Google Checkout and Gmail Updates
Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, October 31, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
I was browsing through the Google Blogs using my Yahoo Pipe and noticed that there have been a couple pieces of cool news item floating around at the the Gmail and Google Checkout blogs.
Gmail Updating Code
So recently the Gmail team has been working on a structural code change thatGoogle Checkout Adds 5 New API Features
we'll be rolling out to Firefox 2 and IE 7 users over the coming weeks (with
other browsers to follow). You won't notice too many differences to start with,
but we're using a new model that enables us to iterate faster and share
components (we now use the same rich text editor as Groups and Page Creator, and the Contact Manager can be seen in several Google apps). A few other things you will notice are some new keyboard shortcuts and the ability to bookmark specific messages and email searches.
* Name Parsing: Provides the first name, last name, and full name of the buyer and
order recipient in separate fields new order notifications.
* Google Promo Notification: If an order is placed under a Google promotion, you can require new order notifications, charge amount notifications, and refund amount notifications to include the promotion amount.
* Ship-to Phone: Returns the buyer's ship-to phone number in new order
notifications.
* Billing Phone: Returns the buyer's billing phone number in new order
notifications.
* Improved Notifications: Prevents a merchant from improperly acknowledging a new order notification by requiring their acknowledgment to specify the serial number of the notification.
I know it's really short notice, but Tom Leung of Google Analytics will be holding a free online webinar titled: Website Optimizer: Creating & Launching Experiments.
The online seminar, Website Optimizer: Creating & Launching Experiments, builds on the first and is designed for those who have previous experience with Website Optimizer or other site testing tools. Tom will give a step-by-step demonstration of how to successfully launch multivariate and A/B experiments, and he'll also answer your questions.
Website Optimizer: Creating & Launching Experiments (Intermediate and advanced users)
Thursday, November 1st, 2007 10:00 - 11:00am PDT
Register to attend.
Labels: Google Analytics, Web Analytics
ClickTracks Receives WSI Excellence Award
Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, October 30, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
ClickTracks, http://www.clicktracks.com/, the Web analytics solution from J.L. Halsey (OTCBB:JLHY), announced today it is the recipient of the 2007 Partner in Excellence award given by WSI, the leading global provider of Internet solutions to small and medium sized businesses, headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
Earlier this year, WSI and J.L. Halsey, a provider of integrated marketing technology solutions, announced a new partnership whereby WSI will offer the suite of ClickTracks Web analytics tools through WSI’s global consulting network. To date, close to 300 WSI consultants have signed on to integrate ClickTracks into their strategy of recommended solutions to clients.
“J.L. Halsey welcomes the opportunity to work with WSI in delivering ClickTracks’ easy-to-use Web analytics tools to our global SMB entrepreneurs,” says Sylvie Moreau, vice president of corporate business development for J.L. Halsey. “One of the attributes that WSI finds of great value is ClickTrack’s quick setup. WSI consultants can immediately start working with ClickTracks and providing insight and actionable advice to their clients to increase ROI of their online marketing programs,” Moreau says.
J.L. Halsey’s ClickTracks solution is WSI’s first analytics partner, chosen for its innovative, customer-friendly approach to Web analytics and data reporting. The collaboration marks the first of future partnerships between the companies, with a host of integrated solutions available from J.L. Halsey, including Lyris List Manager, EmailLabs, EmailAdvisor, Hot Banana and the soon-to-be launched PPC bid management solution, BidHero.
CMS Watch has found that IBM's Web Content Management (WCM) technologies have been stagnating at a time when competitors are paying greater attention to web publishing toolsets.This analysis stems from CMS Watch's 2008 "Web CMS Report," released earlier this month, which evaluates 30 major Web Content Management (WCM) offerings. As part of its ongoing research, CMS Watch interviews hundreds of web managers around the world.
IBM's competitors have been busy in the past year. Microsoft rebuilt its WCM services from scratch under Office SharePoint 2007. EMC is re-investing in Documentum's WCM capabilities. Oracle acquired Stellent, an ECM vendor with a strong focus on WCM. None of these products are without their flaws, but each has seen substantial attention of late.
In the meantime, IBM's Workplace Web Content Management (WWCM) product remains a generation behind, and it is conceivable that IBM may simply elect to acquire a WCM vendor to fill the gap. CMS Watch cautions that IBM WWCM customers may risk the kind of painful upgrade or even replacement of the kind endured by Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) licensees when Redmond rewrote that tool under SharePoint.
To be sure, the IBM WWCM product has some strengths. It can be integrated with WebSphere Portal Server, and the contributor interface has been localized in multiple languages.
However, WWCM customers tell CMS Watch that the product remains weak in the following areas:
- WWCM comes in two different versions (a Java edition associated with WebSphere and a Lotus edition attached to Domino), which is confusing for buyers and appears to have dissipated development energy
- The product is comparatively feature-poor, especially with respect to globalization services, at a time when many large customers are re-examining their web publishing operations in a global context.
- WWCM suffers from a legacy of bugginess (somewhat redressed in a recent dot-release), a comparatively very quiescent customer community, and much less publicly-available information than other IBM server products.
- Experienced WWCM consulting and integration talent appears in particularly short supply
"Workplace Web Content Management seems lost at IBM," argues CMS Watch Founder, Tony Byrne. "That doesn't mean current licensees should stop using it," Byrne added, "but it does mean that Big Blue customers should not automatically implement WWCM without carefully considering other alternatives."
Labels: CMS Watch, IBM, Industry News
Hitwise Launches New and Returning Visitors Data
Manoj Jasra - Monday, October 29, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Hitwise, today announced the launch of a new Clickstream report - New and Returning Visitors. This new data is invaluable for understanding the percentage of new and repeat traffic a website receives, which sources of traffic provide the greatest volumes of each type of visitor and where new and returning visitors go after visiting a website.
Utilizing this data allows marketers to analyze a competitor’s audience in terms of new and repeat traffic and further understand the strategy and effectiveness of competitive marketing programs. For example, New and Returning Visitors data can help determine if competitors are more focused on traffic-driving campaigns or retaining existing visitors. In addition, New and Returning Visitors allows marketers to:
Gauge the effectiveness of online partners, such as search engines and other traffic- driving websites, like social networking sites, in driving traffic to a website.
Identify where New or Returning Visitors go after visiting your own website for insights on how to stop churn.
The New and Returning Visitor data is updated daily, weekly and monthly and available on the top 10,000 websites visited by Internet users from the U.S. sample of 10 million users.
Some examples of the data include:
- Among Social Networking websites: 6.23 percent of traffic to Facebook.com consisted of new visitors for the week ending Oct. 20, 2007.
- Among Online movie rental websites: Of the traffic going to Netflix.com from Google, 24 percent was from new visitors for the week ending Oct. 20, 2007. Of the traffic going to Netflix.com from Yahoo! Search, 34 percent was from new visitors.
- Among Political candidate websites: Traffic to Ronpaul2008.com consisted of 52 percent returning visitors for the week ending Oct. 20, 2007. Traffic to HillaryClinton.com consisted of 28 percent returning visitors.
The New and Returning Visitors data is calculated by Hitwise’s proprietary data collection software that determines whether an anonymous user has visited a website in the previous 30 days. A New Visitor is classified as a user who has not accessed the website in the previous 30 days. New and Returning data is also available in the UK and Australia markets.
Labels: HitWise, Web Analytics
I was trying to determine which map site (Mapquest, Yahoo Maps or Google maps) had the greatest market share and was surprised to see how dominant Mapquest still is. All the numbers below from Hitwise, Compete and comScore (2006-2007) indicate that Mapquest still owns the majority of traffic. What this tells me that Mapquest has done a good job retaining visitors even though their interface lacks the sophistication of Google/Yahoo maps.
According to Hitwise, the top searched for Halloween Costumes in 2007 are:
Below are the top Halloween websites (by market share)
- hannah montana costume
- master chief costume
- pirate costume
- wonder woman costume
- little red riding hood costume
- hannah montana halloween costume
- tinkerbell costume
- pippi longstocking costume
- flapper costume
- raggedy ann costume
The websites receiving the most traffic from the term “hannah montana costume” were Costumzee.com, PriceGrabber.com, Celebrate Express, Target.com and Shopzilla. Other popular costume searches included Halo 3’s Master Chief, pirates, Wonder Woman, Little Red Riding Hood, and Tinkerbell. The top descriptive search terms used for Halloween costumes include perennial favorites such as sexy, funny, homemade and cool. Also among the popular descriptive searches were “cheap halloween costume ideas” which increased 305 percent and the term “adult halloween costume” which increased 336 percent versus last year.
Below are the top Halloween websites (by market share)
- http://www.buycostumes.com/
- http://www.halloweenexpress.com/
- http://www.spirithalloween.com/
- http://www.costumesupercenter.com/
- http://www.anniescostumes.com/
- http://www.costumehub.com/
- http://www.costumecraze.com/
- http://www.zoogstercostumes.com/
- http://www.halloweenmart.com/
- http://www.partylounge.com/
Could Ask.com Finally be on the Right Commercial Track?
John W Ellis -
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
HitWise’ Bill Tancer recently noted that Ask.com has experienced a lift in weekly market share. The question is, did Ask.com’s new marketing campaigns cause this? Well, like all broadcast messages it’s hard to tell for sure. They are definitely better and less offensive than the previous “algorithm” commercials. They seem to be getting closer to the mark, but yet still way off.
However, Ask.com is trying too hard at mass marketing. Mass marketing is dead.
Unfortunately, there is a lot missing from Ask Sponsored Search program that we can not buy into. Until we can get it, I can not recommend the product to friends and family.
Ask.com could save time and money by going after a small, yet ignitable audience … us. As online marketers, if we like the product we will spread the words.
Online marketers need to “buy in”, before Ask expects others to adapt. By following PyroMarketing rules, Ask.com can make small steps that can prove wonders.
** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/
Labels: ASK, HitWise, john ellis, pay-per-click, ppc
Omniture to Acquire Visual Sciences
Manoj Jasra - Thursday, October 25, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Omniture is at it again, this time set to buy Visual Sciences. Visual Sciences is known as the product which provides the deepest segmentation and analysis of any of the analytics vendors. This acquisition will give Omniture an even greater market-share in the web analytics space. It will be interesting to see the pricing model and the integration of Visual Sciences with Omniture's suite of tools. I really like Gary Angel's thoughts on this news.
Omniture Inc. (NASDAQ: OMTR), today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Visual Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSCN) in a stock and cash transaction valued at approximately $394 million.
The combination of Omniture and Visual Sciences creates a company with substantial scale and resources to deliver industry leading products and services that address the rapidly expanding online business optimization market. The combined company will be able to accelerate investments, meet a wider set of customer needs through a richer solution set and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets.
"With the tremendous growth opportunities we see in the online optimizationUnder the terms of the agreement, Visual Sciences shareholders will receive $2.39 in cash per share and a fixed exchange ratio of 0.49 shares of Omniture stock for each Visual Sciences share, on a fully diluted basis. Based upon Omniture's closing price on Wednesday, October 24, 2007, this yields a total consideration of $18.04 per share. Upon the close of the transaction, Visual Sciences stockholders will own approximately 13.7 percent of the combined company on a pro forma basis.
market, we believe that in addition to being financially accretive to our
shareholders, this is a strategic investment that will drive increased value for
customers and partners," said Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture. "We
are facing a very significant opportunity defined by the rapid growth of online
advertising and online business in general. This acquisition enables Omniture to
accelerate our investments in advanced solutions that drive customer success as
well as create further opportunities to cross-sell our growing portfolio of
products to a combined customer base of more than 4,000 customers."
"Omniture is a leader in online business optimization, and absolutely the rightThe acquisition, which is expected to close in early to mid 2008, is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval of stockholders of both companies and regulatory approvals. The transaction will be accounted for under purchase accounting rules.
company to leverage our technology and resources for the benefit of the
industry. The combined company will provide our customers with a richer solution
set, faster innovation and greater access to unique industry and business
expertise," said Jim MacIntyre, CEO of Visual Sciences. "We look forward to
bringing these two great teams together."
Labels: Omniture, visual sciences
With Microsoft's recent 2% ($240 million) purchase of Facebook it's quite interesting to look at some online market share numbers for Facebook - provided by Hitwise:
- Facebook.com was the ninth most visited website (as ranked by Hitwise) in the U.S. receiving .96% of all Internet visits for the week ending 10/20/07.
- U.S. traffic to Facebook.com has increased 102% YOY comparing the week ending 10/20/07 versus 10/21/06.
- Among a custom category of leading social networking websites, Facebook.com received 15% of U.S. visits for the week ending 10/20/07. That was second most among social networking websites behind MySpace.com, who received 76%. Windows Live Spaces received .40% for the same week.
- Facebook.com received '9.90%' of its U.S. traffic from Search Engines for the week ending 10/20/2007. Of that traffic, MSN Search and Live Search combined for .46% to Facebook.com last week. Google sent 6.82% percent of U.S. traffic while Yahoo! Search send 1.34% of traffic for the week ending 10/20/07.
- U.S visits for Facebook.com among users ages 35 and over have increased 19% comparing the week ending 10/20/07 versus 10/21/06.
- Bangkok Post: Microsoft buys into 15 billion dollar Facebook
- Seattle Times: Microsoft-Facebook deal: Highlights from the call
- Wallstreet Journal: Microsoft Bets On Facebook Stake And Web Ad Boom
- MarketWatch: Microsoft's investment upstages Google love-fest
- Wired News: Three Reasons Microsoft Underpaid For Facebook
- CNN Money: Revised: Facebook and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance
- SearchEngineLand: Microsoft Makes $240 Million Investment In Facebook
- Marketing Pilgrim: Facebook Sells 1.6% to Microsoft for $240 Million
- Tech Crunch: Facebook Takes the Microsoft Money And Runs.
Summer Retail Traffic Increased 10 Percent
Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, October 24, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Online retail websites saw an increase in traffic during the summer months in 2007, Hitwise reported today. Online traffic to the Hitwise Retail Index, which consists of the leading 100 U.S. retail websites, increased 10 percent from June to August in 2007 compared to 2006.
August 2007 saw the largest amount of traffic among the summer months with 11 percent increase year-over-year. July 2007 also saw a double digit increase, growing by 10 percent. The traffic among the Hitwise Retail Index has continued to grow in the fall as U.S. visits in September were up 15 percent compared to September 2006.
| U.S. Market Share of Visits to Top 100 Retail Websites* | |||
| Month | 2007 | 2006 | % Change |
| June | 2.08% | 1.90% | 9% |
| July | 2.15% | 1.96% | 10% |
| August | 2.15% | 1.93% | 11% |
| Avg. Traffic Percentage | 2.12% | 1.93% | 10% |
| September | 2.51% | 2.18% | 15% |
| The data is based on the U.S. market share of visits among a custom category of the top 100 retail websites from a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. * indicates that the top 100 retail websites excludes websites from the following categories: auctions, classifieds, subscription services, DVD and video game rental, reward point collecting and coupons. | |||
| Source: Hitwise | |||
“As we head into the 2007 online holiday season, the healthy increase in visitsTop Websites
to the retail category this year versus last is an indicator that we will be
seeing a strong showing for online retail in the fourth quarter,” said Bill
Tancer, General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise.
Amazon.com was the most visited website among the top 100 retail websites during the summer months. Amazon’s average market share of U.S. visits from June to August was 11.52 percent followed by Wal-mart with 5.37 percent. Target received 4.81 percent of visits, Half.com received 4.45 percent and Dell.com rounded out the top five websites with 3.49 percent.
| Top 5 Most Visited Retail Websites* Between June - August 2007 | |||
Rank | Name | Domain | Avg. Market Share % |
1 | Amazon.com | http://www.amazon.com/ | 11.52% |
2 | Wal-mart | http://www.walmart.com/ | 5.37% |
3 | Target | http://www.target.com/ | 4.81% |
4 | Half.com | http://www.half.ebay.com/ | 4.45% |
5 | Dell USA | http://www.dell.com/ | 3.49% |
| The data is based on the U.S. market share of visits among a custom category of the top 100 retail websites from a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. * indicates that the top 100 retail websites excludes websites from the following categories: auctions, classifieds, subscription services, DVD and video game rental, reward point collecting and coupons. | |||
| Source: Hitwise | |||
Labels: HitWise, Web Analytics
I wrote an article over at Search Engine Guide today that might be worth reading if you've recently created a Facebook Group and are not sure what to do next. Below are a few snippets from the post:
So you were all excited when you first discovered Facebook
Groups and noticed that all the cool kids had their own group so you quickly
jumped on the bandwagon to create one for yourself. You went through the
process of creating an enticing title/description, selected the perfect logo and
then proceeded to invite all your friends to join...but now
what???
Promote Discussion: It's difficult to get your members to
initiate conversation, however since you are quite familiar with your vertical
it allows you to get the conversation rolling with questions related to hot
topics. Discussion boards are an excellent way to share ideas and get
multiple perspectives on a given topic.
Read the full post here: http://www.searchengineguide.com/manoj-jasra/my-facebook-group-its-setup-now-what.php
Labels: Facebook
The Web Analytics World Facebook Group is now 318 members strong and has a lot of useful links posted related to Search Marketing and Analytics. Here are a few of the most recent posted items that could be useful in your next search marketing strategy:
- Download the free white paper: 7 Web Analytics Sins, And How to Avoid Them: Web analytics solutions from ClickTracks Analytics allow visual analysis of web site visitor behavior. Using web log files generated by your web server or our JavaScript page-tagging method.
- How to Optimize for Ask: Ask's portion of the search market is a mere 4.3% (src. Hitwise) so it is understandable that optimizing for Ask is a low priority in the eyes of many webmasters.
- 5 Ways Google Analytics Can Help Increase Traffic to Your Website: Everyone wants more web traffic! The place to start mining for traffic data is right in your own backyard: your free Google Analytics application (www.google.com/analytics/). You can use these techniques with all analytics packages, but we'll lead you through the exact Google Analytics reports.
- Web Success Marketing Info BLOG: Highly Recommended Keyword Research Tools: The place where Web Marketing Specialist, Marci Rosenblum shares her knowledge, observations and ideas on how to have an Effective and Successful Direct Response Marketing Plan and Website Presence!
- Enquiro Research: Marketing to a B2B Technical Buyer:
- What Influences a Technical Buyer throughout the purchase decision, and how to leverage those influencing factors on your website.
- What Technical Buyers are looking for on your website, and how to build up your "content arsenal."
- How to get Technical Buyers to put you on the top of their short-list.
Want to join our Facebook Group? Click here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4987100546
Labels: Facebook, Web Analytics
Hitwise Launches Retail Data Center
Manoj Jasra - Monday, October 22, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Hitwise, today announced the launch of its new Retail Data Center. This publicly available website provides weekly online shopping trend data, based on how U.S. Internet users interact with more than 20,000 online shopping sites, across 21 shopping categories such as Video Games, Electronics and Apparel. The data available will illustrate which websites consumers are visiting and terms they are searching for online heading into the Holiday retail season.
The Hitwise Retail Data Center updates weekly and will feature key data on a market-by-market basis including:
The Hitwise Retail Data Center updates weekly and will feature key data on a market-by-market basis including:
- Top 20 Most Visited Websites from custom category of top 100 retail websites (U.S. only)
- Top 10 Shopping Search Terms among rotating categories
- Top 10 Visited Shopping Websites among rotating categories
- Top Four Fast Moving shopping websites
- Links to Latest Online Shopping related Blog Posts by Hitwise research analysts
The U.S. Hitwise Retail Data Center is located on the Hitwise website at: http://www.hitwise.com/datacenter/retail/ updating every Tuesday with RSS feeds available. The data is based on the online usage and search behavior of how more than 10 million US Internet users interact with more than 1 million websites.
The retail data is also available from the following markets:
United Kingdom: http://www.hitwise.co.uk/datacenter/retail/
Australia: http://www.hitwise.com.au/datacenter/retail/
New Zealand: http://www.hitwise.co.nz/datacenter/retail/
Singapore: http://sg.hitwise.com/datacenter/retail/
Hong Kong: http://www.hitwise.com.hk/datacenter/retail/
The retail data is also available from the following markets:
United Kingdom: http://www.hitwise.co.uk/datacenter/retail/
Australia: http://www.hitwise.com.au/datacenter/retail/
New Zealand: http://www.hitwise.co.nz/datacenter/retail/
Singapore: http://sg.hitwise.com/datacenter/retail/
Hong Kong: http://www.hitwise.com.hk/datacenter/retail/
Labels: HitWise, Web Analytics
Feed subscribers are quite possibly your most loyal readers therefore it's important to grow your subscriber community as much as possible. With Google's purchase of FeedBurner as well as their own proprietary subscriber calculating technology don't be surprised to see feed subscribers becoming a variable in Google's ranking algorithm. In today's post we'll talk about how to increase your feed subscribers with some very simple tips.
Prominent, Accessible and Ease of Use: Make your subscription buttons available on all pages and place them above the fold. Using technology like FeedBurner you can get a sense of your subscribers' favorite feed services and begin making subscribing to those services even easier.- Repeat in Footer: Something that has worked well for me is adding the subscription option to the footer of each individual post. What this does is remind visitors to subscribe after reading one of my posts.
- Add Option in Emails: In FeedBurner you can also publicize your feed's content by placing a widget in outgoing emails. Through this widget people can also subscribe to your feed.
- Subscribe by Email: Depending on what industry you're in adding an option to subscribe by email can dramatically increase your subscribers. Many authors of travel sites have noticed that email is even more popular than feed readers.
Increasing Feed Subscribers: Additional Resources
- The Blog Studio: How to Increase Subscribers by 50% in 30 Days
- Pro Blogger: 11 Ways to Find New RSS Subscribers for Your Blog
- Daily SEO Blog: Increase the number of subscribers to your blog overnight
- Copy Blogger: 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers
- Rob Malon: Decrease Bounce Rate - Increase Subscribers and Visit Time
- Internet Marketing Students: How To Increase Blog Subscribers
- Jimmy Thakkar: Techniques to increase subscribers for BLOG
- Ades Blog: Increase your RSS subscriber count with FeedSmith
- Garry Conn: How To Increase RSS Feedburner Subscribers
- Jonh TP: Tips To Increase Your Blog Subscribers
Labels: Blog Promotion, FeedBurner
Text Links MarketPlace Enters Link Exchange Arena
Manoj Jasra - Saturday, October 20, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Text Links MarketPlace is a new alternative to Text Links Ads, Link Worth and Text Link Brokers. In order to begin selling links you must insert a snippet of PHP code onto your website - which is a prerequisite, your site must be able to execute PHP.Here are the benefits from a website publishers perspective:
- You'll be able to sell links on every page of your website.
- Automatically sell links to thousands of advertisers.
- Receive payouts every month in advance, via PayPal, Check, Wire, or any other applicable payment method.
- Easy code installation using "copy-paste" method.
- The price for each link is calculated automatically. It mostly depends on Google PageRank (PR) of each page, website category, link popularity, and number of outbound links.
- TNX commission is just 12.5% from each party involved in transaction.
Text Links MarketPlace also has a convenient income calculator where you can determine how much money you can make selling links. The calculator does this based on the number of incoming links to your site, the number of pages in your site and the distribution of PageRank amongst those site pages.
Publishers and Advertisers can sign up here: http://www.tnx.net/register.php
Text Links MarketPlace also has developed a point based affiliate marketing program:
What can a partner do with earned "TNX-points" ? There are several
options:
1. Use them to advertise his or her own websites to improve traffic and search engine rating.2. Accumulate "TNX-points" on the account and observe how they grow in value
as the system becomes more efficient due to increasing number of participating websites.3. Sell "TNX-points" to the system, or send them to another participant of the TNX network, who will use it to promote his projects. Each participant has the right to transfer its "TNX-points" to any other participant (without commission) and set his own price.
This is a sponsored review
This Weeks Must Reads in Search Marketing
Manoj Jasra - Friday, October 19, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
It's been a busy schedule for me this week and last being at WebTrends' Engage and Emetrics Washington DC back to back. Here are some of the stories that you should definitely check out:
Search Marketing
- Search Engine Land: The Big SMX Social Media NY '07 Roundup
- Top Rank Blog: Top SEO Blogs on Google Reader
- SEO Space: What Influences B2B Tech Buyers During the Purchase Process?
- SEO Book: Google Lowered My PageRank, Was My Website Penalized?
- SE Journal: Google Docs Mobile Launched
- Search Insider: Infomediating A Broken Marketplace
- Live Search: Announcing Live Search 411 (1-800-CALL-411)
- SE Guide: 9 (+1) Tips For Writing User-Friendly Content
Web Analytics
- Occam's Razor: Kick Butt With Internal Site Search Analytics
- Epike One: Introducing Urchin 6
- Web Analytics Princess: Emetrics Washington 2007: Consumer segmentation, personas and tribes, aren’t we drilling down into the same thing?
- June Dershewitz: What is the Career Trajectory in Web Analytics?
- Phil Kemelor: Web Analytics for Government Agencies
- Web Analytics Book: Hitwise Launches Lifestyle V3.0
Labels: Industry News, Must Reads
Facebook Slipping is Seasonal
Manoj Jasra - Thursday, October 18, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Bill Tancer over at the Hitwise blog wrote an interesting blog post this morning explaining the "Facebook Slowdown" theory (which reportedly is a very hot but inaccurate topic around the blogosphere). Using Hitwise, Tancer shows that Facebook's recent slowdown is due to seasonality.
As you can see in Hitwise's market share graph below, this same slowdown happened last year as well. It makes sense that activity would be greater during the summer where people, especially students, have time off to use Facebook more often.
During this past Emetrics Optimization Summit in Washington DC I had the opportunity to present on the topic of Blog Promotion Strategies and Measurement. My presentation was very "to the point" and included many different takeaways that people could instantly apply on their blogs. The key with blog promotion is to constantly test different tactics and then refine them because every blog has its own perfect recipe. The topics I covered in my presentation included:
- Why Blog?
- What Makes A Blog Unique?
- Creating Community through Subscribers
- Developing Relationships
- Content Strategies
- Leveraging Social Media and Networking
- Metrics and Measurement
- Strategies that haven't worked for me
- Strategies that have worked for me
Below is a copy of my presentation from Emetrics Washington:
Labels: Blog Promotion, emetrics, Web Analytics
Search Engine Market Share for September - Hitwise
Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, October 17, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Hitwise, today announced that Google accounted for 63.55 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending September 29, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22.55, 7.83 and 4.32 percent respectively. The remaining 49 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.75 percent of U.S. searches.
| Percentage of U.S. Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers | |||
| Domain | Sept 07 | Aug 07 | Sept 06 |
| www.google.com | 63.55% | 63.98% | 60.93% |
| search.yahoo.com | 22.55% | 22.87% | 22.29% |
| search.msn.com | 7.83%* | 7.98%* | 10.87%* |
| www.ask.com | 4.32% | 3.49% | 4.28% |
| Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 9/29/07, 9/01/07; 9/30/2006) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users. * - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search. | |||
| Source: Hitwise | |||
Google an Increasing Source of Traffic to Key Industries
Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing September 2007 to September 2006, the Travel, Entertainment and Business and Finance categories received double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Labels: HitWise
More Google Analytics Updates!
Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, October 16, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Today at Emetrics Washington DC, Google announced some more features to Google Analytics as well as a new update to Urchin 5 software. The new updates to Google Analytics include site search reporting and event tracking. What an interesting time to release these new features, the day after the live Microsoft Gatineau Demo at Emetrics.Users can enable site search to identify keywords, categories, products, and trends across time and user segments, thereby helping them measure the effectiveness of their websites and their marketing dollars. Site search aggregates data about how searches affect site usage, e-commerce activity, and conversion rates, by tracking internal search patterns. This will soon be available worldwide, and it works with Google Custom Search™, GSA, Google Mini™ and many other non-Google site search products.
With Web 2.0 features also spreading on the Internet, measuring their success is increasingly valuable. Event tracking, which launches in a limited beta at the eMetrics Summit, enables Google Analytics users to measure visitor engagement with a site's interactive elements, such as Ajax, Javascript, Flash movies, page gadgets, downloads and other multimedia Web 2.0 experiences. Google Analytics users who are attending the eMetrics Summit can sign up for event tracking at the Google Analytics booth, and users should note that when they add event tracking, they must update their page tags from "urchin.js" to "ga.js".
For those who prefer a software version of web analytics, Google Analytics is introducing Urchin Software in limited beta worldwide. Urchin Software is an update to Urchin 5 software, and a free 90-day trial of the beta version of Urchin Software can be requested from an authorized reseller: http://www.google.com/analytics/support_partner_provided.html. Urchin Software will be available for a discounted price to users of Urchin 5, and will include many improvements including tools to assist in migrating configurations and data from previous versions of Urchin. Once the new software is out of beta, it can be purchased through an authorized reseller, who often offer comprehensive support and consultation services as well.
Labels: Google Analytics
One of the most anticipated sessions at the Emetrics Optimization Summit in Washington was the demonstration of Microsoft's very own analytics, Gatineau. Ian Thomas, who was giving the presentation, announced that beta accounts will be released very shortly, however the original beta release was supposed to be released at the end of . Microsoft will be integrating into AdCenter similar to what Google Analytics does with Adwords.
One of the coolest features which I noticed was the ability to measure the performance of individual webpage sections giving a whole new level of granularity. Microsoft hopes to takeaway some of Google Analytics' market share, however I don't think this is the easiest of tasks. Looking at the initial screenshots of Gatineau you can see that they are also implementing an ajax based user interface, however it currently doesn't have polish of Google Analytics' interface.
If Microsoft expects to compete with Google Analytics and other products, they are going to have to come out with something unique and exciting. They will have to do something similar to what Google Analytics did when it initially replaced Urchin. Microsoft has had nearly 2 years to analyze the top features and issues that Google Analytics posseses in order to capitalize on them.
Labels: emetrics, Google Analytics, Microsoft
AIMpromote - Lead Management Alternative
Manoj Jasra - Monday, October 15, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
1 Comments
AIMpromote is an on-demand web-based software application to manage the handling of sales leads. It is essentially a CRM, but is focused particularly on handling leads. There is also the ability to sell leads (lead aggregation business).
AIMpr0mote tracks and display data for all the visitors, but it displays tracking data for each visitor who fills out the feedback form on your site. Knowing where your conversions came from, and knowing the search term, plus knowing the pages they viewed and path they took just gives you that more information about the lead before you make the sales call.
Aimpromote's Lead Management Meter: Lead neglect is attributed to an estimated 80% of all lost sales. Don't let this happen to your business by using the user configurable Lead Attention Meter settings in the AIMpromote lead management system. All 'Open' leads have a Lead Attention Meter, which is used to provide a quick way to see how much attention (or neglect) a lead is receiving. For leads that have been recently addressed, the attention meter shows green.Check out AIMpromote's extensive features list which goes into detail about Pricing, Reporting, Lead management, Sales Force automation, user management, support and website integration.
This is a sponsored review
After traveling all day on planes and shuttles I have finally arrived at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, the location for Emetrics Washington DC. It's supposedly the largest gathering of Search Marketing professionals which has been a growing trend for Emetrics. I am actually a speaker here in DC and will be talking about Blog Promotion and Measurement. Here's the official description:With blogging and social bookmarking so popular, measurement leads to leverage. Manoj looks at applying various SEM/Promotion strategies to a blog or website and then measuring the success or downfalls of the promotion strategies through Web Analytics.
Labels: emetrics
Bailey, Eisenberg Join MarketMotive
Manoj Jasra - Friday, October 12, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
MarketMotive's Internet marketing dream team continues to grow stronger as they have now added Social Media Expert Matt Bailey and Bryan Eisenberg as a conversion analysis specialist. Co-founders Michael Stebbins, John Marshall and Avinash Kaushik also recruited Alan Rimm-Kaufman as their Paid Search Specialist.
Their lineup now consists of:
| Bryan Eisenberg | Conversion Optimization |
| Greg Jarboe & Jamie O’Donnell | Online publicity |
| Alan Rimm-Kaufman | Paid search / PPC |
| Matt Bailey | Social Media |
| Avinash Kaushik | Web Analytics |
| Todd Malicoat | SEO |
For $299/month the MarketMotive team will offer you the following benefits:
- Fresh training videos on each area of Internet Marketing: SEO, PPC, analytics, online publicity, social media, site conversion optimization, marketing processes, down-and-dirty how-to’s and more
- Monthly conference calls with each Market Motive Faculty (experience site clinics, and discuss strategies specific to your business)
- Recordings of monthly conference calls (Your questions are answered even if you cannot attend)
- Discussion areas where members, staff and faculty answer your specific questions
Labels: Industry News
I have given up on Broad Match
John W Ellis - Thursday, October 11, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
4 Comments
I have finally pulled the trigger and paused all broad match keywords in my Google Adwords account. Notice, I said pause not delete. I am still a little hesitant.
Google AdWords Expanded Broad Match is good for Google but bad for advertisers. I was consistently showing a decrease in conversions on broad match terms, while showing an increase in cost. If anyone has followed any of my posts before, knows that I am a stern believer in conversion over clicks.
There were some obvious changes because of this pausing of broad keywords. Clicks and impressions have obviously all gone done immediately. And yes, conversions have gone down. But I am fine with that. Because proportionally speaking, it was a small decrease. I am willing to sacrifice a handful of conversions, if I can get a better return on as spend.
However, I do expect conversions and click to go back up soon. I plan to expand my keyword list with various long tail terms. This should greatly decrease my cost per conversion as well. Also, by eliminating broad match terms, I expect my ads will be more targeted. More targeted ads lead to a higher cost-per-click.
Thus, in theory, my quality score will go up and my ads will get ranked higher. Sounds right to me.
I will continue to monitor and see if there is any negative impact on overall revenue.
** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/
Labels: adwords, Google, john ellis, pay-per-click, ppc
Hitwise, today that the NBC’s Deal or No Deal website was the most visited broadcast network television show website among a custom category of selected shows for the week ending September 29, 2007. More than 120 television show websites from the six leading broadcast networks1 were included in the custom category. Deal or No Deal received 15.46 percent of all U.S. visits during the week in which many networks premiered their shows for the new television season.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The ABC show Dancing with the Stars website received the second largest percentage of U.S. visits. Following Dancing with the Stars was NBC’s Heroes website that received 9.71 percent of visits and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy website received 3.51 percent of visits.
The FOX show, America’s Most Wanted website rounded out the top five visited shows receiving 2.70 percent of visits for the week ending September 29, 2007.
The table is based on a weekly Hitwise Conversions report that ranks the selected broadcast network television show websites, whether they are a stand-alone site such as American Idol or a section within a larger website such as Deal or No Deal. The show websites are ranked by market share of U.S. visits among all the websites included.
Network Website Traffic
NBC.com received the largest market share of U.S. visits, 36.70 percent, among a custom category of the six broadcast networks for the week ending September 29, 2007. ABC.com received the second most visits for the week with 30.41 percent, followed by CBS.com with 19.08 percent.
| ||||
| Network | Website | Week Ending 9/29/2007 | Week Ending 9/23/2006 |
| NBC | http://www.nbc.com/ | 36.70% | 48.10% |
| ABC | http://www.abc.com/ | 30.41% | 23.40% |
| CBS | http://www.cbs.com/ | 19.08% | 17.13% |
| FOX* | http://www.fox.com/ | 7.07% | 4.59% |
| The CW | http://www.cwtv.com/ | 6.64% | 6.53% |
| MyNetworkTV | http://www.mynetworktv.com/ | 0.10% | 0.26% |
| Source: Rankings are based on custom category of television network websites among the six major broadcast networks for the week ending September 29, 2007 (Sunday – Saturday) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. *Does not include traffic from related stand alone websites such as American Idol, The Simpsons, Family Guy and America’s Most Wanted. | |||
| Source: Hitwise | |||
Top TV Premiere Searches
Among all U.S. Internet that contained the phrase “season premiere,” The ABC television series, Lost, was the most searched for premiering show for the four weeks ending September 29, 2007. Lost, which doesn’t premiere until early 2008, received 5.92 percent of U.S. searches amongst all the ‘season premiere’ searches which included the top three searches overall. The CW Network’s, One Tree Hill, received 1.59 percent of searches for the week ending September 29, 2007, making the show the fourth most searched for television series premiere. Following searches for One Tree Hill were Smallville, Grey’s Anatomy, House, Heroes and CSI.
Among all U.S. Internet that contained the phrase “season premiere,” The ABC television series, Lost, was the most searched for premiering show for the four weeks ending September 29, 2007. Lost, which doesn’t premiere until early 2008, received 5.92 percent of U.S. searches amongst all the ‘season premiere’ searches which included the top three searches overall. The CW Network’s, One Tree Hill, received 1.59 percent of searches for the week ending September 29, 2007, making the show the fourth most searched for television series premiere. Following searches for One Tree Hill were Smallville, Grey’s Anatomy, House, Heroes and CSI.
Labels: HitWise
Ultimate Consumer Engagement Resources
Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, October 10, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
2 Comments
Consumer Engagement is not a metric that can be measured in the same manner by all businesses and therefore there is no such thing as an optimum engagement score. Consumer Engagement is also not simply captured on your website, it's calculated using all touch points in a consumer's (website, search engine, blog, banner ad, offline media, etc...). Consumer engagement has to be defined by marketing teams and appropriate stake holders so that it can be correlated to repetitive interactions by the consumer.
"Customer engagement is about putting the customer at the centre of everything we do and meeting their needs effectively. It’s about talking to customers about the things that are important to them in the language they use, at the right time and through the channel that is most convenient to them." cScape Annual SurveyBecause consumer engagement is so difficult to measure I have compiled a list of trusted resources to help shorten (or potentially lengthen) the search for the right answers:
- iMedia Connection: iMedia Connection: Who Cares About Engagement?
- iMedia Connection: Consumer Engagement: What Does It Mean?
- Clickz: Consumer Engagement: Breaking the Perfect Measurement Myth
- Clickz: Get Ready to Enage with the Engagement Metric
- Read Between the Ps: Consumer Engagement - From Intrusive to Co-creation
- Web Metrics Guru: Consumer Engagement: What Does It Mean?
- Online Spin (Media Post): Are Engagement Believers In Denial?
- Econsultancy: Customer Engagement Survey Results
- WikiPedia: Customer Engagement
- Web Analytics Demystified: How do you calculate engagement? Part 1
- Web Analytics Demystified: How do you calculate engagement? Part II
- Wired Set: Terms of Engagement - Measuring the Active Consumer
- Adobe: Engagement
- Marketing ROI: Consumer Engagement is Measurable
- Dan Greenfield: Consumer Engagement - The New PR Metric
- Occam's Razor: Engagement, It's not a metrics, It's an excuse
- Jim Novo: Measuring Consumer Engagement
- Anil Batra: Engagement, is it a metric or an excuse?
- Post Gazette: Strategies to involve the customer are the hot marketing trend
Labels: Consumer Engagement, Web Analytics
WebTrends Engage 2007: Measuring Consumer Engagement
Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, October 09, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
I have just arrived at the Rio Resort in Las Vegas and will be attending WebTrends' Engage 2007 tomorrow. I am actually on an "expert panel" where we'll be discussing different aspects of the buzz phrase: Consumer Engagement. The topics surrounding consumer engagement will include:
- What consumer engagement actually means
- Best Practices for measuring consumer engagement
- The role of the marketer
- Consumer Engagement: B2B vs. B2C
The panel consists of some very respected names in the search marketing/web analytics industry: Gary Angel, Andy Beal, Anil Batra, Jim Novo, Jim Sterne and myself. I am hoping I can add some value to the conversation because after reading Jim Novo's Blog it appears he is quite the guru on the subject.
Labels: WebTrends
Google Analytics Shortcut by Justin Cutroni
Manoj Jasra - Monday, October 08, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
1 Comments
According to Brett Crosby over at the Google Analytics Blog posted that Justin Cutroni, the Director of Analytics at EpikOne, Inc has jsut released a very thorough eBook on Google Analytics, titled "Google Analytics Shortcut." The goal of Google Analytics ShortCut is to help users configure Google Analytics to meet their business needs. It's only $10, so I suggest you BUY IT right away.Here's an overview of the eBook:
- Getting Setup Correct
- How Google Analytics Works
- Profiles and Profile Settings
- Filters
- Goals & Funnels
- Common Website Configurations
- Dynamic Websites
- Tracking Across Multiple Domains
- Tracking Across Multiple Sub Domains
- Tracking Across Multiple Domains with Multiple Sub Domains
- Frames & IFrames
- Marketing Campaign Tracking
- E-Commerce Tracking
- Custom Segmentation
- CRM Integration
- Tips & Tricks
- Tracking Visitor Clicks, Outbound Links and Non-HTML Files
- Recommended Profiles & Filters
- Custom Segmentation Hacks
- Excluding Yourself from Google Analytics Data
- Creating an Implementation Plan
- Keeping Track of Your Configuration Changes
- Troubleshooting Data Accuracy
- Reference
- Google Analytics Functions
- Tracking Code Variables
- Regular Expressions
- Tools for Debugging Google Analytics
Labels: Google Analytics, Web Analytics
Compete Search Analytics Now Live
Manoj Jasra - Friday, October 05, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Compete Search Analytics is officially open to the public! Visit searchanalytics.compete.com to sign up or take a tour.
Using just a credit card to activate the service, a marketer at any size company, with any level of search marketing experience, can immediately benefit from the new Web-based resource that delivers the industry’s richest search analytics on a revolutionary pay-as-you-go basis. Compete Search Analytics make it easy for you to:
- Identify new relevant keywords for possible bids
- Learn competitor’s search strategies
- Track performance of specific keywords against competitors
- Find the search terms that drive the most engaged visitors
If you have any suggestions, concerns or comments please contact Compete at membersupport@compete.com. Additionally, you can join the Compete Search Analytics Group and get involved in the discussion.
Labels: Web Analytics
Send SMS - Text Messaging
By Josh Yudaken
An application that allow visitors to send you SMS text messages from your facebook page at no cost. Has support for many international cellphone service providers, message history and themes. UK and many new countries supported since September 14!
65,379 daily active users (7%) — 324 reviews
Instant Messaging
By Digital Standard, Inc.
Instant Message your friends on Facebook.
46,322 daily active users (3%) — 14 friends, 62 reviews
FacéDouble Celebrity Look-alike
By FacéDouble.com
Find your celebrity look alike using your Facebook photos or camera phone! * Find friend's Facedoubles * Vote on matches * Get the buzz on your celebrity * See best matches of the day
21,087 daily active users (6%) — 3 friends, 97 reviews
By Twitter
See what you and your friends are up to on Twitter and update your Twitter status, right from your Facebook!
1,637 daily active users (3%) — 11 friends, 249 reviews
Text Me
By Mozes, Inc.
Allow friends to send you SMS, photos, and mobile gifts from your profile for free! Text messages, photos, and gifts sent from your page are delivered directly to your phone.
2,614 daily active users (1%) — 163 reviews
Friends GPS
By Digital Standard, Inc.
Update your GeoStatus and see your friends'. NEW: Browse Facebook users sorted by distance from your current location.
2,146 daily active users (7%) — 1 review
SpringCaster : Video
By Adam Freeman, Daniel Shrier and 2 other people
Display all your favorite videos on your profile page. You can add videos by using your web cam, uploading them from your hard drive or directly from your mobile phone. Friends can watch the videos back via our large video player. App by SpringDoo.
3,131 daily active users (17%) — 1 review
MyPhone
By jaxtr, Inc.
Lets Facebook friends call your phone or leave a voice message while you keep your phone number private.
2,067 daily active users (4%) — 151 reviews
Phonebook
By Jangl
Talk to your facebook friends by phone! Add friends to your Phonebook and get numbers to call them. Get voicemail right inside facebook or talk live on your phone! Your real phone number stays private and you can block any caller completely.
1,915 daily active users (3%) — 39 reviews
3jam Text Messaging
By 3jam
Text message with your friends from Facebook. SMS with one person or with a group. No one can see your phone number and everyone can reply-all. It’s fun and easy. Check it out!
1,742 daily active users (5%) — 40 reviews
Labels: Facebook
Ultimate Local Search Optimization Resources
Manoj Jasra - Thursday, October 04, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
17 Comments
Local Search is becoming essential in many businesses' online marketing strategy. With all major search players (Google, MSN, Yahoo, ASK, AOL) providing pristine real estate for local search results, businesses can't afford NOT to invest into local search optimization strategies. Search Engines such as Google make it very simple for businesses to submit their websites into its local search index, therefore you can find more and more companies taking advantage of local search services. There also many search engines which primarly focus on "Local" such as Super Pages and Local.com. These engines serve up millions of pages views a month, which means companies need to evaluate these secondary avenues of traffic as well because they can lead to increased online visibility. Below are some useful local search optimization resources you should consider before executing your local search strategy.Local Search Engines
- Google Maps: http://local.google.com/
- Yahoo! Local: http://local.yahoo.com/
- ASK City: http://city.ask.com/city
- AOL Local Search: http://local.aol.com/aol/localhome
- Live Local: http://local.live.com/
- Local.com: http://www.local.com/
- Super Pages: http://www.superpages.com/
- Yellow Pages: http://www.yellowpages.com/
- Dex Online: http://www.dexonline.com/
- Local Launch: http://www.locallaunch.com/
- Switch Board: http://www.switchboard.com/
- 411.com: http://www.411.com/
- True Local: http://www.truelocal.com/
- City Search: http://www.citysearch.com/
- White Pages: http://www.whitepages.com/
- Zvents: http://www.zvents.com/
Local Search Optimization
- Search Engine Journal: 5 Quick Ways To Optimize For Local Search
- Natural Search Blog: Extreme Local Search Optimization Tactics
- iMedia Connection: 10 Winning Ways to Optimize Local Search
- SE Round Table: Local Search Marketing Tactics
- Small Business SEM: 10 Likely Elements of Google’s Local Search Algorithm
- SearchEngineWatch: 8 Ways to Improve Your Local Search Results
- The Karcher Group: Optimizing Local Search
- Improve the Web: Optimize your site for local search engine traffic
- Local SEO Guide: http://www.localseoguide.com/
- WebProNews: SES: Six Tips For Local Search Marketing
- Single Grain: Optimizing for Local Search
- ClickZ: A New Form of Local Search Optimization, Part 1
- SE Journal: Local Search Optimization Think Globally, Act Locally
- Search Engine Land: Using Images For Local SEO
- Search Engine Guide: "Local Search Engine Optimization" Yesterday and Today
- Search Engine Lane: Advanced Local Search Optimization Tips
- Info Mean: Local Search Optimization - A Guide to Getting Started
- Search Anyway: Using Yellow Pages for Local Search SEO
- SEO Design Solutions: Local Search Engine Optimization Tips to Improve Organic Rankings
- Local Internet Marketing - Local Search
- Wolf Howl: Local Search Tips, Tricks & Secrets
- Search Engine Guide: Boost Your Local Search Presence
- Bruce Clay: Search Engine Relationship Chart - Local Edition
- Sugar Rae: Before You Launch that Local Small Business Website
- Peter Krasilovsky: Local Onliner
- Expose Local: http://www.exposelocal.com/
Have a resource that should be added? Leave a comment and I will review it
Labels: Local Search, SEM, SEO
I read a great article from RarePlay.com last week titled: "Searching For A Perfect Fit" which talks about online clothing retailers offering virtual fitting rooms to further entice visitors to remain on the site and potentially purchase a product. I thought this was an excellent way to engage visitors by allowing them to see what a piece of clothing would look like on body shape which was similar to theirs. I am not sure what types of results the retailers are seeing but I assume abandonment rates would decrease while orders and time spent on site would increase. Below is a blurb from the article and you can read the rest here.
"The online apparel industry has been one of the fastest growing online e-commerce categories over the past few years, but it is also one with a high number of returns partly due to the lack of personalized sizes/measurements. To reduce return rates and further increase sales, online retail sites like MyShape, Zafu, Intellifit and My Virtual Model are using innovative personalized services for shoppers by offering a collection of clothing outfits to suit an individual’s shapes, sizes and styles. Other online services like FashMatch, Like and 6pm help users assemble matching outfits using technology that combines both mathematical algorithms (that account for colors and patterns) as well as the collective feedback from its users. "
"The online apparel industry has been one of the fastest growing online e-commerce categories over the past few years, but it is also one with a high number of returns partly due to the lack of personalized sizes/measurements. To reduce return rates and further increase sales, online retail sites like MyShape, Zafu, Intellifit and My Virtual Model are using innovative personalized services for shoppers by offering a collection of clothing outfits to suit an individual’s shapes, sizes and styles. Other online services like FashMatch, Like and 6pm help users assemble matching outfits using technology that combines both mathematical algorithms (that account for colors and patterns) as well as the collective feedback from its users. "Labels: Industry News
Ultimate Video Optimization Resources
Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, October 03, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Last week we gathered some useful link for Optimizing Images for Search Engines and this week we discovered some great resources for Optimizing Video for Search Engines. With Google introducing Universal Search earlier this year (and other engines closely following behind), search results are more and more likely to have video results integrated within natural search listings. Titles, Descriptions, Ratings, Average watch duration and Views are all factors contributing to the likelihood of videos (from YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, Yahoo Video) found within 
search results. Check out the sites below for detailed tactics on how to leverage videos in your online campaign:- Search Engine Watch: Optimizing Video for Search Engines
- ASK Enquiro: How Can I Optimize My Videos?
- Matt Cutts: optimize for search engines or users Google video
- More Matt Cutts: SEO Answers on Google Video
- Lancer Media: Optimize Videos For Search Engines
- Antezeta: 8 Ways to Optimize Video and Multimedia for Top Search Engine Visibility
- Digg: Optimizing Video Content for Search Engines
- Search Marketing Standard: Optimizing Your Video Pages in 10 Easy Steps
- Top Rank Blog: Optimizing for Video Search Engines
- Fatham SEO: SEO, Video Search Engine Optimization
- Persona Non Gravy: Optimizing Video for Natural Search
- Reel SEO: Basic Tips for Optimizing Video content for Search Engines
- Aus SEO: Optimizing Video for Search Engines
- Rise Rep: Optimizing Video Content for Search Engines
- 10 Golden Rules Blog: Optimizing Multimedia Files for "Blended or Universal Search"
Top 10 Video Competitors - From Compete.com
Have a resource that should be added? Leave a comment and I will review it
Labels: Universal Search, Video Optimization
Free White Paper: Tech Buyer Influencers
Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, October 02, 2007
[ Post a Comment ]
0 Comments
Enquiro Research has just released a Free white paper on how B2B Tech Buyers make purchase decisions online. Download it and find out how:
- What Influences a Technical Buyer throughout the purchase decision, and how to leverage those influencing factors on your website.
- What Technical Buyers are looking for on your website, and how to build up your "content arsenal."
- How to get Technical Buyers to put you on the top of their short-list.
It seems that B2B still looks at online as only a lead generation tool,Here is the table of contents from the whitepaper:
something that generates a contact for an offline sales agent to follow up on,
but obviously technical buyers want more information from online.
Technical buyers are using online and search to select and screen out vendors;
to create short lists; and to get competitive pricing for closing negotiations.
Introduction
Who is a Technical Buyer?
What is a Technical Buyer Looking for at First?
- Leveraging the SERP
What are a Technical Buyers Influencers?
- How to Build Online Buzz
- Leveraging the Distributor’s Website
- Driving Offline Traffic Online
- Using Microsites for Tradeshows
-What are Technical Buyers Looking for on Your Website?
- Rich Media in BB
- The Power of Testimonials
- Building a Great Homepage
How do Technical Buyers get to You?
- The Role of Vertical Search in BB
Where do Technical Buyers Buy?
Visit: http://www.enquiroresearch.com/b2b-tech-2007.aspx
Labels: Enquiro, Industry News
CMS Watch released research today finding that a new breed of web manager is emerging to link content management more closely to website visitor satisfaction.
This analysis stems from CMS Watch's 2008 "Web CMS Report," released today, which evaluates 30 major Web Content Management (WCM) offerings. As part of its ongoing research, CMS Watch interviews hundreds of web managers around the world.
Web teams have traditionally emphasized webmaster roles with layout and production skills, sometimes using first-generation WCM tools to automate the HTML conversion process. Automated or not, "shovel and forget" editorial processes frequently led to bloated sites. Says CMS Watch Founder Tony Byrne, "The new web manager looks at information from the consumers' perspective and more often than not, asks, 'what can we get rid of?'"
The new web manager may operate under several professional guises: "customer advocate," "information guru," or "metator," to name just a few. Although they may serve as "power users" of Web CMS tools, they need to employ a very different set of soft skills than traditional webmastering, and many enterprises are struggling with the personnel challenges of this transition.
CMS Watch research findings include:
- Greater site visitor focus has driven a renewed, industry-wide interest in metadata and classification, with enterprise demands sometimes exceeding what their WCM tools can deliver.
- Greater emphasis on editorial and graphical standardization is limiting previous ambitions for highly distributed web content development, and compelling enterprises to "dumb down" WCM tool interfaces to the bare essentials for the limited contributions of casual contributors.
- Many WCM vendors still equate consumer orientation with e-commerce and online marketing, when in fact the need for visitor-centric content and experience pervades all web publishing scenarios -- including Intranets.
- The new web manager needs a stronger set of reporting tools than what most WCM tools offer today.
"From an industry perspective, there's a real divide between those vendors who provide strong managerial, reporting, and analysis tools to help bridge the gap between content producer and consumer, versus those that emphasize distributed publishing for its own sake," argues CMS Watch Analyst, Kas Thomas. "In general, pure-play WCM tools seem to have a closer affinity with the needs of contemporary web teams," Thomas added.Not surprisingly, many enterprises are evaluating their technology options. "Even customers who are reasonably satisfied with their WCM tools frequently tell us they remain on the look-out for alternatives," noted Byrne. "They sense that the marketplace is evolving, and that some vendors are adapting more nimbly than others."
The 2008 Web CMS Report includes detailed comparisons of 30 vendors across 18 key feature categories, as well as evaluations of individual product suitability for 12 universal CMS scenarios. A separate European Edition focuses on vendors active in that region.
Vendors covered include: Alfresco, CoreMedia, CrownPeak, Day, Drupal, Ektron, EMCDocumentum, FatWire, IBM, Interwoven, Mediasurface, Microsoft, Open Text/RedDot, Oracle/Stellent, PaperThin, Percussion, Plone, Serena, Sitecore, Tridion, Typo3, and Vignette. The Report is available for purchase online from CMS Watch (http://www.cmswatch.com/).
Labels: CMS Watch, Industry News
September 24th marked my 5 year anniversary with search marketing firm, Enquiro Search Solutions. Joining the 5 year club comes with the added benefit of getting a portion of Enquiro's offices named after you with a street sign. My hallway has officially been designated "Manoj Estates." The last 5 years have been wonderful which included working with a dynamic team and learning all aspects of Search Marketing.
Introducing the new Coremetrics Support Center (https://support.coremetrics.com/) which replaces the old Coremetrics support site with greatly expanded functionality through a self-service portal that puts you in the driver's seat with round-the clock, one-stop shopping that delivers:
- A searchable knowledge base to answer your questions, and give you instant access to essential documents, such as the Implementation Guide, Glossary of Metrics, User Guide, Release Notes and more!
- Educational tools such as web-based training, archived webinars, and more!
- Marketing information including case studies, white papers, and upcoming events, such as the client summit.
- Notifications from support and operations.
- Issue tracking from when you open a ticket through close, so you have complete insight into the status of your inquiries.
- A feedback arena so you can offer suggestions for improvement.
Labels: Web Analytics
Clever Hippo is a search engine for Facebook Apps. Their mission is to make it easier for Facebook users to find cool applications. http://apps.facebook.com/cleverhippoYou are probably wondering, "Why not just use Facebook's Application Search?"
Here are several compelling reasons to use Clever Hippo:
Quality Full-Text Search
The hippo performs a crawl of the Facebook application directory, indexing and prioritizing all relevant application meta-data. This process yields a richer data set than a search that just includes the application summary.
Refine Your Results
- Sort by Daily Active Users
- Sort by Percent Active
- Sort by Most Recent Apps
- Get Specific - narrow results by using advanced search techniques such as OR, NOT, wild-card, or boost queries
- Screenshots - the application's screenshot is available on the search result page for quick viewing
Search Metrics
See what search terms are popular - Clever Hippo aggregates search queries hourly and provides a ranking of the most popular search terms.
Terms are search-able and broken down into time slices - last hour, day, week, month, and all-time. We hope the search metrics feature will be especially interesting to App developers looking to develop what the community is craving.
Labels: Facebook
Logic361 is an analytics firm that specializes in analyzing pay-per-click performance for internet retailers. They focus on helping internet retailers identify and eliminate needless advertising expense while increasing their overall pay-per-click performance.Logic361’s automated reporting insures that:
-Critical insights are transparent
-High priorities are easily distinguished from low priorities
-Paid search priorities are reported on and managed consistently
Last week I had a good conversation with the President of Logic361, Stephen Schramke and received some further insight into his company.
Manoj: What makes your product unique? - What's your competitive advantage?
Stephen Schramke: We have not come across a company yet that focus strictly on PPC analytics. We believe that our focus is unique and that our reports provide a view into this type of data that can not be achieved with spreadsheets or other analytics program. We also believe that we have several competitive advantages in the way do our data mining and present the data. Navigating our reports is very snappy especially considering the average account is pulling reports from 2 gigs of data.
Manoj: Who are your competitors?
Stephen Schramke: At this point we are not aware of any direct competitors. Indirect competitors include companies that provide ppc management and bidding applications and companies that sell analytics solutions. Eventually, several of these categories will probably merge.
Manoj: I see the reports are pulled in through an API can you explain the process as well as list the engines that you can pull information from?
Stephen Schramke: Yes, we do pull Adwords reports via API but we are not limited by having to use an API to get the data. As such, we are able to analyze data from all of the 1st and 2nd tier search engines. For example, the complimentary Adwords snapshot analysis report we provide is based on standard ad performance data that can be downloaded from anyone’s Adwords account and emailed to us. The typical client file that we process daily is 250 to 800 meg’s of data (uncompressed.) The data is mined and analyzed via a sophisticated proprietary database application, packaged for presentation (optimized) and made available for review/assessment via a secure login utilizing a standard web browser. Analysis reports are updated 5 days a week.
Manoj: So the Snapshot analysis pulls 3 sections primarily of reports, which report section is your favorite and why?
Stephen Schramke: Manoj, this is tough question… I love all of our report sections equally! My definite favorite however is the financial report section. When I was responsible for manually reviewing analysis reports I was guilty of only looking at summary performance reports every couple of days. What I like most about our financial section reports is that they provide distinctly separate reporting for keywords that are “workers” verses keywords that are “slackers.” It became crystal clear from analyzing ton’s of historical PPC data that relying on “averages” is costly and can quietly rob an organization of significant profits. Our reports make it easy to identify keyword “workers” that should get higher budgets, higher CPC’s and if they are really good… their own ad group. “Slackers” on the other hand are closely scrutinized based on aging and get the ax if they have less than a favorable statistical probability of producing desired results within a specified timeframe.
Manoj: Do you have any videos or other tutorials or information to assist the audience with understanding the use of your application?
Stephen Schramke: One of our major goals in developing our service was to minimize the need for training and/or tutorials. The goal from the beginning has been to focus strictly on actionable data that could be squeezed into the fewest number analysis reports possible. It would have been a lot easier to create dozens of reports but we wanted experienced paid search people to say “Very cool. I have never looked at my data this way. Wow! This is amazing I can very quickly see and drill into priorities.”
We were also conscious that there are a lot of organizations and agencies struggling to find experienced SEM talent and that there is a need to bring new talent up to speed quickly. We structured the flow of our reports to speed the training process and provide guard rails for management to easily monitor and quickly course correct if necessary.
With all that said, if customers ask for videos and tutorials we will quickly make them our highest priority.
Manoj: Can you talk a little about your pricing model?
Stephen Schramke: We are typically able to identify 10% to 30% of ad spend that can be eliminated within the 1st month and still generate the same or better results. We charge $300 a month per advertising account we monitor and analyze and don't require a contract. We also have reseller and private label programs for agencies and affiliates that sell or service our target market.
Manoj: Who is your target market?
Stephen Schramke: Internet retailers who spend $10K to $1M a month in ppc advertising.
Labels: ppc, Web Analytics
