Tag Archives: google

November 7, 2012 · 10:30 am

Running Full Speed In The Dark

If your business does anything in the digital space you probably have some sort of system in place to measure that digital activity.

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Having run an online commerce site I can tell you that those analytics are second only to actual sales figures in importance.  Having run and consulted on sites where content is king (as opposed to commerce!), the data helps you to understand user preferences, content gaps, and how best to engage the reader.

That’s why something I saw the other day was so disturbing to me.  The folks at DBD Media recently conducted research on Google Analytics implementation across 50 e-commerce websites and found that 80% of retailers don’t know how to use Google Analytics:

  • Only 50% of e-commerce businesses track main conversion
  • 73% of businesses are inflating traffic in their analytics reports,through self referral issues.
  • 60% of GA accounts were not correctly synced with Google AdWords, meaning Pay Per Click data is not being passed-on and is hampering accurate ROI measurements for paid search.
  • 67% of websites haven’t integrated social media tracking
  • 30% of websites have incorrect e-commerce tracking implementation.

There are more findings but for a commerce site these are the most critical ones.  I suspect that if we were to survey content sites we’d find similar issues.  Why does this happen?  According to the folks at eConsultancy:

Our recent Online Measurement and Strategy report finds that the most commonly cited barrier for company respondents was a lack of budget and resources, with 50% of respondents listing this as an issue. Following this was a lack of strategy (31%) and siloed organisation / lack of co-ordination (26%).

For supply-side respondents the most commonly cited barrier was a lack of understanding / don’t know what to measure (47% compared to only 24% for company respondents), followed by a lack of budget and resources (42%) and a lack of strategy (37%).

The first item is particularly galling.  I suspect that has to do less with an actual lack of funds that a failure to reallocate the funding from some legacy activity into analytics support.  What could be more important, especially if your entire business is online?

When you’re doing your next budget, think about what activities add revenue and profit   Maybe those need to be your top priorities as you’re allocating funds? “We did it this way last year” isn’t a system – it’s an impediment.  You with me?

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July 25, 2012 · 9:03 am

Facebook And Browsers

Anyone here still using Netscape Navigator to read the screed today?  Oh sure, you might be using one of its descendants but that browser is long gone.  What you just might be using is Internet Explorer, so let’s pause for a minute and think about some numbers.  Five years ago, in July of 2007, there was roughly an 80% chance that you would be accessing the web via that browser.  It had a dominant market share although a relative newcomer named Firefox was chipping away.  IE was buggy, full of security issues, and consumers hated it.  Of course 10 years prior, in July of 1997, one would have said the same about Netscape – it had 72% of the market then when IE declared war.  Today, IE has about 30% market share, about the same as Chrome.  Firefox is not far behind, and a few others make up the rest of the desktop web browser world.

I raise this today because of a few articles last week about Facebook.  Obviously it’s the dominant social network but it can’t seem to get any love.  Both pieces talked about customer dissatisfaction with the service.  Here is the first from MediaPost:

Facebook doesn’t seem to be particularly well-liked by its own users, according to the latest figures from the American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report, which was produced in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee. Overall, Facebook scored a 61 out of 100 in terms of customer satisfaction — down 8 points from 69 last year. That’s a new record low for companies in the social media category.

Most interesting to me are the comments which demonstrate the dissatisfaction within the ad community as well.  Your users and your customers both unhappy isn’t the best situation.  The second piece from CNet adds another angle:

Now Google+, which has been dubbed by some as a ghost town, is gaining some traction with a higher customer satisfaction rating, according to the numbers released from the American Customer Satisfaction Index today. According to the new numbers, Facebook’s rating drops 8 percent to 61 on a 100-point scale, while Google+ makes its index debut with a 78, putting it in line with Wikipedia.

In other words, we’re only on Facebook because that’s where our friends and family are.  Sound like a browser you know?  Hard as it might be to imagine, Facebook is in a pretty precarious situation.  No, they’re not gong to implode, but history has a way of repeating itself.

What do you think?  How do you feel about Facebook lately?  Are you using other networks in lieu of it?

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July 11, 2012 · 8:38 am

An Audience Of One

I was catching up on my podcasts the other day when one of the marketing gurus

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used the phrase “an audience of one.”  It resonated with me because it seems a concise expression of everything we’re trying to achieve in marketing and media:  reaching exactly the right individual at exactly the right time via the exact channel with the unique message that will get them to use our product or service.  The Holy Grail, right?

To a certain extent, search marketing comes closest to that.  The user is expressing intent – where can I get a pizza around here?  What’s the best replacement hard drive for a PC?  We don’t know always know for certain if the search is for themselves or on behalf of another nor do we know where they are in the purchase cycle.  On the other hand, when they click on a search ad – not just on a search results listing – my thinking is they’re indicating that they’re nearly ready to buy since one generally conducts research with neutral sources and not something as obviously prejudiced as an ad.  Maybe that’s wishful thinking.  But whether it’s search or some other form of audience targeting, the ability to gauge intent and anticipate a reply is at the core of digital marketing technology.

I’m raising this today because of the record fine levied against Google yesterday.  As you probably know, they were caught bypassing some privacy controls to snoop on iPhone and iPad users.  I’m sure in some engineer’s mind, being able to use all the data made available by this tracking would help improve a user’s search experience and bring them (and Google’s advertisers) closer to the nexus of intent and message.  But it was, and is, a nasty invasion of privacy.

That issue – how to balance the quest for the audience of one and the rapidly disappearing concept of privacy – is big and getting bigger.  I think it may invoke the law of unintended consequences – as we try to make advertising better and more relevant we end up making it less so due to the imposition of strict controls by folks who don’t understand technology.  Not only won’t we get to the audience of one but the audiences we currently can distinguish will become less clear.  That helps neither the marketers nor the recipients of the messages.

Any ideas?

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