Here it is … a straggling installment on my year-long saga to bring Regular Expressions (RegEx) to regular people. Today, I want to write about how to make your expressions less greedy. It’s a feature called “minimal matching.” Unfortunately for you advanced learners, you have to wait until the end of the article until you see the application. I always want to teach with the easiest of examples (however meaningless they may be…)

Last winter, I wrote about how RegEx are greedy. But Google Analytics uses a flavor of RegEx that allows you to make them less greedy.

Let’s start with a fairly stupid but easy to understand example. We’ll assume that the phrase we want to match to is baaaaa. We could create a regular expression like this:

ba+

That means, start matching at the b, match the a next, and then match one or more a’s. (Right? The plus sign means, match one or more of the previous expression, which is so often, just the previous character.) So this RegEx that I wrote, ba+, will match the entire string:

baaaaa

(If that doesn’t make sense to you, remember that RegEx are greedy, and the default is, they match as much as they possibly can. Here, they will match all the a’s we give it, since the plus sign means, one or more.)

But what if we wanted to match just the first b and the first a, like this: ba

We need to specify minimal matching (and hang in there with me, soon it will all be worthwhile.) We can match to just the first instance of a by using a question mark. Like this:

ba+?

When Justin taught this to me (months ago), I asked, “How does the RegEx know that the question mark is doing minimal matching, and not there to say, match zero or one of the last character?” Well, it turns out that those are the same thing — the question mark in the expression above tells the plus sign, “You can match to one a but no more.”

This concept is actually very helpful when you are matching to URI strings. For example, let’s say you had a string like this:

gibberish/foldertwo/folderthree

And you wanted to rewrite that gibberish to be something meaningful. But because it is gibberish, it looks different every time. You could write a RegEx like this:

.*/

But, it will match to the last slash because the RegEx are greedy. However, if you use minimal matching, like this:

.*?/

it will match to only the first slash. And that’s what minimal matching is all about.

Plus signs +
Backslashes \
Dots .
Carats ^
Dollars signs $
Question marks ?
Pipes |
Parentheses ()
Square brackets []and dashes -
Plus signs +
Stars *
Regular Expressions for Google Analytics: Now we will Practice
Bad Greed
RegEx and Good Greed
Intro to RegEx
{Braces}
Minimal Matching
Lookahead 

Robbin

Hello WA/Conversion world, Taylor here. Oddly enough, my very first LunaMetrics post is to brag about how great my first year with the company has been (and first year in the “real world.”) I’m the SEO here at LunaMetrics, and Robbin had asked me to prepare a self-review. Naturally, my SEO skills kicked in and Robbin thought it would be great for me to share my thoughts with all of you!

*short pause to let the excitement sink in*

7 Reasons Why My First Year at LunaMetrics was a Success

1. I was very concerned that because this was my very first job out of college I wouldn’t be able to meet expectations, and eventually be the demise of LunaMetrics. Thankfully, I feel like I was able to carry my share of the work load, and (with Robbin’s help) deal with any adversity.
2. My SEO knowledge has quintupled (I say “quintupled” because I don’t know what’s higher than that!) When I first came into this job, all I had was some very basic knowledge of SEO and a lot of passion. I really wanted to excel in this field, and get a full understanding of the Search Engine world. I think I’ve done an amazing job so far with the help of my early training with Robbin, reading SEO books, attending conferences, asking Rob questions (he’s our Canadian SEO friend), reading blogs, and (of course) trial and error.
3. I feel confident with my SEO abilities. Am I an SEO guru? No way. I do, however, look forward to new SEO challenges – instead of fearing that I won’t be able to solve a problem. I really owe a lot of that to my trip to SES NY in April. During one of the Q&A sessions, I was able to answer about 8/10 of the questions. I realized that maybe I’m a lot better at this than I thought. Don’t confuse arrogance with confidence. I by no means developed some sort of ego when I had this epiphany. I know now that no matter what I have to tackle in the future (in the SEO world at least), with enough time and commitment I’ll be able to understand it, and overcome it. And that is a BIG deal to me.
4. What I thought was going to be the biggest disaster of my SEO career, ended up being my biggest success. Of course I am talking about the [specific client's] website. That website was a complete disaster, and I had to deal with a dozen SEO issues that I had never addressed before – all at once. On top of that, I was having to deal with the ego of a web designer who just didn’t get the SEO world. When [that client's site] lost most of its rankings, their traffic plummeted, half the site didn’t work, and 90% of their site was in the supplemental (all on Christmas Eve, of course), I thought for sure this account would get me fired and my career would be forever scarred. After a lot of hard work, patience, and help I was able to make this site my biggest success story. Oh, the irony.
5. I’ve done a couple of public speaking events…and enjoyed them! After working here for 2 months I remember Robbin telling me that she hoped I would start speaking on SEO in the future. I remember my jaw hitting the floor and I tried to start thinking of a way out of it. Fortunately, after watching multiple great presentations from Robbin and the help of Tim Sweet, I was able to overcome my stage fright and give well informed sessions (in my opinion). I look forward to my next speaking engagements!
6. I enjoy what I do. I can’t tell you how great it is when people ask if I enjoy my job and I tell them how much I love it. I just feel bad that they don’t get the same joy out of their jobs. My biggest goal in life was to enjoy what I do for a living. I’m very thankful that I was able to find that so quickly.
7. My self review is a top 7 list! Who else can say that?

Do you ever abandon a website because you need to know when the product (gift??) will arrive?

If I buy software from your website, I can download it as soon as my credit card is approved. If you have a lead generation site, I’ll be added to your list of leads instantly, and if your salesperson turns around that lead within hours, he has a better chance of closing. But if I’m buying a product from you, why can’t you tell me when it is arriving?

Oh sure, I know. “Your product will arrive in 3-7 business days.” I see it all the time on the web. But if today is Friday, seven business days will include two weekends. Not very precise.

I go to “Contact Us” pages all the time to figure out where the company is shipping from. If it’s coming from Florida, it will be here in three days from the day it’s shipped. Seattle takes a full business week. New York might be here tomorrow.

Now, maybe you are Amazon and you have many warehouses, and the shipping location depends on the arrival location. But you probably aren’t Amazon. It is possible that you drop ship products, also making the problem harder.

But still.

If you can’t tell me when the product will arrive (before I order, that is), maybe you can tell me, “Most orders ship one business day after we receive your order. 95% of our product ships out of our warehouse in Boca Raton, FL.

Or wherever you happen to ship from.

Robbin

Oh, it took forever, but we finally have winners and runners-up to the Google Analytics Documentation Contest. (One of the judges, Avinash Kaushik, wrote me this morning, “You have my permission to shame me on this one, you can blame me for the delay in awarding prizes.”) The other judge was Justin Cutroni of Epikone. I let them make the decisions and then cast the tie-breaking vote where necessary. Justin and Avinash, thank you.

Before I start, a word about prizes. I must be such an Ugly American, it never occurred to me that three of the four winners would be on other continents, making it hard (actually, impossible) for me to give away some of the prizes. But all is not lost! Here is what we are giving away, in no particular order:

1. A copy of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, which we can order from any of Amazon’s many locations. Avinash is buying that one. (Thanks A)

2. A gift certificate for up to $50 in a free ink/toner refill for your printer from Databazaar. That one is good in the US and Canada only. (Thanks, Databazaar.)

3. and 4. Copies (when it is available, which I hope is in the next month or so) of Justin Cutroni’s new O’Reilly e-book, Google Analytics Shortcuts. Shareen Jordan, who works at LunaMetrics, says this about the book, “I open the .pdf in the morning and I don’t turn it off until the day is over.” Justin, we (LunaMetrics) are buying this one these two gifts.

And now for the awards! (drumroll, please):

The “I’m Smarter Than Google Analytics” award goes to Steve McInerney for pointing out that the Regular Expressions(RegEx) for IP addresses in this link are too greedy, and will match much more than GA thinks they will. You can read his full entry here. For Steve, we have a copy of Avinash’s book. I know that he already has one copy, but is looking forward to another one, hopefully autographed. Category: Incorrect documentation

The “Am I Going Blind — where are those GA instructions?” award goes to Aditya Dugar for his entry, whereby he points out that GA never tells you how to choose a kind of match (head, exact or Regular Expressions) in the “How do I set up goals?” instructions? For Aditya, we have a copy of Justin’s ebook, and I think it is going to India (so I can just email it. When it is ready. Soon.) Category: Missing Documentation

The “Does GA have to hide the information?” award goes to Daniel Waisberg, who really wants to know how many pages he gets in Content before he has to see “other.” About this entry, Judge Cutroni wrote, “Another winner! Can you see a trend in my selections? Again, the issues I have with the documentation are the lack of information about the overall architecture of the applications. This includes limits in the data, how the reports are constructed and the basic processing of the application. ” For Daniel, we have a copy of Justin’s book, too. This one is going to Tel Aviv. Category: Missing Documentation

And the “Can’t You make this even harder to understand?” award goes to Joe Teixeira for his submission on how incredibly hard it is to understand the documentation wrt setting up e-commerce goals in Google Analytics. Judge Kaushik wrote, “It is a classic doh! I read it and am sad.” For Joe, we have a gift certificate from Databazaar, and I will get that to you very soon. Category: Opacity (Opaqueness?)

Runners up: Dylan Lewis, who asked, “Are goals applied retroactively?” (is everyone subscribing to his Web Analytics Wiki?) and June Li, who thinks that GA needs a whole new section on Regular Expressions.

Many thanks to everyone who submitted. I sent everything to GA, and they came back with some specific questions, and I am hoping to see some changes really soon.

Robbin

I used to devastate guys. Not in the “you should drop dead because I am so beautiful and have no time for you” kind of way (I’m not beautiful), but in the “Let me insult you in front of all your friends so that you feel like two cents” kind of way.

So it should not be surprising that I treated two out of three websites that way recently — it comes so naturally. Lars Johansson sent me a list of European (and mostly Scandanavian) websites, and asked me to evaluate them for conversion best practices. Well, you can read for yourself how I treated two of the websites like guys with overblown egos.

Robbin

How long do you have to run a test to consider it a tie?

You could consider this to be part II of a series, where part I is a post by statistician Wendi Malley. She writes about how many pageviews I need in my sample size before I can call my Google Website Optimizer (GWO) test a tie. You should bear with me even if statistics aren’t your thing, because by the end of this post, I put it in plain English. (OK, en-us.)

If you didn’t read her post, she looked at my GWO tests, which were all running neck and neck for two+ weeks, with a conversion rate of greater than 4% for the control (and the other ones, too). From there, she figured out that I can call it a day (i.e. they are a tie), when I have 1728 pageviews. I only had 783 views of the test page when I sent her the data.

Her answer assumes that I am looking for 95% confidence in my answer and a margin of error of plus or minus 1%. Since it only took 2+ weeks to get 783 views, I figured I only needed another 2+ weeks to go.

But at the same time that I wrote Wendi, I also wrote GWO. On the surface, their answer seemed to be very different from hers:

Given enough time, every test (assuming there are perceptible differences in the variations) will generate a winner in the report. This is because with enough data, even the smallest differences will be discernible. The question is, are those differences worth waiting for? At this point, there aren’t many conversions in your experiment. Because of the low traffic and low conversion rate, you may have to wait for months to get something more definitive.

Hmm, those two things didn’t seem to go together. So I pushed a little harder, and as usual, the GWO people were very responsive, and they came back with this answer:

What Wendi is describing in her blog is a power calculation. This
says: if I want to be able to measure a difference of a given size
(delta), if I wait so long (n), I will be 95% (alpha) certain that I
can see the difference…

My original statement is also correct: If you wait long enough, a
difference of any magnitude will be measurable. What Wendi shows is
that you qualify that statement with an amount of difference one is
interested in, you can calculate the number of impressions required to
detect that difference with a given degree of certainty.

So I pushed through the Greek letters (and wrote Wendi) in an effort to really understand her equation. Here is what it means in English - no Greek letters or subscripts (and Wendi, you correct me if I am wrong):

Given a conversion rate we already know (the control) and a confidence that we want (95%), how many views of the test page do we need to have in order to feel that the conversion rate of the other tests will be no more than plus or minus 1%? In the case of my test, how many pageviews do we need to see to feel 95% confident that the conversion rates of the other tests will be between 3.72 and 5.72%? (after all the control has 4.72%, so that’s plus or minus one percentage point, right?)

And in fact, GWO is right also - they *are* both right. We can decrease that “margin of error” (I wish we could call it “conversion rate difference”) to be .0001% and we will need over 17 million page views to have 95% confidence that there is a tie. Of course, I owe that calculation to Wendi’s spreadsheet.

And finally — look! I am starting to see a little spread in the data:

Certainly, you should have the navigation that works best for you. But testing navigation is not as easy as testing, say, what titles you should have on pages, or what prices you should offer your products at (Well, that one can be hard, too). Most companies want to decide on their navigation before they design their sites, and then they just live with their misery until the next redesign. (I learned that lesson the hard way.) So let’s just discuss the opportunities and downfalls.

Top horizontal vs. left vertical navigation vs. both.

Top horizontal navigation has the advantage of all being above the fold, and gets presented in a nice neat package up there with your logo. Furthermore, it doesn’t hoard much of your precious real estate, the way that left navigation does. After all, even if your left navigation only has seven or eight options, your designer will probably keep you from wrapping text around it (and thereby prevent you from using the white space below it. Although, you could use the space for surveys or testimonials or news or snippets from your blog.) Top horizontal has another advantage — you can add a blog much easier to your site. Blogs tend to have a side horizontal nav bar already. You could still do them on opposite sides of the page, especially if you don’t have to design for 800×600.

On the other hand, it is much harder to extend horizontal navigation - it can only get as wide as your customers’ browsers .

So I will make sweeping generalizations, if everyone who reads recognizes that the only “good” navigation is the one that is good for you. If you are a small lead generation website that wants to have Services, Products, Partners, About Us and Contact Us in your navigation (I really hate those, but more later), then go ahead and do the horizontal thing. If you are a large website, especially an e-commerce website with lots of products, you probably have to do the vertical navigation. If you are Amazon, you probably have so many products that you need to do both. And if you are a content site, like CNN (don’t you hate their newest redesign?) your whole site is really one big piece of navigation, because everywhere you turn, you are linking to another story.

Having said that, we are a small b-to-b website, and I just hate our horizontal navigation. I just wish I could extend it.

Text vs. words in pictures.

Oh, this one is easy. If your navigation includes important keywords, then do your navigation in text. That way, you get credit for those keywords in the search engines. On the other hand, if you have one of those Services - Products - Partners - About Us -Contact Us kinds of navigation, go ahead and write it any way you want. And you can always put your important links as end-links on the bottom of the page in real text, which will help your SEO some.

Javascript pulldowns and flyouts.

The issue here, besides any search engine issues, is about usability - it’s so hard to get your mouse to navigate to exactly the right place (and to then yet another layer of javascript. Think about your own experience: you mouse over something, a menu comes up, you move your mouse over to where you want to be, and then you have a third set, and you can’t get your mouse to hold on the right spot? You hate it, right? So keep this one simple. As part of that, make sure that the first level of navigation is mousable. For example, if you had a music website, and one category was Jazz, and under that, you had all sorts of jazz bands — you should still allow the visitor to click on Jazz, the highest level, so that s/he can see the category page.

What words should you use in your navigation?

This is a great opportunity for some quick user testing. Write down the topics of your top hundred or two hundred pages, and ask users to sort them into piles that make sense. Andthen ask the people who are sorting to give each pile a descriptive name.

My favorite example of bad naming is from the old Carnegie Mellon website. Here is a screenshot.

Notice that one of the categories is Faculty Visitors. I can’t tell you how many times I have been to that link. After all, when I go to the CMU website, I am usually pretending to be my spouse, dealing with benefits. Visiting their website. That made me a faculty visitor. Right? But always, I came away disappointed, because that’s where visitors from other universities were supposed to go….

You also have the opportunity to say just about nothing and use Services - Products - Partners - About Us -Contact Us, thereby ensuring that visitors cannot understand what your company does by reading your navigation.

Breadcrumbs, and where am I, anyway?

Not everything is on the navigation. After all, it just can’t be when you have a million-page website. But you still need to get visitors to their information, so you’ll have to rely on excellent on-site search, a great sitemap (but not everything will be there either, will it?), very strong scent, and linking from page to page.

Should you have breadcrumbs? You know, those little (sometimes clickable) links that showed you went from Outerwear to Sweatshirts to Hoodies? I think that the jury is out on that one.

Jared Spool claimed to me (this was in March ‘06 when I was at their road show) that his studies show, no one uses breadcrumbs. I countered that I use them all the time in Google AdWords, but that is more of a web application than a website (and I use them to click on and get back where I want to be. Plus, AW has a strong hierarchy, keywords inside adgroups inside campaigns, so where you are really matters.) If you do use breadcrumbs, be careful not to create a real trail in text (lest you really mess yourself up in the search engines.) You can create either a relative, “hard coded” trail (so, for example, even if I land directly on Hoodies from the search engines, my trail already says Outerwear > Sweatshirts > Hoodies.) Or, you can create a real trail, but wrap it in javascript so that the search engines can’t read it.

Endnotes: Many thanks to Internetrix, for being the only GAAC to submit to the GA contest. (I should have winner announcements this week.) Congrats to Conversion Rate Experts for becoming a Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant. (You guys are probably the only four page website to achieve that accolade.)  Thanks to Kevin from the T-shirt company, who requested this post. And many thanks to Taylor Pratt from LunaMetrics, whose vacation I interrupted just to ask an SEO question (and thereby finish this post. Finally.)