Blog analytics are interesting because blogs tend to be simple and so the analytics don’t require you to write code and understand GetQueryParam. You can learn quickly.

I run four kinds of web analytics on my blog, when you include FeedBurner (although I am still waiting for Google Analytics) and these are some of the things I have learned:

1) No one subscribed to the FeedBlitz email subscription, which was how I enabled individuals to read my blog in their email instead of RSS or going to the blogsite itself. Since no one cared, and since I was always incorrectly using that email field to search my blog instead of using the Technorati field, I ditched that service.

2) My most important referrer this month was the StatCounter forum. I wrote a post about them a week or two ago, and then cross-posted to it on their forum. I got immediate traffic, and then when the conversation became slightly controversial, I continued to get traffic. Now, if I were writing about another company with a forum, I would always know to cross post or trackback so that I could get that traffic.

3) My website continues to be my most important referrer, over time, to my blog, and vice versa. There is no “to do” here, it is just a nice verification to have.

4) My two top posts this month for my blogsite (i.e. among newsstand readers) are the post about Matt Belkin (where I take all the credit for his post) and the original Statcounter post. However, among those who subscribe to feeds, the most-read post is, not surprisingly, How do you convert feed readers? There is a great lesson here about writing for one’s audience.

5) I can see that when people comment, they rarely come back to the conversation because I don’t have comment trackback. So I am thinking about pulling the code from a site like co.mments, into my blog template and thereby make it easier for commentators to watch the conversation.

Robbin
LunaMetrics

When I spoke today about increasing your conversion rate, the topic of comments came up. “You know,” I mentioned, “Having negative comments is also very helpful.”

I could see the shock on people’s faces. Why would anyone put anything less than fabulous about themselves on their websites?

“Have you ever gone to a restaurant, asked the waitress, ‘How’s the apple pie tonight?’ and heard her answer, ‘It’s not that great. Why don’t you try the peach cobbler instead?’” I could see the audience members nodding their heads. “As soon as the waitress says something negative, your estimation of her goes up because now you really believe her when she says something positive.” Negative comments show that the positive ones are real (you aren’t vetting them and just pulling the diamonds.)

Negative comments work best when they aren’t on a more static website, but are posted by customers on a blog where you can turn them to your advantage. For example, here’s what you can write to the customer who complains about response time, : “Yes, the sale rep should have gotten back to you in a day instead of a week. My humblest apologies. We are all too human here, but I posted your comment in the office kitchen with a notice to all the sales reps about the importance of reaching our customers in a timely fashion. Thank you for your post!”

Robbin
LunaMetrics

RevealSite is unlike any other WA software I’ve worked with, because it is not about trends - it is real time monitoring of who visits your website or blog. They don’t use tracking cookies - they match IP address strings, “but most people in the US don’t have dynamic IP addresses,” Addison Schonland from RevealSite told me on the phone. (I haven’t had a static IP address since I started with cable in 2002 — and now I have fiber optic service — but I haven’t taken a poll on this topic.)

The software enables you to watch as individuals (or more correctly, their IP addresses) wander around your site. If you know who they are, you can rename them. You can send a text message (”It looks like you’re having trouble with that software download, how can I help you?”) and you can block someone, like a competitor whose address you recognize, from your site. You can change the color of a specific IP address to quickly alert you when someone special or problematic is on your site. You can even create a Welcome, You’re Special page and send it to replace the page that the IP address is looking at (or for that matter, a page that says, “We don’t need your type of IP address hanging around here.”)

On the one hand, I’m fascinated, on the other, I’m scared silly. “What’s so scary?” Addison asked (and I paraphrase, since I wasn’t taking notes.) He said, “It’s my site, I can let in the people I want. If it were my store, I’d kick someone out if they were inappropriately dressed. It’s the same thing.” Well, is it? People like the perception that they are anonymous on the Internet. It’s true that an unexpected chat message might help someone who is pogo-sticking between the menu and the content, but will that person feel like Big Brother is watching? Some companies don’t even like to send email that says, “You left Widget X” in your shopping cart, because it breaks the illusion that the customer is anonymous. They find it more effective to write, “We’re having a 5% discount sale this week on Widgets X,Y and Z” and the customer feels that they just got a lucky break.” But you know, I have a special bias, I worry about conversion all the time. Other kinds of sites may have different concerns and so RevealSite may be just the ticket for them.

On the technical front, the monitoring dashboard runs on IE, and it seems to do a better job of picking up visitors who use IE than those who use FireFox (when Addison demoed it back to me from his site, he couldn’t pick up my visit until I opened his site in an IE browser.) After a three hour trial, I had to take it off my blog because it forced the entire page to scroll down to the bottom.

Addison and everyone else - you are welcome to comment and tell me how wrong I am.

Robbin
LunaMetrics

We’ve all heard comments about web buttons: “Test the color of your buttons. Test the size of your buttons.” The point that the writer is always making (a good point, BTW), is that small changes can affect your conversion rate, and you should test, test, test.

But we don’t always know what to test, so let me make some suggestions for best practices in buttons.

The best buttons are the ones that give your visitors assurances that they are doing the right thing and going to the right place. So look at this great button from MarketingSherpa’s email marketing contest:
They tell you exactly what to do “Click here to nominate” and then add a sense of urgency “…today!” They add a picture of a golden cup, so the button stands out, makes it a thousand percent clear that this is about a contest , and perhaps makes you feel like a winner already.

Compare that to “Submit.” Submit can’t convert as well. Not only is it boring, but it really doesn’t tell me what happens after I click it.

Here’s another good one. “Place my secure order” makes it clear not only that this is the final step, but adds the assurance that the order is secure. That one I worked on, and we saw a significant increase in conversion rate when we brought it out.

How about “Get Adobe Reader”? None of this “Download” business for Adobe (usually - I still found “download” buttons and buttons that download the old verions)- they make it clear what you are doing and add their branding to the button as well.

Where you put the buttons can be almost as important as what they say. Perhaps more so. Don’t put the action button just below the fold, or you will lose customers who just can’t find it. Don’t bury it in a block of color or some people’s eyes will just ignore it. “Ad blindness,” it’s called. And this may sound incredibly basic, but for most of the world, the left side of the page is back, the way our internet browsers have taught most of us, and the right hand side of the page is forward. So when you are presenting the visitor with a choice, such as continue shopping vs. check out now, the “continue shopping” button goes on the left and the “check out now” button goes on the right.

Robbin
LunaMetrics

ps Apologies to anyone who reads the Internet in Hebrew or another language that goes from right to left. It was too late at night when I wrote this to find out if the browser is different, too.

(Apologies to most of the people who read, who aren’t from Pgh. I will write about using action buttons to increase conversion rates — a non-geographic topic — tomorrow.)

I will be speaking on how to increase your conversion rate on Wednesday, March 29 at Duquesne University, 9-noon. You can get more information here and you can register for the presentation here.

I’m also speaking with Dave Radin the next day, Thursday the 30th, on blogging and web analytics and tagging and SEO/PR. Dave will handle RSS and Podcasting and online loyalty and new online advertising. It’s called The Next Generation of Online Marketing - The Rules Just Changed Again.

Finally, Web Analytics Wednesday will be on April 5, 6-8 PM at Panera’s in Oakland (on the Blvd. of the Allies). You can get details and register here, be sure to scroll to the Pittsburgh event (and skip the events in London, Menlo Park, Chicago, etc.)

Robbin
LunaMetrics

Chief Marketer did a post last night on maintaining customer loyalty. Written by Michael Greenberg of Loyalty Lab, the post points out that you need to keep loyal customers from leaving your company, and that you can use your web analytics to notice when they are starting to stray. If you set your alerts on your high-end analytics system to show up in your dashboard when a customer is unhappy (haven’t visited recently, don’t click through in your email marketing etc.) you will notice when their loyalty starts to waver and are in a position to send them email with an offer, for example.

The part about the customers who don’t click through on the email sounds interesting. There are lots of slips between the email and the click, but this is do-able. However, I was surprised at his suggestion that marketers write someone who doesn’t visit very often anymore (or, as he points out in his article, takes other actions on your site such as typing “Complaint” into your onsite search). It sounds a little bit like that episode I saw on CSI Miami, where they resolved an IP address into an email address. Unless your website forces the visitor to sign in before surfing the site (a terrible policy for retailers, who are Greenberg’s audience), you can guess but you really can’t assign an email address. Analytics measure computers, not people. (Example: maybe the customer always used to check out your site from work but now uses their super-duper fiber optic broadband at home. The customer is still with you but the computer is not.)

It’s a lofty goal, we shouldn’t lose site of it, but I don’t see retailers doing it because it’s hard and at times, impossible. Instead — if someone types “Complaint” into your onsite search, serve them up a complaint landing page. “We take your complaints seriously. Please click here to talk directly to our customer care staff.” If your site traffic overall is dropping, and you can see that repeat customers aren’t repeating, create an online focus group of loyal customers who will give you feedback on the site, on your service, on your products. It’s true that we live in the age of one-to-one marketing, but visitors and customers hang onto their anonymity as long as they can, and unfortunately, there are times when we have to be satisfied with slightly less personalized approach. For now.

Robbin
LunaMetrics

When I find a blog I like or need, I nag the blogger to write it so it helps me even more. I know, selfish, selfish, selfish. Nonetheless, I nagged Instant Cognition to please include the entire post in the feed, and they did (thank you, Clint.) I nagged Jeffrey Eisenberg to please stop composing his blog in MSWord, because it creates gibberish characters in the feeds (and I don’t know if he got my email.) And I send email to, and publicly nagged Matt Belkin, the VP of Omniture Best Practices, asking him to please blog more often — once a quarter doesn’t cut it, I said. The last time I complained was yesterday (or Wed?) So I was delighted to see that Matt did a great post today on how to measure conversion rate - should you use visits or unique visitors?

Whether you are an Omniture customer or not, whether you know the difference between GetQueryParam and GetOutofJailFree - if you are interested in web analytics, Matt’s post is for you.

Robbin
LunaMetrics

I just paid my parking ticket online. On the one hand, I was impressed with how easily the city took my money (after all, other e-commerce vendors sometimes make you fight to give them your money.) On the other hand, I was very surprised at one of their practices.

After I filled in the credit card information and pressed submit, a little popup window came back to me. “Did you really want to pay your credit card number 12345678 with credit card 5123456789012345?” It said. Just like an error window, “do you really want to close without saving your work?” And I started to wonder, did I do something wrong (besides letting my meter run out?)

So that’s a conversion issue, but the other problem is a web analytics issue. Since that little window pops up on the page with the “submit” button, the URL doesn’t change, and so measuring the popup effect has to be like measuring Flash — possible but requiring effort (and do you imagine a municipality doing it?). If, however, they just served up another page, the way most companies do (”Please confirm your order”), the measurement would be trivial.

Robbin
LunaMetrics

I really pushed FeedBurner (and more specifically, John Z in Customer Care) to the wall on what feeds looked like. I read my feeds in Thunderbird, and when I finally started sending John screenshots of

how his own feed came through in Thunderbird (and why couldn’t mine look like that?), he wrote me this note:

Fascinating! Turns out that Thunderbird ignores the convention set by all other feed readers and shows you the *web page* that corresponds to a feed item rather than the item content.

After John showed me the light, I realized that most people weren’t seeing beautiful webpages like I was — in general, feeds aren’t overly pretty. Sure, you can include graphics, but the individual who is reading isn’t going to see your blogroll or your profile or see your $10,000 logo. And they get to see it in the typeface they’ve chosen. This becomes a major conversion issue - whether it’s your site or your blog, you’ve (hopefully) optimized it for visitors to take action, and now, how do you get them to take action when they never visit?

You could just show a snippet and thereby mandate that they go to the permalink to see the whole thing. I’d love to see the analytics on that one - how many people actually click through to finish reading, how many just read the snippet and how many delete the feed? (In general, when someone does that, I write the blogger and ask them to please turn it on.) So how do you convert them into an action-taker?

Of course, it depends on what action you want them to take. Maybe you are a blogger who needs viewership to increase ad revenues, or maybe you publish an email marketing newsletter that you hope will maintain relationships with customers and potential customers.

A few thoughts:

• Always have great content. If you don’t have anything to say, don’t say it. This is true not just for bloggers but for companies that are “PR machines.”

Always stay on topic.

• Link to other posts you’ve written, or pages on your site. That way, the viewer has the chance to read more, and you take them to exactly where you want them to be (although, I for once I don’t have anything I want to link to. Sorry.)
• Link to your site. For example, I link to my site after my name in every post - it’s a natural place and doesn’t seem obnoxious. I hope.

Robbin
LunaMetrics

ps on the other hand, you could convince everyone you know to read their feeds in Thunderbird…

Web Analytics Wednesday in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, April fifth. The 4th sounded good but it turned out not to be a Wednesday…

Robbin