“We wanted to make WYD08 a unique experience by using new ways to connect with today’s tech-savvy youth,” Bishop Anthony Fisher said in a statement on Wednesday.

Via Reuters

These numbers are for December 2007, so you would expect a higher than normal conversion rate in the lead up to Christmas, but even so, 29.5% of visitors to The Popcorn Factory made a purchase. That is pretty good.

Based on this I would propose the following range:

So if you’re not in the 11-15% range, you are probably not getting the right type of traffic to the site, or you have significant conversion issues within the site itself that are preventing customers from completing the transaction.

To determine if it is the first issue you would need to look at the Bounce report in Google Analytics. This will tell you if you are getting a lot of visitors to the site who leave straight away or “bounce”. This would mean you need to look at where you are getting your traffic from and making changes to who your are targetting.

If this is not the case and you think it might the second issue, then you can look at using a tool like ClickTale to get some insight into what is happening. This is obviously a more complex issue and could involve a number of factors including price, trust, shipping policy, copy, quality of product information and content. A tool like ClickTale is going to give you some valuable information though. You could take this further by implementing live chat to start to interact with the visitors and find out what it is they are looking for as well help them through a transaction.

The numbers above are a generalisation, and there are many different types of online stores, so it might not be entirely accurate depending on what category you are in, however, it is a useful benchmark to see how you are tracking against the big boys, as the graph is only of those sites with 500,000 + visitors per month.

Technorati Tags: clicktale, googleanalytics

“Heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000,” the study said, and they “are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites ? a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.”

“While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns,” said Erin Hunter, executive vice president at comScore. “For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is what?’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign?’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience.”

Let’s just pay special attention to part of this quote; “clicks are more of an ancillary benefit”. Wow!

This study is interesting as it was actually sponsored by one of the largest media agencies in the US. They are effectively trying to justify low clickthrough rates (CTR) on banner campaigns. This is positive that they are trying to address the issue, but it leaves us with the reality that banners are simply a brand spend and are not really appropriate for direct response. With the lack of clarify around the effectiveness of brand advertising online, this just makes the return on investment calculation even more grey not less.

So in summary:

Don’t buy banners for direct response – it won’t work – the people who make millions from selling them to you are saying so.

Do buy banners for brand advertising – but make sure you have specific criteria agreed on how you will measure success.

Or, even better, why don’t you put that budget into creating or sponsoring some really compelling content online that will actually provide value to the consumer and associate this with your brand? Whichever way you spin it, the banner ad days are limited, you need to start thinking differently about this.

Recently James recommended Clicky which is a fairly lightweight but very web 2.0 style analytics application. The two features I like the most is the Spy report which lets you see in real time who is on your site including a mash-up with Google Maps to show where they are located, and the ability to get the data via RSS feeds.

One of the most interesting reports you get from Google Analytics and some other tools is what’s referred to as the “heat map”. This is a report that overlays where on the page of your site people click most frequently. This is particularly interesting in trying to understand which calls to action or elements on a page are the most successful. This can be invaluable in determining what changes you might make to key parts of the site, such as the home page, to try to improve conversion rates.

This brings me on to ClickTale, which I am quite excited about, as I think it is the substantial leap in analytics that I have been waiting for.

ClickTale

Their tag line sums it up really:

Record – Watch – Understand

This service allows you to record every mouse click and scrolling up and down the page (this is really significant) as the user navigates through the site and plays it back to you as a movie. So you can see exactly how a visitor to your site interacts from the moment they arrive until they leave again.

Analytics, including the heat maps and path reports, are all about aggregated data, and therein lies the problem. You have to make decisions based on numbers, the majority. ClickTale allows you to study how individuals interact with your website, online store or web application at a very deep and quite personal level. This type of insight has traditionally only been available via usability studies and testing and also visitor surveys.

I have taken a quick screenshot video to show you how it looks:

This is probably not a great demo but imagine the possibilities:

• Detailed analysis of an e-commerce store to understand how people browse/search for products and go through the checkout process.
• An alternative to a usability study in a new web application – just deploy ClickTale and release to beta users and see what they are doing.
• Real time analysis of your campaign landing pages to understand how the calls to action are working and allow you to make changes to the design.

There are likely to be some privacy concerns around this, but it is really just a logical extension of web analytics. Existing packages would more or less have this data, but never before have I seen it presented in this way.

Overall, I am very excited with this product and can see numerous opportunities to start using it right now. I hope this will push the major analytics providers to start to think more creatively about how they can provide more insightful information rather than just giving me a prettier graph for essentially the same report as I have been looking at for over 10 years.

Beacon is a programme that allows their advertising partner sites to prompt Facebook users on their website to post information about what they are doing back to their Facebook profile.

What happened when they launched was that this information was being sent by default, unless you specifically opted out of the service. The result was a massive campaign online to petition Facebook to change this to an opt-in service.

Facebook was accused of ruining Christmas as boyfriends inadvertently told their girlfriends, via the Facebook News Feed, what gift they had just purchased for them.

Anyway, read the post as it is an excellent synopsis.

• 34% visit a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, compared with 13% two years ago
• 78% have recently voted or rated something online, compared with 47% two years ago.
• 63% have recently uploaded photographs or videos; 40% had two years ago.
• 44% have recently commented on a forum or blog; 23% had two years ago.
• 28% have recently written a product or book review: 15% had two years ago.
• 16% now maintain a blog; 9% were maintaining a blog two years ago.

What is more interesting to me are the results around trust.

• 36% of respondents said they “highly trust” information they receive from friends and acquaintances on social networking sites.
• This jumps to 90% if you include those that said they “moderately trust” this information.
• This compares to just 4% who said they “highly trust” content from advertisers

It is not surprising that people trust friends over advertisers, but it does highlight why sites like Facebook offer such an enormous opportunity to marketers. Don’t think about advertising, think about high you get your customers to recommend or review your product/service to their friends. We all know word of mouth business it the best kind, and there is now the ability for your message propagate across these networks at an amazing speed.

Think about how many friends you could realistically stay in touch with frequently even 5 years ago. For me, I would have been able to count the number on my fingers. Now, it is not uncommon for people to have over 100 friends on their social network. Those 100 friends might also have 100+ friends each…you get the point. I don’t want to call it viral, as it is an awful word, and it just makes me think of stupid videos being emailed around as a way to trick the consumer into thinking your brand is cool. The opportunity is word of mouth business in a highly efficient, scalable, networked way.

No problem, our resident Half-Geek, James Fleet, will break it down for you with these three posts:

• Google OpenSocial
• facebook & myspace ad networks
• facebook business solutions review

Technorati Tags: facebook, google, myspace, opensocial

]]> http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/11/the-lazy-marketers-way-to-understand-how-to-use-social-networks/feed/ 0 http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/10/pulling-back-for-full-benefit/ http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/10/pulling-back-for-full-benefit/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:50:19 +0000 Marker http://blog.markerstudio.com/archives/381 I spoke yesterday about communicating (or pushing) your Christmas promos online, once you get your message out you need to turn that interest into a sale by pulling the customers/prospects back to you.

When the interest is created, some people are ready to buy straight away and others need more information. It?’s most likely these people will go online to get more information to help make their purchase. So, to get full effects of your promotion you need to meet those people when they?’re seeking for more information and send them somewhere to convert them.

Catching the information seekers
You?’ve got to make sure you and the details of the promotion are easily found. Searching is the easiest way for someone to find what they want. You should make sure your customers can find you for all relevant searches that reflect your offline communications. Sometimes your advertising could spark an interest for your type of product or service and it?’s likely to get a person to search on your products. What if you have bad rankings on Google? They?’ll find your competitor first. Search optimisation may take too long to help you before Christmas so it?’s pretty important you invest in pay per click search advertising. The last thing you want to do is drive traffic to your competitor?’s websites from your offline advertising.

The coveted Superbowl advertising spots showed testament to this theory. Last year, Ford advertised using Kermit the frog to promote their new hybrid version of the Ford Escape. GM went a brought the keyword ?kermit?’ and advertised with a relevant ad and drove traffic through to their site promoting their hybrid cars. Take a look at this article (http://www.reprisemedia.com/superbowlscorecard.aspx) for a review of how Superbowl advertisers missed their opportunities to back up their expensive ad spots. The principle doesn?’t just apply to TVC?’s, it can work for any offline communications.

Match the message
Everything you do needs to say the same thing across your initial push, your search ads and most important the area on your site that is relevant to the promotion. The reason why people go to this part of you site (be it landing pages or a micro site) is to find out about the promotion so you need to give them content that?’s going to match what they want. You?’ll see effects like higher click through rates and conversion rates if you. Key pieces of information that need to be included are details of the promotion, when it runs out and links to where to buy ? either online, making an enquiry or store finder.

This is especially important with the rising number of people who are using the internet at the same time as watching TV. It?’s a usual situation that if someone sees an ad that interests them, they Google it to find out more. I myself do this a lot, but it?’s not just me ? a study in March 2005 found 28% of children were online ?"often?" while watching TV in the US. This is sure to be hugely increased now with more broadband and wireless networks in the home.

Track it all
With offline promotions you should use special URL?’s to tell where they came from. It?’s a classic trick that?’s also used with 0800 numbers and specials. An example is Dell using the URL dell.co.nz/tv for their special promotion and then they can measure the effectiveness of that TV advertisement.

Of course there?’s your web analytics which you should go over with a fine toothed comb to see how it all went and take your findings to help you next year.

That concludes our tips for Christmas. We haven’t suggested anything revolutionary, these are basics that a necessary to support a full integrated marketing communications approach.

]]> http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/10/pulling-back-for-full-benefit/feed/ 1 http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/10/pushing-your-christmas-promotions/ http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/10/pushing-your-christmas-promotions/#comments Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:18:32 +0000 Marker http://blog.markerstudio.com/archives/380 How are you communicating your Christmas promotions this year? I?’m not going to talk Web 2.0 here; I?’m taking you back to basics. Here?’s a check list of what you should consider with any promotions coming up.

Search advertising ? Google AdWords
Reach people in the middle of their online Christmas research/shopping. You can target websites with gift ideas and advertise there, or specific keyword searches for your product and reflect Christmas in the ad creative.

Send promotional email
It?’s an effective way to tell your customers what?’s going on ? and fully measurable. There should be no excuses for not running an email campaign.

There?’s also permission lists like Smile City. If you?’re going to drop a flyer in someone?’s letter box ? why not send an email who is asking to hear about promotions just like yours? The cost can sometimes be a factor, but of course less than print but the targeting options you get make it worth it.

Add a feature on your website
There?’s no advertising more targeted than you?’re own website. Throw an ad up on your homepage or a relevant page to tell your visitor about the great promotion you?’re offering. If it?’s a huge promo, you could even go all out with a micro site or landing page tailored to the promotional campaign running.

Also, if there?’s any talk of a special Christmas promotion anywhere, it?’s more than likely if someone wants to know more about the promo, the first place they?’ll go is your site.

Banners?
A promo campaign will usually look to make sales and get that beloved ROI and banners probably won?’t give you this. You might see positive impact if they match an offline advertisement like a TVC where it just reinforces the same message and gives an easy way to complete the TVC?’s call to action.

If there?’s anything here you would like more information about please don?’t hesitate to contact us.

Let?’s get a conversation going ? put a comment on this post with what you?’re doing in the way of Christmas marketing and comment on others ideas.

]]> http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/10/pushing-your-christmas-promotions/feed/ 0 http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/10/its-all-about-relationships/ http://www.markerstudio.com/uncategorized/2007/10/its-all-about-relationships/#comments Mon, 29 Oct 2007 04:35:37 +0000 Marker http://blog.markerstudio.com/archives/376 This Christmas you?’re sure to be doing something special for your customers to say thanks or perhaps something to prospects to say please. Whether it?’s inviting them to an event, sending them a gift or a Christmas card, you should consider how online channels can help you meet your goals.

A while back I posted about an email I received from Burger Fuel. The emails?’ main message was to tell me to expect a card in the mail the next couple of days with the wrong name on it. As well as warning me of their error, it made me look out for the card in the mail ? something you?’d want your customers to do for your Christmas card or gift.

Here?’s my solution:

Integrate any offline communications with an online counterpart
Email is a perfect tool to follow up on RSVP?’s or let a customer know there?’s mail coming for them to improve your response rate. Email is an excellent way to get a message across quickly, measurably and cheaply. It does a pretty damn good job of reinforcing and following up on other messages.

Run event registration online
Dealing with excel spreadsheets can be painful. Hundreds of RSVP?’s email coming in through different sales reps, phone calls, emails can waste a lot of time. If you are SalesForce.com customer then we have a simple solution but I?’ve also stumbled across a service called Eventbrite which does everything you could need, and it?’s free so long as you?’re not selling tickets. You can also change colours and add your logo. You could run an email campaign informing your customers to look out for their invite in the mail and to book the date in. A week after they receive the printed invitation you can follow up those who have not already registered with an email, just to improve that response which is after all ? exactly what you need.

Use email Christmas cards
It?’s an easy job to email Christmas cards which will cost much less than a printed Christmas card. Sometimes you may still want to send physical messages to key accounts, so email can fill the void and make your entire customer base feel loved.

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