OK, this is one of two commercials I have to do (the next one will be for Lunametrics’ Google Analytics training on June 4 in NYC at the Harvard Club. But I don’t have the link for that one ready quite yet.)

So here is the deal - the WAA is having a free event — actually two. First, there is an educational session on Web Analytics vs. Audience Measurement, and then there will be our fun event: the Raucous Caucus. It is on the Sunday evening before the eMetrics Summit in San Francisco, in the Gold Ballroom of the Palace Hotel in SF (the same hotel as the Summit will be in). Two New Montgomery Street, if you are mapping it. It starts at 4:30 PM and goes until 7, and then you can all go out for dinner. Or, stand on the sidewalk until midnight and try to decide what to do, which is where I found everyone last year when I finally pulled up to the hotel.

The hard part is that the registration requires you to go through the eMetrics signup, and it FEELS like it costs money. Wouldn’t you expect more from an organization that is supposed to help people *improve* their websites? But it is always that way, no one ever can do for themselves what they do for others.

Anyway, you probably should register for this free event. If you show up with no registration, there will be no name tag for you, and no finger food with your name on it, either. It is the first item on the top of the WAA home page.

So happy registering.

Robbin

Popularity: 15% [?]

When I begin working on a new pay-per-click account, I really never know what I’m going to see. Sometimes the keywords are far too generic to generate a good conversion rate (a dog walker advertising on the term “dogs”) and sometimes the keywords are far too specific to generate any real traffic (such as “dog walking services in Pittsburgh’s North Hills”). But you know what never surprises me with new clients? Poor segmentation!

So, for anyone who’s just delving into PPC for the first time (or who’s been bravely running their own PPC campaigns), let’s get down to business. What is segmentation? And why is it so important?

I’d like you to think of your PPC account as an investment portfolio. You might look at your portfolio as a whole from time to time to see how you’re doing overall, but in general, there is very little actionable data at the account level.

The actionable data comes from seeing how various segments of your portfolio are performing. Let’s say my fictional investment portfolio is made up of energy stocks, manufacturing stocks and tech stocks. If my energy stocks are getting phenomenal returns, my manufacturing stocks are getting steady positive returns and my tech stocks are losing money each month — well, *that* is some actionable data. I’m probably going to put more money into my energy stocks, hang onto my manufacturing stocks and sell my tech stocks.

Your pay-per-click account can be seen in much the same way. When you divide up your account into 6-10 campaigns (generally, your main product lines or service areas), you are going to begin getting some clear, actionable data. You’re going to know what your top-performing campaigns are and you’ll be able to turn up the volume on these campaigns (for example, increase your bids to get a higher volume of high-converting traffic). Similarly, you will know where your efforts are wasted and can stop the “slow bleed” of poorly performing campaigns.

And don’t forget to extend your segmentation efforts one level deeper — each campaign should be segmented into relevant ad groups (let’s say about 2-4 ad groups for each campaign). Although adjustments at the ad group level are somewhat more “fine tuning” than “big picture”, the principles are the same — it’s still about doing more of what’s working and less of what’s not.

So, if you’re one of those many PPC advertisers who have one campaign and one ad group, start segmenting! What you find out may surprise you.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Thanks to everyone who took our survey. We had 72 responses (and we have about 1500 subscribers, plus tens of thousands of unique visitors who read on a non-subscription basis), so there are definitely issues with statistical significance. I will do a separate post on statistical significance of surveys (i.e. where you only have one numerator and one denominator, as opposed to all those calculators that let you compare tests.) In the meantime, many thanks to Judah Phillips for lending a hand in that department.

We only asked five questions:

1. Please describe your “relationship” with the LunaMetrics blog
2. Why do you read this blog?
3. In the area of Google Analytics, you consider yourself (novice, intermediate, expert)
4. In the area of multivariate and A/B testing, you consider yourself (novice, etc.)
5. Freeform place to tell us what you want

At a simple level, we learned that most responders to the survey are also blog subscribers or read very often (63%), they are mostly interested in GA (46%), although the second area of interest was split between learning about conversion in general and learning about web analytics in general. This one was hard, because I didn’t learn enough to stop beating myself up about doing so much GA stuff and so little conversion stuff. The least important reason people read is to learn about industry trends. (OK, we will remember not to do that. An easy request.)

We learned that among responders, there is a nice bell curve of GA expertise, with the majority of responders (45%) considering themselves at an intermediate level

and experts at 18%, newbies at 32%. On the other hand, the vast majority of responders considered themselves newbies at MVT and A/B. Again, this is helpful information, because it reminds me and other bloggers here at Luna to write at a level that new and intermediate analysts can understand.

I tried to do a lot of neat correlations that fell apart (too little data.) However, I pushed the numbers by hand, and was continually awed at how MVT came in last place to most readers. Of course, there is a strong problem of what causes what; after all, we write about GA so much, that it would be surprising if the audience didn’t self-select and want to hear about it. On the other hand, it always feels to me like MVT goes hand in glove with web analytics….

Although everything was completely anonymous, a number of people left some really great comments, and a few even left their name. And responses were so nice! (Maybe no one knew how incredibly anonymous they were - no IP addresses or anything.) Here are only some of the comments that we got. I copied and pasted (and only added hyperlinks to other places in our blog.)

Freeform answers to, “What is your relationship to this blog?”

I´ve discovered today, reading a spanish analytic blog.

I clicked on the link today while I was visiting your website…just wanted to know more about LunaMetrics…in particular, your CEO, Robin.

I just subscribed after the recommendation of Avinash’s book. I use Google Reader, which i read daily.

accidentally found it yesterday through google and it was the only website to make understand RegEx properly

Yes, I am embellishing on my answer!! My answer is really A: I subscribe to this blog or read it very often, but I also use some posts as reference guides whenever I need them. Amazingly, I still use Robbin’s Regular Expression guides from 2 years ago, because it’s always good to go back and cover the basics again. [Dear writer — me too!! There are all these RegExen, like negative lookahead, that I don’t use that often, and then when I need them, I go back to the blog and learn about them again - Robbin]

Freeform answers to, “Why do you read this blog?”

I don’t care for the way this question is laid out. I don’t think that I can “rank” the reasons why I read a blog. But I do know that this is one of the blogs that you MUST have bookmarked if you’re in web analytics and consider yourself “staying on top of the industry”. Therefore I have checkmarked that answer, but everything else would come in as 1a, if you will.

I wanted to see how much LunaMetrics knows about paid search.

Interesting insights, How to’s on how to get at the data in GA to answer relevant questions.

because Robbin will ask me if I read it and I must be truthful!!! But your team is so freaking smart I want to read it.

Freeform answers in the place where I said, “Go ahead, tell us everything you wish we had asked, what you wish we would write about, anything at all.”

More than anything, I get to see when the web analytics industry moves to analysis of customer behavior over time (i.e. prior loyal customers have a 20.3% chance of visiting in January 2008, visiting an average of 3.4 times, and has a 32.4% chance of purchasing, spending an average of $125.) When I see this type of information, broken down by Recency/Frequency/Monetary/Channel/Personas, I’ll know that the Web Analytics community has arrived. I believe the folks at Luna Metrics will be among the first to get this.

I like stories about what other people have learned, tried or are thinking about. Since I am a novice, I want to learn as much as I can. I don’t really like the technical posts, but I am not the technical person so I just sort of skim them and move on. I’d also like to learn about how your clients are overcoming organizational obstacles. [Ooh, this is a good one, although Avinash just wrote a nice piece on this.]

I really liked it when you brought up the issues with documentation on the Google Analytics Help Section. I’m all about organization and it would be nice if you pushed that issue some more. Since the issue was brought up, I have seen several changes in the Help Files organization. I also really like it when you conduct experiments (like your Visitor Loyalty experiment from about a month ago). Thank you, Robbin!

You might have asked about your audience. For example, website managers might be interested in a certain level of detail on how to do something, but CEOs might be in more top level stuff and may not have time to slog through the blog.

I *love* that you are putting tools on your blog, like the FireFox extension for copying goals, and the macro for deduping parameters. Thanks!!!

I wish more WA bloggers would write about “Doh!” moments they’ve had - where they’ve spent x amount of time (too much) trying to solve a problem, or configure a profile, or segment a group, or whatever, and after spending all this time, they have an “aha” moment, where they realize the answer. Sharing those moments with other practitioners/blog readers…priceless

Popularity: 53% [?]

We see it all the time — companies who just can’t figure out why their site doesn’t convert like it should.

We know first-hand that high conversion rate sites aren’t necessarily the prettiest sites. They often don’t have fancy graphics, knock-your-socks-off design or expensive flash elements. But they know what their users want and they give it to them — for example, they help users easily navigate to the right product; they give users the information they care about; they make it easy for users to do business with them.

Since it’s a Friday, I’m not going to tell you why you should do user testing on your site, or rant about common usability problems I encounter in performing user testing for clients. Instead, I’ll save the educational post for the work week and direct you to this funny (because it’s true) post, Don’t Hire An Ad Agency to Build Your Web Site. It says it better than I ever could!

Popularity: 49% [?]

I was thinking about the LunaMetrics Blog survey. Quite a few people have taken it, but I’d like to get another fifty responses before publishing.

I considered (and discarded) these thoughts:

• You owe it to the blog writers. No, let’s face it: you don’t owe anything. We’ll keep doing great content, and we really don’t know anything about who replies (unless they actually sign their name, which a couple of people did). So we’ll never know if you answered or not.
• You aren’t getting paid for it, so why should you? Good point. So you see why I discarded this one.
• You’ll be able to influence some of the things we write, or at least, how we write them. Well, that’s like saying you will have a chance to win a free iPod. You might win, but your chances are diluted by the number of others who answered. And when was a potentially free iPod the reason that you did something, anyway?

No, it seems to me that there is only one good reason to answer our survey: this is what analysts do. They understand that data is sacred, and that not having enough of it is aggravating. So if creating data is something an analyst can do, we do it.

I hope you’ll understand how important having enough data is, and you’ll take our short, completely anonymous survey.

Take the LunaMetrics Blog survey

Thanks!

Robbin

Popularity: 70% [?]

So yesterday, the new year started in force, and our team sat down to talk about our blog (and what kind of posts we would like to do in the coming months.) “Well, what do our readers care about?” one person asked. “Who are they?” Hmm, I thought, I really have very little idea. So here is our first little survey (and it really is little — just four or five questions, depending on how you count them. None are mandatory, because don’t you just hate when you give freely of your time and they force you to answer things you don’t want to answer?) Please please please take a minute or two to fill this out. We write a lot, but only know that we’re helping when you talk to us.

Take the LunaMetrics Blog survey

Many thanks to Taylor and Traci, John and Jason. I know you guys won’t think that I took any of your advice, but I really did.

- Robbin

Popularity: 65% [?]

Finally, you’re on the front page of Digg! You’re server is hopefully prepared to handle the ridiculous amount of traffic it is about to see today. You check back in the next day to see how many new orders you have. Think about the possibilities: 10,000 visitors with your 4% conversion rate. You finally bring up the report…nothing. In fact, your conversion rate is probably lower than usual.

Writing that social media whale that will bring in thousands of visitors to your site is hard. You have to research the hook that will be most successful for your niche, and then successfully market it to get on the front page of Digg, Reddit, Mixx, or other social media sites. Despite the opportunities social media gives you, I still hear the same complaint over and over: the traffic doesn’t convert.

It is easy to understand your conversion concerns with social media. You probably wonder, “what good is all of that traffic if 0.01% of it actually buys something or clicks on one of my ads? I’d rather have my resources used on strategies that will get people to buy more.” But what so many people fail to realize is: social media marketing is not about conversion, it is about links.

The links that you get from a successful social media campaign will help you rank higher for your targeted keywords that will bring in the traffic that actually converts. Don’t expect any of the thousands of visitors you receive from Digg to convert, but you should expect them to link to your site from their blogs and from their websites. These links can easily be enough to take you straight to the first position for your most important keywords. Next thing you know, more and more of your quality traffic is converting.

A great way to filter out all of this non-converting traffic is to setup a filter in your Google Analytics. First, create a new profile so you still have that main profile that shows everything. Next, add a custom filter to get rid of all of the social media traffic coming your way:

Now your new profile will display all of the traffic and conversion rates, minus all of the non-converting traffic from social media. See how your traffic from the Search Engines improves, and how it affects your goals. You’ll be amazed at the indirect benefit social media can create for you.

Popularity: 52% [?]

“You really mix it up, Robbin, don’t you?” LunaMetrician Jason Green joked as he unpacked box after box of Melitta’s Breakfast Blend javapods.

“Well, that’s what you guys drink,” I answered. But in fact, that wasn’t the main reason that I bought all Breakfast Blend. Melitta just didn’t have the information that I needed to distinguish between their products. And I saw the same problem with the user tests we did in December, for a completely different kind of customer.

The problem was that the Melitta site made it too hard for me to buy anything else. I would have loved to try some new stuff, but all those coffee words didn’t mean anything to me.

For example, one of the flavors was, “A Cafe Kind of Day.” The description is, “The forecast calls for smooth and satisfying. The 100% Colombian brew delivers a subtle, wine-like overtone from daybreak to nightfall. Each box contains 18 pods. Fits all Coffee Pod Brewers.”

Seems simple? Not to me. I want to hear, “This is the perfect cup of coffee when you have that mid-afternoon sleepy feeling.” Or, “Just awesome when you crave something as dark as espresso, but can’t get to your machine.” I need some way to differentiate this kind of coffee from “Breakfast Blend.” With Breakfast Blend, I understand one important feature: it is for drinking in the morning. All those other blends — I just couldn’t tell the difference.

This is the same issue I saw last week in user testing. We had a site with product after product, and they were so similar. The owner certainly understood how and when to make a selection, because he knows the product selection intimately. Some of the users, however, were overwhelmed. He needed to tell them when to choose each one — just like Melitta needed to tell me how to choose a flavor of coffee.

Next time, I am going to find a site that has compatible coffee pods, and that tells me what to buy, and why. And we’ll try something new.

Robbin

Popularity: 63% [?]

Do long search phrases convert better?

This was what I wanted to find out for a particular client, but it took some work. I used a regular expression in the Keywords Report of Google Analytics to filter by the number of terms in the Keyword Phrase. The exported results showed a clear increase in conversion rate as the number of search terms increased.

This client was doing far better with searchers who were using a lot of terms. They were being specific! They knew just what they were looking for and were ready to buy. This data put additional power behind recommendations concerning content, search engine optimization and paid search strategies.

1 .59%

2 .60%

3 .90%

4 1.17%

5 1.06%

6 1.22%

7 1.88%

8 3.33%

Even though there were a lot of people using long search phrases, this data was obscured. As the number of terms increased, the number of people searching for exactly that phrase decreased. This resulted in none of the individual phrases seeming to count for much. The so-called Long Tail.

You really have to dig to find these sorts of gems but they are invaluable in the pursuit of providing information that can be acted upon.

A tool for digging

The tool is a Regular Expression, a pattern matching language. If you’re not already familiar with it, there is a great series of articles right here on the LunaMetrics blog.

Here is what I used:

^([\+*"*\s*,*'*\-*]*\w+\b\s*[\+*"*\s*,*'*\-*]*){3}$

It accounts for the most common characters I’ve found between words.

Steve (see comments) pointed out a great way to shorten my expression by using the \W character set. Here is what it looks like.

^(\W*\w+\b\W*){3}$

\W is shorthand for all non-word characters

How do I use it?

I know this may look like gibberish but keep reading — you don’t need to understand it to get some use from it.

In Google Analytics, go to Traffic Sources > Keywords and paste the Regular Expression into the box at the bottom of the data. Just change the {3} to whatever number of terms you want to see and click the GO button.

A brief look at the RegEx

Although this is not strictly a Regular Expression post, I feel obligated to include a basic glance at the different parts of the expression. Feel free to skip this if you just don’t care.

^ anchors the beginning of the match to the beginning of the string

( ) used to group a set of items together for a match

[\+*”*\s*,*’*\-*]* This group matches any number and any order of + ” , – ‘ and whitepace (\s). It is what handles all the characters that might end up separating different search terms.

\w+ Matches 1 or more alphanumeric characters (the \w is another pre-defined set of characters like \s)

\b Match for a word boundary. It forces the \w characters to be separated by something. Otherwise the expression will match any string of characters longer than {3}.

{3} Requires exactly 3 of the above sequence so it would match the phrase one two three but not one two three four

$ anchors the end of the match to the end of the string

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

You can’t account for every situation. For example, sometimes ‘ is meant as an apostrophe and sometimes “-” is used as a hyphen. In the end the impact is usually small – just 2-3% of the search phrases were affected in my case and they just get bumped to the next higher match instead. (For example, non-glare window would match at {3} instead of {2})

It is an interesting way to look at keyword data and maybe you’ll get some use from it– if you do, let me know.

Popularity: 93% [?]

“I really want to download that song,” my anti-war teenager whispered to me in the darkened theater. We were watching the (almost mandatory) music video about the National Guard that is showing here in the US on every screen, before every movie, it seems.

“Don’t you care that it’s about the US military?” I whispered back, incredulously.

“No,” she whispered in reply, “I just care that 3 Doors Down did it.”

Today is the end of the holiday weekend, and as she was getting ready to go back to school, I asked her if she had downloaded it. “I didn’t,” she answered, “They wanted my name and my email address. I’m just the right age, I’m sure they’ll try to recruit me. I’ll get a ton of spam from them.” I pointed out that she could easily just create an alternative email account and not worry about the spam. Which is exactly what she did.

The National Guard is really foolish. They have spent an incredible amount of money getting a truly great music video on movie screens nationwide. But instead of putting a wall in front of it (stopping lots and lots of people), they should give it away without asking for names. And they should make not just the music, but also the video, available for download (I only found the streaming video available.) It’s a great recruiting piece, and instead of stopping the conversion, they should let people take it and watch it and watch it. Isn’t that what you want, all your potential customers putting your advertising on their iPods? The US National Guard has that opportunity, but left as it is - email address required - lots of people will just leave the page (I’d like to see that page’s exit rate - I notice that they use Google Analytics), and plenty of others will just use an alternate address. One they will never look at again.

Now, that would make a great split test - because all that should matter is whether they get enough recruits…

Popularity: 48% [?]