Ideas, insights and inspirations.

Marketers enjoy web analytics, because we like to count things. Naturally we love Google Analytics, because it lets us count our total website visitors, total time spent on our pages, top converting pages, referral sources, top cities, browsers, and more. Counting has never been easier (or more fun). One thing marketers don’t like is guesswork. For all our counting, we can never quite be sure whether people are actually enjoying our content. We assume that they enjoy it, because, well, it’s good content! But just how much do people enjoy it? We can’t actually place a number on that, and it drives us nuts. Or maybe we can. Despite the subjective nature of engagement, there are actually a number of ways of estimating user engagement and users’ enjoyment of your content. Combine the following eight methods together with a simple algorithm (math! counting!), and you’ve got yourself an objective, measurable metric. 1. Time spent on page Begin with a landing … Continue reading

Data is cheap.  Just log into Google Analytics and see for yourself.  Awaiting you are mountains of free data points about your website’s visitors, sessions, referrals and keywords, organized neatly into tables and sortable by hour back into the dark recesses of web history.  Mountains of data.  All at your fingertips.  All free. But you know what isn’t cheap?  Analysis. Google rolled out a new version of Google Analytics last year, which it claimed is easier to use, with a sleeker interface and faster reporting.  After months of beta testing, the results are in: people hate it.  Cross-referencing of data from multiple reports is no longer readily available.  Data that used to be divisible by visitor or by keyword is now lumped together in inseparable totals.  Adding insult to injury, reports can no longer be exported to PDF.  Analytics gurus are clamoring for features that are no longer available, but despite the outcry, Google will soon be enforcing this new … Continue reading

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In today’s revolutionary new marketing landscape, consumers have become more confident, capable and impatient. They know what they want, based on the fabulous wealth of data in search, and the trusted reviews of their peers in social networks. Even while traditional marketing continues to over-saturate every aspect of their lives, consumers are increasingly enlightened to aggressive modern marketing tactics: they know when a Facebook campaign reeks of shameless self-promotion, or when promotional Tweets sound like spam. As social media adoption reaches a level previously inconceivable – and growing still – it seems as if marketing power has finally returned to the people. As Chief Marketing Officers struggle to shift gears, stubborn or inflexible brands are the ones likely to be left behind. According to a recent study by IBM, the four biggest challenges facing CMOs today are an enormous increase of data, the growing importance of social media, ever-expanding channels and devices, and shifts in consumer demographics. A cynical brand … Continue reading

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