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Archives for March 2010

Mobile Visitor Trending and The Impact On Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Campaigns

March 29, 2010 By Glenn Gabe

The impact of mobile visitors on paid search ROI.

All you have to do is look around you right now to see the power (and promise) of mobile technology. Everyone is holding some form of mobile device, whether that’s a smartphone like an iphone or blackberry, or a feature phone (which is a marketing term for a standard cell phone with relatively basic functionality). And as mobile devices gain traction, more and more people are accessing the web via mobile browsers to research information, buy products, sign up for your services, contact local businesses, etc. It’s becoming hard to ignore that fact.

Based on what I explained above, here are two important questions to ask yourself:

1. Do you know how many mobile visitors are browsing your site?

2. Are those mobile visitors able to accomplish what they need to do on your site (and what you want them to do)?

Some Examples of Mobile Trending

Let’s take a quick look at mobile trending since January of 2009 for three sites that I control. Although the percentage of total site traffic still isn’t staggering, the trend is clearly on the rise (and especially over the past six months).

The Increase in Mobile Visits Since January 2009:Trending of mobile visitors since January 2009

Trending of mobile visitors since January 2009

Trending of mobile visitors since January 2009

Note: To view mobile trending, I used a regular expression in Google Analytics to include only screen resolutions under 320×480 (which is a smart method of filtering mobile visits documented by Craig Hordlow on iMediaConnecton). Although Google Analytics added mobile tracking in October of 2009, that doesn’t give us enough data (due to the timeframe). You can filter mobile visits a number of ways, but I like the screen resolution method when looking back in time.

How This Impacts Your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Efforts

If more people are visiting your website via mobile devices, and you are paying for some of that traffic, how does that impact your ROI? I’ve provided three points to consider below with regard to mobile visitors and paid search.

1. SEM Targeting (Along With Other Campaign Targeting)
There are times that search engine marketers do a great job mapping out campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads, but still the campaigns aren’t driving the ROI that they were expecting. For some of these campaigns, unintended mobile visitors could be dragging down your return. I recommend checking your campaign settings to see if you are targeting mobile devices and then checking the user experience for those visitors. You might find that those visitors have a horrible user experience when visiting your website (such as your site design breaking when it renders on mobile devices). For example, if you have a nifty JavaScript-based hero image that’s not rendering properly or a slick flash element that cannot be displayed (with no alternative content). Heck, your navigation might not even be showing up. From an analytics standpoint, you can typically identify a serious issue by checking the bounce rate for any given ad group in SEM. If you see a high bounce rate, then you would obviously want to dig deeper to learn more. For example, you might see a bounce rate of 85% or higher for certain ad groups. While checking your campaign settings, you might just find that mobile targeting is turned on, and more importantly, that your site isn’t ready for it. This is why I typically recommend setting up separate campaigns targeting mobile users versus mixing mobile and desktop targeting (but that’s for another blog post).

In case you are wondering what a broken site looks like in a mobile browser, I’ve provided screenshots of sites not rendering or working properly below:

Visitors Won’t Be Able To Get Very Far If They See This:

JavaScript inhibiting the proper display of a website on mobile browsers.

Unless You Are Selling Blank Boxes, This Won’t Suffice:

Tiffany's content not rendering on mobile browsers.

The Screenshot Below Might Look OK, But I Added Three Products To My Shopping Cart & The Site Wouldn’t Actually Add Them…

Mobile e-commerce not working on mobile browsers.

A Note About The Google Content Network & Mobile Applications
The Content Network can be a very powerful driver of traffic for your website, however, it also presents some challenges. For example, if you are targeting mobile devices across the content network, then your ads can show up on mobile applications too. Given the widespread use of some mobile apps (across iPhone and Android), you might end up with a lot of traffic via mobile visitors. If your site cannot handle those visitors, you’ll be throwing away a lot of money…

2. Obstacles to Conversion
Based on what I explained above about sites not rendering properly, you can imagine the impact on conversion. Actually, there won’t be any conversions from mobile visitors. :) But let’s say your site does render ok and mobile visitors are able to browse your website. That’s great, but can those visitors accomplish what they want to on your site (and what you need them to do in order to convert?) When I’m helping clients with analytics, I often talk about conversions and events, which are actions that are important to your company. These actions provide value and do not represent meaningless numbers. For example, revenue, downloads, requests for more information, contacting your sales department, subscribing to your RSS feed, etc.

So, if you are focusing on outcomes (conversions, events, etc.), then you probably want to make sure that mobile visitors can reach those outcomes. For example, if you run an ecommerce website, can visitors purchase from your site? If you focus on lead generation, can visitors contact you via the site, if you want people to download your ebook, can they submit the form that gets them to the download page? The quick way to understand how your site performs across mobile devices is to test it directly from those devices. You might find some interesting things as you traverse your site on a mobile device…

Excellent Examples of Providing Content Targeted for Mobile Visitors:

Amazon.com provides one of the best mobile shopping experiences on the web: You can read more about Amazon.com and Mobile e-Commerce in a previous blog post of mine.

Mobile e-Commerce and Amazon.com
Mashble Provides a Mobile-Optimized Version of the Site Content:

Mashable's mobile-optimized content..
Best Buy Also Provides a Streamlined Shopping Experience for Mobile Visitors:

Mobile e-Commerce on Best Buy's website.

3. Video and Rich Media for Mobile Visitors
Online video is booming and it can definitely be an important component to your content development strategy. However, be very careful if your content relies heavily on video (when it comes to mobile visitors). Most of the visitors from mobile will not be able to see that really cool video on your landing page, and worse, that video element could end up breaking your page as it renders. I’m not saying to exclude video from your campaigns. You should just understand your audience and the targeting capabilities available via SEM. Then you can plan accordingly. For example, you can create a landing page for mobile visitors, you could redirect all mobile visits to a mobile-ready section of your site, etc. The worst thing you could do is spend $10-$20K on a killer video only to have it inhibit the very thing you are looking to do…convert visitors.

Your Next Mobile Steps
Mobile is rapidly growing and you should expect more and more visitors from mobile devices as 2010 progresses. If you are running paid search campaigns, understand the targeting capabilities available and adjust accordingly. Work with your development team on testing and refining your landing pages and site content to ensure they are mobile-friendly. You never know, you might be able to implement some minor adjustments that can make a big difference conversion-wise.

Just look for that 95% bounce rate and then dig deeper. :)

GG

Filed Under: google-analytics, mobile, SEM, web-analytics

SES NY 2010 Series: Augmented Reality and Mobile Marketing, An Interview With Rachel Pasqua of iCrossing

March 16, 2010 By Glenn Gabe

Augmented Reality and Mobile Marketing.This is the second post in my SES NY 2010 series. The conference is only one week away and I’ll be covering it again via blogging and Twitter. As part of my coverage, I’m writing a few posts about sessions that piqued my curiosity. As I was scanning through the list of topics being covered at this year’s conference, it was hard not to be interested in the session about Augmented Reality (AR). AR is the hot new technology that merges real world data with computer generated elements, and it provides a world of opportunity for mobile marketers.

Last week I was able to speak with Rachel Pasqua, the Director of Mobile Marketing at iCrossing, who will be co-presenting the session titled “Augmented Reality: A Brave New World”. The session will focus on how marketers can use Augmented Reality to create new and engaging ways to connect with consumers. The session is being held from 4:45PM-5:45PM on Tuesday, March 23rd. And if you’re not that familiar with Augmented Reality, you’re not alone. Although there has been quite a bit of buzz about AR over the past year or so, there are still many marketers scratching their heads about how to best use the technology.

Augmented Reality and The Blistering Speed of Online Marketing

Online marketing is now moving at a blistering pace. That’s up from a staggering pace last year, and an astounding pace the year before. :) It’s part of what I love about the industry. Augmented Reality is one of the most recent advancements, and I find there’s a lot of confusion about what it actually is, how you can use it, and what the future looks like for the technology. Currently, the iPhone is driving AR, based on how many devices are in the market and the ability to easily develop iPhone apps. Then of course, you have the app store, which then makes it easy to market and sell apps once developed.

What Is Augmented Reality?

As mentioned above, Augmented Reality combines computer generated elements with real world data. For example, an AR Twitter app for your iPhone might superimpose other Twitter user profiles that are in your vicinity, based on the GPS signal on your mobile device. Another example would be the ability to virtually try on clothes via an application that uses your webcam mixed with computer images from an online store. Although there are endless ideas for using Augmented Reality, the technology is still extremely new (which somewhat limits the real-world possibilities for marketers in the short-term). You can build the best app in the world, but it’s worthless if few people understand how to use it! Many of the AR apps available now still struggle with providing the value needed to gain traction, but that’s definitely starting to change. For example, Zugara recently launched a shopping app that enables you to virtually try on clothes via your webcam. It looks pretty cool, and definitely provides more value than many of the AR apps on the market. I expect more of these types of AR apps to hit the market in 2010.

My Interview About Augmented Reality With Rachel Pasqua

Rachel Pasqua of iCrossing.Based on my interest in Augmented Reality, I was able to track down Rachel Pasqua to ask her some questions about her session. Since Rachel is neck deep in mobile marketing, I was eager to hear her thoughts about Augmented Reality, the future of the technology, and how marketers can use AR to connect with consumers. I found that Rachel provided a very real-world view of the technology (no pun intended).

So without further ado, here is my interview with Rachel:

Glenn: What are the top two or three things people will learn at your session?

Rachel: Like most new technologies, AR is mostly being used right now for its own sake (because marketers are excited about using this new technology.) My presentation, entitled “What’s the ROI of AR?” will focus on ways in which various verticals can use Augmented Reality to support real marketing goals, as well as simple tips for getting started.

Glenn: Can you provide some innovative ways that companies are starting to use AR in their marketing efforts?

Rachel: The only truly innovative usage I have seen so far is the United States Postal Service’s Virtual Box Simulator. It’s a great example of AR being used to provide a service and improve the overall customer experience.

Glenn: Is there a high cost of entry to developing AR applications? Also, what type of turnaround is there for developing an app?

Rachel: The cost of developing an app all depends on the complexity of the app itself, what you put into it, and who develops it. You could get a freelance app developer to build you one for ~$25K or you could hire a hot agency to concept, design and market one for $150K+. Like all digital marketing, it really all depends on what you’re trying to achieve. There are several AR SDKs out there that can be used to implement the actual AR functionality so there’s not much additional cost to developing an AR app versus any other kind.

Glenn: Are there many vendors or developers that are up to speed on the technology?

Rachel: Yes, many – AR is one of the most promising new areas of mobile marketing so this is something developers are pretty excited about.

Glenn: Are there services, software or tools on the market that can help companies develop and employ their own applications (without external development)?

Rachel: The LAYAR API is probably the best known right now. http://layar.com/

Glenn: Are there any case studies you are going to provide (along with statistics) about AR apps?

Rachel: None that I’m aware of just yet – this is all so new and most examples are gratuitous use of technology rather than well planned out marketing initiatives.

———————————

If you are interested in learning more about mobile marketing and how Augmented Reality works, then you should definitely check out Rachel’s session at SES. Again, the session is titled “Augmented Reality: A Brave New World” and is being held from 4:45PM-5:45PM on Tuesday, March 23rd. I believe the session will give you a solid understanding of how AR is currently being used, as well as what the future looks like for the technology. Now, let me go virtually try on some new cargo shorts via Zugara. :)

If you have any questions, post them below. Either Rachel or myself will respond.

GG

Filed Under: mobile

Advanced Segmentation in Google Analytics: How to Set Up and Use Advanced Segments to Analyze Social Media Traffic

March 4, 2010 By Glenn Gabe

How to set up and use advanced segments in Google Analytics to analyze social media traffic.When I’m helping clients analyze website traffic and performance, I try and help them avoid the time-consuming process of “report browsing”. Instead, I emphasize entering the process with a very specific goal in mind. You need a purpose when diving into reporting or else you run the risk of spending hours scanning metrics with nothing to show at the end but a headache and a bottle of Visine. I also emphasize focusing on actionable data, or information you can analyze and then make decisions based on. This is why segmentation is so important. I’ll explain more about segments below, but for now think of a segment as a slice of your site traffic (based on traffic source, type of visitor, etc.) For the example I provide in this post, visitors from Social Media websites could be a segment of your site traffic.

Back to web analytics and actionable data. Aggregate data from a broad view of your site traffic doesn’t tell you very much. However, data related to specific traffic sources, locations, keywords, and campaigns can reveal incredible information (and you can act on that data). For example, an aggregate website bounce rate of 70% tells you almost nothing. You cannot take action from that metric alone, since you might have dozens of traffic sources all with varying bounce rates. Some may be low (15-20%), while others may be extremely high (90%+). If you just focus on the average bounce rate at the site level, you won’t be able to make an impact easily. On the flip side, if you had a 70% bounce rate for a specific ad group in paid search (which focuses on a specific theme based on your product line), then you know there’s a problem. That’s actionable data. You can then start to analyze the keywords you are bidding on, the ad text you are using, the landing pages you are driving visitors to, etc. And actionable data impacts conversion, revenue, registrations, and overall campaign performance.

The Social Media Segment

With all the buzz about social media marketing, many companies are trying to figure out how to effectively analyze traffic from social media sites. Sure, it’s easy to see visits from social media sites, but in order to understand the impact of that traffic, you need to dig deeper and have a clearer view. It’s sometimes hard to analyze the specific data you want when several sources of traffic are mixed in your reporting. It can get extremely frustrating to say the least. For example, what content on your site do social media visitors consume the most, how engaged is that traffic segment, how much revenue do they generate, do they return to your site, so on and so forth. So, wouldn’t it be great to isolate that traffic and then run Google Analytics reporting just for that custom segment? The good news is that you can set this up using one of the most powerful features of Google Analytics – Advanced Segmentation.

What is Advanced Segmentation?

Setting up advanced segments in Google Analytics enables you to analyze very specific slices of traffic. Instead of analyzing reporting based on major types of traffic, you can slice and dice the traffic to glean actionable insights. For example, you can set up segments for social media traffic, visitors from specific countries or cities, visitors that searched for specific keywords, campaign traffic, etc. You get the picture. It’s extremely flexible and the segments you choose to set up are based on your specific online marketing initiatives. Once you set up an advanced segment, you will only view data for that segment while you traverse your reporting in Google Analytics. Advanced Segmentation is incredibly handy, and again, you gain actionable intelligence from the reporting for the segment you are analyzing. You can view the Google Analytics help area for more information about advanced segmentation.

Setting Up Your Social Media Segment

Let’s say you’ve been focusing heavily on social media marketing and want to gain a clearer picture of how that traffic is performing. For argument’s sake, let’s say you have a Facebook page and accounts at Twitter, Stumbleupon, Delicious, and Digg. You hired a social media marketer who is managing each account and that person has started gaining traction. Based on your social media efforts, you want to find out as much as possible about how that segment is performing. Sure, you could go into referring sources and view some top-level data for each traffic source, but you want more. You want to drill into several more reports to see what content they are viewing, how much revenue they are generating, which events they are triggering, where they are located geographically, etc. Let’s get started.

How to Set Up Your Social Media Segment in Google Analytics:

1. Log into Google Analytics and find the Advanced Segments dropdown in the upper right-hand corner of your reporting. It will be located above the date range and the default segment will say “All Visits”.

Finding the advanced segments dropdown:

Finding advanced segments in Google Analytics.

2. Click the “All Visits” dropdown and find the link on the left-hand side that reads “Create a new advanced segment”.

Creating a new advanced segment:

Creating a new advanced segment.

3. Now you will see a slick drag and drop interface for creating your custom segment. I love that Google Analytics made this so intuitive. On the left hand side, you will find a list of dimensions and metrics that you can use to create your custom segment. On the right-hand side, you will find an area where you can drag those dimensions or metrics and then define them. Clicking the arrows next to each category on the left hand side will reveal all of the dimensions and metrics you can utilize.

Dragging metrics and dimensions to define a new segment:

Dragging metrics and dimensions to create a new segment.

4. For our purposes, we want to define several referring sources as our segment (various social media websites). Click the arrow icon next to “Traffic Sources” and then drag the “Source” tab to the area that says “Dimension or Metric”. The “Source” tab is located near the bottom of the list under “Traffic Sources”. When you drag the source tab over the box labeled “dimension or metric”, you will see the bounding box change from a light grey dotted line to a dark grey dotted line (indicating that you can drop it there). Once you drop the source tab in the box, Google Analytics will let you type the first few letters of the site in a text field to select the specific traffic source. Google Analytics will also auto-populate the field with your current traffic sources (as you type). So, if you start typing Twitter, you will be able to select Twitter.com. You will also notice a “condition” dropdown, which gives you the flexibility for setting matching options. For our purpose, we want to use “Matches Exactly” as we want the exact social media website.

Entering specific traffic sources to define the custom segment:

Entering specific traffic sources to define a segment.

5. Once you set up Twitter.com, you can add more traffic sources by clicking the “Add or statement” link and then dragging another “Source” tab to the dimension or metric box. Start typing Digg and then select Digg.com. Note, Google Analytics will only auto-populate sites where visits exist for your website. So if you don’t have any visitors from Digg.com, then it won’t show up. You will need to manually enter Digg.com in the field if that’s the case.

Adding more traffic sources to your custom segment:

Using the add or statement to include more metrics or dimensions.

6. Add traffic sources for Stumbleupon, Facebook, and Delicious as explained above.

7. Name your custom segment by typing in the text field below the drag and drop section you have been using up to this point. You can enter something like “Social Media Traffic” for this example.

Naming your advanced segment:

Naming your advanced segment.

8. At this point, you can click “Test Segment” to see the data that Google Analytics will pull for the segment. The “Test Segment” link is located on the right side of the screen next to your various social media traffic sources. It’s not required that you test the segment, but it’s always a good idea to ensure you set up your custom segment properly.

9. Finally, when you are ready, click “Create Segment”, which is located next to the Name Segment field mentioned earlier.

10. After creating your segment, you will be sent back to your Google Analytics reporting. Note, your new segment will not be active at this point. You will still be viewing “All Visits” until you manually select your segment. To do this, find the “Advanced Segments” area again in the upper right-hand corner of the reporting and click the “All Visits” dropdown. You should see your new segment titled “Social Media Traffic” in the list. You can click the checkbox next to “All Visits” to remove that segment from your reporting and instead check the box next to “Social Media Traffic” to include the segment in your reporting. When you click “Apply” at the bottom of the advanced segments form, you will be able to view only social media traffic in your Google Analytics reports (as defined by your segment). Voila, you’re done.

Now comes the fun part. Go ahead and browse your reporting to view data just for your social media segment. This includes the content the segment is consuming, locations they are visiting from, conversions, revenue, event tracking, return visitors, etc. Pretty cool, right? Note, you can also activate multiple segments at one time to compare them in your reporting. But, that’s for another blog post. :)

Go Ahead, Segment Away…

Although this was a quick tutorial, I hope you have a better understanding of what advanced segments are and how to use them to analyze specific slices of traffic. Based on how flexible and powerful advanced segmentation is, I plan to write more about the topic in future blog posts. So go ahead and log into Google Analytics and create some custom segments. Don’t worry about corrupting your reporting or messing up any of your data. Advanced Segments won’t hurt any of your current profiles or reporting. It simply filters data for you based on the dimensions and metrics you choose. It’s like a segmentation sandbox (less the shovel and pail of course). Have fun.

GG

Filed Under: facebook, google-analytics, linkedin, social-media, Twitter, web-analytics, youtube

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