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One of the more popular social bookmarking tools is Reddit. Similar to Digg and Delicious it offers search capabilities and allows for news/post/article submissions with appropriate keyword tagging.

The first time I submitted to Reddit was this past Sunday when I was preparing to give a blog promotion seminar at work. I submitted my post: "Firefox Beating IE" because it was a little edgy. Within hours I noticed my visitors and page views absolutely sky rocket. I have never had a bigger Sunday in terms of traffic volume. This past Sunday was actually my biggest traffic day the entire past week. Do take note that submitting to Reddit won't always get you huge amounts of traffic because it does depend on topic and content (we tried a fellow employees post on PPC and it didn't do very well).

Here's a graph of my stats for the last week:

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Starting today I am introducing a small new section on my right hand navigation: Featured Website. This is basically a text link to a website that I have been reading lately or that other people have suggested. I am always looking for cool industry websites so please go ahead and email me suggestions. I will also write up a small post detailing the featured website's details.

This week's website is Sponsored B2B. Please see yesterday's post for further information.

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Rick Tobin, a Senior Sponsored Search Analyst at Enquiro Search Solutions recently wrote an insightful post on his blog: Sponsored B2B regarding how to find the Real Cost of a sponsored campaign.

Rick focuses his post on B2B organizations and starts by defining the issues:

"If a click is somewhere in the distance past, how can you reconcile that unique visit with all the subsequent visits (whether organic, direct, or sponsored) within the research to purchase stage? What about linking this activity to a unique lead or any conversion? What about actually being able to cost all that activity to get a "real" metric."

The post then continues to address that there are multiple needs within a B2B Organization to be met as well as issues such as: a long sales cycle, multiple visits, multiple sponsored campaigns, multiple entry points, multiple exit points, probably multiple products and analytics data which doesn't match the numbers from your sponsored campaign's reporting.

The conclusion consists of a clever way of finding a solution by simplifying everything, it's definitely worth a read: http://sponsoredb2b.blogspot.com/2006/10/real-cost-of-sponosred-campaign.html

More on Rick Tobin: Rick has over 7 years experience as a technical writer and promotional copywriter for a variety of industries. His broad ranged capacity is currently focused on producing ever increasing returns for each of Enquiro's client's sponsored campaigns. Related article The Doors to Conversion

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At the Emetrics summit Avinash Kaushik of Intuit went around to the various web analytics vendors and asked them all the same 2 questions:

Question # 1: Unique: What is the most unique thing about your company / solution compared to all other competitor solutions out there?

Question # 2: Unique Feature: Is there a feature in your product that differentiates you from your competitors? Perhaps a report, a metric or a feature?

The Result is a very interesting post talking about the unique value proposition of 14 different Web Analytics vendors (including Google Analytics, Omniture, and WebSideStory)

Avinash concludes by telling us the benefit of his post both from a vendor and consumer perspective.

Source: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2006/10/hello-my-name-is-avinash-what-is-unique-about-you.html

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ClickDensity was launched in June of this year. It is a usability tool which helps you better understand how visitors interact with your website. It does this by tracking exactly where visitors click on a given webpage. Reports such as Heat Maps and Click Maps are provided to analyze the data.

Recently they updated their software to included exporting and more importantly A/B Testing. "This new feature allows you to easily tryout and analyse small changes to your site, using a subset of your site visitors. Maybe you'd like to know if a different advert image could produce more click-throughs? Maybe a change in the wording of a heading would pique your visitors' interest? Or perhaps you could re-phrase an inline link to make it more appealing? Use clickdensity A/B tests to trial and analyse changes like these with ease."

A Free 30 day trial is available and I think it's worth checking out.

Benefits of ClickDensity Include:

- Seeing exactly where your users are clicking.
- Seeing where people are clicking that they shouldn't be.
- Seeing where people aren't clicking.
- Identifing usability and information architecture issues on your site.

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I recently read a very good post from the Aviva Directory that listed 21 tips to launch a blog successfully and I have to agree that many of those methods have worked very well for me. I also added subscription via email today because of that list (I'll keep you posted on how that effects my feed subscribers). Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz also developed an excellent list of his own a couple months ago so I thought I would summarize all 42 points for everyone (there were a few duplications).

	SEOmoz	Aviva Directory
1	Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)	Connect with your readers through an about page and welcome message.
2	Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain	Don’t get seen naked: Never launch a blog with fewer than 5 posts
3	Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind	Make sure a link to your RSS feed is available above the fold
4	Participate at Related Forums & Blogs	Make RSS easier still: Add subscribe links to the most popular newsreaders.
5	Tag Your Content	Offer an email version of your RSS feed
6	Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)	Put chicklets in your template
7	Don't Jump on the Bandwagon	Be your own promoter: Seed your best posts
8	Link Intelligently	Leave highly valuable comments on other blogs in your niche
9	Invite Guest Bloggers	Reload quickly: Take advantage of your initial launch buzz
10	Eschew Advertising (Until You're Popular)	Include tons of outbound links in your posts
11	Go Beyond Text in Your Posts	If you have something to give, give it away!
12	Cover Topics that Need Attention	Start real relationships with bloggers in your niche.
13	Pay Attention to Your Analytics	Submit your blog to blog directories.
14	Use a Human Voice	Submit your blog to general web directories such as DMOZ and Aviva
15	Archive Effectively	Leave your blog’s URL as your signature when you participate in forums.
16	Implement Smart URLs	Use your URL in your email signature.
17	Reveal as Much as Possible	Myspace or Facebook members: Put a link in your profile.
18	Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait	Submit guest posts at other blogs
19	Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days	Ask friends for feedback on your site.
20	Create Expectations and Fulfill Them	Go ‘Real-World’ with other bloggers
21	Build a Brand	Dress up your comments.

If you want 25 more tips, I totally forgot to mention Lee Oden's list which includes some great tidbits such as:

- "Research keywords and develop a glossary - Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research."
- "Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value."

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A couple weeks ago I wrote a post talking about how I used my FeedBurner stats to discover that Bloglines and NetVibes were the most popular feed readers used on my blog's feed (Newsgator was very popular too). Recently, InformationWeek had a great post comparing 2 of those 3 (Bloglines and Newsgator) as well as Google Reader.

Here are a few of the summaries from that article:

Bloglines: "Bloglines is good on the input side. It makes discovering and subscribing to an RSS feed very easy, and provides better-than average help in suggesting feeds. It is feature-rich, with things like package tracking and notification, but pays for this with a cluttered look. It is weak on the display of feed entries, and it doesn't give you much room for tweaking its UI. It's on the output side that Bloglines does best, with its integrated blog."

Newsgator: "If you like to fiddle with your feeds, Newsgator's subscription features and drag-and-drop interface for the navigation bar will be to your liking, but the lack of a customizable entry display and limited information management and collaboration options put Newsgator Online at a disadvantage compared to Bloglines and Google Reader."

Google Reader: "Google Reader is the winner for helping you cope with the flood of RSS-delivered information in its intelligently designed interface. While it lacks the blogging integration of Bloglines, its unlimited sharing of collections via embedded JavaScript in other Web pages is very powerful."

Read David DeJean's entire article at InformationWeek:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193401507&pgno=1

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The Web Design Firm Preation has recently released a new analytics product called Clickscapes which tracks visitors' activity on a website through the use of click tracking and heatmaps.

Clickscapes is similar to products such as ClickDensity and CrazyEgg in that it provides reporting through overlays however, a cool capability that I noticed on their feature list included the ability to track AJAX

Reporting metrics include:

- total number of click data points
- data ranges of click data points
- average seconds waited before clicking
- per-element click count and percentage of total
- visual element bounding boxes
- visual representation of click densities within each element

A trial version of the product is available for free.




Source: http://www.websitehostdirectory.com/article865.html

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The results are in and it looks like visitors are most interested in reading about an interview with WebSideStory. I have already started talks with them and we will be setting up something with their CMO very soon.

If Andy Beal had posted about the cool new Poll Service: Poll Daddy a day sooner I would have definitely taken advantage of it for my previous poll. Since I liked the look of Poll Daddy SO much, I would like to ask everyone the following question:

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This is the case for my blog anyways...Have you ever looked at your website's analytics and noticed what browsers your visitors are using. This is pretty important because you want to be able to give your visitors a good on-site experience, especially on the browser of their choice. I was checking out my browser stats on Google Analytics and was a little surprised to see that FireFox had a larger share than Internet Explorer. This is probably because my visitors are fairly web savvy and enjoy all the extra add-ons and functionality of FireFox. I would expect similar results for other blogs and websites geared towards the tech/SEM sector.



Have a look at your stats and make sure your site is optimized for the Big 2.

***Update Oct 19***
Check out the results from Poll Daddy's Latest Poll about Favorite Browsers:

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ClickTracks is offering a discount on both ClickTracks Analyzer and ClickTracks Optimizer. These are the company's entry-level and mid-level web metrics products for small businesses and online marketers. ClickTracks Analyzer will be on sale for $295 (regularly $495) and ClickTracks Optimizer for $795 (regularly $1195) through October 31, 2006. The promo requires no coupon and details are at http://www.clicktracks.com/holidays. (The rest of the information is posted in a release at http://www.clicktracks.com/news.php?id=93)

ClickTracks and its new fellow subsidiaries are offering cross-company discounts. ClickTracks customers are receiving discounts on EmailLabs, Lyris and Hot Banana products. Users of Hot Banana, Lyris or EmailLabs products can get 20% discounts on ClickTracks hosted web analytics products. The company is promising that integrations among the products are due in 6-18 months. Details are posted at http://www.clicktracks.com/smartmarketing. (The rest of the information is posted in a release at http://www.clicktracks.com/news.php?id=95)

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To better focus my content towards my readers I am giving everyone an opportunity to vote on the topics they'd like to see discussed. I have been focusing on Interviews with Industry Professionals as of late so I thought I would stick with that same theme.

If you can't see the Poll please click HERE.



Your votes will help entice some of these organizations to make some time for an interview.

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If you really enjoy the content of this blog please consider nominating it for a Clickz Award: http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623677 (in the marketing blog category, see bottom of page)

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Marcos Richardson from WebTrafficIQ contacted me for an interview a few weeks ago and together we came up with a cool twist where we would introduce a second interviewee: Jim Sterne and focus the entire conversation around the topic of B2B. Here's how it went:

[Manoj]: Can you start by talking a little bit about your background?

[Marcos]: I hold a Business BA (Hons) Marketing to Customers and Markets.

Working for a Marketing agency in 1997 during the dot com boom I gained a wide knowledge of online marketing and tracking technologies: Media Planning & Buying, Affiliate Programs, Strategic Links, Opt-in Email Management, Search Engine Optimisation, News Group Development, Viral Marketing, Log-file Analysis & Browser based tracking.

In 2001 I was employed by Clickstream Plc: a very interesting Web Analytics company that is still slightly ahead of its time today. This is where I gained my technical knowledge which enabled me to go into partnership with a small Web Analytics company that amazingly was the very first page tagging system in the Industry and being used by NASA. I rebranded the solution and service offerings to appeal to the European Market. WebtraffIQ is now well known within the Industry and has been able to boast many more industry firsts. First SMS alerts system, Internet Fraud application, First terrestrial Television to Internet tracking (for Halifax), Radio to Internet tracking for City & Guilds. Most recently the first Web Analytics vendor agnostic consultancy service

Within my Web Analytics career I have worked with Sony, Reuters, MP3.com Europe, The Direct Marketing Association, Business Link, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Publicis, City & Guilds, Universal Pictures and many more.

[Jim]: I started paying attention to the Internet as a marketing medium in 1993, after 15 years in sales and marketing. I've written books, pounded the podium and even started a conference on the subject of measuring and optimizing the web experience for customers because I feel so strongly about the opportunities.

I am the Founding President of the Web Analytics Association, the producer of the Emetrics Summit and an international consultant on how to increase the value of a website.


[Manoj]: Web Analytics is becoming immensely popular in North America, is this similar in Europe?

[Marcos]: Yes most definitely – Companies in Europe have been utilising Logfile analysers on par with the United States, Webtrends was pretty much the global Logfile analyser recognised by all. In 2003 after the dot com bubble burst many online companies became instantly more accountable. This brought Web Analytics as we know it today to the fore. Accuracy of data started becoming a critical part of choosing a good Web Analytics system. Page tagging or browser based tracking became widely accepted as the more accurate when compared to log file analysers although this is not strictly true.

More recently large traditional retailers such as Next are finding that their business models are changing and they are starting to see a slow down in terrestrial sales with the major growth moving to online e-commerce. Reed Business Information is seeing its traditional hard copy growth diminish and sees its future in online sales. All of this has of course put greater emphasis on tracking, measuring and analysing consumer behaviour in relation to marketing, websites and bottom line transactions.

The emergence of Google Analytics has given the Industry another boost in the right direction. With its substantial reach even the small to medium sized enterprises in Europe are now aware of the importance of Web Analytics.


[Jim]: The top European companies are having no trouble keeping up with top US companies in that they understand and have the ability to take advantage of sophisticated web optimization tools. Lucky for them, they are few in number on both sides of the Pond.

This means those who really apply the tools and assign the human resources to getting the most out of them, have a distinct advantage over the rest of the business world.


[Manoj]: How can WebtraffIQ help solve some of the pains for B2B Organizations?

[Marcos]: Pay-Per-Lead service for the Business to Business sector is starting to become wide spread. Good Web Analytics companies can siphon out direct leads from unique users whom have come in from a Business Network. WebtraffIQ has a powerful geo-location system which is based on the most up to date global IP list possible. There has always been an inherent problem with tracing B2C users IP’s due to rerouting of the majority to a local or national ISP. This is far less of a problem when looking at B2B IP’s as these companies tend to host their own servers.

Pay Per Click (PPC) is another area where B2B companies are focusing their attentions online; Targeting key potential suppliers and sales networks. WebtraffIQ has special campaign code and reports show PPC key words and campaign results. Having this system helps alleviate the much talked about click fraud currently within the industry.

[Jim]: In addition, these tools help companies get more value out of their Internet investments. Improving acquisition and conversion is part of the picture. The other part is that web analytics offers a window into the hearts and minds of the marketplace.

What do people like? What interests them? Do they care more about these features or those benefits? These tools allow sales people to keep an eye on which customers are logging into the website and what they are looking at. That makes the sales person more proficient at offering advise and direction. They are in a position to be a better consultant.


[Manoj]: What is the best way to make a B2B company understand the importance of implementing a web analytics solution?

[Marcos]: The main reason for the slightly slower take up of Web Analytics systems in the B2B sector is due to lesser use of their website as a whole. After speaking to a few large B2B companies such as NRG Group PLC (Gestetner, Rex – Rotary) the inventors of the fax machine, I found that many of them only saw their Website as a brochure of their business, sighting that they already knew all their suppliers.

More proactive B2B companies like Sony appreciate what the Internet and their Website can do for their Brand.

Marketing and Advertising are leading the way as the major B2B users of Web Analytics systems.

Brand exposure and measurement is something that B2B companies find important.


[Manoj]: What do you think are the main differences between metrics for B2B sites compared to other sites?

[Jim]: B2B sites have a better opportunity to respond dynamically to specific customers. Everybody can watch prospects click around and note how many pageviews a particular product receives. but B2B companies can create programmed responses for those who register for newsletters, etc.

Furthermore, the B2B company has a much deeper relationship with its customers. Customers can log into a website and make use of any number of online applications. Tracking what they do and with what frequency generates a large amount of significant behavioural data that makes the Amazon.com recommendation engine look like a toy.


[Manoj]: Brand reputation, especially for B2B organizations, is a measurement that CEOs and CMOs are very often interested in, what are some ways to measure this?

[Marcos]: Once every day (or couple of days) our server asks various powerful search engines to perform a search (spider) for a company 'brand name' and WebtraffIQ uses the results to provide the following…

- Increase / decrease in listings
- Top key words associated with the brand
- Change in key words associated (e.g. compare with last week)
- The number of links to the Brand’s web site

This provides the Brand Owner with information about:

- The brand’s “weight”
- Word associations
- Brand performance

WebtraffIQ also tracks online PR, blogs and forums. Our reports show if people have come from discussions to the B2B customer website. We then manually look at the discussion threads and see if they are negative or positive.

[Jim]: This additional, manual step is crucial. Web analytics are excellent at tell you what happened, but they cannot say why. Online and email surveys are an important addition to any web analytics effort. Ask people how they feel about the company and how their impressions have changed after visiting the site.

A website has a huge impact on customer opinion, ranging from; "This company doesn't understand the power of the Internet and, therefore cannot understand my needs." all the way to, "I couldn't get my job done if it weren't for the things I can find and accomplish on this website."


[Manoj]: From an analytics perspective what is the best way to satisfy different priorities within a company. (i.e.: CEO vs. CFO vs. Director of Web Marketing vs. Sales)?

[Marcos]: By setting up specific reports which each perspective party is most interested in. The less flexible Web Analytic systems out there don’t provide this administration facility. WebtraffIQ’s admin is customisable by the user, they can specify which reports go to whom and when.

For example the CEO is usually interested in Top line data such as how many new Unique Users have arrived week on week and month on month. The CFO would be interested in how many of those converted to sales or required actions. The CMO would be most interested in seeing campaign analysis on ROI conversions for specific marketing initiatives. Head of sales usually works closely with the CMO to try and get as many ‘warm’ leads or incoming sales enquiries.

The CTO would be interested in the WebtraffIQ Alerts system which sends an SMS or email to the CTO when there is a problem on a page or the servers are down.

[Jim]: "Need to know basis." The secret is that the higher in the organization you go, the less data you show them. Different dashboards are needed at different levels of the company and you never want the MD poking around in the details. He or she needs to be looking at how well the website is achieving corporate goals. If it is not, then it's up to the directors to dig in and figure out why.


[Manoj]: B2B companies have long sales cycles and end up leading to offline sales. How would you use analytics to accurately measure this type of cycle?

[Marcos]: By looking at Key Benchmarks within the website life cycle and using these to gauge specific sales and marketing campaigns.

[Jim]: Prospective customers travel a fairly recognizable buying cycle. If visitors from Company A are looking at the specifications and the service policies but not the ROI pages or the financing information, a red flag is flying. The team responsible for closing that sale now knows they need to find and make contact with the financial side of the decision committee. Otherwise, they are spinning their wheels.


[Manoj]: What are the advantages of using WebtraffIQ vs. free software such as Google Analytics and StatCounter?

[Marcos]: Hands on help with customisation based on specific business Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Integration into other internal business technology systems such as Intranets, Content Managements Systems (CMS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

Deep investigation into how to optimise their current business activities by looking at specific Web Analytics and recommending actions to be taken.

We use a simple three step process…

1.) We sit down with customers and ascertain their wants and needs by mapping out their Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) together.

2.) For Web sites and Marketing initiatives we look at design usability, functionality, accessibility and comparing these simultaneously to loyalty, retention, stickiness and churn rate.

3.) Create a rich picture showing customer flow rates to increase fluidity in all user transactions based on Customer KPI’s

[Jim]: Another important point is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. These tools take time to implement, time to understand, time to optimize and time to learn how to get the most out of them. If money is to be saved on the tool, how much of an investment is being put into its implementation that might have to be re-spent when it's time to upgrade?


[Manoj]: What is the future for Web Analytics in Europe?

[Marcos]: The Web Analytics Market is directly linked to Internet and broadband take up in general. People will continue to join the Internet as the fringe European Community continues to become more technically sophisticated.

Whilst traditional businesses of all sizes continue to move online and seek the benefits of e-commerce, Web Analytics will be a much appreciated tool to gauge how and why success is achieved online.

[Jim]: Indeed, a corporate website is becoming the communication hub between customer and company. The B2B world no longer revolves around who make the sales call most recently, but who is most findable online and who has the most compelling web presence.

I think marketing in general is maturing from a seat of the pants, let the creative types drive and just throw money at it proposition, to a show me the results proposition. Web analytics is bringing results based marketing to the attention of senior managers. They are no longer going to be happy with guesses.


Interviews focusing on specific topics is something I want to continue to do because there is nothing better than getting first hand insight from industry professionals such as Jim Sterne and Marcos Richardson.

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Gord Hotchkiss recently wrote an excellent 2 part series detailing the top 10 Rules him and his team (including me) has discovered in order to be successful with Search Engine Marketing for B2B organizations. Key takeaways mentioned in the articles include Analysis of Roles, Complex Sales Cycles, User Intentions as well as many more items. Here is his top 10:

1. Know Who is the Buyer and Who’s the Influencer
2. Realize What the Intent of the Researcher Is
3. Understand Complex Buying Cycles and the Possible Touch points with Search
4. Be Prepared to Build Relationships with Search Leads
5. Don’t Ask for Too Much Too Soon
6. Understand the Complexity of the Keyword Universe
7. Know the Roles of General and Vertical Search Portals
8. Realize that Education is a Necessary Evil
9. Be Prepared to Lose Control
10. Understand the Buying Process of Your Prospect, but Don’t Surrender to It

Source: Part 1, Part 2


On a related note, check out Enquiro's Free B2B WhitePaper. This research study details how search might be used on business to business transactions.

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I was checking out Google News this morning to see what the hottest Google Topics were and then accidentally switched over to Google Image Search to find that the top images for "Google" were both YouTube related.



I found that odd considering the deal just happened less than a week ago. But I guess it's similar to Google Results where you find new sites popping into the top rankings temporarily.

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A good reason to use FeedBurner to manage your blog or site’s feed is the subscriber data you get along with it. It’s nice to be able to see how many subscribers your site gets a day but you can also leverage the subscriber details to attract more subscriptions to your feed.




While in your Feed Stats you can click on "See more about your subscribers »" this takes you to the various feed readers visitors have used. Personally I noticed that Bloglines and NetVibes made up nearly 40% of the feed readers used for my site. By using this insight I added the ability for users to subscribe via NetVibes on my blog and moved the Bloglines image to the very top. Looking at these trends helped me in tailoring my blog’s experience to my visitors.

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Dick Costolo is the co-founder and CEO of FeedBurner. Previously, he co-founded and was CEO of Spyonit.com. FeedBurner currently serves over 250,000 publishers. Dick was gracious enough to take some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few of our questions:

[Manoj]: As the visionary leader of FeedBurner and with more than 250,000 publishers and 23 million subscriptions where do you go from here, what is the organization’s goal?

[Dick]: Total world domination is the next project on the roadmap, but prior to that, we have a lot of work to do. Specifically, there are a number of services we want to offer that will further simplify the process of distributing, tracking and optimizing text, audio and video feeds. This includes improvements to tracking and reporting, further enhancements to our existing services like PingShot and new services that we can't talk about for fear of reprisal from the engineering team. We also have big plans to continue expansion of our advertising network.

[Manoj]: How is the integration of Blogbeat coming along? Are you still on target for the scheduled release date?

[Dick]: We are on track to integrate Blogbeat functionality into FeedBurner's StandardStats service by the end of the year. Jeff Turner, Blogbeat founder and now FeedBurner's Lead Developer of Web Analytics has been guiding this project toward what we like to call "assimilation."

[Manoj]: What are you thoughts on the insight/usefulness that the Blogbeat data will bring a FeedBurner user’s account?

[Dick]: At its most basic level, the integration of Blogbeat functionality will provide FeedBurner publishers with a more complete understanding of who's interacting with their content. Specifically, publishers will have the ability to see how their feed subscribers relate to their site traffic. Ultimately, we plan to offer insight about how many web site visitors came from your feed, and other information to help publishers make informed decisions about their content and marketing strategies.

[Manoj]: Is there a specific target market for FeedBurner, are you noticing more individuals from a specific industry using your service?

[Dick]: We consider FeedBurner to be an equal opportunity platform, open to the full range of content creators. When we first launched the service back in early 2004, we saw a lot of interest from early adopters and bloggers. By the middle of 2005, podcasters and video bloggers were burning feeds alongside the large established media brands like Reuters, Wired and Ziff Davis. This year, we're seeing more traditional companies jump into the feedburning game including retailers, consumer packaged good suppliers, government agencies, law firms and small business owners from around the world. Building an audience online, tracking subscriptions and ultimately monetizing content seems to be a universal need.

[Manoj]: You recently added the FeedBurner Ad Network where ads can be placed on a site and/or in the site's feeds. How has that program been for you? How are bloggers and other content creators responding to the program? Do you feel competition from others like Yahoo's new program will help or harm your efforts?

[Dick]: The expansion of feed-driven ads on blogs and Web sites was a logical one for us. Because we're gathering information about a publisher's feed, we are in a unique position to offer compelling placements of advertising back on the site. The program has been very successful in terms of our ability to offer richer ads with more informed and creative placements. For example, advertisers will be able to attach their message to the "most commented" post or the post with the most links in Technorati. We have also been able to expand the advertising network to include podcasters who want to include advertising back on their web sites.

[Manoj]: What is the team atmosphere like at FeedBurner? What types of things do you encourage? Can you list the top 5 things you enjoy the most working at FeedBurner.

[Dick]: There is plenty of feed in team. When it comes to the atmosphere around here, I say it's 3 parts intensity and 1 part irreverence, with a healthy dash of brilliance. Since we all sit together in an open room, we are forced to work together pretty closely. Personally, I enjoy the innovation, the pace, the work ethic of the team, the music selection (most of the time) and the constant feedback from our 250,000+ customer base since everyone participates in support in one way or another.


Interesting stuff, I specifically found the part about the diversity in the target markets quite fascinating. Thank you Mr. Costolo.

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Last week I got the opportunity to speak with the CEO of ClickTracks John Marshall. During the interview I was able to get his views about topics such as the Web Analytics Industry and J.L. Halsey's acquisition of ClickTracks. If you ever get a chance to speak with John you can totally hear the passion in his voice about what he does. Here's how it went:



[Manoj] - How did you get into the web analytics industry?

[John] - I was running a small software company in 1998 (a very web centric marketing company) and we bought a log analyzer product which was the most popular and most expensive product at the time. I hated it; it was very clunky and rigid. It had 2 major problems: firstly, it did not encourage thinking about the website analytically. It was just list of stats, as if the developers had simply written every possible report in the hope the user would find something useful. Of course this made the product intimidating and actually discouraged heavy use. The second was the unnecessary complexity of the data presentation. I recall ranting that I just needed to see where people click on the page, and I can work out the rest – and the light bulb went on. Therefore my origin in the industry was as a small business owner trying to answer: What do people do when they arrive at my website? I realized that no product was doing a good job of answering that question, and therefore a need was going unmet.

[Manoj] – 1998 was a great time to get into the Web Analytics market considering how new the concept was.

[John] – Yes it was, however I would like to clarify that we didn’t actually start ClickTracks until 2000. The original company in 1998 was a different product altogether.

I started to think about the books by Edward Tufte. I am a big fan of what he does, long before ClickTracks and it was at that time I started thinking through his idea of data presentation methods (which he promoted in his book). It was from that I gained the inspiration for the first ClickTracks product.

[Manoj] – What are specific things you and your organization do to help ClickTracks stay a leader in the Web Analytics Industry?

[John] – We practice what we preach by acting as Web Analysts to analyze our clients’ sites as well as our own. We go to a lot of Trade Shows where you’ll usually find me in the booth. There is something about the environment of the tradeshow where a customer or prospect will come and say in very passionate terms: I have the following business problem or I am looking for a product that solves this need. Sometimes those conversations involve us telling the customer/prospect that ClickTracks can solve a particular problem, whereas other times the conversations are more insightful making us think of ways to help solve their pain (this makes us learn from our customers). We are very methodical in the way we add features to the product, we generally don’t add features unless it solves a compelling need and this is a strategy I have learned from my past experiences doing website analysis. We are constantly trying to stay away from feature bloat by listening closely to the problems the customers are trying to solve.

[Manoj] – Focus is key because there are times with analytics packages you are lost when having to sift through so many reports.

[John] – Yes exactly, you obviously are an experienced user. We try to keep the promise that our software does less; we come right out and say that. Adding features makes a product harder to use so you’d better be sure there are compelling reasons behind adding it. Our users don’t have time to go through extra features and we don’t want to get in their way when they’re just trying to get the job done.

[Manoj] – I really like the idea that even you, the CEO gets involved in things like teaching classes.

[John] – Yeah… (Laughs), I am flattered you noticed such a thing. I really enjoy doing that because it’s a lot of fun and we learn what our customers are trying to accomplish in their analytics. Through the act of teaching these classes we get to help customers solve these needs and I get a lot of satisfaction out of that.

[Manoj] – What is one of the best business decisions you’ve made?

[John] – Good question, superficially I might say starting the company but I might also say that early on we wanted to present data that was animated on the screen, because I have always thought the brain is very good at interpreting data that moves temporally. However, I am really glad we didn’t go down that path. It leads to products that are useful for entertainment but not for decision making. It was a concept that I had early on and I am glad we abandoned it.

[Manoj] – What makes a good Web Analytics Vendor?

[John] – I think training and support, because you gain so much through one on one training and the process of good informed assistance. The value of the data and price of failure of a bad implementation is so high that a vendor really needs to nail this item. I am very biased to the idea of analysis rather than reporting because if you find yourself only looking at the trends of visitors to your site you are probably not going to succeed at improving your website. What makes a good web analyst and good web analytics package are somewhat related. Interactive exploration is important, for example: 2 months after I have collected my data, can I go back and add another segment (metric) and measure it against my previously collected data. We have designed our product to do that and that’s what we’re known for. It’s this idea that helps a good analyst think and understand why things are happening on a website rather than simply looking at a graph that goes up and to the right. That in turn requires some training.

[Manoj] – Do you have hints or tidbits for some upcoming products?

[John] – Let me say that we will be coming out with API level access to the underlying data store of ClickTracks. We have very good reasons for not releasing this earlier but this has been a frequently requested feature.

[Manoj] – I have some background in software development so I can understand how useful and powerful this feature can be.

[Manoj] – You were recently purchased by J.L Halsey, what does this do for ClickTracks (i.e. any kind of leverage?).

[John] – J.L. Halsey already owns 2 other companies that sell product to digital marketers. At the same time they acquired ClickTracks they also acquired Hot Banana (CMS Vendor) and you can clearly see that there is an intent to build a suite of products that focuses primarily on customer acquisition and retention. ClickTracks is mainly about the analysis of customer acquisition (email campaigns, search campaigns, click fraud…). We now have easier access to resources allowing us to grow our business faster. We basically have more scale and reach (we are growing and hiring).

[Manoj] – What does the future hold for ClickTracks and the rest of the Industry?

[John] – I hope that we’ll get some consensus on the terminology and best practices. Web Analytics is sort of like accounting in that dealing with things that can be interpreted in different ways makes for different vendors have different standards (this is something users complain about). In the web analytics industry we don’t yet accept the idea that the data is open to interpretation because I hear people saying that “I just want the numbers to agree” (across different vendors). I feel that they don’t need to agree because there are reasons that company A and company B count things differently. In accounting we readily accept that some things are depreciated over 3 years and some over 5. They don’t agree, and there are good reasons because they are used for different things. We do, however, need to agree on what the underlying standards are, in the same way we all know what a year is. As the concepts mature it will become less specialized and will be part of marketing analysis. I think we’ll move away from the term Web Analytics to Digital Marketing Analytics (or Marketing Analytics).

[Manoj] – Top 5 things you enjoy most working at ClickTracks.

[John] –
- Innovating
- Talking to the Customer
- Meeting Colleagues at Tradeshows/Networking Events
- Teaching
- Working with very bright people

[Manoj] – It’s always nice to enjoy who you work with.

[John] – Yes and I am very fortunate.

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Google Gadgets can now be put directly on any personal website. This free service was released to the public just recently. There are currently hundreds of Google Gadgets which includes different applications ranging from calendars, games, map, dictionaries and more.

This creates the ability for anyone to further increase their website's user experiences by adding a Google Gadget which compliments the website. (Scroll further down to see my Google Gadget Pacman game!)

"With almost no effort and at no cost, webpage owners can add complex, dynamically updating content to their own websites using Google Gadgets. Because there is such an enormous variety of Google Gadgets to choose from, webmasters also have a great deal of freedom to select only the gadgets that will best complement their own page. There are games, news clips, weather reports, maps, and more."

Source: http://www.google.com/press/annc/synd_gadgets.html

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Google offers so many useful tools, many of which are absolutely free and sometimes it gets difficult to stay on top of of them. Titus Hoskins wrote a neat post describing his top 10 list which included:

- Google Analytics
- Google Sitemaps
- Google Alerts
- Google Froogle
- Google Checkout
- Google Blogger
- Google Toolbar
- Google Groups- Google AdSense
- Google Writely

This list includes tools I use ALL the time. Google Analytics, Blogger and Toolbar are ones I use multiple times throughout the day. I also use Sitemaps, Adsense and Groups very frequently. A few things that would probably make my list would include Google Maps and who can forget Gmail. I think I use Gmail more than my Yahoo and Hotmail account now (why wouldn't I? It's so quick and user friendly).

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Late last week I wrote an article at Enquiro.com focusing on what Search Marketing companies can do in order to better prepare them to handle B2B clients. The article focuses on roles within B2B companies as well as defining metrics that are important to each role.

"When providing services such as Search Marketing strategies to large B2B tech firms you will find that there are several levels of management to please (this is the case for many large corporations). With above average sales cycles and the focus to produce quality leads it’s important to establish the right metrics to satisfy all levels within the company..."

Read it here: http://www.enquiro.com/marketing-monitor/B2B-Know-Your-Roles.asp

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