So this is what I learned…
This woman was also quite good: Market Research (new stategies type stuff). Liz Torlee, TerraNova Martket Strategies.
This dude was awesome: Avinash Kaushik. Web Analytics 2.0, Putting the Marketer back into Marketing.
Insights: Where is the how much in analytics? (I think he was talking about segmentation here) He gave a great example on averages and how dividing number of page views by number of visits would give you the average. That apparently is not good enough, in his example the BBC averages 2 page views per visitor/month, but they have some major SHUs, upwards of 250 visits a month…He mentioned content should cater to these folks as well.
Made a good point about most people not visiting a site just once before the make a decision, in fact the return upwards of three times (much like you need to view an ad three times to retain it) He said that most websites treat customers like one night stands…and that content should be adjusted to reflect a multi-visit experience. You don’t get just one shot, often days until purchase.
He said to check your traffic, find out if your referral sources are any good (apparently there is such a thing as a bad referral) high bounce rate means you might want to revisit who is pointing at you…
He said to remember that you don’t decide what your homepage is (Yikes!) that Google does. Better look at the pages coming up tops in search engines.
He said to segment your visitors (need to look into that one) and then use clicktracks
He mentioned using a firefox plug-in for google analytics to see what websites are giving you the most traffic, and to see where the increases/decreases in traffic referral is located. Example find out if you’ve had 50% more traffic from a link (even thought it’s not a main one). I assume this can point you in the direction of other useful links.
He said to track your keyword search…what words are you coming up in and your competition.
He said that 90% of time is spent on what we did, and only 10% of time is spent on what we should do next, used the Tiger Woods Ad example. I guess Tiger spends 90% of his time on what to do next.
Made a great point about attributing dollar amounts to sites that don’t offer profit to track ROI. If you decide it would be worth .50 cents to have some do a poll and you want X number of people to do it, you can track your success. Cool!
Software Q4 to test your site – Wow, that was cool, it is free and it attaches a survey that will ask you the four questions you should know about your buyer. Had a great Viagra example. They had a huge bounce rate and a lovely site but when asked “why they were there?” they were looking for info on the drug, the site simply made it easy to purchase. Bam, they knew within 5 minutes what they had to change.
The questions he suggested:
Why are you here?
Were you able to complete your task?
Why were you not able to complete it?
He said that most people have to deal with a HIPPO, highest paid person’s opinions (how true is that!) He said the best way to counter act a HIPPO is to prove them wrong as quickly as possible. Good ways to do this? He said AB testing, Multi Version Testing, Content Contribution Reports…lots of other good stuff.
AB testing is asking people which page they like better ( I think he said you can do this through google)
Multi Version Testing is having pages rotate through visitors so you track which ones had better returns (can do this through google as well I am pretty sure)
He stressed checking our your competitors…who is referring them? What are there best key words, track their traffic, going to have to look into this one…not quite sure how to set it up.
