint if users are coming from the locations I would like or expect them to be coming from (Sparks, 2010).

Goals

The first goal will be to measure sign ups for the online banking service. Success will be measured by setting up a URL destination goal for the “confirmation” or “thank you” page, which users will be directed to after completing the signup process. An increased number of online banking signups will result in “sales” in the form of increased deposits and decreased printing and paper costs of statements formerly mailed to account holders. Ideally, enquiries from prospective clients will also be generated if users landed on the online banking page from an organic search or from an email marketing campaign. How current and prospective clients found the site can be tracked by setting up a funnel process in Google Analytics. If the minimum amount required to open an online account is a $15 deposit, I can enter $15 for the goal value to get an overall value. To measure the goal value of other pages like newsletter signups, I would need to evaluate how often the visitors who complete the Goal become customers (Google Analytics, 2013). If account managers can close 10% of people who sign up for a newsletter, and the average balance is $500, I would then assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to the Newsletter sign-up Goal (Google Analytics, 2013).

Funnels

By knowing “which steps of the process woos customers” (Goals, 2013), I can understand where customers are entering and abandoning the signup process and create or tweak a more efficient process. For example, by analyzing the account opening funnel and removing some of the requirements fields (requesting the same information twice or including a captcha that is too difficult to complete (Ran, 2009), I can better understand where users are experiencing difficulty, which could lead to abandoning the process.

Goal funnels will only work if visitors are required to move through a series of pages. “Unless required, visitors seldom follow a clear path on your site and a goal funnel won’t help you make any sense of how your visitors move from page to page” Lofgren (2013).  Another useful tool is the Reverse Goal Path report, which indicates if visitors are reaching your goal page through a path that you did not anticipate (Lofgren, 2012).

Fortunately, an online account signup path is being constructed for the new website; however, if this were not the case, Google Analytics’ Visitors Flow report or another program such as Crazy Eggs’ Heat Map could track a user’s progress through the site.

While goals are important for understanding conversation, Funnels are “as essential” (Lofren, 2012), as they serve by themselves more as basic KPIs (key performance indicators) than as actionable starting points for conversion optimization.

Filters

Creating filters provide accurate reports that are not skewed by internal traffic or not relevant if coming from regions outside of the bank’s target area. For the online banking page, there are three necessary filters that should be created. The first would exclude internal traffic (employees and staff visiting the page); another would exclude traffic from regions and cities outside the bank’s target market; and yet another would be a Full Referral URL filter for affiliated sites that may provide multiple references and links to the bank’s website. Knowing which page visitors were linking from would show whether a storytelling content page from the affiliate site was more effective or if a URL link was providing the most traffic. Understanding which reference was more effective would be beneficial for tailoring future affiliate marketing initiatives. Including the “lowercase” filter is also important so that the reports are not perceived as two different unique views when in reality they are not (Nurelm, 2010).

Streiner (2012) suggests setting up a new profile or “at least one profile in your account that does not contain any filters” since Google Analytics does not provide a method to go back and track the data that was filtered out.  Creating a new profile each time a filter is added would provide better segmentation of results and allow for comparisons across filters or over time.

References

Goals in Google Analytics. (2013). Google Analytics IQ lessons. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from http://www.google.com/analytics/iq.html

Google Analytics. (2013). Conversions: About goals. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1012040

Lofren, L. (2012). The Google Analytics Conversion Funnel Survival Guide. KISSMetrics. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/

Lofgren, L. (2013).  4 Google Analytics Goal Types That Are Critical To Your Business. KISSMetrics. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/

Nurelm. (2010, November 29). Four Google Analytics Filters You Should Be Using. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from http://www.nurelm.com/themanual/2010/11/29/four-google-analytics-filters-you-should-be-using/

PI Reed School of Journalism. (2013). Lesson 6: Successful approaches in Google Analytics. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from ecampus.wvu.edu

Ran. (2009, March 4). 10 must track Google Analytics goals. Web Analytics World. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2009/03/10-must-track-google-analytics-goals.html

Sparks, D. (2010, March 14). Google Analytics in depth: Funnels and Goals. Six Revisions. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from http://sixrevisions.com/tools/google-analytics-in-depth-goals-and-funnels/

Steiner, J. (2013, February 2). Google Analytics filters and filtering. More Visibility. Retrieved February 23, 2013 from http://www.morevisibility.com/analyticsblog/google-analytics-filters-filtering.html

Week 5 assignment: Valuable reports and measurements

I generated traffic to one blog post, “Content is definitely king” on Saturday, February 16 to 226 people that have me in their circles on Google+. The measurements of interest included: number of page views, content by title, bounce rate, traffic sources, referrers, traffic sources, and mobile devices. I chose these measurements to draw conclusions on ways to improve my blog’s content in relation to current and potential audiences. I am primarily interested in providing interesting posts that will keep viewers clicking-through to other posts (measured by page views, content by title, bounce rate) and understanding/catering to who my audience is (measured by traffic sources, referrers, and mobile device use). Mobile device use may not be of the utmost importance for the Blogger website, as it is optimized for mobile devices, but would be relevant if I needed to measure an e-commerce website’s engagement and conversion rates. For sites receiving higher volumes of traffic, keyword targeting and average session time would also be important metrics to measure the true results of one’s online marketing efforts (Hines, 2011).

Page views
I am interested in page views to measure my blog’s growth through Google+ promotion. Long-term measurement over weeks and months would return more accurate results but I received a whopping three additional page views through promotional efforts on Saturday. Kaushik (2010) says, “page views are dead” (p. 126); however, in this instance, I can directly measure the impact of promoting this blog in terms of effectiveness of reach. Promoting my blog on other social media channels would (hopefully) result in an increase in page views and provide the opportunity to measure trends regarding which channel is most effective for promotion. Gunelius (2013) also notes that measuring page views is an important statistic to provide potential advertisers, to watch for spikes in traffic, and to find the best time to post new content.

Content by title
Content by title is an interesting metric as it identifies the types of content that adds the most value to an ultimate outcome (Kaushik, 2010). In the content drilldown report, I can measure how one blog post is performing in comparison to others and create more content based on, and similar to, the most popular posts. While my blog is titled “IMC 642: Web metrics and SEO” the post I promoted was related to the importance of valuable content. Tailored posts relating directly to Web metrics and SEO could ensure audiences are finding the information they are seeking. For an e-commerce site, this metric would be useful in creating and promoting products similar to top-sellers, resulting in an increased ROI for a company.

Bounce rate
Kaushik (2010) advises that a high bounce rate can mean the wrong people are coming to your site (highlighting problems with campaigns, SEO, etc.); or the page itself is poorly constructed (missing calls to action, etc.); or otherwise broken. A high bounce rate could also mean the content is not targeted enough to a certain audience, which also relates to the content by title metric. Preparing more keyword-targeted and relevant content would decrease bounce rate and improve overall time on site and page views. Prior to Saturday’s Google+ post, my bounce rate was between 88 per cent and 100 per cent. This decreased to a 66 per cent bounce rate, which is not anything to write home about, but suggests that reaching a larger audience can result in acquiring viewers with interest in this blog’s content.

Traffic sources
The screenshot below shows the number of visits by blog has received since the first post. Of viewers visiting this blog, 26 visits were direct, two were Google/organic searches, one was referred from Google+, and one was referred from a classmate’s blog. The direct visitors statistic can be further segmented by the percentage of new visits, which is at almost 8 per cent. As 92 per cent of direct URL visitors consisted of my own visits to my blog, this information can be misleading as Google treats the traffic as direct when a referrer is not passed (Sharma, 2013). Furthermore, this could lead to crediting conversions and transactions to the wrong acquisition channel for a website or e-commerce site (Sharma, 2013).

Referrers
Analyzing referrers, or the amount of traffic from other sites, will provide information on not only where my traffic is coming from, but also what is most interesting and relevant to those visiting my blog. Kaushik (2010) states that receiving 20 to 30 per cent of traffic from referring sites is ideal. In excluding direct traffic, it is apparent that 50 per cent of my traffic comes from referring websites; therefore, I should focus on creating a balanced source of “quality traffic” (Chaffey, 2011) by focusing on search engines (for diverse organic traffic) and direct traffic (for visitor retention and loyalty).


Mobile devices
As previously mentioned, Blogger is optimized for mobile device use but I chose this metric due to the rapid increase of mobile users (myself included), which is projected to reach one billion by 2014 and due to mobile marketing being the next frontier of advertising (Abayomi, 2013). While my blog received 0 views from a mobile device, an e-commerce website, for example, would receive a great deal more. As a matter of fact, $1.2 billion worth of e-Commerce was conducted on mobile phones in 2009 (Abayomi, 2013). Companies should not overlook the importance of utilizing mobile analytics and should be certain their website performs well on mobile devices. Optimizing for mobile provides further behavior and event tracking opportunities as well as additional opportunities to drive user engagement through push notifications and cloud backup options (Abayomi, 2013).


By setting objectives and identifying targets, I have gained valuable insights from analyzing Google Analytics’’ metrics and measurements. While GA provides a plethora of reports to analyze online marketing efforts and effectives, the most important outcome for this blog, and arguably any other blog or website, is to measure the data that can be used to draw conclusions to help you continually improve (Lewis, 2012).

References 

Abayomi, T. (2013). How to Effectively Track 3 Types Of Mobile Metrics. KISSmetrics. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/mobile-metrics/

Chaffey, D. (2011, July 4). How balanced is your traffic mix. Smart Insights. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/customer-acquisition-strategy/how-balanced-is-your-traffic-mix/

Gunelius, S. (2013). 10 blog metrics bloggers should track through web analytics tools. About.com. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://weblogs.about.com/od/addonsandplugins/tp/10-Blog-Metrics-Bloggers-Should-Track-Through-Web-Analytics-Tools.htm

Hines, K. (2011, October 26). How to set up goals and track conversions in Google Analytics. Sprout Social. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://sproutsocial.com/insights/2011/10/how-to-google-analytics-goals/

Kaushik, A. (2010, November 15). Beginner's guide to web data analysis: Ten steps to love & success. Occam’s Razor. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/beginners-guide-web-data-analysis-ten-steps-tips-best-practices/

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.

Lewis, A. (2012, December 21). Top 10 most important Google Analytics Reports – keyword rankings need not apply. Koozai. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.koozai.com/blog/analytics/top-10-most-important-google-analytics-reports-keyword-rankings-need-not-apply/

PI Reed School of Journalism. (2013). Lesson 5: Google Analytics. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from ecampus.wvu.edu

Sharma, H. (2013). You are doing Google Analytics all wrong. Here is why. SEO Takeaways. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.seotakeaways.com/google-analytics-wrong-why/#ixzz2LBSCv3Xs

Week 3 blog topic #1: Content is definitely king

Novak (2010) calls content without conversation “just broadcasting, or just advertising” but I have to disagree. Good content spurs discussion; therefore, conversation could be viewed as a by-product of content, much like a good advertisement will spur interest for a purchase. It could be argued that word-of-mouth is the most important element consumers use to make a purchase – because it is – (Cohen, 2012) but if a consumer hears a good review, goes to look at the product (or content) and doesn’t like it, what good was the review?

I can think of numerous real world examples to represent why content is of primary importance but popular books came to mind immediately. For example, the title, What To Expect When You’re Expecting, a well-known book preparing women for pregnancy, has spent 597 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. In comparison, popular celebrity and author Jenny McCarthy penned an insightful and informative book called, Belly Laughs: The Naked Truth about Pregnancy and Childbirth, which only spent a few weeks on the BestSeller list.

Both titles were recipients of a great deal of media hype, arguably more by McCarthy due to her active social media presence and regular appearances on television. McCarthy’s book has an Amazon rating of 4.4 with 729 mostly positive customer reviews. What To Expect When You’re Expecting has an Amazon rating of 3.7 with 581 mostly positive customer reviews. At a glance, it seems that McCarthy’s book was more popular and received more praise; however, the content of What to Expect When You’re Expecting landed it on USA Today's list of the 25 most influential books of the past 25 years. While many arguments could be made against why one book is more relevant or popular than the other, if you consider other classic books like, Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884, or Pride and Prejudice published in 1813, through the lens of their waxing and waning media hype during the past two centuries, you can deduce how I developed this opinion. These two books, in addition to What to Expect When You’re Expecting, provide content that is essentially better than its competitors, thus, feeding more conversation; and so goes the cycle.

Greenberg (2009) says, “Social marketing efforts need to be driven by content, not vice versa. Without content, there is not a whole lot to talk about.” He also says, “Have something to say. Say it often. Be interesting.” I agree with those statements, albeit with one exception. For social media, providing consistently valuable content often is important to stay relevant, but providing one piece of content that will remain perennially relevant is of equal importance (see classic book examples above). The difference is, it is easier to produce pretty good content fairly often than it is to produce one really great piece of evergreen content just once.

For a more closely related social media example, consider this: Hepburn (2009) relays a tale of two coffee vendors by analyzing content vs. conversation. Vendor A (Amy) is an extrovert who has gained a large online following by tweeting and conversing regular with friends and followers, even if the conversation is not always relating to coffee. Vendor B (Jill) is not an extrovert but creates content that educates and entertains coffee lovers: Video of a Best Barista competition, customer video notes about their favorite coffees, and a “Finding the Perfect Coffee to Suit Your Mood” PDF.

Hepburn (2009) says both vendors have used “smart moves to grow brand awareness” but by creating interesting content, Jill gave her audiences something more to talk about. To return to Novak’s Cornflakes and ferret discussion as an example, “I had cornflakes for breakfast” is not likely to generate any sort of conversation because it is boring. There is nothing groundbreaking about that statement. Incorporating a ferret into the conversation does spur discussion but is not providing any sort of useful content apart from a few statements of exclamation from her audience, much like Vendor A.

To paraphrase Hepburn (2009), conversations and relationships are only part of the social media picture that can be sustained for a short time. Content, like a good cup of coffee or a classic novel, keeps an audience coming back.

References 

Cohen, R. (2012, May 22). Marketing influence: The power of persuasion. Forbes. Retrieved February 2, 2013 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/22/marketing-influence-the-power-of-persuasion/

Greenberg, M. (2009, October 20). Content is king of social marketing. MultichannelMerchant.com. Retrieved February 2, 2013 from http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/1020-content-social-marketing/

Hepburn, S. (2009, December 21). A tale of two coffee vendors: Content vs. conversation. Media Emerging. Retrieved February 2, 2013 from http://www.mediaemerging.com/2009/12/21/coffee-social-media/

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. SocialMediaToday.com. Retrieved February 2, 2013 from http://socialmediatoday.com/wordspring/152636/why-conversation-not-content-king

Week 3 blog topic #2: Comparing apples to oranges -- what’s your favorite fruit?

(Kim, 2012)

In a sense, comparing Google AdWords to Facebook Ads is a bit like comparing apples to oranges; yet, both platforms seem to have a similar goal of becoming some sort of hybrid apple-orange that is everyone’s favorite choice of fruit.

Both AdWords and Facebook Ads offer fairly simple and straightforward platforms to create an advertising campaign for one’s business, website, or blog. AdWords does not require a minimum budget but a $5.00 activation fee is charged. Facebook Ads’ minimum requirement is $1.00 but does not charge an activation fee. The search results will both contain information like title, two lines of description, web address, and key words relevant to one’s campaign. Furthermore, Facebook’s ad placement of Sponsored Results relating to organic search queries is similar to Google’s approach (Constine, 2012).

The useful infographic (left) “grades” AdWords and Facebook on various features:

In my eyes, Google is primarily a search engine with social tools like “Google +, Gmail, Google chat, Picasa Web albums, etc.” (PI Reed, 2013) with 96 per cent of its revenue coming from advertising (Kim, 2012). Similarly, I consider Facebook primarily a social channel with advertising and integrated search tool options. However, Facebook does receive 86 per cent of its revenue from advertising, which shows its Sponsored Ad results are working well for the organization (Kim, 2012). While both platforms offer advantageous advertising options, elements of segmentation, reach and Click-Through Rates (CTR) are discussed below.

While Google has a highly sophisticated, highly refined ecosystem (PI Reed, 2013) that allows for extensive segmenting and targeting, the search engine will only display ads relevant to a user’s organic search terms. Facebook, on the other hand, allows advertisers to segment and target users with a number of filters like age, sex, likes/interests (religion, hobbies, jobs), relationships, language, education, companies, connections, friends of connections, application authorizations, and even targeting users on their birthdays. This filtering option is “one of the most powerful parts of Facebook advertising” (Facebooktutorial, 2010) that is not currently offered by AdWords.

This element of control allows advertisers to communicate with relevant segments and also towards segments that may be relevant in the future – all without an algorithm’s input. While having control over whom see what is powerful, Facebook’s search results will only direct users to pages on-site vs. off-site to the advertiser’s own domain (Constine, 2012), which may not be as beneficial for an advertiser seeking such traffic.

According to Kim (2012), the average CTR of an ad on the Google Display Network is .4%, almost ten times as high as a Facebook ad. The CTR for Facebook ads in 2010 was 0.051%, dropping from 0.064% in 2010, pointing to a downward trend. With 180 billion ad impressions served up by Google each month, advertisers can expect a 90 per cent reach of all Internet users compared to one trillion page views per month on Facebook, resulting in a 51 per cent reach of all Internet users (Kim, 2012).

Shifting focus, one option Facebook offers users is the choice to 'hide the ad', which pops up a question about whether someone hid it because it was ‘Uninteresting, Misleading, Offensive, Repetitive’ or one of a few more options” (Constine, 2012). This information could be beneficial for advertisers in tailoring messages for future campaigns.

Despite the differences and advantages of both platforms, Facebook Sponsored Results may still be a lot less helpful to advertisers than those that show up on Google Search due to the specificity of user searches on either platform.

Constine (2012) states, “when people search for an entity on Facebook, they’re typically looking for something very specific, such as a particular game or business, and might be more likely to bypass ads. People don’t usually search for ‘camera’ on Facebook and certainly not ‘where to buy a camera?’ Meanwhile on Google those are common queries from budding photographers looking to purchase new equipment. That means ads that could persuade them to choose a certain camera brand can command a high price for Google and sweet, sweet ROI for businesses” (Constine, 2012).

When comparing Google AdWords to Facebook advertising options, the clear winner in terms of reach, at least for now, is Google AdWords. It seems that to Internet advertisers at large, Google provides more opportunities for advertisement visibility and Click-Through Rates; however, Facebook offers greater tailoring capabilities to reach segments that Google algorithmically filters out.

References

Constine, J. (2012, August 22). Facebook officially launches “sponsored results” search ads. Tech Crunch. Retrieved February 3, 2013 from http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/22/facebook-search-ads/

Facebooktutorial. (2010, April 5). Facebook tutorial: How to advertise of Facebook [video file]. Retrieved February 2, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jOBDIql4y

GoogleBusiness. (2009, June 15). Getting started with Google AdWords [video file]. Retrieved February 3, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx2L6EGa9DY

PI Reed School of Journalism. (2013). Lesson 3: Social media analytics and advertising channels. Retrieved February 2, 2013 from ecampus.wvu.edu