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I have always found it interesting that Usability Experts and Search Marketers both discount each other's work as not being relevant. Usability focuses on making a site more intuitive for an individual whereas Search Engine Optimization focuses (primarily) on making a site more intuitive for a search engine.
When compared side by side, both focus primarily on organization and retrieval of data. Let's think about this for a second. The algorithms that a typical search engine uses are built based on retrieving results relevant to how an individual would search for them.
Knowing this, it's easier to understand why when a client comes to me expecting a search engine optimization proposal that I have been known to respond with a proposal that contains tactics such as: "A/B testing," or "site analysis." Frankly (and this is where my colleagues in a competing business may get nervous), each business industry should be offering these skill sets as a service to their clients. I have found this knowledge imperative for developing my web strategies, implementations and subsequent testing. A process, that because of this methodology is no longer linear in it's approach.
Still, I know of many Search Engine Marketers (SEM's) that do not know how to read/write HTML. Conversely I can also think of many Designers, Developers and Information Architect's that have never considered a keyword strategy" or the ramifications that AJAX and/or Flash can have on a website.
A Designer may even tell you "We care more about the experience than the ranking that the site has on a search engine." A SEM may try to convince you that "exposure alone drives conversions." Both of these statements are missing the bigger picture.
In closing, a search engine will entice a user to come to a site as a result of proper page indexing. A properly designed and functional website will entice them to stay. When traffic and in turn content is targeted, usage and subsequently conversions will increase.Labels: A/B Testing, internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization, web marketing, web strategy, Web Usability, Website Analysis
In the old days of the internet (approximately 2 years for you traditional marketing folks), data was measured in terms of one or two primary metrics. If you said "hits" please exit my site immediately. Thank you, now that I have your attention, let's continue...
Primary success metrics of a given online campaign were routinely measured by leveraging total visits with the average number of pageviews per visit. This was a gold mine. I could create seemingly limitless reports based on this most elementary data. Of course that was in the days of synchronously loading page data - before scripting methodologies such as AJAX had to complicate matters.
Fast forward to today, page views are still a main stay within analytics programs such as Google Analytics however I question whether or not they should be. This belief can still be summed up within a few short accronyms and one syllable words: AJAX, PDFs, and Flash.
This method of scripting, a document type and multimedia application have been causing havoc for web analysts for some time now. And Adobe, you still have not convinced me that Flash is completely queriable. Especially given the fact that so many people still use Flash within a timeline. That is instead of it's one frame object-oriented routines with simple "getURL" linking structures found within this said frame. (And this is just one example of Flash 'issues' with regards to analytics, I have several more). Like text that is broken apart or part of a graphic instead of dynamic text instances.
The point is creating 'fake' pages that only have the responsibility of being logged within analytics programs (to aid with AJAX and PDFs) is a tedious process.
So... What metrics do I particularly like to use when providing reports to clients? Every vertical marketplace is going to be different however if I had to pick two to replace the above two metrics in terms of equal importance it would most likely be "Bounce Rate" and "Average Time Spent on Site".
AJAX can have many calls to varying pages occurring within the same HTML based document. PDFs can have text that has been converted as an outline (and is essentially speaking, merely a graphic). Neither of my above-mentioned two metrics are clouded by AJAX, PDFs, and Flash.
With "Bounce Rate" I can see definitively that someone came to a given site and left immediately thereafter. If this rate is unusually high I can then monitor that cluster of users against a series of other metrics (visitor loyalty, and traffic sources) more effectively than I could have done with a "pageviews" metric on a site predominantly coded using a series of AJAX calls.
With "Average Time Spent on Site" I can still see that a given user spent (X) amount of time on a given site. Since I can correlate this data across a series of given days, I can analyze why time on site may have been so very much higher on Monday, June 23, 2008.
At the end of the day, the one quote I will always repeat is 'the only thing constant is change.' Within the area of internet technology this could not be more true as I have seen entire methodologies completely change online within 12-18 months.
That being said, as the fundamentals of a more engaging Web 2.0 are starting to be realized it becomes more important than ever that web analysts provide clean and accurate data to web strategists so that they can react with a proper course of action for a given web campaign.Labels: metrics, web analytics, web marketing
Obviously social media sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are newcomers to the online marketing world. Their core focus is clearly evolving. Being that they are so new, it is easy to understand that most marketers are simply not experienced in marketing to these type of communities.
Unlike web analytic software (Google Analytics, ClickTracks, Omniture, etc) there is currently no widely accepted standard dashboard in existence that is able to monitor all forms of social media and in effect determine ROI. This process is left almost entirely to the marketer. There are many attempts to monitor conversations and measure overall buzz (Buzzlogic, TruCast). I have spoken with and demo'd the material of these two firms and they both measure conversations fairly well.
It seems to me that in order to measure success and inevitably ROI, you need to first establish your own objectives and determine which KPI's you wish to follow. I think it’s reasonable to believe that without indicators such as revenue growth and conversion metrics it is hard to determine overall ROI.
In the business world, ROI is typically determined by taking the amount of the total investment and dividing that by the amount of the return. Since social media marketing is based almost entirely on trust and dialogue, how can you measure this?
I believe that the metrics used in calculating the success of a social media marketing campaign area going to be unique. In short, a focus on lead generation and driving sales is going to have a different set of ideal metrics than a general focus on user engagement.
I am finding out in my own research, there are several ways to determine an individual's likelihood that they are providing influence to others - a common determinant in the success of a social media marketing campaign.
Metrics to consider: Do they have a blog? How many posts are within this blog? Do they have social network profiles? How many 'friends' do they have? How long have they been a member of a particular social network? How long has it been since their last login? Additionally, what kind of digital footprint are they leaving across the web?
Again, certain campaigns are going to follow a different set of parameters though it's a starting point.Labels: Buzzlogic, ClickTracks, Facebook, Google Analytics, KPI, LinkedIn, MySpace, Omniture, ROI, social media, TruCast, web marketing
I measure the success of any web initiative though clear use of metrics. I love analyzing "the numbers" because it gives me further incite into user data that as a marketer I may not have otherwise understood yet alone considered.
In my travels I came across a post by Rachel Happe. In this post she highlights methodologies for measuring social media success.
What I like the most about her proposed series of metrics is that for different individuals there are different types of metrics that should be analyzed. Great post Rachel!Labels: measuring success, metrics, ROI, social media, web marketing
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