Free Pinterest Web Analytics tool released to assist marketers

by Marketing ON 14 March 2013

Pinterest is now using your pins and providing data to brands courtesy of its new analytics tool, Pinterest Web Analytics.

In November, the social scrapbooking site started encouraging businesses to open their own accounts and create boards so users can re-pin their products. The Pinterest analytics tool, already available, takes that a step further, with websites allowed to see which products are being most re-pinned, and the amount of web traffic generated from Pinterest.

Following a similar format to that of Google Analytics – Pinterest Web Analytics’ unique sell is that it does not concentrate so much on the person, but relays information to the brands, about how they’re being discovered, and which images appeal to users.

Other companies such as Pinfluencer and Pinalyzer have been providing brands with Pinterest analytics, but many of those companies charge for the data. Pinterest Web Analytics is a free tool.

In December, Pinterest had almost 30 million unique visitors, slightly edging out Instagram, according to comScore. A December Nielsen report also showed Pinterest as the fastest growing social network on both desktops and smartphones, up 1047% and 4225% over the same period in 2011, respectively.

Pinterest is now valued at US$2.5 billion and collects no advertising revenue, so these new tools give an inkling of how the company will leverage its growing user base to make money.

With Macworld.

Google Analytics to measure social ROI

by Marketing ON 22 March 2012

The curly task of measuring ROI from social media initiatives may have just gotten a whole lot easier with Google Analytics.

The website tracking arm of Google announced new analytics features yesterday that will enable webmasters to track users who arrive from social sources and if they are converted towards a desired goal, such as a purchase, or move on without converting.

The new social reports will enable marketers to determine which social channels actually drive value and which tactics are most effective. Google claims they bridge the gap between social media and business metrics, allowing marketers to measure the full value of the social channels by helping with three things:

Identifying the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measuring how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions,
Understanding social activities happening both on and off of your site to help optimise user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs),
Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in social media marketing programs.

The social reports will allow marketers to define goals and measure which are achieved as a result of or with assistance from social channels. Marketers will also be able to measure the value of each individual social channel by seeing the conversion rates of each social network and the monetary value they drive to your business.

Engagement and conversion metrics for each social network will be tied into the same reports to show how people are interacting with content and whether it’s leading to a desired outcome.

The new reports will be available for all users over the next few weeks under the standard reporting tab of Google Analytics accounts.

Digital footprints

by Marketing ON 5 January 2012

This feature first appeared in the September 2011 issue of Marketing magazine.

They say if you really want to get to know a person, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. Matt Granfield talks to some of Australia’s savviest digital marketers and finds out how they’re tracking the digital footprints of the nation and then using that information to lead consumers to the checkout.

You’re being watched. Every move you make is being tracked.

Keep your head down. Stay calm.

Whatever you do, don’t look behind you. That’s not where they are. They’re in front. In the screen. In the computer. They know everything. Everything.

Sit down. Go to google.com/history. Log in. There it is. Everything you’ve ever searched for. How to yodel – the number to order a pizza – the answer to the pub trivia question you were asked in June 2006 (the capital of Turkmenistan is Ashgabat, in case you’ve forgotten). Google hasn’t forgotten.

And that’s just one website. There are thousands, perhaps millions more. You have been watched since the moment you first went online. The news knows what news you like. Facebook knows who your friends are. Your bank knows when you last checked your balance. Your favourite charity knows precisely what time you read your email. You will be watched tomorrow. If you’re on a computer, or a mobile device, you are being watched right now. Don’t worry though. They’re watching you for your own good.

They’re watching you, so they can help you.

Does it sound creepy? You’d want to hope not, because you’ve probably done a bit of watching yourself.

You’re a marketer. You use Google Analytics. You know where your visitors are from. You know how long they stay. You know what keywords they use to find your site and you know which pages they visit. Whether you realise it or not, you’ve been placing cookies on their computer so you know when they come back. It’s all good though, cookies are cute. Cookies never hurt anybody.

Actually, that’s a lie. Maureen Govern was hurt by cookies… 650,000 of them, in fact. Govern was the chief technology officer at AOL in 2006 and she was in charge when the company publicly released the search history of 650,000 users for ‘research’ purposes. The users were identified only by a number, but The New York Times did some snooping and discovered that it was fairly easy to connect a person’s search history to a person. They released some names, and let the world know there were people out there searching for ‘Beauty and the Beast Disney porn’, among other more sordid queries. Govern resigned.

Your search history may be vanilla by comparison, but that doesn’t make your digital footprints any less interesting to marketers. In fact, as the world’s information shifts into a digital cloud, smart marketers are getting more and more sophisticated in the measurements they take – if you can learn to read the cloud properly, you’ll know when it’s about to rain money – and the technology is getting a lot more sophisticated than Google Analytics.

The shift from website analytics to customer intelligence

While Google’s website visitor analysis program (or its earlier forefathers) was the first stepping stone on a path to online enlightenment for many marketers, companies like Experian have made multimillion-dollar businesses out of showing companies a lot more than just the IP address of a user. In fact, online customer behaviour is now starting to drive innovation in areas as diverse as product development, supply chain management and purchasing trends.

Matt Glasner, general manager of Experian Marketing Services, explains how the world has changed. “Australian consumers are spending more and more time in the online space. The increase in digital media usage has subsequently increased the collection and analysis of data, which was very difficult in an analogue world,” he says.

“Not only are organisations now capturing customer data from online activity, they’re also analysing and drawing insights from the activity. The data that this consumer activity provides can drive innovation through the detailed measurement of customer and market data that is more readily available in a digital world.

“Businesses can take this data and use it for not only product development, but also marketing material. For example, (budget electronics retailer) Kogan recently launched above the line ads based on recent real-time social media feedback, so they are taking the sentiment of their existing customers online and replicating this to their target audiences on a larger scale above the line.

“When businesses harness the power of these technologies and interact directly with consumers online, they provide a faster, more relevant and responsive way of engaging with existing and potential customers.”

And that engagement gets a whole lot more profitable once you can lead it down a sales funnel in an online shopping environment.

Paul Downs is the co-founder and director of Hitworks, an ecommerce consultancy that helps retailers make the most of their online stores. A former CIO (chief information officer) of City Beach, he decided to start Hitworks when he realised just how little Australian retailers knew about what was actually possible when they started tapping into the data available online.

“One of the biggest opportunities online is in the wealth of data you can capture through the transactions your customers are making,” says Downs.

“The data allows you to get a much better understanding of what your customers’ buying patterns are, and you can start a dialogue with them and you’re then able to tune promotions to what they’re looking for. Through continual harvesting of information on their buying patterns, and by talking to them, you can start to do that. You can get to a level of sophistication where your ecommerce system tailors the products that are presented to the customer when they come to the site. The Utopia is that you end up presenting the right product at the right price to the right person at the time they’re looking for it.

“Amazon is a good example. When I log in to my Amazon account, it recommends me products because it knows what I look at and it knows what I’ve bought. So, rather than me logging in and just cruising around looking for stuff, it says, ‘Hey, you might be interested in this’.”

Downs says smart retailers are doing more with user data than just deciding which products to show people. Smart marketers, he believes, use data to profile their customers in detail and then use that knowledge over time.

“Great retailers in this space understand their customers’ consumption behaviours and are therefore better placed to understand what a certain type of customer will spend in a given cycle, say annually. That then drives the level of discount and offers presented to that customer to drive increased sales.

“My experience with a number of Aussie retailers is that they are a million miles away from the concept of customer intelligence, let alone the execution of it – which means there is a fantastic opportunity for those prepared to embrace what Europe and the US have been doing for some time.

“For example, if you know customer type ‘A’ spends a few thousand dollars with you a year, you’re more likely to give them a 20 percent discount than someone who shops with you once. The software and platforms to do this are available now.”

Remarketing

But it’s not just website visitors who are providing marketers with digital footprints to follow. Tracking technology is now being applied to online advertising, allowing brands to target ads to people who’ve visited their website once they’re long gone.

In 2010, Google launched an innovative ad product called Remarketing, which allows advertisers to show ads to users who’ve previously visited their website as they then go on to browse the web. It works by allowing a company to tag pages of its site that correspond to certain categories it wants to promote. For example, an electronics retailer could add a ‘TV’ tag on all of the pages where it sells televisions and then create an AdWords campaign to show messages to people who’ve visited these pages as they browse TV-related sites across the Google Display Network (publishers who have elected to display Google ads on their web pages).

Google Remarketing product manager Aitan Weinberg says companies have been quick to embrace the technology.

“We rolled out Remarketing one year ago across the Google Display Network, and we think we have a hit on our hands,” he says. “In 2010, the total number of advertisers using Remarketing grew an average of 113 percent every quarter after launch.”

He adds that Google is continuing to develop the product and is beginning to use complex algorithms to mine user data for the best results.

“In the year since launch, we’ve boosted performance and scale with three key enhancements to make Remarketing even more powerful for the largest to the smallest of advertisers. First, we now enable you to show a relevant ad right after a potential customer leaves your site, when our internal analysis shows they’re most likely to click. Second, we’ve improved the algorithm that helps determine, in real time, how much you should pay for each impression in order to maximise the possibility that a user will click on your ad. Finally, the growing reach of the Google Display Network means you can reach your customers on more and more sites across the web.

While Google can’t point to any specific Australian case studies, Weinberg highlights three US firms that have experienced success with the program:

the Yankee Candle Company, which used Remarketing to re-engage shoppers and increased conversion rates by 600 percent while cutting cost-per-conversion in half
Lenovo, which increased sales by 20 percent and lowered its overall expense-to-revenue ratio by 14 percent in a campaign that included Remarketing and display across multiple networks, and
etrailer.com, an online towing parts retailer that saw twice the click-through rate at a 75 percent lower cost-per-click with Remarketing, compared to its typical display advertising campaigns.

Digital footprints in email and B2C communications

While the retail industry is starting to get display advertising runs on the board by utilising smart data, it’s still the one traditionally struggling to get its head around how to communicate directly with consumers without being labelled as spammers.

Lisa Arthur, chief marketing officer of marketing automation software company Aprimo, says that satisfying educated consumers requires that marketers provide the right information, when, where and in what forms these educated consumers want it.

“The blast campaigns of the past produce low response rates, and just a half a percent spam complaint rate will start to get you blocked by major mailbox providers all over the world,” she explains. “As a result, marketers must master new ways to answer critical, long-standing questions about the overall effectiveness of both traditional and new interactive online marketing programs. For example, what level of interest was generated by last week’s special offer? Is the marketing program reaching the desired demographic regions?”

Arthur says that to take full advantage of interactive marketing, B2C marketers need to adopt a holistic approach based on the simplification of processes and the integration of deep customer intelligence.

“Email blasts of the past have been replaced with online marketing that creates a dialogue with consumers, requiring the creation of custom content that can hold the attention of the educated consumer,” she says.

Arthur outlines three key ways a B2C marketing strategy should be using data to achieve maximum results:

built-in capabilities for triggered/event-based email marketing to allow marketers to personalise content and introduce rules-driven communications that can be scheduled to meet campaign objectives
interactive dialogues that can be triggered from email or landing page responses, as well as web-browsing history on company website properties, and
the ability to quickly and flexibly set up m-sites, landing pages, and forms to suit each project.

Arthur says that interactive marketing also requires marketers getting access to the right information – particularly in heavily ‘siloed’ organisations where IT, customer service and marketing all keep different sets of data on who is interacting with the brand.

“Customer data is typically gathered and managed by multiple departments and organisations within each business,” says Arthur. “Many marketing tools limit the amount and type of customer data that can be referenced. B2C businesses must fully leverage deep data drawn from multiple channels from offline connections to email response, form and survey data and company website browsing history. As a result, marketers can create highly focused content for uniquely engaging customer experiences.”

Successful campaigns, she says, should be able to segment users into groups based on the frequency of marketing communications they respond to, send ‘win back’ messages to those recipients who aren’t engaging, use social media to invite opt-in subscription requests from new fans and followers, and create interactive experiences on dedicated landing pages to engage users.

“Clearly, to build trust and loyalty, you can’t spam your customers and their contacts. The era of the educated consumer is here, unleashing revolutionary changes in how B2C marketers must interact with audiences. Nowhere is this new balance of dialogue, education and selling more evident than on the web,” concludes Arthur.

Google’s secure search and missing data

by Anthony Contoleon ON 8 December 2011

It has been a month since Google started to replace keyword data with ‘(not provided)’ for Google.com organic search traffic. SSL (secure sockets layer) search was released on October 18 for American users and was made the default option for every search done on Google.com. Since this change, keywords used in a search done with Google’s SSL search now appear as ‘(not provided)’ in all analytics packages, including Google’s own. Making SSL search the default for their users is the latest way that Google is incorporating the SSL encryption protocol with more of their services.

Currently Google’s SSL search only restricts what user generated data it passes on in a few ways. Keyword data won’t be passed on if:

the user is using Google.com
the user is currently logged in, or
the user clicks on an organic link in the normal search results.

However, for searches performed through SSL search, keyword data will be passed on if:

the user is not using Google.com
not logged in, or
clicks on a paid AdWords link in the normal search results

The amount of search traffic affected by this change seems to match the informal estimates of Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam team. Some online marketers are starting to report higher numbers within their own verticals – keywords appearing as ‘(not provided)’ mostly represent just a single digit percentage of organic search in the States, and even less for the rest of the world. In Australia, unless the site’s audience is from the USA or especially web savvy, it is rare to see more than 1% of keyword referrers returning as ‘(not provided)’. As more users remain logged in to use services such as Gmail, YouTube and Google+, the amount of keyword information that will be ‘(not provided)’ will only increase.

Losing sight of the customers

Keywords are far more revealing about what a visitor is trying to do, what their interests are and how they describe products or ideas. Segmenting traffic by the words they used to arrive on the site can reveal a lot about how effective a campaign is through changes in campaign terms, identifying returning customers through navigational terms like the use of brands and URLs as queries, and also the success or otherwise of search optimisation campaigns. There is a lot more that can be done with keyword data and search is an important part of any marketing mix. This is why Google implementing SSL search matters. ‘(not provided)’ does not differentiate between a search for a product or a brand, or a store location.

On the official Analytics blog, Google indicated that keyword data available in Google Analytics through Webmaster Tools won’t be affected by SSL search. This data is far more generalised and for sites that receive a reasonable amount of traffic, won’t display all data. This data also can’t be linked to user behaviour on the site and its utility is very limited. As SSL search accounts for a greater proportion of traffic, conversion optimisation and tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns will be harder and less reliable. Until the user clicks on a paid link.

Insecure security

In fact, Google’s SSL search isn’t really that. By implementing SSL search in such a way as to continue passing keyword referral information to AdWords users, Google had to ignore some standards, such as how referrer header information is passed between HTTPS and HTTP sites.

Reading referrer information is how analytics products like Google Analytics can determine where a visit came from and associate other information with the visitor such keywords from a search engine. Under current standards HTTP sites can pass this information to HTTP and HTTPS sites, but HTTPS sites can only pass this information to other HTTPS sites and this is all handled by the browser.

If SSL search was actually following these standards, as their first secure search option on https://encrypted.google .com still does, only other HTTPS sites would see the keywords the visitor used, while HTTP sites won’t, regardless of whether the link was paid or not.

SSL search as implemented by Google on https://www.google.com/ behaves differently. It does not matter if the destination site is HTTP or HTTPS. It is the type of link clicked that determines what happens to the keyword data, rather than whether the other site is secure.

End of free data and precise metrics?

Search engines have provided traffic and invaluable insights about customers for as long as they have existed. An appreciation of the value of this data has even begun to spread beyond the Internet silos within many companies.

SSL search is going to affect more traffic over time and marketing campaigns with an online element will just have to adapt. Segmenting campaign traffic through using social media touch points and microsites are all alternatives for tracking the effectiveness of some campaigns. Increased use of AdWords is another way to collect more data, as well as traffic. Monitoring which pages appear for which terms in search is also another way to segment visitors.

Google’s market share guarantees that SSL search will have a significant impact on search engine marketing. The popularity of services such as Gmail and Google Docs will encourage more people to remain signed in as they search and as SSL search is rolled out internationally, ‘(not provided)’ will account for even more traffic. Even with all its flaws and the issues surrounding its implementation, SSL is not going to go away.

Ignorance is not bliss

by Marketing ON 20 May 2010

As a marketing manager (we do most of our stuff online) I have a budget to look after and my main goal is to maximise the return from my marketing investments. I have lots of tactical choices available – banner ads, search, print, emails, newsletter sponsorship, social media and so forth. To decide where to allocate my hard-earned budget, I generally look to the history of my various campaigns and spend more where I know I will get a better return.

The hidden problem for marketers is that many of the measurement tools being used to determine campaign outcomes are totally bogus and so the results being used to determine future marketing investments are false. Truly, you could be operating in a vacuum of blissful ignorance and not even know it!

Most of todays online web analytics tools, including Google Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends and Yahoo Analytics default to what is known as last click attribution – that is, they count the value of the conversion (sale, booking event etc) towards the last marketing activity that happened. Last Click attribution is good for measuring conversion events but will not tell you which campaign brought the customer to you in the first place – for that you would measure the First Click. And what about the other campaigns along the way that influenced the conversion? How do you measure these and make sure they get some credit as well?

The key takeaway is that depending on the attribution model you are using, your return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS) may vary dramatically, and may lead you to make different (and possibly very wrong) decisions about how to best optimise your marketing efforts.

Whilst there are some very advanced attribution techniques being deployed by some companies, the general consensus today is that an approach looking at First, Last and Average Click, side by side, is a sensible and achievable approach – and it can be done with minimal effort (and possibly a spreadsheet, if you must). Such an approach will show you which campaigns are working better for acquisition, influence and conversion – you can then weight the results to drive the campaign mix you are looking for.

A recommended action plan:

Find out which attribution model you are currently using,
Re-assess your current marketing program now that you know what your are really measuring,
Implement a First, Last and Average Click attribution model for your business,
Reconsider your mix strategy for acquisition, influence and conversion,
Make more informed and effective investment decisions,
Bask in the glory of knowing you have improved your marketing effectiveness, and
Spend your ‘Management By Objective’ bonus!

This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.

Unleashing the power of analytics

by Marketing ON 28 April 2010

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew more about how your customers and prospects interacted with your website, so you could tailor content and campaigns accordingly and increase the opportunity available to you via the web?  Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few years, you’ll know that you can. And it isn’t all that hard.  

I know I rant and rave about web analytics, but they really are the holy grail for anyone accountable for the success of the online realm of a business. And as the web plays an increasingly critical role in the battle for market share, the incremental gains that can be made online can offer major competitive advantages.

  Free tools like Google Analytics are fantastic for beginners (and let’s face it, having something is better than having nothing), but if you’re serious about your website, return on investment and continuous improvement, then a paid analytics package is essential. If you’re going to invest then you may as well measure – otherwise how will you know what success looks like?

  Start at the beginning with KPIs. What is your website trying to achieve? The whole purpose of this exercise is to help you reach these goals. From there it’s hard to know where to look first, which measurements matter and what statistics you should be monitoring. My advice? Understand your visitors and measure based on objectives. Who is doing what, when and where? Using analytics you can focus on the specifics.

  If you’re like most brands, your website will have a number of target segments – and each will have its own expectations. But I don’t need to tell you about the benefits of understanding visitor types – knowing your target audience is Marketing 101. What you should know is that web analytics can provide you with aggregated demographic and psychographic information on these segments, and then track them accordingly. How do Facebook users between the ages of 35 and 55 engage with your website differently from Twitter users under the age of 35 who access from mobile devices? These are the kinds of questions you can have answered.   

Measuring based on objectives is all about breaking down the end goal based on the actions that need to be completed in order to achieve the conversion; so that each action can be incrementally improved to increase the percentage of conversions. Have I lost you? I’ll break it down. For example, if the end goal is a sale, then the steps to achieving that sale are:

Reach the website
Go to the product catalogue
Narrow down product options
Check product details
Add product to cart
Proceed to order page
Enter details
Confirm payment

 Each of these steps is an opportunity to improve. Web analytics will tell you the types of people who are making it to each step, what they are looking at, where they are dropping off and much, much more, comparatively. From there you can make informed decisions (rather than assumptions) about how to improve each step and the process as a whole (and you may choose to do so differently for different segments). Measure changes, assess the impact and then refine further. Your options are endless – multivariate testing and A/B testing mean you can test any number of versions so you can identify the most successful in context – it’s like having your very own crystal ball.  

I always say if you can’t measure it, don’t do it, but we need to move beyond the basics in order to improve and take the next steps. Measure everything, miss nothing. From what I’ve seen, people are largely unaware of the possibilities of web analytics, and it’s an area in which companies can gain sustainable competitive advantage. More and more organisations are stepping up – so where will you be when the competition does?

Australian Business Community versus Free Web Analytics

by Marketing ON 24 November 2009

There was a gasp from the gallery! The result was not at all what the industry pundits had expected. In the case of the Australian Business Community versus Free Web Analytics, the jury had weighed up the pros and cons, considered the evidence and made their surprising decision: Free Web Analytics was guilty as charged of the crime of grossly overstating the benefit of its services and leading Australian businesses astray.

 In his judgement, the Chief Justice of the High Online Court explained that the common perception that Google Analytics was the most widely used measuring vehicle for online performance for web sites in Australia simply did not stand up to a scrutiny of the facts. “This miscarriage of justice is a travesty and should be exposed for all to see. Sure, many companies use Google Analytics, and why shouldn’t they?” he said. “After all, it is presented as a ‘free’ service, but the fact is that the majority of leading web sites in this country actually use paid analytics services. Businesses need to know this otherwise they are basing major decisions on incorrect assumptions.”

 In presenting the case for the Australian Business Community, we reviewed a group of websites crowned as ‘leaders’ by two of our nation’s most recent studies: The Amber Awards, The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association Awards, and the HitWise Online Performance Awards presented on 24 March 2009. Of all the Amber Award winners, more than 2/3 (66%) use a paid analytics service, while the Hitwise Awards showed that more than 50% of the winners using a paid analytics service.

 Not surprising is that many of these leading web sites also use Google Analytics, as well as a paid analytics service. Furthermore, the most commonly used paid analytics services were the top recognised international vendors (in alphabetical order) Coremetrics, Omniture and WebTrends. 

 A closer look at the award winning web sites revealed a trend that, in general, the more creative sites and those primarily outsourced to web development and advertising companies had a higher tendency to use the free services, while the websites that were maintained in-house were overseen by tightly managed and dedicated web marketing teams.   

This leads us to two questions: 

Why are the top sites paying for web analytics? 
Who is perpetuating the myth that Google Analytics is all a good business needs?

Companies pay for web analytics for a myriad of reasons but the most commonly heard include: 

The depth of reporting from free tools does not match the more advanced paid services
The ownership of the data is important – larger and more successful organisations tend to place a real value on owning the information about their marketing channels 
The need for information reliability and security, which generally comes from a formal Service Level Agreement, can only be provided by a paid service 
Technical support and training from the vendor is important 
Free software does not equal $0 total cost of ownership, and 
Analytics can be complex and many leading companies are looking for a business partnership, not just a vendor.

 So, who benefits from promoting the simplicity of a ‘free’ service? The vendors like Google provide analytics as a tool to help promote the expansion of their primary product (because a common outcome is that you buy more Adwords), as do Yahoo!, who also have a ‘free’ service to help promote their online services. In addition to these guys, the main promoters of the free services seem to be advertising agencies and web developers. For many agencies it an easy way to create the impression that they’re measuring the results of campaigns and can also be part of their revenue stream. For web developers, many of whom know no better, it is a quick solution for their customer needs.   

What to learn from this landmark case? The primary takeaway is that most of the major and more successful websites in Australia use paid analytics tools to drive programs of continuous improvement through their online marketing programs. Free tools are a good place to start but the really successful players value their results and invest in solutions to measure their growth and drive change.    

“This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.”

Finding Mirvac Hotels

by Marketing ON 2 October 2009

Background

Mirvac Hotels comprises 42 hotels spanning three countries, ranging from CBD accommodation to tropical resorts. Their target customers encompass both the value conscious and high end in business and leisure markets.

Mirvac Hotels had the same dilemma as any marketing focused, brand aware, multi-venue operation worldwide: generate more with less. How does group marketing offer the ability for individual hotels to respond promptly to regional needs without additional resources while retaining brand control?

Mirvac Hotels needed a better website with better content, more easily found in search engines to create better qualified traffic and generate more bookings, while still encapsulating the emotions associated with travel.

Client: Mirvac Hotels
Creative Agency: Square Circle Triangle

Objective

Square Circle Triangle’s (SCT) goal was to increase bookings by focusing on two factors: more traffic from search engines and increased user engagement with the website. Both of these factors should in turn result in an increase in booking conversions and an increase in enquiries about hosting functions and events.

In addition SCT planned to give Mirvac Hotels the ability to add content at the hotel level to respond to local needs, while retaining brand and publication control at a higher level.

Strategy

Firstly, we reviewed the available analytics and interrogated the problem. We then sought to understand the client’s resources and how to make best use of those. Finally, we came to understand the potential issues in delivering a client managed website.

Execution

We began by addressing the SEO concerns in design and through our CMS, Blocks. This meant developing Mirvac Hotel’s portal site www.mirvachotels.com.au.

Underneath this, each of the 42 hotels have a fully functioning and editable website promoting the unique nature of their hotel. The editable nature means individual hotels can respond quickly to local demands and occupancy rates. All sites have free text and map search functions that are populated from live data and search based algorithms.

The customer now has a well indexed, easy to use site with powerful text and map based search functions alongside a simple booking engine that integrates live with the hotel’s property management system. The content is tailored, optimised, relevant and fresh.

Increasing booking revenue was addressed in three ways:

Driving more traffic – primarily through high search engine rankings
Improving the user experience throughout the site
Easy and safe booking functionality

The CMS also allows Mirvac Hotels to manage the creation of new websites, email campaigns as well as contact management.

Results

The results have surpassed all expectations, with a massive increase in website traffic and revenues:

Online bookings revenue up over 300%
User engagement up 39% for pages/visit and time on site experiencing an over 100% increase.
Bounce rate 45% below benchmark for hotel sites

Search traffic was identified as a key driver of new business, so the site was designed with this in mind, and all marketing managers responsible for content creation were given SEO training. This has resulted in:

Search traffic up 161%
Search traffic from Asia up 130%, Europe 120%, non-branded search traffic up 184% (excluding Mirvacs brand names e.g. Sebel, Citigate, Sea Temple, Como, Quay West)
Search Traffic on event keywords (conference, wedding, function, event) up over 1000%, and
Non-branded search traffic 481%. This is an important metric as it excludes Mirvac’s powerful brands, which have always ranked well.

Phone call tracking add-on for Google Analytics launched

by Marketing ON 28 August 2009

UK internet and search engine marketing company ClickThrough Marketing has announced the launch of a module add-on for Google Analytics that allows users to track phone call conversions from any source including pay per click, natural rankings, forums, banners, affiliates or any online advertising channel.

Launched as a free service to its clients, the system allows marketers’ to track phone calls made on their website and display them in Google Analytics alongside other conversions like sales, enquiry forms and email subscribes.

According to the company his means marketers are able to track the true ROI of all online marketing channels and make informed decisions based on the real cost per acquisition each campaign is delivering.

Founder of ClickThrough Phil Robinson indicated the key benefits of the add-on are that the company is able to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its clients’ PPC and other online marketing activities.

“We’ve been tracking phone call conversions for years, however, this new service allows us to seamlessly track phone call data in real time alongside other key conversion points,” explained Robinson.

The call tracking module has a number of features including geographical location of callers, free call queuing, missed call alerts via email/SMS, free voice mail and customised messaging.

Grant Hardy, managing director of Liquid11 phone and SMS service provider who developed the call tracking application, agreed that Clickthrough Marketing’s add-on as an advanced call tracking the application could be implemented quickly and efficiently.

“We are confident that at this point in time the application is the most effective product available to accurately track your phone call from you web pages or website. We feel that this is the missing link for many companies, allowing them complete tracking for all aspects of their online business,” said Hardy.

Why is Google Analytics a free service?

by Marketing ON 15 January 2009

Generally in business, things that are free have some alternate
revenue stream or strategy driving them. On the internet, people have
become accustomed to using free products and services where the
revenue stream is driven by advertising on the site and most do not
think twice about taking them onboard. In the case of Google Analytics
there is no direct advertising revenue – no ads or pop ups etc. – so
there must be some other strategy at work – and as business savvy
marketers, it makes sense to understand the underlying motive behind
the free offering in case it colours the outcome of the results.
(It’s like the old adage: If you are in a meeting and you can’t work
out who is being screwed over, then it is probably you.)

Most
people don’t read online click-through licences these days – especially
for a free service – perhaps we should pay more attention to them.
The Google Analytics Terms of Service states: Google and its
wholly owned subsidiaries may retain and use… information collected in your use of the Service. This is an interesting position, and
obviously could be open to legal interpretation and challenge (at your
cost), but on the surface it may be that the company you pay for
AdWords also has access to all the resulting information of you web
site strategies and tactics? Are you cool with this?

This is not
a conspiracy theory – it is basic business sense: no business would
knowingly allow unfettered access to such important business
intelligence to a third party – even (or especially) a vendor of
related services.

Basically, you get what you pay for. The
Google Analytics Term of Service explains that there is no quality of
service of guarantee nor is there an availability or data accuracy
guarantee. In fact, the terms of service specifically call out the service levels: Google does not guarantee the service will be operable
at all times or during any down time… complete accuracy in all
aspects of your statistics at all times also is not guaranteed.

This
was reflected recently when Google admitted to having data processing
issues: Google Analytics experienced a data processing error from
April 30th to May 5th. Almost all of the data has been recovered and is
currently being reprocessed. The recovered data will be reflected in
your reports within a few days. Please note that a small percentage of
data, particularly in the area of e-commerce reporting, was not
recoverable from those dates.

As a free service, this lack of
commitment to service quality is to be expected – why would they expose
their company to such a risk without direct revenue? However, as
professional marketers coming to rely more and more on this information
to help meet our KPIs and business goals, it is worth at least
understanding the risks involved and taking action to mitigate the risk
if appropriate.

Google provide a comprehensive online technical
support FAQ but you cannot call them directly for technical support
or advice. Rather, this level of service is provided through a range of
third party Google Analytics Authorised Consultants. These
consultants, who do charge for their services, can help with installation, consulting and training. The level of support you can
expect will depend on the relationship and skills of the particular
consultant.

In may cases, web marketers rely on the unskilled,
self-learned knowledge of trusted web developers or marketing agencies
– unfortunately this can often times lead to less than optimum outcomes
for the marketer. (In fact, some advertising agencies are reported to
have implemented Google Analytics on client’s web sites and then charge
the client to run a report for the free service!)

Web savvy
marketers are embracing the dynamic reporting and statistics that are
intrinsically available in the digital world. Businesses are fast
moving beyond basic statistics (how many hits did we get on the site
last month?) to building a much deeper understanding of client
behaviour on the website (which segments from our email campaign used
a keyword search and converted in the past four months and what are they
most likely to do next?). This depth of understanding leads a marketer
to gaining a real insight into to website and client interactions – a
much more sustainable and sensible position for the business and also a
much more rewarding role for the marketer.

As businesses come to
understand more about the value and potential of information from
customer interactions on the web, they will be more likely to place a
real value on the information and less likely to make do with so
called free tools like Google Analytics and the others.

As the
perceived value of the information raises, the potential risks and
potential for loss of business knowledge will mean that data integrity,
ownership, training and support will rise to become critical factors
for all web marketers.

This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.

Is your shopping cart only half full?

by Marketing ON 8 January 2009

The interest in the recent Online Retailer event held in Sydney highlighted that most companies appear to be still struggling to fully benefit from ecommerce and offer their clients/customers a new convenient sales channel.

A number of Australian retailers are working to refine their online strategies and understand that if they are successful they can potentially make tens of millions more in revenue. With many Australian retailers still learning the ropes, you competition may only be a few steps ahead and it’s not too late to catch up.

The common project questions are what platform, shopping cart and web analytics will be best suited to your industry and budget. What can often confuse business is the sheer number of potential store platforms and shopping carts available.

For simplicity we have listed seven of the most common solutions in typically order of cost:

Paypal
Amazon/eBay stores
Out-of-the-box hosted
Custom built by web developer
Open sourced solutions
Proprietary solutions, and
Enterprise solutions.

The store cost also varies from a small investment in time and possible ongoing charge per sale to enterprise solutions costing millions. The first three options are the cheapest and quickest solutions but are not suitable for competitive industries or large stores. Many custom built solutions by web developers while appearing cost effective can often have longer term limitations, can be inflexible, non-search friendly and make it difficult to track ROI.

The best solution for ecommerce stores is typically an open sourced solution, as they offer the most flexibility, support, plugins and customisations. Proprietary solutions can be suited to complex projects or need implementation within existing CMS platforms, they can prove expensive and not always the best solution. The enterprise solution is the type that Walmart, Amazon or Woolworths would select and can be a combination of proprietary and open sourced solutions.

The main factor that can rapidly increase costs of an online store is the addition of multiple solutions such as:

Back-end fulfillment
Customer relationship management
Email marketing integration
Geo targeting/personalisation
Multiple stores
Integration with custom applications
Onsite search engines, and
Usability testing and implementation.

The more advanced options can even replace other existing sales channels as they can offer more potential benefits allowing visitors to receive the best possible experience and better ROI for the business. While these can increase initial launch costs the benefit of many of these solutions can provide to your online store with better conversion rates, reduced processing costs and even increase visitor traffic.

In this current economy many projects don’t always have the budget for a complete website rebuild so there are two effective solutions to increase your ROI. If you have an existing website solutions such as SLI Systems offer intelligent search solutions which can improve conversion rates and can assist with improved search optimisation campaign results. There are also web usability firms such as Peak Usability that have advised my clients that typical conversion rates should be around 2% and websites should be aiming for around 5%.

The focus in a successful ecommerce business should always be on quality foundations supported by the ability to correctly measure ROI and success. The key to better understanding your visitors and behaviours is having correctly implemented web analytics running within your shopping cart that combines visitor data and revenue.

Around one third of websites are still not using web analytics software and rely on the basic web server logs to understand the success of their online marketing campaigns. The problem that many of these web server logs while free, do not offer business the necessary information required to track their campaigns or refine their online marketing spend.

If you are driving visitors to your online store you need correctly implemented web analytics so you can track how much revenue each campaign or medium delivers the best revenue. While most web analytics packages support campaign tracking some allow for advanced integration with email, video & social media platforms.

Most people understand that the leading web analytics solution is now Google Analytics based purely on the volume of websites, across all industries followed by Omniture. According to my extensive research of the world’s top 1,200 public companies a majority of the world’s largest retailers are split between Google Analytics and Omniture.

While enterprise solutions such as Omniture are often suitable for large ecommerce websites, its setup and costs can make it harder for business to justify. There are other web analytics solutions that fit between Omniture and Google Analytics, listed below with links to their clients/case studies.

If you are in a particular industry it can be a good guide to check the top few sites and follow their solution for web analytics as customised packages maybe available for particular industries. So using web usability testing, onsite search and web analytics you can measure how many visitors have their shopping cart half full and better help them fill it.

Case study success stories: