adCenter Analytics Blog

New Year New User – Getting Credit Crunch Fit For 2009

Mel Carson - MSFT — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:01:00 GMT

So we have all started the new year with the knowledge that it’s going to be a tough one!

The global economic downturn has almost certainly affected us all both personally and professionally in some way.

Last year we got some great reactions to some of our posts on the Analytics Blog like:

Don’t Be Overwhelmed By Data

12 Steps To Effective Online Budget Allocation

7 Biggest Mistakes of Web Analytics

Are You Doing Anything Differently During The Downturn?

On reflection, maybe a lot of the content on how to weather these financially challenging waters is too concentrated on what we shouldn’t be doing, as opposed to what we should.

A new year’s resolution is all about promising yourself to do something differently for the good of yourself or the good of others.

But do any of our commitments include doing something professional in the workplace?

Thinking about how we could work differently, or work smarter, must pay dividends in the long run surely?

Many conversations I’m hearing are about strategies to do more with less.

How much money can we make if we don’t hire any more people? How many leads can we generate with a cut in marketing budget? How many more clicks can I get if I lower my CPCs but tweak my ad copy or landing page?

Ironically, you could call these questions optimization initiatives!

Along with “return on investment”, “optimization” has to be one of the biggest buzz words in the online advertising industry, but it takes a cataclysmic financial storm for companies to start asking some hard questions about how to make more with less and increase those profits.

Luckily we, as marketers, have the tools to help understand the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns. We have the data to help us make better decisions about where we spend our leaner budgets, and we have access to the knowledge that will empower us to get a better ROI.

But it comes down to application!

The gym local to our office in London is offering all sorts of incentives to join up.

“A New Year A New You!”

Well like any new training plan, in order to get fit, lose some of the fat, be more agile, feel better and generally positively re-invent yourself, you need to start off slowly with small steps.

Launching into pumping 100lbs and running a marathon straight off is only going to end in injury and tears.

So this year when it comes to your marketing skills, why not attempt to try something different or learn a little something new every day?

It might be to go into the reporting suite of whatever analytics package you use and try running some alternative data to see what valuable insight that might throw up.

You may want to knock off some of those tedious tasks that have been languishing on your to-do list since last year.

Or you may want to spend 10 minutes watching a product tutorial video or listening to a podcast over your lunch break that might give you an extra edge when you next take a look at your conversion report.

Although this year will be difficult, there’s plenty we all can learn to give us that momentum to get through the next 12 months successfully.

Like going to the gym, we just have to be disciplined!

Cheers

Mel

Don’t Be Overwhelmed By Data

Vanessa Fox - Guest Blogger — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:33:00 GMT

All kinds of data exists about how your site is doing in search engines and about your potential customers. So much data, in fact, that the thought of making sense of it all can seem a bit daunting.

Web analytics data, keyword research, search trends, search engine tools for webmasters: where do you start?

People often ask me what data they should be paying attention to, but the answer really depends on your situation: What are your goals? What stage is your site in? From that mountain of data, you may only need a few pieces of actionable information to help you measure your current efforts and make adjustments for the future.

A mature site embarking a new TV-based branding campaign will use very different measurements than a new site relying on grass roots efforts to get the word out.

Below are just a few examples of how you might pick just a few pieces of key data to help measure success.

New Site Launch

What should you measure?

Keep track of how the search engine robots are crawling your pages (from your server logs) and how many of those crawled pages are getting indexed.

How is the data actionable?

Often, site owners measure new site progress by watching to see when the site starts ranking well for particular queries or when the site starts getting traffic from search engines. But before either of those things can happen, the site has to be crawled and then indexed. By watching these two milestones, you can pinpoint any problems early.

If the site isn't getting crawled, make sure that you're not inadvertently blocking pages via the Robots Exclusion Protocol and that search engines know the pages exist (either via an XML Sitemap or incoming links). Monitor the percentage of pages from the total crawled that are getting indexed. If it's a low percentage, make sure that you don't have lot of duplicate content issues (such as from dynamically generated pages). Check the Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Tools Crawl Issues reports to generate a list of URLs that are blocked or that search engine bots are having trouble crawling for other reasons.

What next?

Once pages are regularly crawled and indexed, then you can start looking at how well you're ranking for relevant queries, how much traffic you're getting from search engines, and how qualified that traffic is.

Grass-roots awareness effort

What should you measure?

You want to know which audiences are interested in spreading the word about you and which are interesting in becoming customers. When you begin viral marketing, PR, or other campaign, you likely let people know by sending out press releases, talking to the press, sharing the information on social media sites, or providing details to bloggers who write about your subject area.

Make a list of all the ways you spread awareness, organized by category. Then track the links that are generated during the course of the campaign using a reporting tool such as the one found in the Microsoft Live Search webmaster tools. You should also look at your analytics data to make note of the traffic from each link (as well as details such as the conversions and bounce rate from each link).

How is the data actionable?

It's interesting to track how many links a viral campaign produced, but it's much more useful to know which of your efforts sparked those links. A technology site may find that getting to the home page of Digg caused 20 bloggers to read about the site and blog about it, and that a mention by Gizmodo influenced 10 blogs posts, whereas a knitting site may get zero blog mentions from making the home page of Digg, but 30 mentions after being discussed in a crafting forum.

You probably can't determine the source for every link, but you can approximate pretty closely by looking at timing. And a lot of bloggers mention where they first saw a link. Do the same exercise for other types of awareness efforts. Which reporters picked up a story you sent them a press release about? Can you find patterns in the types of publications?

Similarly, make note of which links bring you the most qualified traffic. Which visitors buy something? Which referrals have the lowest bounce rate? Making the Digg home page may seem appealing if it brings you 5,000 vistors, but if the bounce rate is 95%, then it's less valuable than that crafting forum that brings you 500 visitors with a 15% bounce rate. (With those numbers, the Digg mention would be bringing in 250 qualified visitors, whereas the crafting forum would be bringing in 425.)

Knowing which efforts give you the most bang for the buck can help you know how to spend your resources next time.

TV-branding campaign

What should you measure?

It can be difficult to measure ROI on branding campaigns as they often aren't tied directly to sales. However, search data can provide clues about efficacy. You may be able to use overall search volume to determine if a campaign is increasing awareness.

A 2007 Jupiter Research study found that 2/3 of online searchers were driving to perform searches as a result of exposure to an offline channel. Raising awareness about your brand may cause more people to search for it. Use keyword research tools to monitor spikes in search volumes. For instance, notice the increase in search volume for [easy button] once Staples launched its campaign in January 2005 and the volume spike when it aired the related Superbowl ad in February.

Throughout the campaign, you can see several "breakout" searches (gaining more than 5000%) and related searches.

You should also make note of increased links and online chatter about your brand after you launch offline campaigns. This can be particularly useful if you have online elements connected to the campaign. For instance, if you are running a funny TV ad, you should make the video available online as well. You can measure chatter by doing things like setting up blog search and Twitter alerts, or by using a company such as Trackur or Visible Technologies to monitor things for you.

How is the data actionable?

You want to capitalize on your branding campaign as much as possible, so if it's influencing people to search for your brand or tagline, you want to make sure you can be found for those queries. Use the data from the keyword research tools to find out the top related searches and rising searches associated with the campaign.

In the case of Staples, their site ranks first for related queries such as [the easy button], [staples easy button], and [that was easy]. And keyword research (such as the Microsoft adCenter Add-In for Excel) shows that "the easy button" seems to resonate more with searchers than "that was easy":

Being ranked first is a great first step, but it's also important to consider the overall searcher experience. Consider this result for Nike's slogan, [just do it]. While the site appears first, the title and description don't provide a compelling marketing message to draw searchers in. If the site is ranking well but the traffic isn't what you expect, make sure that the display in the search results invites searchers in.

Another useful way to use search volume and inbound linking data is in comparing campaigns. Which caused search traffic to spike more and which brought in more links? Did having online elements to the campaign encourage more links and if so, which elements performed better than others? And as noted above, you always want to determine qualified traffic when looking at overall incoming traffic from search queries and links. Which campaigns caused search spikes that had the highest conversion rates?

Tracking online conversations can also alert you early in a campaign is creating negative perception, which can enable you to react right away and turn things around. Motrin, for instance, launched a "wearing your baby" ad intended to connect with mothers who had achy muscles, but instead, offended many of them, who shared their outrage with each other on social networks such as Twitter about their feeling that Motrin equated babies with fashion accessories.

Historically, these conversations may have taken place over the telephone or at dinner, and brands may have not known about negative perceptions like this until months later, after (expensive) follow up surveys and focus groups. But now brands that are monitoring the conversation online can learn about such sentiment in near real-time and can react accordingly.

There's lots of data out there. As a whole, it's likely too much to be useful. But by taking a close look at one or two key pieces of information, you can learn a lot about your customers and where to focus your efforts in the future.

Thanks Vanessa

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7 Biggest Mistakes of Web Analytics

Bryan Eisenberg - Guest Blogger — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:24:00 GMT

For 10 years I have been working with companies to optimize their websites to increase conversion rates. During this time, I’ve used what seems like dozens of web analytics tools.

The insight that is available is incredible if you don’t make the “7 Biggest Mistakes of Web Analytics”:

1. Improper Implementation

According to my friend, Stéphane Hamel the developer behind W.A.S.P., a FireFox plugin for detecting and reviewing web analytics implementations, nearly 100% of implementations are setup improperly. Common mistakes include: untagged pages, untagged or wrongly tagged transactions (i.e. transaction page is tagged like a regular page) and passing wrong values (especially for advanced tools like SiteCatalyst). In fact, several web analytics vendors websites also have these common errors.

To make sure your analytics don’t suffer you need to pick User Acceptance Tests (UAT) tests and re-run them specifically to look at tag quality (WASP can do a crawl that will work for content areas, but for transactions, there’s no better tests than actually running transactions to monitor the results.) Additionally, you should run continuous audits. Sites evolve and change, and the tagging quality suffers since different parts of the site may have been tagged at different times, etc.

2. No Goals Setup

The purpose of web analytics is to provide information about how well you are doing. Defining goals in the tool defines what game you are playing. How can you keep score without knowing where the goals are? Approximately 80%, of implementations have no goals setup. If you can’t define what is valuable to you, then how do expect to increase your results?

Even if you don’t do commerce you should have goals setup. Common non-commerce goals include tracking your inquiries, subscribers, white paper downloads, webinar attendees, etc. The key to success in setting up goals is aligning your goals with your customers’ goals.

3. No Segmentation

Repeat after me…”Not all traffic is equal.” Any analyst worth their weight in salt will tell you that the greatest insights don’t come from average and aggregated data but from slicing and dicing the data to produce intelligent segments. One of the most obvious is first time visitors versus repeat visitors (there are probably a couple of different segments in your repeat visitors too).

One of the features that thrilled me about the latest Google Analytics release is the ability to setup advanced segments. Bloggers surely know, that rss readers behave very differently than social media traffic. The reason FutureNow develops personas for our clients is to insure that we look at the website from these different perspectives/segments and measure them that way too.

4. Paying Too Much Attention to Irrelevant Data

“Web data is dirty data.” Never in the history of Analytics have we been able to collect so much information about visitor activity. This however leads to a lot of noise, due to things like cookie deletion, individuals browsing from multiple machines, different collection methods and definitions, etc. This is just one of the reason why you should never focus too much on data accuracy but on relative trends.

The second issue here is that all the people who rely on so many data points that they have no way of keeping an eye on them all. My core philosophy is that if you can’t relate all your reports back to how they fit into your financial statements then it should probably not be reporting it. Only focus on the metrics that you can actually control.

5. Not Setting up Milestone Events Documentation

With any luck, your business changes. You send out emails, run new campaigns (online and offline), make changes to your pages and other things that could impact your web results. However, most companies do a terrible job of documenting when these changes occurred and correlating them to their web analytics results. It would be great to have this information in your web analytics solution, but you could also run a private wiki that lets everyone on your team leave documentation about these changes.

6. Not Combining Quantitative Data with Qualitative Data

What I have learned in my 10 years plus of optimizing websites using customer-centric persona tools is that you need to be data driven but customer focused. If you forget to include Voice of Customer analytics in to your mix, you will tend to skew more to the cold data driven side (left side of the brain thinking) and neglect many of the opportunities on the softer voice of customer side (right side of the brain thinking). The data side is often focused on the what and how many, but the voice of customer side gives you additional insight into the why. Use tools like TeaLeaf, Bazaarvoice*, iPerceptions, Omniture Survey, ForeSee, and OpinionLab. Here is a great example of how to use web analytics and voice of customer analytics together. You can always start for free using 4Q from iPerceptions* to get some early wins.

7. Not Taking Action On the Data

Unless you are in the business of research, collecting data without acting on it may qualify for the definition of insanity (ever seen the underpants gnomes on South Park?). The purpose for investing in web analytics is to make data-driven, informed decisions and not just rely on gut instincts. The reason to invest in turning your data into insights is to become a smarter marketer and to produce better results. This is the very core of a Six Sigma approach to a continuous improvement process. Use the data to make changes to your website, feed your email campaigns and tools like Google Website Optimizer, Omniture’s Test & Target, CoreMetrics Intelligent Offer, or personalization tools like Monetate and SiteBrand and start increasing your results.

Once you have avoided these 7 biggest mistakes you are well on your way to web analytics success.

* Disclosure: I am on the Advisory Board of Bazaarvoice and iPerceptions.

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The Feedback Loop Gap

Jim Sterne - Guest Blogger — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:04:00 GMT

"We have the data, we have the pretty reports. But we do not have an educated team who can take the resulting statistics and turn them into meaningful plans. The process of creating Web strategy and executing on Web tactics has gone missing."

Besides being fun to say and a legitimate excuse for me to wear my "Mind The Gap" hat purchased the last time I was caught in the rain in Covent Garden, the Feedback Loop Gap is the most pernicious problem faced by those tasked with running and analyzing the success of large, sophisticated Web sites. It all begins the day a business person stumbles upon a Web server log.

Your Web server generates a mountains of data collected in your server logs every day. The assumption is that this information is generated to help you determine how well you're doing. Nice thought, but not the case.

Log files are merely the result of good, solid engineering. If you create a system that does something, it's a good idea to record what happened. That way you've got something to look at when things go wrong. Log files are, therefore, the results of a Web server doing its job, and not a formal effort to capture valuable business intelligence.

The business management side of large companies went to the Web-heads and asked for reports. The log files were available and delivered. Ever since, mankind has been trying to interpret log files like astrologers, phrenologists, and readers of the I-Ching. Log files do, indeed, contain more data than, say, the configuration of the bumps on your head, but it's a matter of torturing usable information out of them.

Here then, is the log file torture process practiced by multitudinous multinational corporations:

1. Capture Log Data

Everybody's happy to lasso the data that Web servers spit out on a daily basis. It's just a matter of file storage - rather mundane, actually. And it gives everybody hope.

2. Cleanse the Data

Some data are useful, some are not. Some are informative, some are confusing. It usually requires a couple of rounds of attempted comprehension before the dirty data become obvious and can be expunged. Traffic from within your own company and visitations by spiders and robots are the first to go. Then you need to decide if your one-page visits are worth the bytes they're stored in.

3. Report

Nice, crisp, colourful charts and graphs adorn the walls of technical and marketing offices. "Look! We have an active, interactive Web site and people are doing things there!" These charts are pretty to look at. They are proof that people are paying attention. They are useless.

4. Analyze

At some point, one of the technical committees squints at a series of reports over a several months period and begins to wonder why some numbers are going up, some are going down, while others do not change in the slightest. They wonder what external forces are at work. They scratch their heads and come up with seventeen technical explanations for the change over time of the appearance of the pie charts, bar charts and diagrams. Twelve of these explanations are interesting and two of these ideas are worth chasing.

5. Deliver

Convinced that they have discovered something important, the technical team calls a meeting with their business compatriots and presents the findings. They expound on the statistics and the resulting graphical depictions in terms of how many people showed up when, how often, for how long, and to what end. The marketing staff are thrilled to receive actual data - hard evidence that the work they've been doing has had an effect.

The End.

Notice something missing?

Several things in fact?

Here's what I looked for and found only in the rarest organizations:

6. Interpret

Technical people and business people gather enough knowledge about Web statistics to actually understand what the charts, graphs and diagrams really mean.

7. Plan

Based upon a thorough understanding of the reported results, a team made up of information systems people, Web designers and business people map out the changes necessary to improve usability, increase customer satisfaction, and boost revenue. Armed with an understanding of site visitors' desires and frustrations, new designs, new content, and new applications are devised and developed.

8. Execute

Select the best options which will result in the greatest impact with the lowest investment in time or money. Secure upper management support. Create a timeline. Instill ownership. Charge ahead.

9. Repeat

Capture, measure, and analyze the results of the changes and incorporate those results in the next planning cycle. Ad infinitum.

The problem facing most companies falls between items 5 and 6: the dreaded Feedback Loop Gap. We have the data, we have the pretty reports. But we do not have an educated team made up of technical and business people who can take the resulting statistics and turn them into meaningful plans. Feeding Web server statistics, customer satisfaction surveys, sales data, etc. back into the process of creating Web strategy and executing on Web tactics has gone missing.

The technical side doesn't have a view into of the company's business drivers and the business people don't know a) what the data mean, nor b) what valuable information might additionally be available.

We need to sufficiently educate those controlling the marketing and customer service budgets so that they can interpret the data they get. At best, they will understand the metrics reports well enough to make well-informed plans for the next step *and* instrument the execution of those plans so that the right information is gathered with each iteration: the Feedback Loop.

We can only hope. In the meantime: Mind the Gap.

Thanks Jim

Jim Sterne is our first guest blogger on adCenterCommunity.com - among other accolades he produces the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and is Founding President and current Chairman of the Web Analytics Association

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Web Analytics Takeaways – PubCon 2008

Mel Carson - MSFT — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:57:00 GMT

I attended a great session on web analytics here in Las Vegas today. The advice doled out was not out of the ordinary but the delivery was excellent and that always helps to drive the message home.

Jamie Smith from Engine Ready gave a detailed presentation outlining the history of web analytics and managed to articulate some of the mistakes people make when implementing analytics packages. He said people fail to set up the proper tracking codes on their sites, making it difficult to assess conversions, goals and actions users make. Forgetting to tag every page and failure to put the tracking code at the bottom of the page were two more examples of errors site owners make which can have a detrimental effect on the numbers reported.

KPIs are a measurement that take your users somewhere. If they’re not going where you want them to then at least you know and can take the necessary action.

Trying to set clear goals and objectives when setting up new online campaigns is huge and Jamie was keen to impress on the delegates the importance of know your conversion rate. Cross-referencing conversion data with analytics data is a powerful way of optimising your site so you’re generating as much return on investment as possible.

Use pathing reports too. By getting into the shoes of your customers as they navigate through your site you get to understand where you need to optimise that navigation and where you need to channel them elsewhere.

Richard Zwicky from Enquisite then did something I’ve not seen at a conference before. He created a live segmentation of the audience by getting us to stand up and raise our hands if we used free and/or paid for analytics packages, getting those who were from outside the US to stay standing while everyone else sat down. It was a clever exercise that proved a point.

Richard spoke to a slide which had his version of an analytics ecosystem or lifecycle

Collect – Analyze – Optimise – Monetise

It was simple but effective in getting us to think about the process of ensuring websites are doing what we set them up to do.

All too often website owners think that just having a site is enough. It’s not. It’s just the beginning of the journey.

Coming Soon! Industry Experts Guest Blogging On Web Analytics

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:29:00 GMT

We’re pleased to announce a trio of experts in the field of online marketing have accepted an invitation to impart some of their knowledge and wisdom on the adCenter Analytics Blog.

Starting next Monday Jim Sterne, Bryan Eisenberg and Vanessa Fox, all well known and well documented industry thought leaders, will begin a series of posts on web analytics and marketing optimisation that will take us through to 2009.

We’ll kick off with Jim Sterne, founder of the Web Analytics Association, who no doubt give us all some great tips on how to nurture data in order to increase return on investment.

This is an exciting move for us as we keep exploring new avenues in order to bring you the very best insight and advice.

Cheers

Mel

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Using Silverlight with adCenter Analytics

Jonathan Tuliani - MSFT — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:01:45 GMT

As Mel Carson recently reported in his announcement of the adCenter Analytics Beta refresh, adCenter Analytics plans to adopt Microsoft Silverlight for some parts of the UI. The first Silverlight features have now been released, so you can try them for yourself.

To use the Silverlight versions, you need to select the ‘Enable Silverlight’ check-box on the profiles page.

Next, if you haven’t installed Silverlight already, you’ll need to click the ‘Install Microsoft Silverlight’ link that appears in place of the calendar when you view your reports.

Silverlight is installed as a small browser plug-in—it’s quick and easy, and you don’t need administrator privileges, although you may have to re-start your browser. And yes, multiple browsers and operating systems are supported.

The first and most obvious enhancement is the new Silverlight Calendar control. In its compact form, it’s just a single line:

Clicking on the arrow to the right expands the calendar:

This offers a much slicker user experience than the old calendar (that’s one of the strengths of Silverlight). It’s also much easier to select custom date ranges, using the date picker.

The second enhancement is in the Treemap reports (see previous blog posts on Treemapping), which has been replaced with a new Silverlight version. In this example, we can see web site traffic segmented by visitor occupation.

The functionality is similar to the old version, with a few small enhancements such as the ability to retain your selected cells when changing size/color settings, and the ability to remove cell selections from the ledger. But again, the big improvement is in the user experience, which with Silverlight is much more responsive and attractive than before.

Jonathan Tuliani is a Program Manager on the Microsoft adCenter Analytics team in Dublin, Ireland (blog, site).

adCenter Analytics Beta Refresh – Check Out The New Features

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:34:00 GMT

adCenter customers across the globe will have noticed some changes to the user interface as they signed in after the weekend.

Carolyn has started a three part series on what the upgrade means for PPC marketers on the adCenter Blog for Advertisers.

But here, I just wanted to point out a couple of new features the analytics team have added to adCenter Analytics.

Report Export

Now you can download reports in Microsoft Excel or .csv formats, making it easier for you to use and share the data.

Just click on the “Export” button and a dialogue box will appear asking which format you want the report generated in.

The report will be ready to download in seconds!

Manage Multiple Users

You may be gathering traffic data from multiple sources and want to allow or restrict team members or clients to read-only or admin access to different profiles.

Simply click on the “Manage User” button on the profile page to change levels of access to different profiles or add new users.

Coming soon! - Silverlight Support

The calendar control and the treemap reports will soon be updated to use Microsoft Silverlight.

These new versions offer more dynamic interaction and a much faster performance.

Visit http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight for more information about Silverlight.

Let us know how you get on and do give us an idea of what features you like to see in the next release either below or on this thread in the adCenter Analytics Forum

12 Steps To Effective Online Budget Allocation

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:01:00 GMT

I spoke at the NMA Live conference recently about how to navigate the credit crunch through online marketing. The first presentation was delivered by Tim Davis of Billetts – a marketing analytics company based in London.

It was of particular interest to me for the actionable insight it provided. There has been many a seminar and blog post on the subject of budget allocation in difficult economic times, but rarely do they give you a comprehensive Twelve Step guide to exactly what you must be thinking about. I’ve fleshed out the 12 steps with some of my own thoughts and examples to try and give you an idea what Tim was getting at.

Retention

The credit crunch has meant cheaper prices and more competition in many ways. One way to retain your customer’s patronage is through excellent customer service. Acquiring new customers costs way more than keeping current ones - so make sure you keep the ones you have happy!

Intention

Search engine marketing has exacerbated the notion of intent among consumers online. Trying to understand user intent, why they are using the particular keywords they do, can have a dramatic effect on ROI. Tor Crockatt gives some great tips in this post on Keyword Research. My favourite example from her is “iron” – are they looking for a clothes iron, iron maiden, soldering iron, iron man events or iron supplements? Having a better handle on HOW your customers might look for your product or service gives you a head start in connecting them with it more efficiently.

Attention

We’ve moved on from traditional media. There’s obviously still a place for advertising on TV, radio and press but the lines between consumers online and offline worlds are starting to blur. Media integration is becoming more and more the norm and you need capture and hold your audience’s attention in more innovative ways. See Nick Drew’s Search and Display Research to see how it pays dividends.

Detention

Marketing has to more than just sending out message and telling folks about your product or service. Remember that you have a brand to promote and the best way is to encourage some kind of engagement and interaction. Rich Media display campaigns are proving an excellent way to detain customers for a few moments playing a game or watching a video. In the UK, MSN recently co-branded the Tech and Gadget page with Barclaycard using banner ads and animation to encourage users in to see their TV ad online. Another example from MSN France lets users get the hang of an EA Games title, shooting up the homepage and watching a short video.

Coordination

Because we’re exposed to so much different media all the time and different sorts of media will inform our purchasing decisions, it’s important to coordinate your media so it’s interwoven into the buying cycle. It’s no use spending £XXXm on a TV commercial if you’re not bidding on your brand name and associate generic terms in search. The chances are many people now watching TV will have a laptop to hand to search for your product or service if it takes their fancy. Ensuring your dots are connected is crucial. You have to be “in it to win it!”

Collaborate

Consumers are getting more and more involved with brands now. Companies are asking customers to sign up to websites and upload videos or giving the public the chance to influence what happens next in an ad. Whether it’s a competition to design a new pair of trainers or an online petition to bring back a 1980’s chocolate bar, using social media to let users build your brand for you and determine the direction of the product is becoming a very powerful tool.

Differentiate

Use the downturn to your advantage. By holding your nerve you’ll not only benefit from potentially cheaper rates for media, but you’ll keep your audience and may well fare better when we start coming out of the current crisis. You’ll be different from the many companies who may well completely pull their budgets because you’ll still be there in front of potential customers. But you may have to adapt your message while the dark times are here. I’ve noticed some retailers suggesting people buy their Christmas presents now in October to spread the cost. What a great and very helpful idea?!

Speculate

Everyone said this year would be the year for mobile advertising – “not me guv!” – they also said that about last year and the year before that. Well given the circumstances, although it might not exactly explode next year, it makes sense to allocate some budget to experimenting in new and different areas so you have the knowledge, skills and understanding for when the up-turn starts and those channels do become mainstream.

Analyse

Do I need to say more? After all this is an Analytics Blog!

Plagiarise

Not literally, but you do need to do some competitive analysis. Who are your competitors? How are they advertising? Why are they advertising in that channel? What are they doing differently? How can you do it better?

Optimise

More than ever, your campaigns need to be optimised. As consumers tighten their belts, your marketing needs to have laser-like precision. Folks may take longer to decide on what product to buy so this has to be taken into account. Check on seasonality, geographic considerations, day-parting and demographics in order to get the most bang for your buck.

Economise

Try to move beyond traditional budget allocation methodologies. The sheer amount of data that we now get from online means we have more sophisticated ways to prove that different approaches to spending money are effective.

- Potential ability to understand multiple and complex relationships

- Justification of “ad investment vs return”

- Optimisation of best marketing mix

- Ability to use past to predict future

Tim’s last quote was a classic – literally:

“He who does not economise……will have to agonise” – Confucius 551 BC – 449 BC

Do let us know your thoughts on these tips or if you have any to add.

Cheers

Mel

Are You Doing Anything Differently During The Downturn?

Mel Carson - MSFT — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:25:00 GMT

After blogging yesterday about the IAB’s announcement of excellent growth in online advertising in the UK, it got me thinking that although we gave advertisers some tips on how to optimise your PPC campaigns in these lean times - what about the other end of the process?

In a downturn we tend to “batten down the hatches” and spend more time being careful about where we spend our budgets to maximise ROI.

But does this economic turbulence mean you MEASURE anything differently?

Are there any particular KPIs or metrics that you find have been magnified by all this uncertainty?

Is there anything you are doing differently that you weren’t before?

Please share any tips you have with fellow readers so we can weather the storm together!

Analysing Your Bottom Line at NMA Live in London

Mel Carson - MSFT — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:48:00 GMT

Join us at New Media Age’s NMA Live event on Thursday 2nd October at the Hotel Hesperia near London’s Victoria Station.

Titled: “Digital in difficult times - How to make your digital marketing budget work harder”, I’ll be on a panel with representatives from other search engines, talking about how to get the best out of your PPC campaigns in an increasingly gloomy economic climate.

Web analytics and how advertisers can dig deeper for actionable insight will be a theme I’ll be exploring during the panel.

I’m also very much looking forward to the other sessions on measuring marketing spend and how social media can contribute to your profitability in these lean times.

Hope to see you there!

Cheers

Mel

10 Second Tip: Compare Metrics At A Glance

Mel Carson - MSFT — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:58:00 GMT

With the latest beta release of adCenter Analytics we introduced the dashboard view.

This customizable visualization gives you a snapshot of your sites traffic including top pages, keywords and referring websites.

Today’s tip shows you how to do a quick comparison of metrics by day, week or month for the previous period.

After logging into adCenter expand the dashboard to expose the calendar view.

To assess any difference by day, just click to select the date you want to compare.

You’ll see in the dashboard’s Traffic Summary a quick indication of how well the days compare. Obviously something to investigate here with such a large drop in day-to-day traffic.

To compare the previous month, select the month you want to compare.

The dashboard’s Traffic Summary show this sites traffic is holding steady.

Let us know what you think about this feature and if you want us to blog about any other aspect of adCenter Analytics.

Understanding Visitor Behavior - The adCenter Analytics Path Report

Jonathan Tuliani - MSFT — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:22:00 GMT

Today, we’re continuing our deep dive into features released in our recent Beta refresh.

We've touched previously on The Dashboard, The Treemap Report and The Entry & Exit Page Report and continue the reporting theme by talking about the adCenter Analytics Path report.

Most analytics reports tell you about the visitors to individual pages of your web site. By contrast, the Path report shows you how visitors actually navigate through your site, from page to page. This information can be very valuable in understanding user behavior and identifying problem pages.

Setting up the Path report

Before viewing the Path report, you first need to set up which paths to track:

· Log into adCenter

· Click the Analytics tab

· Click ‘manage’ your settings for the chosen profile

· Then ‘Configure reports’

· Finally, click on ‘Path reports’

You should now see a list of your active Path reports. In the example below, there’s just one report, ‘From home page’ (you can have up to 5 such reports).

On clicking ‘Add new path report’, you’ll be prompted to enter a name for the report, the focal page URL, and the type of the report (paths from a source page, or paths to a target page). In this example, we’ve created a report tracking how users get to our help page.

When you edit an existing path report, you can only edit the name. To change the focal page or report type, you need to create a new report.

That’s it! Your report is set up and will start capturing data. You may want to wait a day or two before viewing the report, when meaningful data has been gathered.

Viewing the report

To view the Path report, return to the profiles page and view the reports for your selected profile. Expand the ‘Paths’ menu to see your current Path reports, then click the report you want to see.

The report tracks path views. Each time a visitor navigates to the focal page, that’s the start of a new path view (for paths from a source page—it’s the end of a path view for paths from a target page). You can have more than one path view in a session, and they can even overlap. The maximum path length tracked is 7 pages (including focal page).

The path report is an explorative tool. Rather than simply showing static data, you can browse through the tree of paths taken by your users. You can see if the actual site navigation matches that intended by the site design—and thereby identify problem areas to improve or new features to add.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

Example: Paths from the Home Page

This is the most obvious report—tracking visitor paths as they navigate from your home page.

You can see the number of path views for your home page on the left—as the focal page, these always equate to 100%. Branching from this you can see which pages the visitors went to next, and in what numbers.

In this example, you can see that many visitors entering the offers section are either returning to the home page or product listings, or leaving the web site altogether. This suggests a problem with the ‘offers’ page that is confusing users. Fixing this page should improve site performance.

Example: Paths to the Help Page

The Path report also allows you track paths to a target page. In our second example, we track paths to the ‘help’ page, to better what users were doing before they got stuck.

In this case, you can see that a large proportion of users visiting the help page are coming from the ‘samples’ page. Of these, a sizeable proportion has come from the ‘checkout’ page—a navigation not intended by the site designer. Perhaps there is a problem with the site navigation that is confusing users—this should be investigated.

Let us know what you think of this new feature and thanks for reading!

Jonathan

“Hits” Are Successful Pop Songs – Not A Web Success Measurement

Mel Carson - MSFT — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:55:00 GMT

Summer has arrived here in London (!) so yesterday I took myself up to Sheen Common to watch some village cricket in the blazing sunshine.

Accompanied by an assortment of Sunday newspapers, I couldn’t help but spot the word “hits” being spattered around various articles as a supposed indication of a website’s success.

I’m not sure where the term came from (maybe someone can enlighten me) but I do know that it is somewhat passé and should be expunged from our vocabularies when talking about web metrics.

A website’s success is determined by so many different variables it is difficult to sum up in one word or phrase.

We’ve talked on this blog before about Bounce Rate, Visitor Loyalty and Actionable KPIs.

Really it’s a combination of these insights that help paint a true picture of how well a website should be regarded.

But if this is getting too complicated for a feature story in a glossy magazine, we should at least move away from the word “hits!”

Maybe talk in terms of visitors or visits or even page views?

Whatever we do, using the correct web analytics vernacular is paramount in helping to educate and evangelise just how important and effective web success measurement is.

Check back soon where we’ll be defining adCenter Analytics metrics in detail.

How Much Are You Investing In Analytics?

Mel Carson - MSFT — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:00:00 GMT

In the UK last week Brand Republic reported that UK spend on search engine marketing would reach £2.75bn this year.

However, just a tiny fraction of that cash - £330m - was spent on the art of SEO or search engine optimisation. The lion's share of web site owner's budget went on paid search solutions like Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter.

SEO is an essential and vital route to improving usability and search engine visibility of web sites. So with what appears to be a disproportionate amount of time and money being allocated to this fine discipline, it made me wonder how much was being invested in web analytics.

When I say investment, I mean investment in people. Although many web analytics tools cost money to run, some are now free but you still need people to make sense of the data they provide.

At Microsoft we have full time analysts pouring over dashboards of data, setting benchmarks and looking out for actionable insight.

Some might say that having dedicated resource is a luxury a large company like Microsoft can afford - and they might be right!

But that doesn't prevent company leaders from coaching their marketing manager or webmaster to spend an hour a day keeping an eye on what traffic trends might be exploited.

Investment doesn't necessarily mean spending a lot of cash.

A few hundred dollars on a training course at a conference for someone in your company who's interested in data could result in thousands of dollars made or saved.

Paid search is an incredibly valuable lead generator and marketing channel, but in order to build a better web experience for users we need to better understand their behaviour and then act - that means investing a little more time and energy into web analytics and SEO.