Michael Smith

In the course of my networking I meet a lot of people and get a lot of business cards – every once in a while I will get a card that really stands out.

Here are three cards that lead to deeper discussion about their company and products.

The second one is a unique business card from GeekStack, a company that produces an online trading card game with a science and technology theme. The cards feature the history, people, concepts, discoveries, and events in fields like Math, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, and Biology.

The final business card is also for GeekStack and makes creative use of mathematical symbols in a typeface logo, it’s a memorable way for Peter Christensen to introduce his company. Front and Back are shown.

Guarantee you, if you were handed any of these cards you would be on their website checking them out. Let me know if you have favorite a business card.

If you have a cool business card mail us a copy and we will run another post when we get a few.

Last week we shared 10 rules to help instantly improve your presentations. While readers mostly agreed with the rules, they requested some examples of well-designed slides, so Dan and I did some digging.  We gathered some of the best examples of slides and presentation design to help provide a clear picture of what great presentation design is and isn't.

Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen, has become known for his well-designed presentations. His books and presentations have helped him become one of the most noted experts on presentation design. Here are a few sample slides from Garr that demonstrate  great before-and-after slides along with some of the best slides from his presentations.

Great presentations can be about anything. The winners of SlideShare's World's Best Presentation Contest demonstrate this well...

What do you think makes a great slide design?

Free Download: Marketing Data: 50+ Marketing Charts and Graphs

Connect with HubSpot:

Well, the Grasshopper Buzz Team is at it again. We are heading to another city (or country in this case) to meet local entrepreneurs and share some free drinks! Only this time it’s a bit more exciting than usual…

For the first time in Grasshopper History (–> Insert Star Wars Theme Music) we’re going to be able to offer Local Canadian Numbers (currently in beta but available to everyone in the next couple of months)!! We decided in honor of the occasion we needed to do something fun.

So what did we do?

We partnered with a great organization and decided to throw a fun event. We joined forces with the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF). Not only are the folks over there just as passionate about helping entrepreneurs as we are, but they do some great things to inspire & mentor young Toronto entrepreneurs.

On June 1st at 6pm Grasshopper and CYBF will take over the roof deck of The London Tap House. It’s an unbelievable venue, and the local entrepreneurs who run the place have been really awesome in working with us. Our event is 100% free and all entrepreneurs, innovators, and small business owners are welcome! You can reserve your spot and see all the details here: http://ghcanada.eventbrite.com/.

A few highlights of the night:

• 30 Minute Panel:

  Made up of young, engaging and passionate local entrepreneurs

• Topic:

  “How to build a community and WOM (word of mouth) around your brand!”

• Our Panelists:

  Saul Colt – Thoora.com’s Head of Magic @saulcolt

  Erin Bury – Community Manger at Sprouter @erin_bury

  Anthony Del Col – Founder of Kill Shakespeare @killshakespeare

• Free Drinks!

  The first 100 people will get their first drink free!!

If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, concerns, or brilliant ideas feel free to reach out to myself (Jonathan Kay – @grasshopperbuzz – jkay(at)grasshopper(dot)com) or Rachel Azagury (@CYBFcanada or razagury(at)cybf(dot)ca).

Please feel free to pass this invitation on to any friends, colleagues, or random aquantances you know in Toronto that might want to come. Register for your free ticket here: http://ghcanada.eventbrite.com/

We just moved into a new home and we are using the opportunity to say goodbye to some old trusty devices and add some new ones. At the top of that list right now is our laser printer. It's served us incredibly well for the last decade but it is time to move on.

We are looking for an awesome multi-function printer (print, scan, fax, copy) that is small enough to fit on a home office desk and works well in a networked environment.

Here are some specific requirements:

1) The max dimension envelope is 16" high, 20" wide, 22" deep

2) The printer must be accessible by everyone on our home network (we'll connect it via wired ethernet) and the scanned files should be stored on the network automatically.

3) I've always preferred laser printing to ink-jet printing but I hear that ink-jet has really improved recently. I'm open to going with ink-jet.

4) We need the ability to easily manually feed things like envelopes, cards, etc to the printer

I think those are the main requirements. Please let us know what you all think is the best multi-function printer out there for us. We really appreciate your advice and assistance.

Seven months isn’t a long time for most companies, but it’s practically an era in itself on the hyperkinetic mobile web. Since last July, Motorola has launched the Droid and Google its Nexus One. Tens of thousands of new apps have been created — Apple even finally unveiled its iPad, which could potentially rewrite the rules for mobile apps entirely.

One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is PayPal’s visibility on mobile devices. Last July, PayPal opened a beta of its open platform so that developers could embed the payment system in their applications. In November, it went further, staging a developers conference to officially open the platform and setting up the X.com site for APIs and documentation.

If the timing felt a bit slow, the strategy was sound. As AuctionBytes noted, “PayPal believes payments for services is a bigger opportunity than e-commerce.” The Times’ Bits blog painted a clear picture of what it could mean:

PayPal imagines a future in which cash is obsolete, as are wallets. We will buy movie tickets by touching a movie poster on the street and order drinks from a touchscreen embedded in the bar.

It’s a nice vision. But in the months since, PayPal hasn’t really left much of a footprint in mobile apps. I’m still paying for movie tickets mostly with cash, and the Fandango app I downloaded asks me for my credit card number, not my PayPal account. PayPal is now an option in the iTunes App Store, but few people who entered a credit card number in iTunes years ago will bother to go back and change their settings in order to use it. In short, PayPal is very much on mobile devices, but pretty much invisible.

Instead, the buzz in mobile payments in recent months has been centered on Square, whose little white dongle turns an iPhone or iPod touch into a credit and debit card reader. Square is clearly a threat to point-of-sale companies like VeriFone, but by making plastic cards even more useful on the mobile web, it could be a big obstacle to PayPal as well. You can swipe plastic through a Square reader, but not your PayPal account.

PayPal has been at once a success story and a company that hasn’t quite lived up to its potential. Its revenue has grown 45 percent in the past two years, while eBay’s main marketplace business has seen revenue fall 1 percent. But PayPal has never really disrupted credit and debit cards in e-commerce. And outside of eBay, it hasn’t become a default payment method on other sites, notably Amazon.

The web is full of consumer complaints about PayPal, but my experience with the service over several years have always been positive. Even so, most of my purchases at Amazon or other e-commerce sites use debit card payments that bypass PayPal. It’s just a pattern I fell into and haven’t felt a need to change.

That pattern will be even more deadly on mobile e-commerce. Smartphones like the iPhone and the Droid – along with the most popular apps — resonate because of their simple interfaces. They are designed to eliminate tiresome choices. No one wants to choose whether to pay by credit card or PayPal each time they make a mobile payment. And that is PayPal’s challenge — not simply to be an option on the mobile web, but to be the default.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Why 2010 Still Won’t Be the Year of Mobile Advertising

How do you measure success of a online webinar?

I recently did a webinar for the Search Engine Strategies conference (I am doing the opening conference keynote at SES London and SES New York) and my Market Motive co-faculty member Greg Jarboe sent me this KPI via email:

"Your webcast was a big success. Your KPI questions per attendee was off the chart!"

I don't know why I had not thought of this wonderful KPI. So much better than # of attendees.

As always though context is king.

It could be a good thing ("you were great, engaged the audience") or a not such a good thing ("no one understood a thing you were saying, hence so many questions"). Only upon reading the actual questions could I figure out which case it was (mercifully case #1 for me!).

End of a minor web analytics lesson on going beyond obvious metrics and never, ever, never forgetting context.

Back to our story. . . an hour is too short a time to answer all the questions (even in a webinar just focused on attendee questions). So here is a small selection from the 80 questions I could not answer in the wide ranging webinar.

We will cover measuring success of SEO efforts on one web page, how to do search engine optimization for b2b websites, how to rank for highly saturated industries / categories / keywords, and which competitive intelligence tools do I use for search program optimization (and targeting display ads using search data!).

I hope you all find the answers to be of value.

#1. How do you measure SEO performance on a page level? I'd like to know how well my seo efforts for a particular pages have performed.

Every measurement question should start by taking one step back and thinking of goals.

In this case here are some obvious ones:

Now it is not hard to figure out how to measure performance! [Before you do any kind of measurement please consider going through the above exercise. It is simple, effective and works like a charm - not to mention allows to get going faster.]

Before you analyze do one small thing. Log into the Advanced Segmentation tool in your web analytics tool. Create a segment for Organic Search traffic. Sources -> Contain -> Google, Bing, Yahoo! etc. Save. Another way to cheat at this is to simply use Medium Matches Exactly Organic.

If your web analytics tool requires you to call the vendor to set up advanced segments or re-tag your site to get segments then switch. There are too many choices in the market.

Now log into whatever web analytics tool you use and drill down to the specific page you are interested in ("Top Pages Report" / "Content Title Report" etc). Apply the Organic Search segment to that report (in Google Analytics segments are on the top right, in other tools please refer to user manual).

More traffic, not that hard. Stretch the time period to six months (or some large date range – remember SEO takes time). What do you see? Nice and gradual up and to the right trends. Do your happy dance! Something's working. Now look down at the table under the graph that shows traffic sources. If you did your segment correctly you'll see just the search engines and how much each is contributing to your overall traffic. Does the distribution match your goals?

Ready for the next step? Click on Referring Keywords and now you are looking just at the keywords bringing traffic to this page. Do the keywords match the intent of the page? Do they contain keywords you were specifically targeting? No? Why not? On the other hand what are the surprises? Is the customer intent contained in the keywords telling you how to change / improve the page? Do it!

Indexing. . . I am a big fan of Google's Webmaster Tools because of the wealth of data available, if you are not using this free resource (no matter if you are a SEO or not). Bing's Webmaster Tools have also evolved a ton, please claim your account right away and dive in. [I have not had much fun with Yahoo!'s web master resources.] In either tool you are looking for how well your site is indexed (report: Your site on the web -> Top search queries -> Impressions), how well your pages are indexed and, my absolute favorite, which keywords your search results are showing up. You are checking to see if:

1. the pages you are targeting are being indexed frequently and

2. if your site is showing up for the keywords you were targeting.

You want validation that you are showing up for the set of keywords you are optimizing for (above) and that your pages are being recorded as being optimized for the right keywords (above the above :).

Success. . . I humbly believe that the biggest mistake most of us doing SEO make is that we are far too obsessed with ranking and meta this and that and how to work back algorithms etc etc. We should focus more on what was the business impact of our SEO efforts.

So in this context go back to your page report (from step 1 where you applied the organic segment) and look at the $Index [which is: (goal value + e-commerce revenue) / unique views of the page you are analyzing]. That is a crude measure how how efficient your page is being at converting. Of course look at our favorite metric bounce rate by keyword (that tells you if you can get people to give you one solitary click, the most primitive measure of SEO success).

If you truly want to kick it up a notch as a SEO please please please go to the Goal and Ecommerce / Conversions reports and apply your organic segment, stretch the time period, and report (aggressively) how well your SEO efforts are delivering value to the business.

Do it at a overall level, do it by country, do it by search engine, do it by specific keywords you were targeting. . . . and take two minutes to straighten your clothes because a new level of love and praise are about to be dumped on you by your company / client!

[Does the above seem like a lot of work even if it is straight forward? It is. I know we look for short cuts. There is no such thing in real life. But if you are willing to put in a little bit of sweat equity then you'll stand miles apart from your SEO competitors. Not a bad trade off, right?]

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#2. Is there a fundamental difference in SEO strategies for business-to-business sites vs consumer focused ones?

[It is worth pointing out I am not a hard core SEO, that would be Todd Malicoat, I just play one one TV! Think of below as my personal lessons from the front-line of doing this work to the extent my humble skills allow.]

The basic techniques you use to do search engine optimization between b2b and b2c do not change all that much.

Ok All that is the same, no matter if you are a b2b, b2c, b2a (business to aliens, yes they do exist!). Do all that first to make sure you are not coming to play the super bowl naked.

Here are a few things that are different with b2b. . . . .

* Some very effective SEO strategies like allowing users to add reviews and comments and extend the scope of the page do not work as well with b2b as it is a differ net type of engagement and experience with your customers. Well don't give up. You have many many white papers, though leadership papers, webinars, Big B2B Association publications where you contributed and more locked up in pdf or, much worse, behind a forced "give me your login" / "create a account" page. I am going to give you a false email, why not just give me the content, AND let the search engine index it efficiently after all you want people to consume the content.

Did I say already content is king?

* One of the most common issues with b2b websites is that they often have a very specific understanding of their space when it comes to how their potential customers search for information. This results in not speaking the same language (say keywords) as their customers. When I work with b2b websites I spend a lot of time in the AdWords Keywords Tool, Insights for Search, Compete etc analyzing keywords and search behavior in my category. This knowledge goes back into re-doing content, urls etc.

This is of course a good method for b2c as well, but it is significantly more important for b2b.

* Start a conversation. There will likely be a lot fewer individuals talking about you / your industry, a lot fewer tweeting and expressing their love (or hate). I get it. But conversation on your site and away from your site is key (obvious fact). Why not host a user forum on your website for current and future customers to come together and share their thoughts / ideas / complaints / rave about your competitors (scared?)? Why not seek out the few people who do talk about the industry on twitter and engage with them? Why not start a YouTube channel with a series of how-to videos? Why not, : ), start a blog? Not just to highlight your own pomposity and press releases but to really share and lift your industry (not just your company)? Why not become the destination for industry professional?

So few people in the b2b space bother to start conversations, why not use that to your advantage? Even if you can hook 100 people is that not more than worth it?

Three small things that I would prioritize higher when I work with b2b sites.

What do you do differently when it comes to your b2b clients?

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#3. When trying to help your rank in search engines. . . when you are in a saturated industry like health or travel insurance – how does the approach change or differ?

Two words: Long Tail!

When you say saturated most people mean that for the "top" keywords they are interested in there is too much competition. For example: "hotels in las vegas", "cheap health insurance" etc.

When there are a lot of players in the field it can be difficult to show up for the "head terms", especially if there are some strong players in the field. In these cases I have had a very positive experience focusing not on the head terms (terms for which there is a lot of traffic) but rather focusing on the long tail (usually key phrases that individually have little traffic but collectively these key phrases can deliver a ton of traffic).

So, if relevant for your business, try to rank for "california health insurance plans" or "california individual health plans" etc. Key phrases (not just words) that each have much less competition (and will likely deliver more relevant audiences).

You can use various keyword tools out there to identify these key phrases and then adapt your SEO strategy (pages, content, urls, etc) to focus on them. One way I use is to just type in competitor urls into AdWords Keyword Tool and then research what is working for them and adapt my strategy.

Targeting the long tail with SEO can be a bunch of work, hence I have recommended in the past that one effective and cheap way is to use paid search to monetize the long tail. But I can tell you from experience that it works. For example for this blog the top 10 (head) keywords bring in something like 5k visits and the long tail (around 25k keywords) bring close to 34k visits. All organic (I am not rich enough to afford paid search!).

One more bonus tip: Leverage "universal search".

Videos, pictures, downloads, offers, buttons, maps, uploaded menus, coupons, and on and on and on.

When you search for many terms relevant to me you'll see videos pop up, my book (uploaded into Google book search) show up with preview thumbnails, some of my flickr images and my twitter account and so on and so forth. For many of these searches I don't rank #1. But man do those listings (when triggered by the search engine's algorithms) stand out and grab the Searcher's attention. Often for competitor or big paid web analytics tool queries where I have a snowball's chance in a hot place of standing out.

It is ironic that most big companies (with so many assets to leverage) are pretty bad at this. So you win! :)

Also Google (I work there) Local Business Center is really good: http://www.google.com/local/add If you are a small business then this is one more important arrow to have in your quiver!

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#4. Can you look at your competitors sites in the analysis tools you have discussed?

Yes.

But first. . . . it is important to realize that you need to have two skills before you look at competitive intelligence tools:

If you meet the above two requirements. . . . .

I love using competitive intelligence tools because they give me a perspective and context that is simply missing from Omniture or WebTrends or CoreMetrics or the clickstream tools.

In the search context here are some of my favorite tools and what I use them for.

Insights for Search:

I adore I4S because it is perhaps the most comprehensive "database of intentions" thanks to providing us all with access to worldwide Google organic search data.

Use it to understand the latest trends in your category. For example: "How is interest in the computer security category (All Categories -> Computers & Electronics -> Computer Security) and what are the top 100 search terms and the fastest rising brand names / products / searches in that category?"

Use it to identify opportunities. "What states do people search for credit cards the most? What states do people search for Visa credit cards?" Oh look the states with really high credit card searches don't have really high visa card searches, maybe we should do some offline advertising!

Use it to time your campaigns. "When should I have started SEO and PPC campaigns for Italy Tours 2010?" In April 2009!! That's when people first started looking for them. Now go plan for 2011.

Helpful article: How to use Google Insights for Search.

Ad Planner:

This wonderful tool is really built to help you do better display advertising. You log in and you have the delightful ability to do demographic (male, female, age, education, income etc) and psychographic (baby boomers, extreme sports fan, household decision makers, luxury goods consumers, moms etc) segmentation. You can hone in precisely which websites most likely contain your desired audiences. Show them relevant ads and get clicks!

But in the search context there are two things that you use this tool for.

Type in any website you want, expedia.com in my case, and checkout the site and search affinity data:

"The affinity score estimates how many times more likely you are to reach an audience who visits a specific site or searches for specific keywords versus an audience on the internet overall." Source.

Sweet 'eh?

Second, click on the tab that says Search by Audience and then the Keywords Searched button and now you have an ability to use search behavior to identify audience pools.

To use the examples of my beloved Indianapolis Colts (go Colts!!!). . . . I have an ability to type in a bunch of related keywords (the tool suggests most used ones) and find out which websites are most likely to be visited by people who search for these keywords:

At the top are keywords I typed. On the bottom are most commonly searched keywords, I can choose these if I want.

I hit ok and then sort by Comp Index, to ensure I sort the data by the highest audience concentration (audience that searches for all things Colts in this case).

I can use this search and web data to identify where audience I am most interested in exists. I can use it to find out the keyword data for those sites. I can use this to identify sizes (visitors, page views etc) of those websites.

Nice right? Actionable too!

Helpful article: How to use Google Ad Planner.

Compete.Com:

Compete is a paid tool (and it only contains US data). I really love using it because of the wealth of search data it can provide, at an affordable prices.

[I have had a complimentary Pro account for the longest time thanks to the nice people from Compete, that might bias my opinion. Other than that I have no other affiliation with Compete.]

In context of Search I use the data for. . .

1. Identifying what are the top referring keywords for any site that I am interested in:

Above data for www.clickequations.com (the paid search analytics company I am on the advisory board of). Of course when you log in with a paid account you would see rest of the data like paid and natural search split for each keyword and time and what not.

Craig will not be happy that he ranks only #12 on the keyword list! :)

I can either use this data to go after keywords that are not currently referring traffic to ClickEquations (more for me!!) or I now know what keywords I need to target to take ClickEquations down in my quest for world domination! Ha!

See how focused you can be with data?

2. Identifying share of search for a keyword:

In this case I would like to own the pear fruit market, though at the moment I only own two trees. So I go into Compete to find who my current competition is (above exact match data for query "pears"). I can get lots of details about volume, paid and organic share, what percent of traffic comes to a site from that keyword, etc etc.

Now that I have a benchmark I can go about my super awesome kick butt SEO efforts and one way I know I am winning is to check this report in a month or two (or three weeks after whenever I think I am done). If I show up here I know I am having a impact.

These are just three of the many tools I use. There are a whole lot out there that sometimes give you similar data to the above three, or often give you a lot more. Just remember that there is a lot you can learn from what is going on in your ecosystem and at your competitors.

Ok now your turn.

Got a couple tips you want to share with us about how best to do SEO for B2B sites? How would you measure success of SEO efforts spent on a page on your website? Would you use any of the four ideas I have suggested? Care to comment on how to do SEO for crowded industries or for keyword categories where one or two players seem to dominate? What is your favorite search competitive intelligence tool?

Please share your tips / best practices / comments / critique.

Thank you.

Dear Avinash: Search / SEO Metrics & Analytics Questions + Answers is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

The new year is such a wonderful time. Wonderful smells in the air. The world is full of hope. Unachievable things seem achievable and are being polished into shiny resolutions. World peace seems within grasp.

As we spring to action full of passion I wanted to share with you all a short list of things that will expand your little world of online marketing & web analytics.

We all have a tendency of getting caught in a rut, using the same tool to do the same things and spew forth the same data. Change is hard, even if we know that we should be executing a multiplicity strategy to win in the web analytics 2.0 world.

Before all the excitement of the new year wears out, here are five simple things I would love for you to try so that your company will have a glorious truly data driven 2010!

#1: Don't suck.

Seems obvious. And yet in our quest for ever more hard problems to solve we forget that the number one goal of every website is not to suck. Especially at the really simple and basic things.

At a recent conference there were three keynotes.

One was extolling the wonderfulness of their multi channel campaign tracking. When I went to their website it was a 100% flash website with a constrained small size where it took too much looking to click on anything and then too much scrolling to read anything and unclear calls to actions (if any). That's sucking. No amount of great multi channel tracking will save this company, they suck at the basics.

The second was about predictive analytics and how using massive integrations between online and offline databases they had accomplished some really cool reporting of data (and make no doubt the IT work done over 18 months to accomplish this was cool). Their home page is a mess. 24% of the content covers what any visitor might want, rest is the company shouting at you (in many annoying ways). That's sucking.

The third was about how to create data driven cultures and how this person had created a impressively big cross functional team across multiple countries and standardized on Omniture after a lot of work over two and half years. I did a search on some of their products and they did not have page one search listings (on Google or Bing) for what should be their head terms. (That's sucking.) They did have PPC ads, which I click on the ad for specific product they land me on generic nonsense pages. That's sucking.

I share these stories to illustrate vividly how we in the web analytics world get lost in our data and Omniture and Google Analytics and reporting and lose sight of the the basics and the customer experience.

It is important to realize that if you suck nothing else matters. Not your api driven integrated massively multi channel attribution analyzed campaign lifetime databases. That is not going to save you or your company.

Before you attempt the hard make sure that you do all the standard stuff to ensure your company has a fighting chance to win.

Here are some tips to inspire you:

• I LOVE looking at the bounce rates for the top 20 landing / entry pages to the site. Find the losers, fix 'em. These guys are so bad they could not even get one click from the visitors.
• Sit down with the owner of the top ten pages to the site and look at them. I mean really look at them and ask this question: "What the heck are we trying to do with each page?" Make sure there is a clear answer (and a match between Customer Intent and Webpage Purpose).
• Check the load time of your important pages. Use something simple like: www.WebSiteOptimization.com Or whatever complicated tool you have.
• Sign up for your websites campaigns using your personal email address. See how the emails look. Relevant? Personal? Click on the links, what to you see on the landing pages? Fix!
• Create a funnel for your cart / checkout / lead submission process. Find the biggest abandonment page. Fix it.
• Ask your Finance department where most money is being spent on the web. PPC? Affiliate? Display? What? Take a week to segment that data and find out how to save 10% of the cost.
• Count the number of links on your main pages. I mean count them. There are 98 links on a travel site I am looking at right now, on the page for a hotel in Chicago. 98! This is a top site.

What are the analytics people doing if they are not helping the product page owner figure out how to kill atleast 50% of those links on a product specific page. There should be one link: Search for Hotel or Make Reservation! Do this for your site.

• Fix the 25 things Dr. Pete lists in this delightful checklist: 25-point Website Usability Checklist.

There are so many ideas. I hope that before you go for massive web analytics glory that your use your wonderful powers first to make sure your site and customer acquisition strategy does not suck.

PS: Bonus tip: Make sure you visit your website once a week, atleast.

#2 Learn basic statistics.

The days of tools and reports simply puking data out are rapidly reducing. No longer can tools or "analysts" just puke 15 metrics on a report and hope to survive.

Web Analytics tools are starting to become smart (see: Analytics Becomes Intelligent). Data is starting to truly get numerous.

For all of the above reasons it is becoming ever more important that you are know atleast Statistics 101. You don't have to be armed with the knowledge of how to create various models or be able to jump into SAS and get naked with it. But you are going to have to know what a mean and a median and r squared and standard deviations and Z scores and confidence intervals and all that lovely stuff is.

If you have not been exposed to statistics perhaps you can take a class at a local community college or university. Many employers will pay for ongoing job relevant education.

Alternatively get one of the simpler books on the topic and immerse yourself in self education. Regardless of if you are a novice or an expert I think one of the best books to start with is The Cartoon Guide To Statistics ($13). A cartoon book? Yes. It is quite good.

Once you know statistics 101 you'll find that you'll think of data analysis differently and you'll get better at finding that proverbial needle of insight in the haystack of data. Knowledge of statistics is a key arrow to add to your analytical skills quiver.

Hello statistical significance!

#3 Try one (or two) new usability / VOC tool/'s.

My passion for the customer is, as they say, legendary!

Part of it is the humility I have developed at the powerlessness of clickstream data to answer all the needed questions. Part of it is that there are just so many darn good options out there to listen to our customers.

So this year why not try one of the newer more powerful and yet cheap usability analysis tools?

Here are some tools that are pretty cool and unique:

• Five Second Test. I absolutely love the idea of collecting "first impressions" from current customers, employees or just randomly selected people. Within thirty seconds you can take a screenshot of your lovely home page or landing page, upload it and for free get feedback from real people.
• 4Q / Kampyle / UserVoice. Each of these tools does something completely different, and yet each allows people to type things that you can read and be wow'ed or saddened by. Why not try one of these tools this year and truly get in touch with your customers and a real and meaningful way?
• UserTesting.com. You are not a small enough company, or a big enough one for that matter, to do usability testing. This is usability testing for ultra cheap, $29 per person. Set out the tasks, identify your audience, test happens, you watch the video and read comments, you cry, you fix things, you become rich.

Also checkout Feedback Army.

• WebSort / OptimalSort. The information architecture on most website is terrible and the reason is that company employees create it for themselves. A great option to hear from the customers was to do card sorting studies. Problem? Expense! Not any more baby. Both these tools are quite affordable, all online and in a fraction of the time it would take to do a offline card sorting study you can get the key data you need. Sweet.

You don't have to do all of the above. But you do have to listen to your customers.

In 2010 Consider trying just two tools listed above that you have not used so far. I promise you that you'll want to give me a big hug the next time you see me.

#4 Try one new competitive intelligence tool.

I practically have a illicit love affair with competitive intelligence. And I am not embarrassed!

If I ever come to see your company, or you see me presenting publicly, then you have seen me present data about your company / industry and then proceed to say nice / not nice things. There is just so much gold out there to be discovered.

Here are some tools for you to try, ideas for analysis you could do:

• Compete.com / Trends for Websites. I love the depth of data now available in both tools for free (even if you use just the free part of Compete). Index your overall performance against your competitors.

Where do people go after they leave your site? What are the top five referrers for your competitor? What are the top sites that get traffic for the word love? All free from Compete.

People who visit my site, what other sites do they visit? What are the things they search for? What's the difference between US traffic and India? All free from Trends for Websites.

• Google's Search-based Keyword Tool. If you have never explored the long tail for your website (if you are a medium to large site) using SbKT you might be committing a crime. If you have never taken a list of keywords AND the landing pages recommended by SbKT where you have zero impression share and given it to your SEO team then you should feel bad. There is so much here.

[Learn how to use SbKT here: Monetize The Long Tail of Search.]

• Google Ad Planner. Some display / banner ads stink because they are just terribly produced and blink and annoy you with sound and do insane things when you move your mouse over them inadvertently. Most display ads stink because they are not relevant / well targeted. Make sure that is not your ads. Use the Ad Planner to hone into the exact sites where you can find your audiences.

What sites are visited by: Men who are in the market for engagement rings. Women who are interested in the NFL. Young adults who are looking to buy net books. Affluent 100k+ folks or comic book buffs or brides to be.

Now go buy advertising on those sites (from any ad network) and earn a higher ROI on your campaigns.

[Learn more about Ad Planner: Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Ad Planner]

These four tools should keep you busy for a long time. Don't go at it all at once. Ask your boss's boss what his next 90 day priorities are, find the tool above that might have the insights, go on a honeymoon with it.

#5 Identify two new micro-conversions and goal values for each.

The road to web analytics glory (and a promotion for you) runs through the Micro Conversions path.

I am absolutely convinced that we don't get the love that we deserve from our company leaders because (even if we get beyond data puking) we rarely quantify the impact of all of work that the website is doing.

During Q1 make it your personal quest to identify two new micro conversions for your website (many ideas in the preceding blog post).

Now make sure, and this is absolutely key, you take one more step and quantify the economic value of each micro conversion (instructions and ideas: pages 159 to 162 in my new book Web Analytics 2.0).

That economic value will help you arrive at the number on the right, $83,848. That number will finally help you understand the complete value your website is adding to your business (only $21,454 is from the Macro Conversion). That number will allow you to measure your campaigns with a level of accountability that will be supremely awesome.

If you do nothing else on this list (I hope it does not come to that), please make sure you do this item. It is that important (especially if you are a non-ecommerce b2b government peaceful protest photo sharing website).

For the true Analysis Ninjas let me share one bonus item, one thing that will put even them above the top. . . .

Bonus: #6 Measure one thing that is "intangible".

The hardest thing to do in online analytics is to measure the intangible. How did people feel about the website experience? What was the positive brand lift? Did the unaided brand recall improve 60 days after the campaign (online or offline)? And more such questions.

Each is really hard to answer, one must think differently.

Here is a post with seven different strategies: Brand Measurement: Analytics & Metrics for Branding Campaigns.

As an Analysis Ninja go all out on three of them this year and take your business to the next level of measurement and insights.

Good luck ya'll!

Ok now your turn.

Care to share examples of sucking that you have killed on your websites? Got a creative use of statistics in your web metrics practice? Which is your favorite online customer listening strategy? Have you had success with quantifying goal values for your micro conversions?

What is your company's online, or online analytics, new year resolution?

Please share your thoughts via comments, thanks much!

Five Sweet Web Analytics Resolutions To Kick It Up A Notch is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

You know what is the one thing stopping you from finding truly actionable insights from your web data?

Web analytics gems lie deep in the data and we spend our lives looking at the top ten rows of data.

It does not matter which report you look at. Affiliates. Products sold. Referring URL's. Pages viewed. Search keywords. Promotions. Geographies. Really pick any report with any dimension you want to look at, we spend our time (and valuable space on our dashboards) looking at the top ten.

We look at the top ten rows of data because:

1. Too much data from our web analytics tools.

2. Lack of clarity from our business leaders about what the site is solving for.

3. Not enough hours in the day to overcome challenge #1 and #2.

But if you just look at the top ten rows of anything here are the two corrosive problems:

1. The top ten of anything rarely changes (with the exception of hourly changing content – news – sites).

2. The top ten only focuses on the head, while the magic is in the long tail of anything. Magic related to finding challenges in your business. Magic related to finding opportunities. Magic that will help identify things you can actually action.

Allow me to make the case for you to look beyond the top ten rows in your reports by sharing three short stories. In each case I request you to look beyond the specific request and tool, rather focus on the analysis and how you could possibly apply it. I hope is to inspire, not to prescribe.

For example take a look at this report. . . .

I am sure when you look at it now it appears all mysterious, full of potential. You can't wait to take it out for a first date and then another and by the third date if you do the same old thing it gets boring. You are done looking at the bounce rates and time on site and conversions of these keywords. In the best case scenario you have even optimized landing pages. Good.

The first week's over, now want? Why keep reporting the top ten keywords on you Executive Management Global KPI Dashboard?

Look at the top of that table. For this website 86,837 visits came from 8,939 keywords!

What's going on with the other 8,929 keywords?

We never bother with them both because it is really hard to look at more than 10 rows of data. Harder still to look at 30 or 50 or 70 rows of data. Not only do we have a hard time interpreting insights from lots of data, we can't actually physically look at that much data and find insights.

Last month this blog received 40,662 Visits from 26,137 key words. The top 12 keywords accounted for 5k visits. The other 26,125 keywords accounted for 35k visits! By analyzing just the top ten see how many visitors I would be ignoring?

Here are three techniques I use to overcome the trap of the top ten rows. . . .

1. Advanced Table Filtering.

In the past we all used the standard reports that our web analytics tools churned out.

I don't do that any more. If you show me a report and it is not a custom report that you have created to better pull relevant kpi's into one place then please know that I will think less of you.

A sign of non-laziness is that you bother to atleast create custom reports. A best practice is to pull atleast some input metrics (Visits) with some attribute metrics (% New Visits), have something that denotes customer behavior (bounce rate) and it is criminal not to have atleast a couple outcome metrics (goal conversion rate, per visit goal value).

That best practice gives me this report for my search keywords. . . .

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version.]

It is a useful report that helps me understand performance much better than the standard reports from Omniture, Google Analytics, WebTrends etc etc.

But remember I have twenty six thousand keywords referring traffic to this blog.

I want to very efficiently look through them to find something useful.

I want to locate my most important brand terms that perform magnificently for me. To accomplish that I click the link called Advanced Filter under that table and do this. . . .

I move beyond the limitation of the top ten rows by creating a simple inline filter.

Find keywords:

containing "avinash"
where the "per visit goal value" is greater than $1.7 (a higher bar since the average is 1.3) and
the Goal Conversion Rate is greater than 10% (again another high bar compared to the site average)

Notice that I can only run a smarter query because I had created a custom report, without it I would have to use the "lame" metrics that I might get in the standard report (or immediately proceed to extracting all the data, all metrics and spending next four hours in excel doing what I can in two seconds in Analytics).

In a second the table transforms into. . . .

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version.]

You know what's in the table?

Keywords we should make love to because regardless of if they bring a lot of traffic or little, they hugely deliver to the bottom line. Making love might be too small a emotion when you realize compared to a site average of $1.3 the per visit goal value is $5.5. And look at that conversion rate!

Also notice up top. . . I quickly went from tens of thousands of keywords to just 193 I should focus on. I need to analyze these keywords, search engines, landing pages, products sold, leads received, and so much more to figure out:

1. what is going on here that is so right that it works like magic and
2. how much can I replicate the lessons learned

Far too often we focus on our losers. Here I start by focusing on winners and see if I can do more of what I know already works.

I could just as well have mined my data to look for

people on non-branded terms
people who come on every variation of the names of my two books
people who come from China
people who use a cluster of terms I consider most competitive or. . .

The limit to the data I can mine (and I use that word loosely here) is the imagination I have (or better put: the intelligence I possess about important business questions).

So do this. Use inline advanced table filters to go from tens of thousands of rows to just a few that you need to focus on.

Yes you can absolutely do this in Excel. But it will take you five times the amount of time and effort required because. . . please pay attention. . . in this case you are querying the entire dataset of your website and in Excel you'll keep going back and forth to get more data or dump it or write more complicated queried or. . . you catch my drift.

Advanced Table Filters can be used in any report in Google Analytics (Yahoo! Web Analytics also has a very similar feature, actually YWA had it before GA! :)).

The one limitation of the approach is that you'll more optimally analyze your known knowns. You'll even get to understanding your known unknowns. But not your unknown unknowns.

2. Use Tag Clouds.

For pulling lots of data from lots of rows all together into one place I do so love tag clouds.

Download all your keywords into a text file (twenty six thousand or so in my case) and upload them into Wordle and bam!

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version.]

O M G!

Did you think that by doing something so simple you could get such a quickly glance-able view of so much data?

I love search keyword tag clouds because they can tell you about the health of the company when it comes to search.

In my case, above, for example I LOVE the fact that above and beyond everything the word Analytics dominates it all, and what makes me happier is that the word Survey is so prominent (you all know I love qualitative data, now here is proof that my blog attracts so much of that traffic).

I worry a smidgen that people will think this blog is about Google Analytics, it is not, so I am happy that the word Google appears atleast as much as the word Web (and variations like website and online etc). I can't drill down in wordle so easily, but I use technique #1 (above) and it turns out 30% of the time the word Google appears in search queries in the spirit of "working for google", and another 30% for queries like "google insights for search", "google ad planner" etc (tools I have blog posts on). My mind is relieved.

See how I can understand about a strategic concern, at least a bit, using a technique as simple as a tag cloud?

Another thing I am rather ecstatic about is the sheer diversity of the keywords in search queries. It is not my brand that dominates (boo hoo! cry cry!) but rather "category" terms (which bring the "impression virgins"). Metrics and Conversion and Data and Questions (look at that!) and Analysis and Customer and Intelligence and Bounce and Best. . . .

That sweet spread validates some my Search Engine Optimization strategy (something I spend a lot of time on) – go for diversity and attract new people to my "franchisee".

Or in your case it may not. It may tell you different things. The main point is it would be hard to understand some of these macro factors in your data by looking just at a table in your web metrics tool of the top ten keywords!

Here is a tag cloud for a small company you might have heard of, Gatorade. The data does not come from them (obviously), it is from Compete. . . .

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version.]

I am not a SEO expert, can't underscore that enough, but everything that could possibly be sub optimal about seo/ppc is wrong with Gatorade.

The one brand term dominates their referring search keywords. This in of itself is not a bad thing, Gatorade is a huge brand. But what it indicates clearly that their site attracts people who already know Gatorade and are "pre converted", when perhaps a greater use of the website would be to attract the impression virgins and blow them away with the greatness of Gatorade so they'll never consider Powerade or any other brand.

Look at the diversity of keywords.

Find any?

People use tens and thousands of different ways to find even a web analytics blog. Look at how much different types of content there is on Gatorade.com and MissionG.com and Gssiweb.com and it is quite clear that Gatorade's tag cloud is telling a sad story.

Finally for all the money that Gatorade is handing out to premier current athletes (and the really expensive content Gatorade has on its website related to those top athletes) only two show up in the tag cloud. One that used to be important (though he is still a big brand) and the other that sadly ran over a fire hydrant a couple weeks back. That shows how exposed the Gatorade brand (atleast online) is should something unfavorable happen to these two guys.

I would humbly dramatically change Gatorade's SEO and PPC strategies tomorrow morning.

It is amazing how when you have so much data in one place, using such a simple technique, that you can find some very intriguing patterns in your data, stories that might validate what you are doing right or expose everything that is wrong with your digital strategy.

Simple but effective. Try it for your site. What do you find?

3. Use Keyword Trees.

This is my latest love. I mean it.

I was so happy when I first saw it because of this constant quest I am on to take lots of data and show it on a page.

Zach and the team at Juice Analytics have created two powerful visualizations: Referrer Flow and Keyword Tree.

I adore that last one.

You simply go to http://analyticsvisualizations.appspot.com click on Keyword Tree and you are on your way!

The visualization uses the free, open and multifaceted Google Analytics API. In a few seconds you'll get something pretty and intelligent (how often have you seen those two together :)). . . .

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version.]

It's a tree. With branches. :)

While in the case of tag clouds it is difficult to understand the relationships between different words that exist in your search queries, that is not the case with keyword trees.

I was looking up the relationships for the word "avinash", image above, click for a higher resolution version. I am looking at hundreds upon hundreds of rows of data visualized all in one page.

I can easily see long tail queries like "top 10 key metrics web analytics avinash" or head ones like "kaushik blog" or even "kaushik web analytics 2.0 pdf" (my book is not available in pdf form but now I know lots of people are looking for it and so maybe we should get it out fast!).

I can simply walk through the various branches of the tree and it helps me understand in a very powerful way the relationships that exist in my data. It always throws up surprises (partly because of my top ten rows table driven existence I have never actually looked at so much data in such a easy to understand way).

The fun though does not stop here. I can actually look at keyword trees using different metrics.

In this view I am looking at the data for the keyword "tracking", the colors shown highlight the bounce rate metric for each relationship. . . .

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version to be truly impressed!]

Now I know the queries that stink like a skunk, the deep reds, and find some sweet ones, "event tracking" is one such word (lots of visits with very little bounce).

But I can switch and say. . . . well our bounce rates stink so we'll not use that as a success metric :), let's use the % of New Visitors as a success metric. Ok no problem, press the button on the control panel on the right and. . . .

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version to be truly impressed!]

Notice the relationships change, the queries you would have paid attention to will change, what you will action will change. Just with the press of a button.

You can also flip the size of the words. I am using Visits in both cases above, but you can just as easily go for quality (in this case) and use New Visits. I would love to see some kind of Outcome metric there, given my passionate and sustained obsession with measuring end success.

You can do lots of true analysis, for free, with your data and get the kind of insights tables from Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics and WebTrends and CoreMetrics simply can't provide.

Let me share two snapshots to make that point.

I was genuinely shocked at the complexity of the tree and branches associated with the word "google". . . .

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version to absorb the whole thing!]

The darn thing did not even fit my laptop monitor (1440×900), and there was so much going on that it took me a while to absorb all the lessons.

Meanwhile for the "analytics" branch I can see, at a glance, the 70 or so queries that cause the "main flare" and it gives me a peek into the the head of my visitors unlike anything else. Talk about collecting VOC (and actually understanding it!!).

On the other hand I was quite saddened to see the report for the word "metrics". . . .

[Click on the image for a higher resolution version.]

Remember this blog is all about data and metrics. Yet the tree is so "shallow". Or better put it is less a tree and more a bush. Or maybe just a shrub.

For all of the reasons I was less than thrilled with the gatorade data in #2, I am less than thrilled here. From competitive intelligence analysis I know that there is a ton of volume on Google for queries related to "web metrics", and variations, yet I have not done a good job of attracting that traffic.

The above picture does not simply tell me that I need to do a better job of doing SEO for "web metrics", the real lesson is that I need to put in a ton of effort to attract the long tail for "web metrics" because that is where most of the volume is.

You will probably find other lessons from this exercise on your data. Hopefully there is no doubt by now that valuable lessons do await you if you put in the effort to start switching from using tables and excel and shift to using other data analysis / visualization techniques.

Each effort above uses something very simple and while none of them are a panacea, your understanding of web metrics data will not be the same boring self.

Have fun.

[Bonus Item: #4: One strategy to escape the top x rows is listed in the second half of this post, jump to just after the picture of Tiger Woods (!!): Focus On “What’s Changed”.]

Ok… your turn now.

What do you think of these strategies? Have you used them before? Worked for you? Have you used other data visualization techniques that liberate you from the trap of top ten rows? What tools do you use? Got models / approaches / strategies you want to share?

We would all love to learn form you. Please share. Thank you.

PS:
Couple other related posts you might find interesting:

• “Dear Avinash”: Be Awesome At Comparing KPI Trends Over Time
• Consultants, Analysts: Present Impactful Analysis, Insightful Reports
• How Thick is Your Head and How Long is Your Tail?
• Make Web Analytics Actionable: Focus On “What’s Changed”
• Web Data Quality: A 6 Step Process To Evolve Your Mental Model

Analysis Ninjas: Move Beyond The Top Ten. Find Love (/Insights). is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

This is the fourth in a series of Personal Brand Audits, where we’ll make sure you’re keeping the touch points of your personal brand effective and up to date. (See Part 1: LinkedIn Audit, Part 2: Facebook Audit, and Part 3: Google Audit).

What is visibility?

The hallmark of a strong personal brand online is the ability to be found when someone searches for you on the web. The first step to ensure you can be found is to create profiles on major professional networks and directories that rank highly in search engine results. Besides your “home base” website if you have one, these form the foundation of your personal brand online.

Visibility Part I: Profiles

1. Do you have a complete Google Profile?

A Google profile helps you control Google results by creating a profile that shows up when people search your name. This helps others find the right information when they search for you. Create a professional page that outlines your accomplishments, career goals, and links to your blog and other profiles. Create your Google profile now.

2. Do you have a complete LinkedIn Profile?

LinkedIn is an absolute requirement to build visibility for your personal brand online. If you haven’t already, drop everything and read Dan Schawbel’s post, How to Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn. It extends your network, showcases your expertise and simplifies your job search by making your connections to other companies transparent. Create your LinkedIn profile now and make sure it is filled to one hundred percent completion (LinkedIn will guide you through the process).

3. Do you have a complete Twitter Profile?

Twitter is a massively popular social networking and microblogging service that extends your network, builds your brand (if used right) and increases your visibility. Create your Twitter profile now and implement the tips in Dan Schawbel’s excellent post, How to Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter.

4. Do you have a FriendFeed profile?

FriendFeed creates a news feed that aggregates your activity on social networks, much like Facebook’s news feed. It gives people an easy way to stay up to date with your activity on the web and ranks highly in search engines. Create your FriendFeed profile now.

5. Do you have a Gravatar?

Claim your Gravatar (globally recognized avatar) so that your blog comments and other online activity are associated with a consistently branded headshot. Claim your Gravatar now.

Visibility Part II: Directories

Directories are like online Yellow Pages for people. They rank highly in Google searches and make it easier to find the real you. Create a profile on the directories below to increase relevant Google results for your name. Make sure your profiles include your bio, headshot, a link to your LinkedIn profile and links to the other places you exist on the web.

6. Do you have a complete ZoomInfo profile?

ZoomInfo is a comprehensive source of business information on people that ranks highly in search engines. Create your ZoomInfo profile now.

7. Do you have a complete Plaxo profile?

Plaxo is an online address book and professional networking service that automatically updates the contact information of your contacts and ranks highly in search engines. Create your Plaxo profile now.

8. Do you have a complete Naymz profile?

Naymz is a reputation management and networking service for professionals that ranks highly in search engines. Create your Naymz profile now.

9. Do you have a complete Classmates profile?

Classmates is a massive directory of high school and college alumni where you can find and reconnect with old friends that ranks highly in search engines. Create your Classmates profile now.

10. Do you have a complete Ziggs profile?

Ziggs is a business community where you create an online profile that ranks highly in search engines. Create your Ziggs profile now.

11. BONUS: Do you interlink your profiles?

Link from your profiles to each of your other profiles. This is important because search engines like Google count every link to a web page as a “vote” for that page. Google results are often described as a popularity contest because the pages that come up highest in searches for your name are generally the pages that have the most credible sites linking to it.

Because of this, you’ll want to get as many sites linking to your profiles as possible. That means you need to “interlink” all of your profiles to increase the Google rank of each. (For more specific tactics to show up highly in search results for your name, see my last post, Google Audit).

Tally Up: What’s your Google audit score?

Tally up your answers to determine your Visibility score. If you scored 0-4, take a few minutes right now to improve your standing. If you scored 5-7, set some time aside this weekend to improve your score. If you scored 8-10, you’re on the ball – keep up the great work.

Here are the audit points, to recap:

1. Do you have a complete Google Profile?
2. Do you have a complete LinkedIn Profile?
3. Do you have a complete Twitter Profile?
4. Do you have a FriendFeed profile?
5. Do you have a Gravatar?
6. Do you have a complete ZoomInfo profile?
7. Do you have a complete Plaxo profile?
8. Do you have a complete Naymz profile?
9. Do you have a complete Classmates profile?
10. Do you have a complete Ziggs profile?
11. BONUS: Do you interlink your profiles?

Good luck, have fun, and remember: a little personal branding effort now pays off dividends later.

Author:

Pete Kistler is a leading Online Reputation Management expert for Generation Y, a top 5 finalist for Entrepreneur Magazine’s College Entrepreneur of 2009, one of the Top 30 Definitive Personal Branding Experts on Twitter, a widely read career development blogger, and a Judge for the 2009 Personal Brand Awards. Pete manages strategic vision for Brand‐Yourself.com, the first online reputation management platform for job applicants, named one of the Top 100 Most Innovative College Startups in the U.S.

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