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I am going to start this series of post with few questions for you.  Here is some data pulled from a Web Analytics tool. This data is for a “Display Ad” campaign: Most of the web analysts today get the following view of display advertising from their Web Analytics tool.  Looking at this data and some publicly available information they will get started on the analysis and recommendation. Though some other analysts will say, Wait… I need more information.  Google Adwords has done such a great job in providing cost data and almost all of the analysts have dealt with some kind of paid search campaign, so they know that cost of campaign plays a role in the analysis of campaign.  So they demand it.  Well this is where most of the web analytics tools fell short, cost data generally resides in some other tool and it is not easy to get that data. But how said that Analytics was easy.   However, I am providing full data with cost so that we can continue with this po...

Are you obsessing over the total number of mentions, number of positive mentions and negative mentions? If you are then you are not alone. This same issue came up recently while I was speaking on the subject of Social Media at a local event. One person got very concerned when I said that a lot of social media conversations are marked “Neutral” in most of the social media monitoring tools. The reason is that tools are not yet advanced enough to classify everything and so when in doubt the conversation is marked “Neutral” rather than “Positive” or “Negative” . So what do you do in this situation, when you know that the sentiment numbers are not right? Short answer is: Don’t obsess over the raw counts. Let’s face it; you will never get an exact count of mentions about your brand, products etc. let alone the sentiment counts. Here are few reasons why the number won’t be accurate Tools - The number of mentions will change with the tool you are using. Different tools have different sourc...

I am sure you have heard of a story about a guy lost his ring in a dark alley. It was really dark and he could not see anything, so he went to a nearby lamppost and started searching for his ring underneath it. When asked why he was looking for ring under the lamppost, he said “because it is bright here”. That’s what most of the web analyst do. Even when the problem might exist somewhere other than what their web analytics data can show majority of the web analytics folks just look at “Web Data” for the answers. Why? Because that’s all the data they have easy access too. It is brighter there. Here are some other things which are in the “dark” areas. It is time for you to shine light on them: Ad Server – There are several factors that impact a performance of a campaign, many of them don’t show up in your web analytics tools, they reside within ad servers or with 3rd parties. Example: Which pages the ads was shown, what time was the ad shown etc. I will write more on this in a future ...

The purpose of this post is to clarify the terms CPM and CPC and also show how to convert from one model to the other. CPM CPM stands for Cost per 1000 Impressions (number of times the ad is shown) (M is Roman numeral for 1000). Generally display advertising (e.g. banners) is sold in CPM. If the ad is shown 1000 times the cost will be equal to 1 CPM price. For example, if a publisher charges $10 CPM, that means your ad will be shown 1000 times for $10. If your budget is say $10,000 then mean your ad will be shown 1,000,000 times ($10,000 *(1000/$10) ). Total Impressions = (Total Cost or Budget) * (1000/CPM) If you are trying to find out how much you will pay for a given number of impressions then you can use the following formula Total Cost = (Total Impressions * CPM)/1000 If you notice in the above calculations, there are no mentions of how many people the ad will be shown to or how many clicks will be generated. CPM advertising is solely based on impressions. In theory if you d...

You will find many examples of how various headlines, call to actions etc. can be tested to drive more conversions and how many companies have successfully done so. Maybe you have done it too. However deep inside you know that moving the needle from 3% to 4% is huge but still there are 96% of your visitors/visits that did not convert. I have compiled a list of some of my blog posts that show you how can move the needle further up by taking action on things that are generally not found in tips and tricks books and articles. 5 Things That Could Be Hindering Your Conversions In this post I have listed 5 fundamental things that are part of most of the online forms but could be preventing the visitors from converting. Underline the Clickable Text and Link the Pictures Sometimes you just have to do it without doing testing. Underlining the clickable text and linking the picture to a page are few of those things that really do not require testing. Are Form Validations Invalidating Your Co...

For past few years I have made several predictions about Web Analytics. This year I am going to make only one prediction but will provide five tips for 2012. Prediction This year the push will be towards “Multichannel Analytics”. Integration of various data sources, e.g. email, CRM, social media, call center etc. , with Web Analytics will take center stage. Five Tips for Web Analytics Expand your web analytics to consider other data sources We all know by now that no one channel exists in isolation. Web, email, mobile, social media, catalog, stores, call centers etc. all impact each other. Web is a just one part of the customer’s experience and journey towards purchase. To fully understand customer behavior and optimize your marketing you have to go beyond web analytics and look at data from other channels. Move from “How Many” to “Who” Majority of the web analyst today analyze “How Many” e.g. how many people landed, how many bounced, how many converted etc. “How many” is a great ...

Real-time web analytics provides you a view into what is happening on your site at that very moment. It is really interesting to see where visitors are coming from, what keywords they are searching, what pages they are viewing etc. Though most of the time that’s where it ends i.e. it is interesting but not very valuable. As many web analysts have stated time and again, the value of the analytics comes from the action you take on that data. So, unless you are going to take actions in real time you really don’t need real-time analytics. However, I can understand the temptation to use Real Time Analytics for instant gratification. Side Bar: Recently Google Analytics joined the bandwagon of providing Real-Time analytics. Other notable real time web analytics vendors include Chartbeat, Woopra. As of now, Google analytics only provides a very limited view of real time stats at this point, though I am assuming that it is just the beginning and Google will roll out more stats in its real tim...