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Archive for the ‘Analytics’ Category



Brian Michael

02/02/2010

Is this Blog Post Any Good?
10:10 am by Brian Michael

The answer to the question in the title will hopefully be yes, but it probably depends on who you’re asking. It also depends what they consider a “good blog post”; in other words they all have different measures of success. The same is true with any Web site or online project.

Measures of success obviously can vary from project to project, but they can also vary within a project. In most cases there exist three levels of measures, for our purposes we’ll call them primary, secondary and tertiary.

Usually primary measures of success relate to an offline activity. Although some people may spend more time in front of a computer than away from it, there is still a real world out there – a world that revolves around exchanging money, voting, construction and other human activities. Thus some examples would include making a donation on a mobile phone, getting people to vote for a particular candidate, or winning approval for a new hospital. One or more of these are usually the “problems” a client will have when looking to partner with another firm. These are easily the most important measures of success.

Secondary measures have to do with the activities that lead to one of the primary objectives mentioned above. Since primary measures involve a serious commitment on the part of the end-user, a gradual process of building up to the ultimate goal is required. These nodes of engagement could include participating in an online poll or survey, posting a message on a Facebook Wall, or forwarding an email.

The way to judge the likelihood that the secondary actions will be taken by supporters remains the hard data of the tertiary measures. These indexes – like pageviews, open rates or Twitter followers – are the things successful managers follow on a daily basis; and their analysis will uncover trends among your audiences.  This will in turn allow you to optimize campaigns to drive up the response rates measured in the primary and secondary goals.

Taking a step back we have seen that measures of success directly correlate to a campaign goal.  Measuring those goals can be done on a variety of levels in this case primary, secondary, or tertiary.  These levels could also be called Offline, Engagement, and Indicators, respectively.

The goal of this post was to pass on some knowledge for the offline world, I hope it is measured as a success.

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Jason Lyons

01/05/2010

Who’s Winning the Browser War?
12:13 am by Jason Lyons

One trend that has continued through 2009 is that the browser wars have become increasingly competitive. According to this report of browser market share, Internet Explorer lost 7% of the market in the year ending in December. This probably isn’t a surprise as it’s been happening ever since Firefox – who celebrated it’s 5th anniversary in 2009 – hit the scene. What is surprising is that Google’s new brower, launched in 2008, now occupies third place, just recently surpassing the Mac-based Safari.

Nonetheless, Internet Explorer retains the lion’s share of the market with 63%, followed by Firefox with 25%. This has important implications when designing and developing a new Web site. However, the most telling sign of what browser your readers are using remains your analytics data.

Looking through the Google Analytics reports of several clients, the market share broke down a little differently. On average, our client Web site were view in Internet Explorer 74% of the time, Firefox 17% and Safari 6%. However, I noticed a wide disparity among browsers depending on target audiences. For instance, for a trade association client whose subscribers average between 40 and 55 years old, the breakdown is Internet Explorer 82%, Firefox 12% and Safari 5%; while a sports blog with a younger following had a breakdown of Internet Explorer 46%, Firefox 32%, Safari 17%.

One explanation for this discrepancy has to do with mobile phone usage and age. A poll by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion shows that more than one-fourth (26%) of those younger than age 45 own a PDA, compared with just 10% of those ages 45+. This means a lot of younger readers are using their mobile device to view Web sites. Generally these devices do not use Internet Explorer as their browser – with the ubiquitous iPhone using the Safari browser.

Therefore when it comes time to test your new Web site in various browsers and allocate resources to ensure compliance, it is crucial to understand your audience segments and recognize which browser they most likely use.

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Andrew Holmes

11/17/2009

How well do you know Mr. G?
01:26 pm by Andrew Holmes

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is the complex process of improving a website’s traffic via online search engines. Blah, blah, blah. By now, most of us are at least somewhat familiar with this rather confusing and intimidating acronym, but I am here to give you my take on it. As an architect of the pages we view, scroll, click, shop, sign-up, comment, peruse, and ultimately rely on for a myriad of daily use, I am here to help sort out the enigma that is SEO. g

Of course I have to say, search engines (plural) in most cases when I’m talking about SEO, but lets face it, for now there’s really only one that matters. Who is this king of the search engines you ask? This internet moderator who answers those tough questions in life, like “Who delivers Chinese at 2 am?” or “How many feet are in a mile??”  Well I could let you take a guess out of……hmmm, I’ll say three, but I’ll just give you a hint instead. His name begins with G and ends with duh.

For most of you who know him, Mr. G is a pretty neat guy. He’s very popular, hip, clean cut, savvy and for the most part, friendly. Friendly of course, only if you speak his language and dress in his style… and guess what, he can be very choosy. Mr. G is at times extremely judgmental, especially if you try to climb his LONG ladder of friends unfairly, by bending his rules. The fact is, his popularity has given him certain rights. There are certain standards he has set in place that allow him to govern how you or your company rank on his coveted list of friends. Oh and by the way, just because you dress Flash-y doesn’t mean you’re automatically buds with G either.

Ahh, the science of SEO… this is where I come in. Though this “science” is complicated, tedious, and dull with outside opinions; I am a firm believer that the basic underlying concepts of SEO will for the most part remain the same. By following a few key rules any site can attract G’s much needed attention. These rules are simple: Have interesting, up-to-date content on a well-designed and developed infrastructure and, bing! your website will skyrocket to the top of Mr. G’s friend list faster than you can say Balloon Boy.

Maybe you love him, with his quick responses on how to spell words like “unconstitutional” or his perfect timing to remind you that, yes, it is actually Sesame Street’s 40 birthday. Maybe you struggle with Mr. G and his fickle, ever changing taste in websites and where he decides to rank them in importance. One thing is for sure: like him or not, the next wave we get from G….. probably won’t be a wave goodbye.

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