The Chameleon Net blog

Analytics > Assumptions

2009-06-25T12:58:42.3660000+01:00

Last week at Chamtech09 (our digital trends seminar in the City) I spoke to two great audiences on the need to do away with decision-making and assumptions when it comes to creating online content. I argued that simple analytics data and customer feedback should drive the development of a web presence, and that a marketer’s focus should primarily fall on turning more visitors into customers; getting more visitors should be of secondary importance.

It was great to speak to a bunch of people who could obviously see the benefit of this approach, and I hope that I’ll be able to work with as many of you as possible in the future.

In this post I wanted to expand on a few points I raced through on Thursday, especially around the development and operation of a Google Analytics (GA) strategy.

“The numbers in my GA reports don’t add up”

There are numerous reasons why GA might not track an individual visit. The most common ones are:

User has no java support enabled so GA code is not read (>5% of web users)
Users are blocking the first party cookies GA needs to place on your computer (>5% of users)
Code is not implemented correctly on certain pages of your site (Best practice = implement it once in a piece of content that is called by every page e.g. the footer)
Code is being interfered with by other javascript on the page. Fix this by ensuring the GA code is called before these other scripts.
Browser fails to execute the code (increasingly problematic as mobile browsers are susceptible to this)
Pages are failing to load properly.
User bounces before page load completes (often explains why your adwords clicks > visits from adwords). This problem is increasing due to mobile browsing growth. Bloated sites often designed for computers rather than mobiles and the 3G network are especially vulnerable.

A common problem arises around unique visitors (aka “the hotel problem”) and it can be seized upon by people looking for a reason not to invest time in GA as an example of its “inaccuracy” (I know, I’ve been there!). Luckily, the problem is fully explained and illustrated on Wikipedia, as is the issue of total visitors not being equal to new visitors + repeat visitors.

Link tagging

You can track the RoI of every link you put on the web by attaching a source (e.g. person / dept), medium (e.g. email / banner ad / social campaign), campaign (e.g. twitter competition / april newsletter) and an individual content tag to each link. GA allows you to analyse the behaviour of users via the individual link they arrived on. Very quickly you can start to attach a pounds and pence value to links, campaigns, marketing channels and people within your organisation. Who doesn’t want to do that?!

You can create these links really easily in excel spreadsheets as they all follow the same pattern (links broken down by section for easy viewing, obv. this would be one URL string normally):

www. ursite.com/ ?

utm_source=xxx

& utm_medium=yyy

& utm_campaign=zzz

& utm_content=123

In each case you would want to make the utm_content tag an individual descriptor for that link. E.g. if I was going to send out a Chameleon Net newsletter containing a link to our blog the link would be (again, broken down for easy viewing):

http://www.chameleonnet.co.uk/blog/default.aspx ?

utm_source=chamnet_marketing

& utm_medium=email

& utm_campaign=june_newsletter

& utm_content=blog_home

Within the GA dashboard, under traffic sources > campaigns, you can quickly compare the successes and failings of different source, medium, and campaign tags. Then you can easily drill down to the individual content tags for more granular detail. For each tag you’ll be able to see a host of metrics, most importantly goal conversions, but also bounce rate, time on site, and of course visits/visitors/unique visitors.

Pretty neat huh?

“My goals are hard to track”

A number of Chameleon’s clients are charities or NGOs, whose website in many cases provide information rather than make a sale or get an email sign up. For these organisations simply getting someone to read a page is the goal online; the real conversion, i.e. that person taking action, occurs offline in the real world. Goal tracking still has a lot to offer, and maybe you need to think about how your site and your offline conversions interact: e.g. display a unique phone number so you can track how many calls your site is generating.

Another idea might be to flip the situation and instead of focussing on where people are going within your site look at where they are coming from. If you have particular traffic sources that send traffic which tends to bounce out of the site straight away, isolate that traffic and look at its top landing pages. There may well be an obvious disconnect between the content on those pages and the traffic source / audience.

Alternatively, you can look to diversify the traffic sources for your site. Social networks are the web’s watering holes and you can easily (and cheaply) search for and enter conversations around your campaigns. We advise on developing landing pages aimed at audiences you don’t normally target and the process of entering these online conversations. GA will be able to let you know if you’ve developed a new audience and whether they are exploring your site beyond the landing pages you have set up.

**********

Phew, long post. Hope these tips help you and your digital marketing teams.

Remember; your site is made up of sources, (your audiences: get granular by using segmentation) behaviour (the content they browse) and most importantly; defined goals. Without goals your site has no purpose: identify the pages that your user sees when they’ve done what you wanted them to do, then work back through your funnel.

Hit me up in the comments below if you've got issues you want answering!

Facebook Applications from a Marketer's Perspective

2009-06-10T16:19:13.5080000+01:00

This week's internal Chameleon Net seminar was run by Louise Ryan, our Head of Pre-Production Systems, who shared a developer's perspective on Facebook applications.

During the session, I briefly tweeted about Facebook applications from a business developer / marketing perspective:

RT @vickyreeves looking forward to hearing the internal @Chameleon_Net seminar on facebook application development from @louzoid
Internal seminar focused more on developer's perspective. Let's see what marketing / business uses I can pick out from it.
Facebook apps: publishing to the stream is most important in @louzoid's opinion - gives application a wide reach to user's friends...
Facebook connect allows your website to connect up to the user's facebook account so they can quickly publish news items on their stream.
The facebook OpenStream lets users read their streams wherever they want: mobile, desktop, etc. This means multiple interaction points...
Facebook have placed restrictions on apps to reduce spam - considerations: developer credibility, app popularity, if app verified...
Internal teams are considering niche facebook applications that our clients could develop. Your ideas for Higher Education apps..?
@louzoid Thanks for good overview of developing Facebook Apps - interested to see what specific apps we can create for our clients.

If have you ideas for a Facebook application which you'd like developed at your organisation to achieve specific objectives, then leave a comment below or tweet me @surajshah.

Enhancing Student Experience via Twitter

2009-06-03T16:27:42.3670000+01:00

In the city of San Francisco, "citizens can send direct messages 24 hours a day to the sf311 Twitter account to report standard non-emergency city-related sightings (like pot holes), request street cleanings, and any other service already supported by the phone or website." This was reported by the Mashable article San Francisco First City to Instate City-Wide 311 Twitter Program.

It goes on to say: "Of course the real beauty of enabling 311 support through Twitter is that residents can now have the convenience of sending in their requests on their terms, include photos, relevant links, and do so while on the go."

If a whole city can offer this service to enhance the experience for citizens, what are the possibilities for enhancing the student experience on a university campus?

Potential notifications include:

lifts not working
computer room out of operation
security gates rusty and need oiling
high-demand library books not available
paths and rooms requiring cleaning
lecturers inaccessible
issues regarding transport into university - e.g. extending what University of Bath did on Twitter when the snow in Feb 2009 had a big impact on transport in Bath.

Could you think of other non-emergency issues that students could report? Add your thoughts in the comments below.

Using notifications received from students and academic staff, the university's student relations and administration teams could raise the issue with the relevant parties to get it resolved, and report back to the person who sent through the notification. Where appropriate, messages could be tweeted and blog posts published to inform many more people about developments.

A service like this set up at the university could have a major impact, not only on how it serves current students and academic staff, but also on prospective students who take the university's online reputation into account when considering their university choices.

Afterall, the lines between student relations and public relations is blurring, and a disgruntled student being transformed into a content or happy student has a direct impact on way the institution is perceived on the web and therefore on student intake.

The Chameleon Net strategy-oriented technology trends seminar covers some of the latest mobile and web technologies including geo-tagging & geo-location. Other topics covered include augmented reality, social software, content moderation, web analytics & conversion.

Our Online Technology Update seminar is taking place on Thursday 18th June in London and you can read more about it and register at www.chameleonnet.co.uk/seminar

Lessons from presenting to a Higher Education audience

2009-05-27T16:57:10.8110000+01:00

Earlier this month, I was invited by CASE Europe to present a session on International Student Recruitment at the Beyond the Hype seminar. The seminar was led by Pamela Agar, Head of Digital Media and Marketing at Imperial College London and Alison Wildish, Head of Web Services at University of Bath.

These are the slides from the session which I presented:

CASE Europe were kind enough to email me the evaluation of my session. I scored a few 'below average' marks, mostly 'average' marks, a batch of 'v. goods', and a handful of 'excellents' for the following criteria: knowledge of subject matter / topic, presentation skills, and ability to respond appropriately to audience.

Specific comments included:

A little too vague on the specifics, makes me wonder how much is theory and how much has actually been put into practice. Some hard stats and examples from any successfully completed campaigns would have been illuminating.
I liked the way he interacted with audience by taking a query from one of the delegates. But I was hoping to see a result e.g. collecting data on recruiting Law Students from China by phone for KCL - would have liked to have seen how Chameleon.net displayed this data as results (or maybe I got the wrong end of the stick?)
Suraj tried to be interactive but again, because international recruitment isn't necessarily the direct responsibility of those in the audience this was difficult. I think maybe there was too much to be covered in a short space of time.
Far too little detail left me thinking this was little more than a thinly-veiled advertisement.

As I intend to keep presenting to higher education professionals, I'm really grateful for the feedback offered by delegates so that I can improve my presentation style over time. It's also helped me realise that I need to prepare more useful content to present with the right level of detail.

In response to the first point asking for hard stats, the thing is that the strategy which I presented is still fairly new. However, I will be in a position to deliver examples from successfully completed campaigns in a few months time as a result of the work we are doing with clients at the moment.

There was of course quite a lot to cover in a short space of time, so my presentation was meant to only give a top-level overview. Although I had mentioned this in the introduction, I will now need to ensure that I clearly frame the session appropriately.

I'm concerned that one delegate was left thinking it was little more than a thinly-veiled advertisement, but as my intention is to keep serving the higher education community better over time, I hope what I deliver and what comes across is less about advertising and more about informing (and entertaining).

Anyone reading this thinking you'd be happy to spend 30 minutes with me to become a better public speaker, I'd certainly value your support. Tweet me @surajshah

Focus On... Google Analytics

2009-05-06T16:49:41.9700000+01:00

If you read Rich’s post you will know the importance of your conversion rate to the success of your website and, ultimately, your business. But how can you measure your conversion rate? And once you have it, how can you find out which aspects of your site to target to increase it?

The answer is web analytics.

In this 51min video presentation (originally given at Chameleon's client seminar held on the 29th April 2009) we will cover:

An overview of web analytics
Why use Google Analytics?
A brief history of Google Analytics
Behind the scenes
Limitations
Before you start...(Pageviews, Visits, Visitors & the Hotel Problem)
Day to Day usage (Best practices and advanced visualisation features)
Profiles
Filters
Goals
Funnels
Campaign Tracking
E-Commerce Tracking
Track Event/Virtual Pageviews
Tracking Internal Site Search
The Google Analytics API
Case Study: The $300,000,000 button
Conclusions

Video Resources:

How Chameleon Net can help

Several members of staff are accredited by Google for the use of Google Analytics and we are running analytics campaigns for clients right now.
If you have any questions about the presentation or Chameleon Net's online marketing capabilities please get in touch

Focus on... Technology trends

2009-05-05T15:14:37.7510000+01:00

I wanted to write this blog post as a follow up to my technology trends presentation i gave at Chameleon's client seminar held on the 29th April 2009. I'm going to touch on the issues I talked about, but mostly I want to give you some further reading and funky examples on some of the subjects I discussed.

Mobile

Firstly I talked about how until very recently it was pretty tricky to develop web sites for mobile devices. The huge variety of devices and hence different capabilities, screen sizes meant that to target mobile web users would mean rather a large investment. Over the last year or so that has changed with the release of much improved mobile devices which include great browsers e.g. Safari on the iPhone and Opera on the BlackBerry. Mobile web use is increasing massively and is going to influence almost every decision you make about your organisation’s web presence in the future. Jon von Tetzchner (CEO of Opera) thinks that mobiles are in fact going to become the 'primary device for web usage in most of the world'.

With all this improved web browsing technology, do we need to bother creating a mobile targeted web site? Usability guru Jacob Nielsen thinks so - read up on his feelings in his Feb. 2009 Mobile Usability Test Findings report.

What do we need to consider when building a mobile web site? The primary concern is your users goals and motivations. They're likely to be different if they're browsing from a mobile device than if they are browsing your site via a desktop. Here's a selection of other top tips:

Short URLs
Get rid of big logo/brand statements at top of page
Avoid plugins
Minimise data size
No popup windows
Forms – minimise user input – use defaults (radio buttons rather than text-input fields)

Geotagging

This is the process of adding geographical coordinates to various media or data items. For example, in the seminar I talked about how MSF are geotagging their letters from the field. Here's the focus on Chad example I used in my seminar.

Want to get some geotags for your data? MyGeoPosition is a great website to help you look up the coordinates you need.

Microformats

Please do take a look at the Wikipedia entry describing microformats. This will give you a good idea of what they are and how you might be able to use them in your website. If you want to see them in action and use the Firefox browser then do download the fab Operator extension.

Multi-touch

Move-stuff-around-with-yours-hands-coolness. Hopefully meaning death to the wrist killing mouse and much slicker user interfaces in the future. Check out the Wikipedia entry on Multi-touch and then take a look at this video on YouTube to see what the fuss is about.

Web as service platform

All the big players out there are really opening up their systems so they can be accessed and used from all over the place. Let’s take Facebook as a classic example. Since its success it has been criticized for being a ‘walled garden’. Developers could only work within its confines. It's now embracing the open web and has launched an API called Open Stream. This means that developers can create apps that interact with Facebook on other websites, via desktops widgets etc. Facebook has probably recognised that it needed to take this step to survive! Expect to start seeing these widgets soon.
Steve Rubel summarises the situation nicely in this article.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time - from Wikipedia. Far easier to demonstrate than describe - check out the example videos below

Lego box models come to life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UxWkZtUKaI
AR on your mobile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4FAKjfppp0
Just for fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW6_X9qBeds

We can build this type of stuff in Flash and have already put a prototype together in the office!

That's it! This article has turned out much larger than anticipated (and I didn't even mention twitter!) but with all the exciting new concepts and technologies out there I didn't want to skip anything!

Focus On... Website Conversion Rates

2009-04-30T16:02:33.7880000+01:00

Conversion Rate: The fundamental KPI of your website

In an increasingly competitive online environment one metric all digital marketers should be focusing their attention on is the conversion rate of their own website. By conversion rate we mean the number of visitors who complete a desired action vs. the total number of visitors.

E.g. If your site sells CDs, and you get 100 visitors, of which 2 buy CDs, then your website conversion rate is 2%.

What we’re talking about is “how many of your visitors do what you want them to do?"

It’s important to decide on a purpose for each piece of marketing collateral you produce, from a button to an entire website. All of your efforts should be focused towards making as many people as possible who view that piece of collateral fulfill its purpose. Everything has a conversion rate, and not only can you measure it, you can give it a pounds and pence value as well.

In order to increase your conversion rates, you need to work towards what we call a “conversion culture”. In a conversion culture:

You are committed to using analytics, testing and customer feedback to inform decisions about your website’s content, and not the opinions / assumptions of internal staff.

You accept that a website is never finished and can be constantly improved via tweaking.

Why should I bother focusing on Conversion Rate?

Mainly because it allows you to generate more customers without any extra advertising spend. You should make the most of the content and visitors you already have, rather than spending more or diversifying in order to boost revenue. Even if you do this you aren’t improving profitability.

Increasing conversion rate rather than marketing spend means revenue from new sales goes straight into your bottom line. Think about it; you haven’t spent anything more on advertising, the cost of sales or overheads… you’ve just made more revenue from what you already had.

The profit generated by increased conversion rate may allow you to open up new advertising channels not currently feasible. More channels means a more stable business. This is especially true if you are currently reliant on search engine traffic alone.

Selling online is a ‘winner takes all’ environment. Customers may spend a long time choosing where to buy, but very small things are going to make them choose one site over another – and it’s only the winning site that gets the cash. This is known as the ‘slight edge’ and it’s usually got more to do with the buying experience than an item’s price. Increasing conversion rate = gaining the ‘slight edge’ over your competitors.

How can Chameleon Net help me improve my Conversion Rate?

We suggest allowing us to perform a conversion rate audit on one of your key customer journeys, from a landing page to completion of the desired action. Using your analytics tools and other tracking software we can provide a report which will list out where your UI could be improved to make the buying experience easier, and also highlight which pages in your customer journey need the most urgent attention.

Why Chameleon Net?

Although focusing on conversion rate is a relatively new online trend, usability and improving customer experiences have been right at the heart of our offering since we were founded 10 years ago as a bridge between high-minded website designers and technical back-end systems developers.

Several members of staff are accredited by Google for the use of Google Analytics, having passed the recently introduced examinations in the subject, and we have experience of using Google Website Optimiser; a new tool allowing you to quickly perform split and multivariate tests of new content in order to determine whether your new content outperforms older material. We've used this knowledge recently to help a major UK firm in the tourism sector double the conversion rate of their B2C booking engine.

International Student Recruitment for HEIs

2009-04-27T16:23:14.5530000+01:00

How to digitally attract, engage with and recruit international students, while mobilising your existing students to help with language translation, to overcome cultural barriers and give them valuable online marketing work experience.

There are websites, blogs & social networks such as facebook and twitter, all crying out for your prospective students' attention. I'm sure you'll agree that there is simply a lot of noise that they are exposed to. For prospective international students, that noise online is amplified, as you are competing not just with other UK Higher Education Institutions, but also the hundreds of institutions around the world.

Play this slidecast (7 mins 37 seconds) to get an insight into the 3 stage process to run an international Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign at your university that spans across 12 to 24 months. The campaign involves forming a team of International Student Ambassadors, the creation of an optimised online destination, and digital community engagement to attract visitors to your new online destination and raise it's profile in search engines.

The slidecast also touches on a handful of tips to run a successful campaign and gives you a glimpse into what's involed in a 3-month international Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign if you want more rapid results.

International Student Recruitment for HEIs

View more presentations from Suraj Shah.

Scribd - friend or foe to publishers?

2009-04-06T16:30:42.1880000+01:00

I have been reading with interest the online discussion over Scribd.com

If you're unfamiliar with it... in their words 'Scribd began with a simple observation – that there's a writer in all of us. Today, Scribd is the place where you publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents.' Surely a laudable, innocuous-sounding concept?

The answer is less than straightforward. In effect what Scribd is providing is a mechanism for users to upload and tag content for others to consume and download. It's firmly aimed, supposedly, at self-publishers or content-owners.

Of course, unauthorised copyrighted content is cropping up all over the place on Scribd. So as you might imagine it's attracting a lot of interest in the publishing sector. Two of the latest pieces are Alison Flood's appraisal on thebookseller.com last week and this article in the Guardian.

For me the real issue surrounding Scribd is the user's responsibility for their own actions, and it's as old as the web. For year's there has been an issue with people posting stuff that they either don't have the rights to legally, or they shouldn't in someone else's opinion.

Scribd make it clear the resonsibilty is in the hands of users when it comes to posting content. See their general terms. It has also said publicly that it does not police the site - it expects the community to do that itself - but will remove content on request.

Which means that so long as they are seen to be acting on information provided to them by those who have an issue with certain content in a reasonable timeframe, then they are acting within their stated remit. And it's true that most reports I have seen online suggest their staff are friendly and react quickly.

But the problem lies in the passive nature of this moderation. It wrestles the onus onto content owners, who no doubt have better things to do, to check to see if their content has been illegally posted. And of course users can always put the content back up again! OK, there are automatic checks, but users are canny and have plenty of tricks to get around those, if they are that way inclined.

Such automatic checking, without active moderation, is only as good as the technology it uses, which is always flawed by its nature.

In many ways it is similar to implementing a automatic system to vet out unacceptable words, such as swearing or racist terms, but not imposing any checks on the context or purpose of all the acceptable words, and so can miss things like harrassment or bullying, or even simple stuff like deliberate mispellings to 'get around the bots'.

Of course I'm not in a position to comment on the quality or otherwise of Scribd's auto-checking of copyrighted works. But it's clear to see where the gap lies, no matter how good their systems. I've seen plenty of content posted that looks copyrighted to me, big titles by well known authors, and I'd suspect that some of that content was not posted with the right authority. Have a browse and see for yourselves.

So what's the solution? Stop file sharing sites? Well that's just never going to happen. For every Scribd there are dozens of 'underground' sites, torrent networks, etc. Give up content rights altogether? No publisher will, or should, ever do that - it's their product.

Where the real solution lies IMO is in understanding users and then providing a compelling proposition to the market. Sites like Scribd thrive not just because people want stuff for free, but also because there's a genuine demand for the content itself.

People are willing to pay for products if they value the content and feel the price is acceptable. Ask yourself, is the hardback jacket price a suitable price point for a new e-book?

They are even more willing to pay if they get something they couldn't get elsewhere, like goodies or extras. Just think how much money is spent every year on repackaged DVD box sets with the latest special features, director commentaries, and cool new boxes.

'Honesty box' experiements, like with Radiohead's last album launch, have also proved people understand the value of the artist and their need to make money from their works too.

If publishers can get their digital content strategy right, then legit sites like Scribd, file sharing networks and so on, will keep on going but pose only a minor threat to the markets publishers need to survive.

And in some cases, free content on those sites can even stimulate demand for the genuine article, reaching audiences that may never have paid in the first instance, but whose appetites have been whetted by a freebie.

Review of Supply London's Bid Writing Workshop

2009-03-27T11:11:08.8190000-00:00

This month I attended the Bid Writing Workshop run by Supply London who are funded by the LDA and ERDF to help London Based SMEs to win contracts.

As I haven't had very much experience preparing for and writing tender response documents, this was the perfect opportunity for me to brush up my skills.

Before I attended, I knew that I wanted to do what I could to prepare clear and simple documents that made it easy for those reading the bids to make an informed choice. If we are to be the right fit as a supplier to our prospective clients, then the document has to clearly communicate that.

The workshop has given me the skills to do just that. The overarching principle is that the tender process is centred around a list of requirements and certain evaluation criteria. So long as you can check all the boxes and cover everything that is asked for, then you're off to a good start. In essence, it's about mastering the art of forming and executing checklists.

Key steps in the bid writing process:

Evaluating the contract and deciding whether to bid in the first place: using a Decision Making Chart to help with this which covers whether the contract is profitable, whether we have the right capacity, whether the contract terms can be fulfilled, and in our eyes whether the client would choose us.
Preparing to bid with a plan in place to ensure a very good bid is submitted.
Working out which elements of the evaluaton criteria are covered by each of the requirement items: using an Evaluation Criteria Checklist.
Analysing how the deliverables are linked to the evaluation criteria: using a Deliverables Checklist.
Analysing the bid and doing the background research to help understand why that particular tender was advertised and what might be important to the client.
Writing the bid, ensuring the the structure, style and presentation serve to keep the message clear, engaging and professional.
Reviewing the final tender and checking it for consistency and accuracy.
Submitting the tender in good time and ensuring it is submitted in the format asked for.
Creating a repository of well-maintained documents for quick access the next time a tender is to be written. The repository would include the various checklists + deliverables such as staff profiles and copies of policies.

Overall this was a really valuable workshop for me, and it was engaging throughout. I would highly recommend any other SMEs to approach Supply London and find out about their other workshops to maximise their potential of winning new contracts. If you are a SME and based in London, this assistance is provided by Supply London free of charge.