The company uses Google Analytics for basic information, such as unique visitors. For example, the company used Google Analytics to discover it had 5 million unique visitors during the last year. They also use Google Analytics to track what pages users visit, and found that 5 million visitors have used the 3D Design Studio on the site to design a pair of shoes (1).
ACW Marketing
Monday, December 7, 2015
How Shoes of Prey Uses Google Analytics
Shoes of Prey uses Google Analytics to monitor visitor behavior. The e-commerce company was created in 2009, and allows users to create their own shoes based on shoe style, heel height, color, fabric and many other variables. Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Michael Fox was a Google executive when he and two others decided to create the company (1), so it’s no surprise that Shoes of Prey uses Google Analytics to see how visitors are interacting with the website.
Monday, November 30, 2015
The Great and Powerful Google
Google sees more searches than Bing and Yahoo combined
(Fleischner, 2013).
Gmail is the most popular email provider, with 900
million users around the world (Guynn, 2015).
Google Analytics is by far the most popular web
analytics tool (Sparks, 2014).
Google-owned YouTube has more than 1 billion users,
nearly one-third of all people on the Internet (YouTube Statistics, n.d.).
Don’t forget about Google Glass, Google Earth, Google
Maps, Google+ and so, so much more.
Google is a powerhouse. The company has become so much
a part of our lives, that we’ve turned its name into a verb – “Let me Google
that.”
In 2009, a CNBC reporter spoke with then-Google CEO
Eric Schmidt about privacy. “People are treating Google like their most trusted
friend,” she said. “Should they?”
His response: “If you have something that you don’t
want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
Monday, November 23, 2015
Google Analytics or GoSquared?
GoSquared is a web analytic tool that was created in 2006. Based in the UK, the company began when its three founders began working on the idea for a school project. The platform is focused on providing real-time customer analytics and is used around the world by thousands of businesses (1).
A demo, available here, shows just how different the service is from Google Analytics.
Check out the video below to see GoSquared in action.
Check out the video below to see GoSquared in action.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Choosing social media platforms depends on a number of factors
A company should be present on multiple social media platforms. However, which ones depend on a number of factors. The company’s target audience, its goals and what type of company it is should all play a factor in the decision.
If a company is only on one social media platform, it should be Facebook. If it is on multiple social media platforms, one of those should be Facebook. The site is the most popular of all social media sites, with 71 percent of online adults using Facebook in 2014 (Duggan, Ellsion, Lampe, Lenhart & Madden, 2015). Other social media sites just do not have the same reach, and companies have the best chance of connecting with the most people on this platform.
If a company is only on one social media platform, it should be Facebook. If it is on multiple social media platforms, one of those should be Facebook. The site is the most popular of all social media sites, with 71 percent of online adults using Facebook in 2014 (Duggan, Ellsion, Lampe, Lenhart & Madden, 2015). Other social media sites just do not have the same reach, and companies have the best chance of connecting with the most people on this platform.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Visitor Recency: Why it matters and how to measure it
Visitor recency tells how
long it has been since a visitor last visited a website. Put in another way, it
measures the gap between two visits from the same person. Websites may be updated
every day, or multiple times a day, and visitor recency will show whether
people are checking back to the site to see the updated information. This
metric is important because it shows visitors’ commitment to the site.
(Kaushik, 2010).
The best way to determine
whether or not the visitor recency percentage of a website is adequate is by
determining how often content is added to a website. If a website is updated
every day, a marketer may want its visitors to visit the site just as often, to
see the new content. The recency report can show what percentage of visitors have
returned within a day or less.
This metric may be less
vital to websites that are not updated frequently, or those that have longer
buying cycles. For example, a college’s admissions website may not have a high
percentage of visitors returning to the site each day, because they may be
researching the school, looking at the application process and gathering all of
the information they need to decide on whether or not to apply. For blogs or
news sites, however, the goal is typically frequent engagement as there is
frequently updated content, so recency is more beneficial as a PKI for this
type of site (Thayer, n,d.).
To increase visitor
recency, marketers should post links to their newest information on their social
media accounts. Email campaigns and newsletters with fresh content, coupons and
special offers can also drive frequency (Bateman, n.d.).
An example of a blog that
may use the visitor recency metric is J’s Everyday Fashion. The blog is updated almost every day with new fashion
advice, sales, daily outfits and other fashion-related news.
To keep visitors coming
back, the blogger posts updates to her social media accounts every day, with
links to the full post on her website. She also sends out emails every day,
like the one below, which can be clicked to go to the blog post as well.
Another way visitor recency
can be useful is to measure the success of a campaign in a more long-term way.
For example, a social media website runs a campaign in hopes of gaining more
users, and the result is 500,000 new signups. While the campaign may look
successful at face value, visitor recency can be used to take a closer look. By
waiting 30 days and looking at the visitor recency report for visitors that
came to the site as a result of the campaign, a marketer can see the behavior
of those new members (Kaushik, 2009).
Have they visited the
site within the last day or so? Or have they not visited since they signed up?
As shown in the example above, 30 days after the campaign, nearly 77 percent of
those who signed up during the campaign visited the site 30 days later, which
shows that many of those new members are engaging with the site and find it relevant
to them. If, however, 30 days after the campaign, if only a small percentage of
visitors had re-visited the site for the first few days, then the campaign may
not have been as successful as it may have looked judging solely on signups
(Kaushik, 2009). In other words, although the campaign may have created more “members”
to the site, it may not have created more actual “users” of the site.
References:
Bateman, S. (n.d.).
Frequency and recency climb with the right drivers [blog post]. Retrieved
online from http://www.promisemedia.com/organic-marketing/increase-web-site-traffic-with-frequency-drivers.
Kaushik, A. (2009, Jan.
21). Excellent analytics tips #15: Measure latent conversions & visitor
behavior [blog post]. Retrieved online from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-15-measure-latent-conversions-visitor-behavior/.
Kaushik, A. (2010). Web
analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer
centricity. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Thayer, S. (n.d.).
Visitor recency – how long has it been since they’ve come back? [blog post].
Retrieved online from http://www.trendingupward.net/2010/12/visitor-recency/.
Why is Bounce Rate so important?
Bounce rate, often lauded as the most important web metric, is a visit
that consists of only one page being viewed (Reed College, 2015). When a
website is viewed and then left, without any other clicks on the site, it is
known as a bounce. This can be measured in aggregate, as in the percentage of
all website visitors who visited a page on the website and left, or it can be
measured for any individual page on the website. (Kaushik, 2010).
Four main scenarios
register as a bounce. They include a user:
- clicking the back button
- closing the browser window or tab
- typing a new URL
- or just doing nothing, since a session typically times out after 30 minutes (Kelly, 2012).
Bounce rate can also help identify problems on a website. For example, a
high bounce rate could mean that a website has a poor design that seems confusing
or unappealing to visitors, such as sites with video ads that auto-play, or the
load time may be too high and visitors don’t want to wait (Ledgard, n.d.).
Another issue that a high bounce rate could discover is that a website is
attracting the wrong people. For example, a visitor may have used a search
engine to search for shoes to buy. After clicking a link, the visitor may
realize that a particular site just reviews shoes and doesn’t sell them. The
website may need to reevaluate what keywords it uses and how it advertises
itself in order to attract visitors who are looking for what the website
actually offers (Ledgard, n.d.).
The bounce rate can also
help marketers with measuring the effectiveness of an email campaign. For example,
an email might tell subscribers about an exciting new product that company’s
website is now offering. A large percent of people may click the link in the email
to the product’s webpage, but then may exit that page without clicking anything
else. This high bounce rate may be an indication that the email does not
accurately describe what is offered on the web page. A look at the bounce rate
in this situation might alert marketers to an issue with content or a call to
action (Kaushik, 2010).
While marketers strive
for a low bounce rate, sometimes a high bounce rate is acceptable. For example,
blogs might have a high aggregate bounce rate, because visitors might come to
the website to read the latest blog post, then leave. To get a better measure
on bounce rates in this scenario, Kaushik recommends measuring bounce rate for
new visitors instead. New visitors may sign up for a newsletter, or read the
page’s “about the author section,” which show engagement and may make them
repeat visitors (Kaushik, 2010). Another page that might have a high bounce
rate is a “contact us” page. Visitors may click to the page to find a business’s
address or phone number. In this case, the page did its job and a high bounce
rate is not a bad thing (Kelly, 2012).
Marketers can improve
bounce rate by using A/B testing. A/B testing is when one of two or more versions
of a page are randomly shown to page visitors. The goal is to see which version
delivered the desired outcome, or a lower bounce rate in this case. The pages
could vary in many ways, including layout, color, different elements, and a multitude
of other ways (Kaushik, 2010).
For example, MedaliaArt
used A/B testing to see which version of these two home pages would have a
lower bounce rate. Version 1 had a large banner promoting the holiday sale,
while Version 2 displayed the holiday sale information much smaller and in a
sidebar (Chopra,.
Version 1
|
Version 2
|
The company worried that the
large promotional message would irritate visitors, but the test showed that
Version A had a much lower bounce rate (Chopra, 2010).
In this case, there were
not a lot of changes between the pages, but pages that have many differing
elements make A/B testing more difficult, because marketers can’t know which
elements made one of the two pages more effective. However, A/B testing is a
simple way to test how successful a page is, and the results may be surprising
(Kaushik, 2010).
References:
Chopra, P. (2010, Jan. 7).
Using A/B split testing to reduce bounce rate by 20% for an eCommerce store [blog
post]. Retrieved online from https://vwo.com/blog/using-ab-split-testing-reduce-bounce-rate-ecommerce-store/.
Ledgard, J. (n.d.).
Bounce rate: 14 ways you are driving people away from your landing pages [blog
post]. Retrieved online from https://kickofflabs.com/blog/bounce-rate-14-ways-you-are-driving-people-away-from-your-landing-pages/.
Kaushik, A. (2010). Web
analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer
centricity. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Kelly, K. (2012, Feb.
12). What is bounce rate? Avoid common pitfalls [blog post]. Retrieved online from http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/what-is-bounce-rate.
Reed College of Media.
(2015). Lesson 2: Basic Web Metrics. West
Virginia University. Retrieved online from ecampus.wvu.edu.
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