1. Apps: Anyone with an iPhone already knows it. But the appification of Facebook, Salesforce, Google and other web titans suggests there’s more to apps than handheld video games. In fact, Pincus believes (and he seems to have a knack for this web stuff) that the traditional web battlefields are wide open. Even search, he proposes, has no clear leader in the app space. So just because your business dominates the web doesn’t mean it will dominate web-connected apps.
2. Measurement: As a company focused on analytics and measurable results, we’re happy to hear about this—and we’ve noticed. As people increasingly turn to the web and apps for things they previously got elsewhere (like books and newspapers), the ability to measure their activity has become both more important and more possible. That’s why so many web analysts and marketers were excited by Google’s recent announcement of new mobile- and app-tracking features in Google Analytics. Such measurement enables rapid testing and optimization. And if your company’s not doing it, you will almost certainly get left behind by more savvy competitors.
3. Paid content: Could it really be? Are people finally willing to pay for web content? Well, yes and no. With over one billion downloads, the Apple app store reportedly makes $1 million a day in application sales. Traditional websites, however, still tend to fail at pay-wall experiments. So it appears that just because something uses data from the web doesn’t mean people treat it like a website. That’s of important note for your business, as it’s possible you can develop an app that people will actually pay for (like Kraft did). Why? I think there are a few reasons. First, people treat the web like public space, but treat their mobile devices like private space. They expect public space to be free but understand private space takes investment (they’ll buy patio furniture for their yard but not for their nearest park). Second, as internet access costs drop to nothing—and they will, facilitated by Google’s better-than-free operating system plans that will encourage companies to give away mobile devices and data access—people have more money to spend on digital content. There are many other factors, of course, but the bottom line is that consumers appear ready to pay for some digitally distributed content and web-enabled applications.

Call it what you will, but it’s clear these trends will impact your business.

And you should probably act now, because you can bet web 4.0 is on its way.

There are many reasons. One is that I find the term “social media” poorly defined; it’s become a catch-all for anything digital, personal and interconnected, yet sending an email to a group of friends or contributing to a forum discussion rarely qualifies.  (And if you think the definition is clear, try reading the Wikipedia entry on social media.)

Another challenge with what usually qualifies as social media is unrealistic expectations. When we parse web analytics data, for example, we often find that Facebook and Twitter raise awareness but rarely send a high ratio of qualified traffic—people most likely to buy.

All of this said, while I’m a skeptic, I’m not a cynic. I believe there’s value to tools like Facebook and Twitter. So I was happy to see a recent post by Jakob Nielsen on distributing content through social networks and feeds. Here are some of the top tips for business users:

1. Post moderately. One of the biggest frustrations that users report with following businesses through so-called social media tools is excessive posting.
2. Use the right tone (most often, a casual one). Generally, users prefer a casual and personal tone. But not always. For example, people want items in RSS feeds to be more straightforward, and for some organizations, such as news outlets, people want a more professional tone.
3. Cater to greed and exclusivity. Your friends and followers will typically like getting a deal, as well as being the first to know. It’s a reward for following your feed. But beware of aggressive selling; it’s an overt reminder that you’re trying to move product rather than maintain a relationship.
4. Prompt people to follow you. Because they won’t do it of their own volition, even if they know your brand. For example, email existing customers and prompt them to follow or friend you—and make sure your website links to your various accounts.
5. Post substantive, timely and relevant messages. They get rated highest by users. Add value, make the value relevant to your business, and give followers the scoop rather than an afterthought.

A few other likely obvious tips to consider: pick a good username, use a good logo, and write for the medium (rather than shovel from other sources).

And now back to my skeptical perspective, here’s one point worth printing and sticking on your monitor: Feeds (such as RSS and Twitter) are less powerful than email marketing for customer relationships. Why? Because users have to manually delete an email to remove it from their inbox (if they requested it and it’s not spam). Feeds, however, just keep coming, and few people read beyond their first feed screen. So if they missed a post when it first went up, they’ll likely never see it.

So definitely experiment with new tools, social or otherwise. But don’t give up on the classics so quickly.

One of our clients, Consulting-Portal, brought this meme to our attention via Twitter at the height of the Kanye-bashing fun. Since we’d redesigned their site and recently launched some upgrades, it seemed like uncanny timing and we all had a good laugh. The link was promptly buried by a steady stream of tweets and Google alerts, and, along with the rest of the world, we forgot about Kanye.

That is, until Consulting-Portal’s monthly analytics report rolled around.

Now, for those of you not familiar with our analytics reporting service, we synthesize a month’s worth of Google Analytics data and produce a report outlining relevant trends and strategic recommendations. And, as I took a look at their traffic sources, lo and behold: the top referring site for that month was that stupid (albeit hilarious) Kanye app.

Fine. Yes, things can go viral and drive traffic. We try to avoid that kind of campaign in favor of more measurable initiatives, because—most of the time—it’s not like the traffic actually matters. It’s not like it converts, or does anything other than click, glance and bounce.

But—surprise, surprise—the Kanye app didn’t just send traffic. It sent qualified traffic: the time-on-site for visitors from Kanyelicious was higher and the bounce rate was lower than the site average, and visitors from the Kanye app looked at just as many pages as visitors coming from more…ahem…traditional traffic sources.

Hmm.

So, what to do with that surprising information? We took away a few points:

• It’s hard to tell what’s going to drive traffic. So don’t be afraid to experiment. Sometimes, discovering what will resonate with your target audience is a bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall—eventually, something is going to stick.
• That being said, for your efforts to be successful over the long term, you must track everything. It’s easy to get swept away by the latest marketing fad, but unless you can prove your campaigns are working, you’re probably wasting your money.
• Beware of making long-term decisions based on one-time anomalies. Sure, Kanye was successful for one month. The next month, Consulting-Portal’s referral traffic went back to its usual patterns. Trends are far more important than random blips—no matter how successful those random blips.

The final word? (With small apologies to Kanye….) You know, that app was pretty good…but trackable campaigns are one of the best marketing tools OF ALL TIME!

That said, we still clash with the occasional lonely naysayer, who cites the lack of customized reporting or the limit of only four goals per profile as a reason not to go with Google.

But after today’s announcement from the Google Analytics team, the critics have a lot less to carp about. Clearly, Google has listened to its audience and, in turn, has unveiled some impressive new features that should elicit cheers from even the “power users” (Google’s term for Analytics users who want “fine-grained control over their site tracking and who have a burning desire to understand and manipulate the behavior of Analytics”).

Here’s a quick rundown of what the latest version of Google Analytics brings to the table.

Engagement goals

Once restricted to tracking the loading of specific pages, the Goals report now lets you set customized thresholds for key metrics like Time on Site and Pages Per Visit.

More goals per profile

Ever had to decide which four goals were most important to your site’s success and jettison the rest? Google Analytics now lets you set up to 20 goals per profile—which is a wise move, considering that engagement metrics can now be designated as goal completions.

Improved mobile reporting

Have a mobile-friendly site? A new code snippet (yet to be released) will let you gather data from all web-enabled devices—not just those that support JavaScript.

Advanced table filtering

No one drools over reams of data, but with the addition of Advanced Table Filtering, you can filter thousands of variables in a table according to the specific metrics and percentages that you deem radar-worthy.

Multiple custom variables

You could already track your visitors according to customized segments beyond Google’s preset categories. But with Multiple Custom Variables, you have even more power. Set multiple segments to track according to visitor attributes (are they a member?), session attributes (did they log in?) and page-level attributes (did they view a specific page?) for in-depth reporting with increased flexibility.

Increased sharing

Share a special URL link with anyone who has an Analytics account, and you can automatically import custom templates and segments to their profile.

Automatic intelligence and custom alerts

The above updates are powerful stuff, and most were expected. They’re the necessary culmination of where the market is headed—and what GA users (and detractors) are demanding. But what’s really rousing our interest is the unleashing of Analytics Intelligence. Because more than any other improvement, this one is a potential game changer.

Still in beta, Analytics Intelligence uses an algorithmic-driven engine to automatically record significant shifts in your data and organize them in a new Intelligence report.

Even better, you can customize the major changes that matter to you, and you can use new Custom Alerts to receive automatic notifications with every drastic change. Wondering whether a salacious tweet sent droves of targeted traffic to a goal-centric page? Analytics Intelligence will let you know.

Add to this the option to tweak the level of intensity of your alerts (you can assign a percentage to changes you deem worthwhile—there’s even a nifty slider!) and you’re guaranteed to spend significantly less time sifting through data to see what’s working and what isn’t.

Which this magazine has. And yet, despite owning its category, it still struggles to adequately monetize its website.

And it’s not alone. Over the past few months, I’ve met with senior managers at some of Canada’s biggest media companies. While some are succeeding in the new media ad world, many are failing.

This isn’t news, of course. Everyone knows that traditional media companies are struggling to survive the shift to web publication.

What fewer people talk about is one of the primary reasons why: an obsessive focus on the quantity of a site’s traffic rather than the quality.

The primary culprit, from what I can see, is cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad sales. Why? Media buyers representing brands haggle to drive CPM prices down, as their clients want to see the greatest exposure for the least spend. Unfortunately, this means that they pay far less attention to the quality of impressions than the quantity.

This is particularly problematic for niche publications, which offer a highly targeted audience, but far fewer impressions than general interest publications.

One solution I’d like to recommend to niche publishers, based on my experience on both sides of the fence: focus on return on investment, and change the conversation.

When we represent clients buying media, we’re always looking for return on investment.  With our web analytics work, we know that quantity is no measure of success. Ultimately, actions relevant to clients’ business objectives are meaningful. Everything else is just a step along the way.

So if you’re a niche publisher, think about programs, systems and sales pitches that emphasize return on investment. This can include everything from demonstrating your audience’s receptiveness to particular products, to implementing a custom cost-per-action advertising platform.

Advertisers will pay more money for your audience if they’ll get returns unavailable elsewhere.

But they won’t just take your word for it.

1. If you’re not measuring it, you’re probably losing money. First and foremost, we often find that companies don’t have web analytics at all or, if they do, haven’t installed systems to track essential performance indicators through their entire sales funnel. So technically, they’re using analytics tools, but practically, they’re flying blind—or at least legally blind. And regularly, once we start gathering data, we find that expensive, non-data-driven assumptions are incorrect. For example, we often find that companies spend money on search engine optimization without knowing whether their search results drive qualified traffic. Their “measurement” was simply a visual observation of high ranking. Which brings us to point of failure number two.
2. If you’re measuring the wrong things, you’re probably making the wrong decisions. Another common problem is thinking that you’re measuring effectively just because you’re measuring. In daily life, we usually know what to measure. All else being equal, for example, you’ll buy the shoes that fit. But online, things aren’t so clear, in part because there are so many marketing options, and every business and marketing campaign has different objectives. In part due to this confusion, people tend to measure the most superficial things: whether something looks pretty, has cool functionality, has high search ranking. What’s important is measuring what’s meaningful to your business. After all, pretty, cool shoes are great. But if they’re three sizes too small, you won’t walk very far.
3. If you can’t make your data meaningful, your recommendations are probably meaningless. Too often, and in large part due to the availability of free tools such as Google Analytics, we see companies address issues one and two by gathering lots of data to cover their bases. So, for example, they might create a Google Analytics account and drop the JavaScript code in their footer, thereby capturing a broad spectrum of activity. But without proper analytics installation, configuration and interpretation, this typically results in data overload rather than wisdom. It’s like installing a fire hose to get a drink of water.
4. If you’re spending more on technology than interpretation, you’re probably overwhelmed with data and underwhelmed with insight. The problem of data overload is particularly common in organizations that have over-purchased analytics technology. Carrying large analytics license fees typically means less money for analytics services and human resources. It’s a tough place to be: lots of data, but nobody to make sense of it. Analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik recommends the 10/90 rule: for every $10 spent on analytics tools, spend $90 on “intelligent resources/analysts.”
5. If your data’s not actionable, it’s probably paralyzing. This is the other end of the spectrum from not measuring anything: measuring too much, including irrelevant details, and having no way to separate signal from noise.  Typically, this happens when organizations recognize point of failure number one, overcompensate with point of failure number four, then find themselves with a morass of data that bogs down rather than enlightens decision-making.

So there you have it. My thoroughly unscientific, entirely anecdotal and experiential analysis of common web analytics failures. Think I missed something? Let me know in the comments.

Here’s the description:

If you’re like many people in professional services, you’ve probably struggled to implement internet marketing with solid, measurable return on investment—or are skeptical that internet marketing can even work for your business. After all, selling services online isn’t the same as selling products. The sales process can be more complicated, sales cycles are longer, and face-to-face relationships can be essential.

Yet despite such challenges, many successful professional services companies use internet marketing to cost-effectively generate leads, convert sales and grow business. In fact, for some of them, internet marketing has displaced other channels as the primary driver of new business—often new business they may have never otherwise reached.

After attending this talk, you will be able to:

• Understand key sources of web marketing confusion—and how to avoid them
• Know why mimicking big brands’ internet marketing can damage your online marketing’s performance
• Follow a three-step process to create measurable online marketing with exponentially increasing returns
• Implement an online sales funnel that generates qualified leads—from new sources you may have never considered
• Be able to insulate your marketing from expensive, poor performing tactics
• Have the tools for creating a culture of data-driven marketing decision-making

The talk will cover strategy and tactics, including tips for dramatically improving your online conversions and creating end-to-end marketing systems that report key data from a customer’s first click to their latest purchase.

More information is available on The Professional Marketing Forum’s Canadian chapter website.

Hope to see you there!

Yesterday, Google announced a Forrester study, “Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics” (PDF), that helps clarify the situation.

One important finding—particularly for a Google Analytics consulting company like us—is that Forrester recommends spending more money on analytics services than platforms:

Enterprise companies must ask themselves if they are paying too much for capabilities that they simply do not need. In some cases, gaining fewer seldom-used capabilities is a worthwhile tradeoff if funds can be reallocated to hire more resources necessary for analysis.

Also, according to the study, “sixty percent of decision-makers agree that investments in web analytics people are more valuable than investments in web analytics technology.”

Some other interesting findings:

• 53% of enterprises surveyed use a free technology solution as their primary web analytics tool, and 71% use free tools in some way
• 66% of enterprises using a paid tool would consider switching to a free one
• 52% of practitioners fail to effectively use more than half the features of their tools—whether they’re free or paid
• 71% of enterprises surveyed report that web analytics data plays a significant role in decision-making
• Nearly two-thirds of enterprises would abandon their current web analytics provider under the right circumstances

I’m looking forward to digging more deeply into the report, which you can download free by following the link above.

And if your enterprise is considering a switch to—or start with—Google Analytics, or wants to make better use of its current Google Analytics implementation? Let’s talk.

As you probably know, you can track Flash events in Google Analytics. This gives you more robust site statistics—you can, for example, track how users interact with Flash video players, even how much of a video they watch.

But the integration can be a challenge. A few weeks ago, for example, we worked with a client’s Flex developer to integrate Google Analytics into a Flash-based weight loss assessment. Users reached the assessment after clicking a link on an HTML website. After planning and implementing a search marketing campaign to drive traffic to the site, we found that Google Analytics wasn’t properly reporting conversions to their source. Comparing results to AdWords conversion stats, things didn’t add up.

Users appeared to start a new session every time they began their assessment. And that made it exceedingly difficult to know which traffic source had the best return on investment. After working through a list of potential issues, it came down to the equivalent of having an unplugged cord. Looking at the code to embed Flash into the site, we found this culprit:

<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />

Because of the way Google Analytics functions, this line of code should have been the following:

<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" />

It’s a slight difference, but one that will improve your data’s reliability and usefulness—and prevent you from destroying a perfectly good computer in frustration.

The term "nanocontent" refers to the snippets of information people usually scan when looking at web pages. Typically, it’s the first two words of a sentence. Or approximately (but somewhat arbitrarily) 11 characters.

In the study, Nielsen’s group showed people just the first 11 characters of links on about 20 popular websites and asked them to find specific information. The goal was to test the importance of nanocontent. For example, if Nielsen’s group asked users to locate information on retrieving voicemail on the iPhone, they’d theoretically be more likely to succeed if a link read "iPhone Voicemail Instructions" than "Instructions for iPhone Voicemail," because the latter buries what they’re actually looking for.

Three tips for better links

Nielsen’s group found that good nanocontent significantly improves usability, and bad nanocontent can be self-destructive. In fact, for 35% of links, users had absolutely no idea where they went. (Like this one for Chase Bank: "Introducing Chase Exclusives Special Benefits for Checking Customers." Of course, "Introducing Chase" is meaningless on its own.)

Take the study with a nano-grain of salt, because it reviewed just the first 11 characters of each link. But note that it reinforces that you should:

1. Put information up front
2. Eliminate jargon
3. Avoid useless words

And there’s more: bad nanocontent probably means your site’s content is generally poor, since it doesn’t meet the needs of users. So for a quick test of your site’s readability, scan the first 11 characters of a few links and see if they make sense in isolation.