Use What’s Free: Part 2
Last Updated on Thursday, 28 January 2010 08:24 Written by joel Tuesday, 2 June 2009 08:13
I mentioned in an earlier Use What’s Free First about free tools. There are a lot of them for you to choose from, but the following are 5 that I recommend.
- Google Analytics for general purpose web analytics
- Kampyle for feedback analytics (answering what people really think about your website)
- Quantcast for audience profile analytics (answering what your value proposition is to your audience and advertisers)
- BTBuckets for segmentation and behavioral targeting (helping you make sure your audience is getting what they came for)
- Google Website Optimizer for A/B and multivariate testing (helping you optimize your website’s message, content and functionality
P.S. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all offer valuable webmaster and keyword tools not to be missed, too!
Page Views: Part 2
Last Updated on Thursday, 28 January 2010 08:25 Written by joel Monday, 1 June 2009 08:16
In Page Views? You’re Joking, I pointed out the importance of picking the right metric to answer your questions. If you wish to dig deeper, the following 5 are a few other articles by the industry’s finest minds that cover the same type of topic (in no particular order). (If you have others, feel free to add them in the comments.)
- Dear Avinash: Top Web Analytics Questions, Twitter Edition – Look at Avinash’s reply to “How do you convince people to look beyond page impressions for usable measurable metrics?” in particular.
- Unique Visitors ONLY Come in One Size – Eric’s retake on using unique visitors and the potential challenges of using it as a metric (and the muddy mess we make when we bicker about un-actionable metrics).
- Standard Metrics Revisited: #6: Daily, Weekly, Monthly Unique Visitors – Avinash clarifies the differences in grain of various visitor measurements.
- Choosing the Right Metric – A lot of suggestions by Zach on how to avoid metic selection pitfalls crammed into a short article.
- Why the Click Is the Wrong Metric for Online Ads – For those of us measuring digital media effectiveness, Abbey wrote this one for you.
Track Conversions, Not Visits or Visitors
Last Updated on Thursday, 28 January 2010 08:26 Written by joel Sunday, 31 May 2009 08:21
You’re tracking visits and visitors as a key, strategic metric? It’s your #1 KPI? Really? Sure there are reasons why you may want to track those things. Trends of the number of cookies (or as some people call them visitors) and visits are important. It can give you an idea if your reach is growing, if paid, social and organic traffic is contributing to your traffic, and how many times people come back. However, I’m willing to bet that you really have an ulterior motive for getting people to come to your website. You want them to buy something, submit a lead, contribute to your ecosystem or click on an ad. Many times, it’s something about money. If so, set a goal and measure how many visits achieve that goal. Call it a conversion and use that as your yardstick for success. Pick an actionable metric.
Caution: do your best to measure what ends up in your pocket, not just what is added to your ledger. Be sure to optimize those transactions that really put money in the bank and figure out how to avoid those that have high refund rates, don’t convert from leads to sales, or are content contributions that later have to be removed.
