Earlier this week, I wrote about subscribing to a blog or webzine via feeds (sometimes referred to as RSS, although it comes in other flavors as well.) One commentor, Steve, disagreed with my analysis that the subscriber is anonymous.

So let me pull apart the pieces of the issue.

1) Is your IP address anonymous when you subscribe to a feed? Technically, not at all. If you subscribe using a web service like Bloglines, your IP address comes through to the web analytics as a “referral” from Bloglines every time you engage with the blog. If you read feeds with software like Thunderbird, the blog or ezine owner can always put a picture in the feed which your computer has to go out and pull off his server and when he evaluates his server logs, there is your IP address. (I always think this is the reason that Avinash starts every post with a picture of a flower. It is his tracking beacon. But I am just speculating.)

2) Just because someone has your IP address, do they have your identity? Sometimes, it’s not that hard to figure out. Lots of times, it is very hard (and I would venture, sometimes impossible. But the commenter, Steve, has done forensic web analytics and I never work to figure out who someone is because I’m not part of the CSI team. Notice that even he said, “It depends.”)

3) Does it matter if someone has your IP address?Probably not in the context I was setting up. Remember, I was pointing out that you don’t have to give out your email address when you subscribe via a feed (still true and still a nice benefit.) And you can unsubscribe without hurting the author’s feeling (still true, because the author won’t notice that your IP address doesn’t show up the way he would if you send in a “Please unsubscribe me from this email list” request.)

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

A subscription — be it an email subscription or a feed subscription — is often how blogs, webzines and other content sites define conversion. After I wrote my post to Joel, talking about things he wasn’t doing right in his effort to to convert his readers to be RSS subscribers, a couple of people asked me, “How would you write an explanation of what RSS is?” So here goes.

What is RSS? Well, you really don’t care, do you now? All that matters is what it can do for you and how to make it work for you.

RSS Features. We’re going to refer to RSS by the more generic term, “feeds,” since RSS and its cousins will feed information to your desktop, much like a subscription to an email marketing newsletter feeds information to your inbox. Feeds bear another similarity to email: you need a place to read them, like Outlook, Eudora, your gmail account. Ditto for feeds: you can read them in software (that’s one of the reasons I like Thunderbird, I can read both my email and my feeds in one place) or you can establish a free account with the many webservices for reading feeds, such as Bloglines.

So it’s just like email, right? No, there are many differences.

• Your feeds will never be subject to your corporate spam filter.
• When you subscribe, you don’t have to give out your email address and fear that it will be abused.
• If you subscribe to an email newsletter, the publisher always knows about you, and you have to work to be anonymous. But when you subscribe to a feed, you really are anonymous.
• Being anonymous also means you can unsubscribe from feeds published by your friends without hurting their feelings.
• I haven’t been staying on top of the “charge to charge” for email by AOL and Yahoo! but I hear it is coming. Feeds won’t be part of that financial project.

So how does someone make it happen? Remember that you need a place to read your feeds, just like you need a place to read your email. (see RSS Features, above.) Once you’ve got that set up, find a feed you are interested in. You will usually see an icon (often orange) with the words, Subscribe, or XML or RSS or just Get The Feed. Click on it, copy the Internet address bar of the next screen you get, paste that into wherever your feed reader wants it, and you are in business.

Usually.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

I linked a debit card to my PayPal account and then tried to use it. They let me use it, but
sent me semi-threatening messages (which I can’t get exactly right since I don’t have them in front of me.)

Are you sure you don’t want to use your bank account instead of a debit card?
When you use your bank account, your information is always private. We never
charge you. [And there was a third "benefit" to using my bank account.]

Does that mean that when I fund my payments with my debit card, they give it to the third party? Since I was sending money to a pal, I sincerely doubt they gave him my credit card info. (They might, however, have charged me for the priviledge.) This is the same issue I wrote about two days ago - when you pull out certain benefits for certain products and don’t mention them for other products, you create doubt in the customer’s mind about whether those benefits apply to all your products.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

I was having an email conversation with Joseph Carrabis, Chief Research Officer at NextStage Evolution, and we were discussing an opportunity with the WAA, which basically boiled down to, “Which web analysts do other web analysts admire, in theory?”

I really had no idea who Joseph was or what his company did, since we had just met in a virtual sort of way. And so, I was somewhat awed at the depth of his response, which is right here:

I used our technology to analyze 50 postings (selected at random from those I’ve received since I joined the message board) to the WA message board in order to determine 1) how the posters would define and recognize expertise and 2) if they would accept said expertise as necessarily greater than their own.
The answer to 1 is to have an individual with the following characteristics

• 35-45 years old
• has been analyzing websites for 10+ years both in and out of corporations
  
• has been doing web analytics for 5-10 years, ditto and also for large and small businesses
  
• has spoken/presented at major conferences
• has “hands-on” knowledge of at least 5 different analytics platforms
• is product neutral (no commercial affiliations)
• is patient with ignorance

The more of these you can hit the better. There are other salient characteristics but they don’t contribute as much to the necessary persona as the above do.
The answer to 2 is yes, they would accept expertise as necessarily greater than their own provided said expertise was demonstrated by

• knowledge of transitions in the field
• understanding of related fields’ impact on web analytics
• industry knowledge

Much to my chagrin, “knowledge of related research” didn’t show up. Darn.
Hope that’s helpful.

I got this analysis back in about 15 minutes. I hope Joseph will get on my blog to tell everyone about the technology and how it predicts personas. And now I am dying to read his book, Reading Virtual Minds (I don’t think it has been published yet.)

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

I recently had three interesting experiences, all in the area of product features that one might make an argument for withholding.

Experience One: This product is Brand New. We have a customer who writes, on some of his product detail pages, that the product is “Brand New.” So I asked, does that mean that the products without the “Brand New” descriptor are second-hand? Refurbished? In fact, he pointed out, all of their products are brand new, but some of their less trustworthy competitors sell reused products without informing the customer. So I suggested to him that he either write, “Brand New” on all products, or if he felt compelled to highlight a few, write, “Brand New, like all our products.”

Experience Two: This hotel room is air conditioned. I was booking a hotel room in Florence, Italy and as I reviewed my options, I realized that some of the rooms included air conditioning. At first I thought that was a mistake (wouldn’t all the rooms be air conditioned?) but I am thinking it is not an error. Just because every Hyatt, Holiday Inn, Marriott etc has air conditioning doesn’t mean that all rooms in a quaint little Tuscan B&B are electronically cooled. So this wasn’t a bad idea for the web site, it just proves that when you note an “expected” feature on only some of the products (or in this case, some of the rooms), you make the customer wonder about that feature’s availability where it’s not noted.

Experience Three: This software includes a graphical user interface. In this case, the website owner didn’t want to include the feature, and explained it like this: “Look,” he said, “When you buy a car, you expect it to come with four tires and a steering wheel. If the tires aren’t there, it’s a deal breaker, but it’s not a selling feature.”

All three situations were variations of the same problem. “Brand New” accidentally called into question how new the other products were. “Air Conditioned” deliberately showed off how un-air conditioned all the other rooms were. And “Includes a GUI” would have called into question how valuable all the other features were, if they had to include a feature that everyone expected.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

It’s getting harder and harder to talk to Google without talking in XML. A month ago, they rolled out their Google Co-op program. One part of it is Subscribed Links, and even though the description and the how-to’s are terribly written, I slogged my way through it (without any help from any XML gurus.) I hope you will try it too.

I created Subscribed Links in static mode. So if you subscribe to me by clicking here and then click on the big SUBSCRIBE button, on the left side of the screen, you’ll be able to pull up my Links every time you type in “conversion rate.” You’ll see this in Google, right under the top sponsored link:

Alternatively, if you love reference distributions, you can subscribe to one
of my customers, an embedded Linux development tools company, by clicking here and doing the same routine.

It’s good for the ego, but will be better for subscribers once I get the dynamic version working, that pulls up multiple options for many keywords. In the meantime, here’s how you do it yourself, although this is just one way, and there are lots of options available:

Copy this into a NotePad (Mac users, help me out and tell me what works on the Mac):


<results
<authorinfo description="Description (which doesn't seem to show up anywhere)" author="Firstname Lastname">
<resultspec id="InfoMatch">
<query>your search term goes here</query>
<output name="title">This will be the title of your little green co-op search</output>
<output name="more_url">www.yoursite.com</output>

<Output name=”link1″>First Anchor link text</Output>
<Output name=”url1″>www.firstlink.com</Output>
<output name=”link2″>Second Anchor Link text</output>
<output name=”url2″>www.secondlink.com</output>
<output name=”link3″>Third Anchor Link Text</output>
<output name=”url3″>www.thirdlink.com</output>

</response>
</resultspec>
</authorinfo>
</results>

Save it to your desktop as anyname.xml. Then follow the directions at the Google Subscribed Links site.

And many thanks to Clint (again), who helps with every kind of visualization one could need.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

Omniture just released a case study showing how Pegasus Associates increased their conversion rate by 55%. With help from LunaMetrics.

Get the case study .

You SiteCatalyst fans may be interested to know that Omniture has a “points” program whereby they give you a certain number of points for doing a case study, a press release, etc. You get to use the points to do SiteCatalyst training. Frankly, I think they should give their training away for free, since they know that the more intellegently the analyst uses the software, the happpier their customers are. But they didn’t ask my opinion and they charge upwards of $1000 for regional training (I haven’t even priced out their summit) so if you’re interested in their training, and you can get a case study through your legal department, go for it…

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

Lead generation sites are different from e-commerce sites, obviously, because first the visitor converts to a suspect/prospect, and ultimate converts to a purchaser — maybe. So you can look at any set of KPIs you like, but I think that it always comes down to three measurements:

1) How much is each kind of lead generation conversion (the e-mail marketing registration, the demo download, etc.) worth to you? (Here’s the easier of the two posts I wrote on this topic. And now, here’s the harder one.)

2) Once you know which actions turn into sales, how do you convince visitors to take those actions more often? (So, this is a basic conversion blocking and tackling. Don’t hide your call to action. Slice and dice your conversion rate. Measure your bounce rate. Do some user testing.

3) Finally, figure out how much you can pay for the clicks that turn into leads

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

Post and software updated: November 24, 2006

Chris Harrington, who lives here in Pittsburgh, wrote a post on the Web Analytics Forum on Friday, directing everyone to his GA-to-PPT tool. He directed everyone to his site where all the details are, but if you just want to use the tool, here’s how you do it. (And, I know all the details because Chris user tested it with me on Friday afternoon.)

Before I start, understand what the tool does. It merely takes the information you already have in Google Analytics and formats it nicely into a PowerPoint slide. You could definitely do the same thing yourself with a cut and paste job, but if you are generating a lot of these, it’s pretty handy. Plus, it formats the information to fit on the slide perfectly.

The URL is http://www.activeinterface.com/pptatk/ga2ppt.hta . But before you click, you should know that it only works in IE. If your computer is set to a different browser default, you need to cut and paste the URL into IE. You always have to choose Run (not save) because your computer will want to open it in your non-IE browser. (Anyone is welcome to tell me what the workaround for this is, as long is it doesn’t involve changing browser preferences…) Also, you should know that it only works if you have MSXML 4.0 SP2 Parser and SDK.

Once you get past the IE and MSXML thing, you can Run the tool and you’ll get a window like this:

I’ve already filled in the first three fields but they’ll be blank, and you won’t yet have the report choices at the bottom of the screen. When I first looked at this, I didn’t really understand what he was looking for, but the date fields are just like the Google Analytics interface — you start by filling in the dates of the report you are interested in.

Next, you have to fill in the Site ID so that the tool knows which company you are tracking. Chris and I figured out that you don’t have to do any of that XML stuff to get the info — it merely wants the RID number that’s nestled inside each and every URL of your reports (and comes right after the question mark, like this: ?rid=123456&scid=something-else). Be sure to pick up just the six digit number and not the rid= or the scid information. Finally, choose a report area, marketing or content (Chris pointed out to me that he broke it down this way so that the user isn’t overwhelmed.) At that point, you’ll be able to select individual reports (which are identical to the ones you get in GA - remember, this is presentation, not analysis) and watch his magic.

Note: Chris and I worked together to update this software on November 24, 2006. As usual, Chris get the big applause and I was mostly nagging and testing. The updated version includes all the new reports that GA has rolled out in the past few months, like AdWords Analysis. In the newer version, the .ppt usually goes to your “My Documents” if you are a PC user (Mac users, please comment and tell us where it goes to.) The Excel version stays right on your desktop until you save it. Also, be patient when you see that black DOS screen come up — sometimes it takes as long as 60 seconds. If you’ve used this recently and not had success, be sure to clear your cache before trying again.

Every time I work with this, it is a great lesson not only in how to auto-generate GA slides but in the power of user testing.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics

Dear Joel:

Yesterday, I saw your very interesting question on the Web Analytics forum. How do I get people to subscribe to the RSS feed, you asked, when they don’t understand what RSS is? You pointed out that you have an extensive explanation of RSS on your site and give readers some ideas of what feedreaders are and which ones they might check out (so why aren’t they getting it?)

Here is my advice to you and everyone else who wants subscribers to their feeds. BTW, don’t accept it as gospel — test it. One of the pieces of advice I tested myself and it didn’t work for my blog, but I have a different audience than you do.

• Getting subscribers is hard, so deal with it. Lots of people can’t be bothered, or they are just cruising by and want to read something you wrote about that day — not every day.
• Get your feed information up there prominently, not in a little footnote (or even in the fine print at the top of the page.)
• Give visitors the option of subscribing by email as well as your feed. Feedburner now has that capability (and they may still have a FeedFlare enabling you to do it through a second party, too.) Let me point out that I tried this and no one signed up for my feed through email, but I have a somewhat more technical blog and probably have a readership that understands feeds (and if someone reading my letter to Joel doesn’t understand the feed thing and would like to, please send me email, steif at lunametrics.) Joel, your readership is probably a lot more like the blog for the fertility doctor that I monitor — her subscriber base is about 2.5% the size of her drive-by readership.
• And most important of all, stop calling it RSS and stop teaching people what it means and how it’s about XML. They probably stop dead in their tracks as soon as they get to the X word. You need to write sometime like, “Want to get our online magazine sent to you every day? Here’s how you do it….” and then just explain the “how” and not the “why.” If you start by including an email option everyone will understand what you are trying to achieve because everyone understands the idea of getting it in their inbox.
• Remember that this is a conversion like any other and so all the same rules apply. Test. Don’t hide the call to action. Don’t hide the price (free.) Etc.

Hope this helps you and everyone else who wants subscribers. BTW, the best thing that can happen to you is consumer generated media — someone else says, “This blog is the greatest, you have to subscribe!” The second best thing you can do is provide awesome content so that they will *want* to subscribe. (Or maybe they’re reversed…)

Sincerely,

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics