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Adding a widget such as AddThis , ShareThis and Facebook Like button on your site makes it very easy for your site visitors to share your site and content with their friends and followers via email or social media. Even though these are small widgets, that your developers/designers might not have paid much attention to, they add a tremendous value to your business. According to a recent report by eMarketer 47.5% of the people trust the recommendations of their social media contacts. In order to leverage social sharers you have to make it easy for them to share you content and widgets like these do a good job in making your site shareable. A small widget like this can save you thousands of dollars in customer acquisition and even retaining the customers via either direct conversions from the traffic driven by shared links or by the brand awareness that those links create. Monetary value of Social Shares Most of the sharing widgets have built in analytics to measure the virality of your...

Several studies have shown that people trust the link and site recommendation they receive from their friends or experts in the field. To capitalize on this opportunity websites have long used features like “Recommend to a Friend” or “Email this” kind of functionality. Recently we have seen a rise in usage of tools/widgets that make it easy for the visitors to share links via email and social media. Measuring Virality Many of the tools/widget that allow you to add easy sharing now also have built in analytics to help you track things such as which content is getting shared, how many people like to share etc, what methods do they use to share etc. 3 tools that you should look into are: ShareThis AddThis Tynt Tool Comparison ShareThis and AddThis ShareThis and AddThis are very similar in functionality with some minor differences but they look more like each other. Both this widgets have very similar reporting and tell you How many links were shared How many people shared them What con...

Presenting the data is what Web Analysts do majority of the time. It is critical for Web Analysts to present the data in a way that is easily understood by their intended audience. However, I have seen time and again that this simple rule is missed. Why? Because we all suffer from what is known as "The Curse of Knowledge". What is The Curse of Knowledge? Here is what 37Signals.com write on this subject: Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators. Think of a lawyer who can’t give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can’t follow. And we’re all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise. "Curse of Knowledge" becomes a big issue for Web Analysts and Managers who are trying ...

All those who have worked at companies which never used or do not use web analytics to make decisions about site changes, know how difficult it is to create a culture of web analytics. It is very hard. Building a culture of web analytics is a grueling uphill task. After working with various client I have found that reasons for not using web analytics vary from company to company, some of the common ones are: Gut feel has always worked or at least it seems like it has worked It is an additional step in the process New skills are required to use web analytics. They feel they don’t have the required skills for using web analytics Fear of accountability i.e. now I will be measured and I don’t like that The reports that they got in past were pretty useless They didn’t believe in web analytics data because they have no clue on how the data was collected They don’t understand how web analytics can help them They don’t understand what web analytics is The first reaction of many newly hired ana...

Today I came across an article by Isaac Weisberg, titled Unintended Consequences of Targeting: Less Information, Less Serendipity – Part I . In this article Isaac argues that online personalization limits the exposure of information to the individuals. I agree that current personalization practices are very limited though it is more of an issue with the marketers engaged in personalization than with the technology. ( Note: Retargeting , Behavioral Targeting , on-site recommendations, customized emails etc. are all different forms of personalization). So it is not Personalization that limits the flow of information but it is the people engaged in Personalization. The purpose of personalization is to provide information that is relevant to an individual and in order to do so you will eliminate a lot of information that the person is not likely to be interested in. However that does not mean that the person cannot be exposed to new information with the personalization. The issue is tha...

HiPPO is an overly used in the web analytics community to make the web analysts feel good. But this term, in my opinion, does more harm than good to you. Though I meant to write this post a long time ago, today a post by Steve Jackson - HiPPO could be your best friend finally prompted me to write it. For those how don’t know, HiPPO is a term used to describe the opinion of the Highest Paid Person (HiPP) i.e. Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. This terms basically says that the person who gets paid the most (it assumes that this person is also the highest authority position) will make decisions that are not based on any facts but rather based on his/her gut feel. As a result his/her opinions are generally wrong. Really? Do you really think that they got into their position by giving wrong opinions? Some experts even encourage analysts to publicly embarrass HIPPOs by proving them wrong? Really? How do you think it is going to help you? Will you have a job tomorrow? As an analyst, your...

FTC’s proposed a framework to protect the privacy of consumers . Part of this framework is a “Do Not Track” option that has raised a lot of questions among the web analytics and advertising community. Well since this is just a proposal at this stage nobody knows how it will finally pan out. At this point FTC has published the report to seek public comments. The report that FTC has put together is 122 pages long. I have extracted some important point from that report in case you don’t have the time to read the full report. The basic building blocks of this framework are: Scope : The framework applies to all commercial entities that collect or use consumer data that can be reasonably linked to a specific consumer, computer, or other device. Note: This is not limited only those who collect PII data, if you collect any information about a consumer then this applies to you. However commission is seeking input on how to determine “reasonably linked to a specific consumer…” Privacy by De...