Bounce Rate- Please dont ignore it

should we ignore the bounce rate?

Oh let me tell you what basically bounce rate is- bounce rate is defined as the number of visitor visiting single page of site, means the entry and exit page is same,they dont even bother see your page.One more interesting defination is that the visitor are not staying on page for more then 5 second.But what the wrong with your page that it was not able to hold a visitor for even more then 5 seconds and then ask few question from yourself why.....why.... and how....
Bounce rate can cause deep impact on your ROI. So be careful about your Bounce Rate.

The major cause of high bounce rate are
1. Click Fraud- If you are running some online campaign , so checkout the bounce rate of each campaign, and keywords.Try to avoid those campaign that leads to high bounce rate

2. Landing page- This is major source of high bounce rate.As this is landing page for your targetted visitor.


Landing Page optimization
Your landing page is not written on stone tablets. In fact, it is the most ethereal of objects — a set of bits that resides on a computer hard disk that is accessible to the whole world. No one is forcing you to use the particular colors, page layout, pictures, sales copy, call-to-action, or headlines that comprise your landing page now.


You are as free as an artist in front of a blank canvas. Maybe you will create a masterpiece that will move most people who see it. Maybe you will create bland and uninspired mush that will bore and turn away everyone.
The promise of better performing landing pages is often tempered by a fear of making things worse than they already are. How are you to know in advance what will or won't work better? Yet you are supposed to be the “expert.” Shouldn't your landing page already be perfect based on your extensive online marketing experience? What if your landing page design knowledge was exposed as nothing more than pompous subjective posturing and guesswork?
Don't be afraid. You actually have access to a real expert — in fact, thousands of them. You are interacting with them daily already, but you have mostly ignored their advice to date.
You may never be able to answer why a specific person did or did not respond to your landing page. But there are ways to determine what catches the fancy of your Web site visitors.
In fact, landing page optimization can be viewed as a giant online marketing laboratory where your experimental subjects voluntarily participate in your tests without being asked.
Their very actions (or inactions) expose them, and allow you to improve your appeal to a similar population of people.

Three Important steps of online Business

Online marketing can be divided into three key activities:


• Acquisition Getting people to your Web site or landing page, Try to give what your visitor want on this page.

• Conversion Persuading them to take the desired action(s), for what we are working. Most important part of online business

• Retention Deepening the relationship and increasing its lifetime value or we can say thanks for visit and please do come back soon.

Each step feeds into the next.

Imagine that you are in charge of online marketing for your organization. You have slaved for months to tune and optimize your campaigns. Countless hours and days have passed in a blur.

The first visitor arrives — and leaves in half a second. The next one lands on your site, clicks another link, and is gone as well. More and more visitors flash by — a virtual flood. Yet only a tiny percentage will take the action that you would like them to take.
What's wrong?
It's hard to figure it out:
• You have their fleeting attention for a split second.
• You don't know who they are.
• You don't know what they are thinking or feeling.
• You don't know why the vast majority of them leave so soon, empty-handed.
It seems like a hopeless situation. You are forever doomed to suffer from the poor marketing program economics that result from a low Web site conversion rate.

To overcome this type of situation the Proper Tracking and behavior analysis comes in light and try to deliver what visitor want , Try to follow their step see what made them to exit . Unlike in shopping mall where we can see our customer live and analyze their behavior and also we can offer on the spot help to them if they want and we can stop them hold them but in case of online business we can not have this facility, but with good web analytics software we can do tracking and recording of every interaction with your Web site. Each visit is recorded along with a mind-numbing amount of detailed information. Reports can tell you where the visitors came from, their path through your site, the time that they spent lingering over certain content and whether they were persuaded to act.

How satisfied my visitors are ? catch their voice

customer satisfaction very important metrics for web analytics, all web analytics tool only
give idea of what visitor is doing on your site. But no tools can give you the real voice
of customer what he want from your web site and will he able to get the result what he want
from side as Your visitors can be your best friends or your worst enemies. By listening
directly to them, you can understand what works, what doesn’t and what it takes to give
them the best possible website experience.

4Q, an Avinash Kaushik and iPerceptions collaboration is a simple, free survey solution,
free means here abosolute free, no condition apply this is words from Avinash Kaushik
that lets you ask these all-important questions to your website visitors, and gives you
real-time, complete access to the results.

To do this right, you need to ask the four most important survey questions:

* How satisfied are my visitors? like what they want and what they getting

* What are my visitors at my website to do? what their aim for visiting my web site

* Are they completing what they set out to do?If not, why not?

* If yes, what did they like best about the online experience?

for informatiom on this watch Avinash video on

Adword Quality Score-High Rank for minimum cost

I would like to share some basic on quality score for adwords, Qulity score plays major role in keyword ranking and also help in lowering your bidding cost.

What is 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated?
Quality Score is a dynamic variable assigned to each of your keywords. It's calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query.

About Quality Score
Quality Score influences your ads' position on Google and the Google Network. It also partly determines your keywords' minimum bids. In general, the higher your Quality Score, the better your ad position and the lower your minimum bids.
Quality Score helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network. The AdWords system works best for everybody—advertisers, users, publishers, and Google too—when the ads we display match our users' needs as closely as possible. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.

Quality Score Formulas
The formula behind Quality Score varies depending on whether it's calculating minimum bids or assigning ad position. It also varies based on whether it's affecting a keyword-targeted ad on the search network, a keyword-targeted ad on the content network, or a placement-targeted ad.
While we continue to refine our Quality Score formulas, the core components remain more or less the same.

Below you'll find a breakdown of each type of Quality Score.
Quality Score for Google and the search network
Quality Score for Google and the search network is a dynamic metric assigned to each of your keywords. It's calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user's search query. The higher a keyword's Quality Score, the lower its minimum bid and the better its ad position.
The components of Quality Score vary depending on whether it's calculating minimum bid or ad position:
Quality Score for minimum bid is determined by a keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the keyword to its ad group, your landing page quality, your account's historical performance, and other relevance factors.
Quality Score for ad position is determined by a keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the keyword and ad to the search term, your account's historical performance, and other relevance factors.

How are ads ranked?
Ads are positioned on search and content pages based on their Ad Rank. The ad with the highest Ad Rank appears in the first position, and so on down the page.
The criteria determining Ad Rank differ for your keyword-targeted ads depending on whether they're appearing on the search network or on the content network. There's also a third set of criteria determining whether a placement-targeted ad will show on a given content page.
Ad Rank for keyword-targeted ads on the search networkA keyword-targeted ad is ranked on a search result page based on the matched keyword's cost-per-click (CPC) bid* and Quality Score.
Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

The Quality Score for Ad Rank on the search network is determined by:
The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the ad and of the matched keyword on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered
The relevance of the keyword and ad to the search query
Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
Other relevance factors
Your landing page quality is not a factor.
Note that the Quality Score determining minimum CPC bid is slightly different. It's derived from the keyword's CTR on Google, the relevance of the keyword to its ad group, and landing page quality.

Ad Rank for keyword-targeted ads on the content networkA keyword-targeted ad's position on a content page is based on the ad group's content bid and Quality Score. If you don't set a content bid, we'll set an automatic bid using an average of all your ad group's keyword- and ad group-level CPCs.
Ad Rank = content bid X Quality Score
The Quality Score related to Ad Rank on the content network is determined by:
The ad's past performance on the site in question, as well as on similar sites
Your landing page quality
Other relevance factors
Ad Rank for placement-targeted ads on the content networkIf a placement-targeted ad wins a position on a content page, it uses up all the available ad space so no other ads can show on that page. (Certain content pages may have more than one block of space reserved for AdWords ads. In those cases, a single placement-targeted ad or multiple keyword-targeted ads can occupy each block.)
To determine if your placement-targeted ad will show, our system considers the bid you have made for that ad group or for the individual placement, along with the ad group's Quality Score.
Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score
The Quality Score related to Ad Rank for placement-targeted ads with CPM bidding is derived solely from landing page quality. For placement-targeted ads with CPC bidding, the clickthrough rate is also considered, just as it is with keyword-targeted ads.
Improving your ranking
Having relevant keywords and ad text, a strong CTR on Google, and a high keyword CPC bid will result in a higher position for your ad. Because this ranking system rewards well-targeted, relevant ads, you can't be locked out of the top position as you would be in a ranking system based solely on price. Also, the AdWords Discounter monitors your competition and automatically reduces your actual CPC so you pay the lowest price possible for your ad's position on the page.
Here are some resources for improving your Quality Score and ad ranking:
Optimization Tips:
Visit Optimization Tips page to learn more about account optimization, including how to maximize performance for your keyword-targeted ad and improve your ad's position without having to raise your bid.
Traffic Estimator:
Use Traffic Estimator to see how changing your CPC bid can affect the ad position of your keywords on the search network.

Content Bids:
Use content bids to better control your ad position on the content network.
what is Maximum Cost-per-Click (Maximum CPC)
Your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) is the highest amount that you are willing to pay for a click on your ad. You can set a maximum CPC at the keyword- or ad group-level. The AdWords Discounter automatically reduces this amount so that the actual CPC you are charged is just one cent more than the minimum necessary to keep your position on the page.

How to calculate CTR
CTR = No of Clicks / No of impression
Then we multiply the result with 100 to get percentage
e.g
you have no clicks =500
no of impressions = 12000
them CTR = 500/12000 =.0.04 x100 =4.1%

Resource: Adword support

Some tips on Google adwords
1) Experiment With Matching Options
Our client was only using broad match for their keywords in their campaign. We added exact match and phrase match keywords to each ad group and chose which of the three had a better QS and lower minimum CPC and deleted the other two matching options. In the majority of cases, exact match won.
2) Split Keywords into Smaller more targeted Ad GroupsWe used the in built keyword grouper tool in Adwords editor to group keywords into 15 groups of 20 related keywords

Landing Page Optimization

Imagine that you are in charge of online marketing for your organization. You have slaved for months to tune and optimize your campaigns. Countless hours and days have passed in a blur.You have constructed keyword lists, written pay-per-click ad copy, properly set your bid amounts, bought additional banners and exposure on related Web sites, optimized your site for organic search engines, created a powerful affiliate program with effective incentives and set up the Web site analytics needed to track the return on your investment in real time.

The first visitor arrives — and leaves in half a second. The next one lands on your site, clicks another link, and is gone as well. More and more visitors flash by — a virtual flood. Yet only a tiny percentage will take the action that you would like them to take.
What's wrong?It's hard to figure it out:
• You have their fleeting attention for a split second.
• You don't know who they are.
• You don't know what they are thinking or feeling.
• You don't know why the vast majority of them leave so soon, empty-handed.

It seems like a hopeless situation. You are forever doomed to suffer from the poor marketing program economics that result from a low Web site conversion rate.All of your hard work comes down to the few precious moments that the Internet visitors spend on your Web site.Your landing page is not written on stone tablets. In fact, it is the most ethereal of objects — a set of bits that resides on a computer hard disk that is accessible to the whole world. No one is forcing you to use the particular colors, page layout, pictures, sales copy, call-to-action, or headlines that comprise your landing page now.You are as free as an artist in front of a blank canvas. Maybe you will create a masterpiece that will move most people who see it. Maybe you will create bland and uninspired mush that will bore and turn away everyone.The promise of better performing landing pages is often tempered by a fear of making things worse than they already are. How are you to know in advance what will or won't work better? Yet you are supposed to be the “expert.” Shouldn't your landing page already be perfect based on your extensive online marketing experience? What if your landing page design knowledge was exposed as nothing more than pompous subjective posturing and guesswork?Don't be afraid. You actually have access to a real expert — in fact, thousands of them.
You are interacting with them daily already, but you have mostly ignored their advice to date.You may never be able to answer why a specific person did or did not respond to your landing page. But there are ways to determine what catches the fancy of your Web site visitors.In fact, landing page optimization can be viewed as a giant online marketing laboratory where your experimental subjects voluntarily participate in your tests without being asked.Their very actions (or inactions) expose them, and allow you to improve your appeal to a similar population of people.

Going Up- Its great Free analytics Tool

when we think about free web analytics all of sudden one name is come in mind that is GOOGLE ANALYTICS, No doubt its great tool. Today I am sharing one more free web analytics tool that is " Going Up". Its free tool but only up to thousand logs, but for small site its good,better then 500 logs from Statcounter.
The exiting feature of going up is that its heat map which show, portion of ur site is mostly get clicks

other features in Going UP

	"My WebSites" gives your your stats at-a-glance The dashboard shows you all your sites performance from one simple page. The smiley faces show you instantly if your site trend is doing good or bad. If you have many web sites, GoingUp! also categorizes them for you so you can pay more attention to the sites you're most interested in.
	Traffic Summary To get more detail on a specific site's visitors, you can drill down and see unique visitors, returning visitors and total visitors. Plus you can also see page views. Options let you customize the data you want to see.
	Popular, Entry and Exit Pages With the popular pages summary, you can see which pages your visitors come to the most. Entry and exit page summaries show you where visitors enter your site and where they left. The "came from" summary lets you see what sites are sending you traffic.
	Keyword Analysis This is one of our favorite summary pages. It tells you what keywords people used to find your site. You can set options for grouping by search engine/host or just a total list. With GoingUp! you have full control!
	Recent Keyword Activity With the recent keyword activity monitor, you can see a real-time view of the most recent visitors and where they were going. Unlike the summary above, keyword activity is broken down by individual users and specific words on each line. You can also drill down for more detail!
	Search Engine Visits Want to know when the last search engine came by your site? GoingUp! tracks that too with our special php tracking code. Plus, we're making other languages available really soon!
	Actions & Goals With our custom tailored actions, you can track sales, newsletter signups, conversion rates and any other activity on your web site. Even track downloads with our redirect action. Four different styles of actions give you multiple ways to get your data into GoingUp!
	SEO Tools! Track keyword position of various phrases on the major search engines, chart and track your Google Page Rank and Alexa Traffic Rank, and use our site Optimizer to make your site more search engine friendly! There's more coming, too!

Last but no leat one more feature that I like that is Site Analyser

• SEO Diagnosis
• Indexed Pages
• HTML Validation
• Ranking
• Domain Age & Location
• Syndication
• Backlinks
• Social Bookmarks

for information u can visit GoingUP

Web Analytics technologies

There are two main technological approaches to collecting web analytics data. The first method, logfile analysis, reads the logfiles in which the web server records all its transactions. The second method, page tagging, uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser.

Web server logfile analysis
Web servers have always recorded all their transactions in a logfile. It was soon realised that these logfiles could be read by a program to provide data on the popularity of the website. Thus arose web log analysis software.
In the early 1990s, web site statistics consisted primarily of counting the number of client requests (or hits) made to the web server. This was a reasonable method initially, since each web site often consisted of a single HTML file. However, with the introduction of images in HTML, and web sites that spanned multiple HTML files, this count became less useful. The first true commercial Log Analyzer was released by IPRO in 1994

Two units of measure were introduced in the mid 1990s to gauge more accurately the amount of human activity on web servers. These were page views and visits (or sessions). A page view was defined as a request made to the web server for a page, as opposed to a graphic, while a visit was defined as a sequence of requests from a uniquely identified client that expired after a certain amount of inactivity, usually 30 minutes. The page views and visits are still commonly displayed metrics, but are now considered rather unsophisticated measurements.

The emergence of search engine spiders and robots in the late 1990s, along with web proxies and dynamically assigned IP addresses for large companies and ISPs, made it more difficult to identify unique human visitors to a website. Log analyzers responded by tracking visits by cookies, and by ignoring requests from known spiders.

The extensive use of web caches also presented a problem for logfile analysis. If a person revisits a page, the second request will often be retrieved from the browser's cache, and so no request will be received by the web server. This means that the person's path through the site is lost. Caching can be defeated by configuring the web server, but this can result in degraded performance for the visitor to the website.

Page tagging
Concerns about the accuracy of logfile analysis in the presence of caching, and the desire to be able to perform web analytics as an outsourced service, led to the second data collection method, page tagging or 'Web bugs'.
In the mid 1990s, Web counters were commonly seen — these were images included in a web page that showed the number of times the image had been requested, which was an estimate of the number of visits to that page. In the late 1990s this concept evolved to include a small invisible image instead of a visible one, and, by using JavaScript, to pass along with the image request certain information about the page and the visitor. This information can then be processed remotely by a web analytics company, and extensive statistics generated.
The web analytics service also manages the process of assigning a cookie to the user, which can uniquely identify them during their visit and in subsequent visits.

With the increasing popularity of Ajax-based solutions, an alternative to the use of an invisible image, is to implement a call back to the server from the rendered page. In this case, when the page is rendered on the web browser, a piece of Ajax code would call back to the server and pass information about the client that can then be aggregated by a web analytics company. This is in some ways flawed by browser restrictions on the servers which can be contacted with XmlHttpRequest objects.

Logfile analysis vs page tagging

Both logfile analysis programs and page tagging solutions are readily available to companies that wish to perform web analytics. In many cases, the same web analytics company will offer both approaches. The question then arises of which method a company should choose. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.
Advantages of logfile analysis
The main advantages of logfile analysis over page tagging are as follows.
• The web server normally already produces logfiles, so the raw data is already available. To collect data via page tagging requires changes to the website.
• The web server reliably records every transaction it makes. Page tagging relies on the visitors' browsers co-operating, which a certain proportion may not do (for example, if JavaScript is disabled).
• The data is on the company's own servers, and is in a standard, rather than a proprietary, format. This makes it easy for a company to switch programs later, use several different programs, and analyze historical data with a new program. Page tagging solutions involve vendor lock-in.
• Logfiles contain information on visits from search engine spiders. Although these should not be reported as part of the human activity, it is important data for performing search engine optimization.
• Logfiles contain information on failed requests; page tagging only records an event if the page is successfully viewed.

Advantages of page tagging
The main advantages of page tagging over logfile analysis are as follows.
• The JavaScript is automatically run every time the page is loaded. Thus there are fewer worries about caching.
• It is easier to add additional information to the JavaScript, which can then be collected by the remote server. For example, information about the visitors' screen sizes, or the price of the goods they purchased, can be added in this way. With logfile analysis, information not normally collected by the web server can only be recorded by modifying the URL.
• Page tagging can report on events which do not involve a request to the web server, such as interactions within Flash movies.
• The page tagging service manages the process of assigning cookies to visitors; with logfile analysis, the server has to be configured to do this.
• Page tagging is available to companies who do not run their own web servers.

Economic factors
Logfile analysis is almost always performed in-house. Page tagging can be performed in-house, but it is more often provided as a third-party service. The economic difference between these two models can also be a consideration for a company deciding which to purchase.
• Logfile analysis typically involves a one-off software purchase; however, some vendors are introducing maximum annual page views with additional costs to process additional information.
• Page tagging most often involves a monthly fee, although some vendors offer installable page tagging solutions with no additional page view costs.
Which solution is cheaper often depends on the amount of technical expertise within the company, the vendor chosen, the amount of activity seen on the web sites, the depth and type of information sought, and the number of distinct web sites needing statistics.

Resource:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

Free Web Analytics knowledge Sharing Blog

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/) is in a class by itself. It offers substantially more functionality than the basic tools above, but is free (as opposed to the more advanced tools listed below).

Unlike tools such as Webalyzer or AWStats, you need to install Google Analytics on your site, which involves pasting a chuck of HTML (provided by Google) into every page. This obviously requires a bit of HTML know-how, but if you know what you're doing, shouldn't require too much effort. Depending on the size of your site and how it's set up, installing the Google Analytics code might take anywhere from a couple of minutes to a few hours. Once the code is added, Google displays your statistics in a custom reporting interface that you can view online.

In addition to the reports offered by tools like Webalizer or AWStats, Google allows you to find out how often visitors come to your site, tracks visitor conversion across a series of pages, compares the behavior of different types of visitors (such as new versus returning, or those from different referring sites), and much more. A selectable date range allows you to analyze any given time period, instead of being limited to a monthly view (as you are with AWStats and Webalizer). Google has a nifty feature that allows you to look at a rendered version of the site and see the percentage of people that clicked each link on a given page. It also offers robust integration to track the performance of any Google AdWords you have purchased.

Because the Google Analytics package is in an indefinite beta stage, some of the experts we consulted with cited occasional problems. Several reported difficulty in getting Google to show up-to-date stats, while others noted a very occasional loss in historic stats for an entire site. Google's customer service supports this product primarily through automated emails, so you may have little recourse if you encounter problems. The method by which this tool monitors traffic results in lower numbers (such as fewer visitors, and fewer page views) than some other methods. Also, keep in mind that Google offers its product for free because it makes money by watching you; by using Analytics, you're agreeing to let Google store your information and use it for aggregate reports.

Nevertheless, Google Analytics is widely used and widely liked. If you're building a new Web site, or have a bit of HTML knowledge, Google is a great free option for surprisingly robust analytics.


More Powerful Analytics Packages

If you find you're running into substantial limitations with Google Analytics, and you're ready to invest in a more predicable and powerful package, there are plenty of available options. The following tools give you substantially more control than any of the above packages; more powerful metrics; much more freedom to perform detailed user segmentation; the ability track detailed patterns; and, oftentimes, sophisticated data charts (such as trees or interactive layouts) that make it easier to track complex sites.

* ClickTracks (www.clicktracks.com). ClickTracks offers solid mid-priced to top-end analytics packages targeted toward non-technical marketing folks. Both an online version (similar to Google Analytics; you add a piece of code to your site and view the reports online) or an installed version (on your Web server) are available. ClickTracks is easy to use and offers many options for on-the-fly analysis of what different types of visitors are viewing on your site. Hosted packages are available at $25 a month, $99 a month, and $239 a month, and installed software ranges from $295 to $10,000 and up. Free trial versions of the hosted options are available on ClickTrack's Web site.
* WebTrends (www.webtrends.com). The well-known WebTrends has a broad user base and offers a variety of hosted and installed packages ranging in price from about $25 to $1,000 a month or more. While it's unclear if the less inexpensive packages offer much more than Google Analytics, their top-level products certainly do, with detailed data-mining features, including segmentation, click paths, conversion reporting, and a number of predictions and alert functionalities (for instance, you can be notified if your site reaches a certain level of traffic). Several of the experts we consulted with report that WebTrends is harder to use than others in this category, especially for non-technical staff. Their customer service, however, is easy to reach and helpful.
* WebSideStory HBX Analytics (www.websidestory.com). WebsideStory's HBX Analytics (formally HitBox) is widely regarded as one of the most powerful and usable hosted analytics solutions, appropriate for complex and highly trafficed Web sites. Like WebTrends, WebSideStory offers a wide range of price points, but is best known for its high-end products.
* Omniture's SiteCatalyst (www.omniture.com). Like HBX Analytics, SiteCatalyst is a powerful hosted analytics package directed at complex and high-traffic sites. It offers powerful segmentation and data-mining features that integrate with the tools's other functions, like email campaigns and site search. Usability is also a strength. SiteCatalyst starts at about $1,000 per month for a package that would support the site volume of most medium- and even large-sized nonprofits.
resouce: web analytics explained

Top Web Analytics Blogs

The Web changes all the time, and those changes create pain points on how best to accurately andconsistently analyze our websites. One of the most awesome resources at your disposal is the blogsof various industry luminaries and practitioners who unselfishly put out some of the best contentyou’ll find anywhere. A key characteristic of most of these blogs is that they are extremely currentand on the cutting edge in their discussions. Get an RSS (really simple syndication) reader and soak up all the information—it’s free!
Google Analytics Blog This official blog of the GA team has loads of great GA tips and insights.
Occam’s Razor (Avinash Kausik Blog) : blog focuses on web research and analytics.
Web Analytics Demystified : Eric Peterson is an author, conference speaker, and Visual Sciences VP, and on his blog he shares his wisdom about all things web analytics.
Lies, Damned Lies…. (http://www.liesdamnedlies.com):
Ian Thomas is the Director of Customer Intelligence at Microsoft, and in a prior life helped found
WebAbacus, a web analytics company. Ian applies his deep experience and covers complex topics inan easy-to-understand language.
Analytics Talk (http://epikone.com/blog/): Justin Cutroni is one of the smartest web analytics
practitioners and consultants around.His focus is on GA, but he has lots of non-GA stuff as well.
Commerce360 Blog (http://blogs.commerce360.com/): Craig Danuloff is the president of
Commerce360, a consulting company, and he brings a refreshingly honest perspective on all thingsweb analytics and marketing.
LunaMetrics Blog (http://lunametrics.blogspot.com/): Robbin Steif provides practical
tips and tricks on getting the most out of your web analytics tools, specifically with an eye toward
improving your conversion rate.
Instant Cognition (http://blog.instantcognition.com/): Clint Ivy calls himself a data
visualization journeyman—that says it all! Clint shares his perspective on analytics with a focus
on visual report design.
Applied Insights Blog (http://snipurl.com/neilmason/): Neil Mason and John McConnell
share their insights from the United Kingdom. I have known Neil for some time now, and he shares absolutely invaluable insights.
OX2 Blog (http://webanalytics.wordpress.com): René Dechamps Otamendi and Aurélie
Pols run the pan-European OX2, and their blog always has wonderfully insightful perspectives on web analytics.

The ABCs of A/B Testing

My friend Cindy has taken up hiking, and, being a shoe kinda gal, she has taken an intense interest in hiking boots. She's the first one who will tell you, "They may be a dream on the shelf, but you really have no idea how they're going to work for you until you start trail testing them."

You could say the same thing about ebusiness. When you start doing business online, you enter the realm of "trail testing." And here is where you discover that the practical work of managing any online enterprise has only just begun. Because no matter how thoroughly you think you've covered your bases in the development phases of your Web site or your email campaigns, you are about to discover countless opportunities for improvement.

How do you take that first step in monitoring your performance based on all the little tweaks and fidgets you think will help? Ah, it's as simple as A, B ... and no C!

Maximizing your conversion rate is not simply a matter of making changes, it's about making

a) the right changes,

b) at the right time,

c) in the right sequence, and then

d) evaluating the results before continuing the process.

If you are not methodical in your approach to change, much of your effort will be wasted. So take your time, and keep these guidelines in mind as you test:

• Always clarify in your mind what you are testing and how you are going to measure and interpret the results before you begin. You cannot measure success unless you know exactly what you are measuring (and naturally I hope you have a clear idea of what constitutes success).
• Your test groups should be of similar size.
• After the first test, you should always test against a control. The first time out, you are testing two unknowns, and you won't be able to determine the better option until the results are in. Once they are in, then you have a benchmark, or control, against which you can measure subsequent changes.
• Remember you can accurately test only one element at a time. Even if they all seem necessary, changes need to be made individually so you can track effectively the result of the change. While you might institute several changes and see an improvement, it could be a "net" improvement - that is, a 5% improvement could be the result of change #1 helping 10% while change #2 actually hurt by 5%. If you make one change at a time and then discover it doesn't help, it's easier to back up and try something else.
• If you are testing emails, send your test emails simultaneously to eliminate the timing variable. Ideally, at the same time, you want to test your Web site as well. Software platforms like Optimost and Inceptor can help with this.

A/B testing - sometimes it's called an A/B split - is the simplest and easiest method of testing elements in your emails or on your Web site. You divide your audience into two groups. You expose one group to the original version of whatever you are testing. You expose the other group to an alternative version, in which only one element has been changed. Then you track the results.

For example, suppose you want to figure out the best subject line for your promotional email. Prepare two separate emails, identical except for the subject line. The email with the first subject line goes to half your list, while the email with the second subject line goes to the other half.

To gauge the effectiveness of your subject line, compare the open rates between the two groups. Once you find your winner, it becomes your control or benchmark. Test it against another subject line, and so on, until you are convinced you've found the best possible subject line for your messages. And the results may surprise you. In one of our testing scenarios, one subject line generated an open rate 300% higher than its closest competitor. A difference like that can have a tremendous impact on your bottom line!

What should you be testing? It's easier to make a list of what you don't need to worry about, because that would be a blank sheet of paper. But here are some possibilities to get you started:

Emails: bonus gifts, coupons, P.S. messages, guarantees, opening sentence image, closing sentence image, from-field, calls to action, opening greetings, type styles, layout elements, graphic images, etc.

Web Sites: landing pages, language of copy (headings, body, calls to action, assurances), colors, location of elements, look/feel, hyperlinks, etc.

A/B testing is far from rocket science (and there are other more complicated and robust ways to test), but it has a sweet advantage: it isn't complicated. More importantly, it means you won't have to make potentially expensive decisions based on your gut reaction. You'll know, because you can say, "Here, look at the numbers!"

, multivariate testing is a process by which more than one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be thought of in simple terms as numerous split tests or A/B tests performed on one page at the same time. Split tests and A/B tests are usually performed to determine the better of two content variations, multivariate testing can theoretically test the effectiveness of limitless combinations. The only limits on the number of combinations and the number of variables in a multivariate test are the amount of time it will take to get a statistically valid sample of visitors and computational power.

Multivariate testing is usually employed in order to ascertain which content or creative variation produces the best improvement in the defined goals of a website, whether that be user registrations or successful completion of a checkout process (that is, conversion rate). Dramatic increases can be seen through testing different copy text, form layouts and even landing page images and background colours.

Testing can be carried out on a dynamically generated website by setting up the server to display the different variations of content in equal proportions to incoming visitors. Statistics on how each visitor went on to behave after seeing the content under test must then be gathered and presented. Outsourced services can also be used to provide multivariate testing on websites with minor changes to page coding. These services insert their content to predefined areas of a site and monitor user behavior.

In a nutshell, multivariate testing can be seen as allowing website visitors to vote with their clicks for which content they prefer and will stand the most chance of them proceeding to a defined goal. The testing is transparent to the visitor with all commercial solutions capable of ensuring that each visitor is shown the same content as they first saw on each subsequent visit.

Some websites benefit from constant 24/7 continuous optimization as visitor response to creatives and layouts differ by time of day/week or even season.

Multivariate testing is currently an area of high growth in internet marketing as it helps website owners to ensure that they are getting the most from the visitors arriving at their site. Areas such as search engine optimization and pay per click advertising bring visitors to a site and have been extensively used by many organisations but multivariate testing allows internet marketeers to ensure that visitors are being effectively exploited once they arrive at the website.

We're thrilled that Google's getting into the testing game with a new service called Website Optimizer. The service will be gratis to all Google advertisers. Just as Google Analytics had a major effect on how e-tailers viewed analytics, so this service will open the world of testing to a much broader audience. Testing is more action-oriented (and should therefore appeal to even more people) than straight analysis. However, some level of analysis is still required.

This is long overdue. We were fortunate to be an early beta tester of the system and are impressed with several features.

Making a decision to test is simple. But making that decision alone won't deliver better online results.

In over 10 years of optimizing sites for our clients, we've identified over 1,100 factors that contribute to a customer's ability to successfully complete a single conversion funnel.

Multiply that by the number of campaigns, offers, products, keywords, visitor motivations, visitor types, and several other elements and the number of contributing factors becomes astronomical. When you consider most of these factors as potential variants to test and optimize for, you must conclude determining what and how to test campaigns for maximum return takes plenty of thought, planning, and effort.

Fortunately, not all factors are equal in their ability to drive success. There are many things you can do to stack these factors in your favor.

If you're new to testing, begin with A/B testing rather than multivariate. Although it may feel limiting and takes more time, you're likely to get more sound scientific data with which to determine your optimization efforts. It also allows you to gain experience testing with proper methods.

Testing is a science, not an art. Unlike the intuitive creative process, a test must conform to well-established scientific design to be truly effective. As I've stated before, most of today's so-called A/B and multivariate tests are nothing more than marketers throwing landing page, banner ad, and AdWord variations at a wall to see what sticks, wasting valuable time and money with little to no conversion increases to show for it. A key to avoiding that is to have a better handle on "fitness factors." In his A/B testing whitepaper our CTO, John Quarto-vonTividar, explains:

Let's say we want to determine whether Nolan Ryan is a better baseball player than Homer Simpson. How should we proceed? First, we might set a metric for what we mean by a "better" baseball player. We can measure evidence in concrete ways, noting the two subjects' different batting averages or RBIs or the like. What we're searching for is the right metric -- a formula that would lead us to a correct decision. Such a formula is more precisely termed a "fitness function."

We might decide that considering indirect evidence will lead us to a better decision than comparing pure statistics. In that case, our fitness function may involve such things as the difference in salary paid for services or a comparison of the prices paid for our subjects' autographs on eBay.

In virtually all such measures, Nolan is the better candidate. If you were choosing a player for your team, you'd certainly pick Nolan; you can be confident you've made the correct decision.

But let's think on that a moment: the reason you feel confidence in signing Nolan stems from your familiarity with the metric and fitness function that are implicitly applied when we speak of baseball. Your decision might be quite different if we want to pick an effective donut quality assurance taster. Suddenly, Homer Simpson is back in the running.

Even then, your confidence may be based on your understanding that "tastes better" is the donut metric and that Homer Simpson is an acknowledged expert in donut consumption. But what is the fitness function? That is, what does it mean to "taste better"? Are you relying solely on Homer's reputation as an expert? But his expertise is based on consumption quantity so perhaps you suspect he enjoys all donuts equally and actually has little, uh, "taste" at all. In other words, it's quite possible you don't have any knowledge at all of what we might call the "donut tastiness" fitness function.

Interestingly, marketers and business owners are asked -- every day -- to make more important decisions with less information with an undetermined fitness function.

More formally, A/B Testing first requires a metric be identified (that is, "what will be contrasted?"). Second, a fitness function describing that metric is agreed upon ("how will we measure and contrast the differences?"). And third, an optimization step where the system is tweaked based on comparison of exactly two tested solutions, which differ in only one respect of how they meet the fitness function.

Here are few steps, then, that will keep you from merely throwing stuff at the wall.

Define the Conversion Goals

The fitness factors that will determine a successful campaign:

• Is it a lead generation campaign?
• Is it a product-specific purchase?
• Does it generate qualified traffic for on-site purchase?
• Does it generate traffic for a self-service or subscription service?
• Is it an online service signup or event registration?
• What micro conversions are needed to reach a macro conversion?

Know Your Customers

• How many different types of personas will participate in this campaign?
• What type of decision maker are they: methodical, spontaneous, humanistic, or competitive?
• Where are they in the buying cycle?

Do the Creative

Create the pages, PPC (define) ads, e-mail, or ads (online and off-) that drive your prospects to your landing pages. Always try having someone different than you normally would use for a portion of the variations. Ask:

• Do you have the correct messages for each profile type and her motivation? You will likely need more than one.
• Do you have the correct message for each stage of the profile's buying cycle? Is she early in the buying process, in the middle, or ready to buy?

Test and Optimize

Thankfully, the financial costs related to the software side of A/B and multivariant testing are about to be out of the way. The only remaining costs are the creative variations. They're affected by how much you spend thinking in the first two steps. More time thinking usually means less time coming up with meaningless variations.

A lot of the testing is done by producing the creative first while skimming (sometimes skipping) over step two and poorly identifying goals and fitness factors. Don't make the same mistake.

What is Multivariate Testing

So you've heard the buzz. Multivariate Testing is the word... But if you're like a lot of people, you're probably wondering what it's all about. Today is your lucky day- because I have a (relatively) complete explanation for you...

Before you will understand Multivariate testing, lets review some facts about statistics and testing. In science class we learned something called the scientific method. This principal states that to test a something, we should only change one thing at a time. By only varying one element and measuring results before and after the change, we could learn the relative impact of that change. When attempting to optimize a web page this way, we would make just one change to the page at a time. After repeating the experiment enough times, we could prove our results with some certainty.

Multivariate testing refutes the above notions. Using mathematical formulas and specialized arrays, it is possible to test many aspects of a system at the same time. Not only are you able to learn what worked and what didn't, but also the optimal combination of page elements to maximize the response rate. This creates the net effect of doing many simple experiments at the same time.

In fact, it becomes possible to run the equivalent of thousands of tests simultaneously.

How will it help me sell more on my site?

Through the magic of Multivariate experiments, the possibilities are virtually limitless. You can rapidly learn the best combination of page elements- things like your headlines, product images, and price points, to maximize sales or lead flow. Stop guessing what the ideal design for your page is because you don't have to. Through Multivariate experiments, you can learn if the picture of the girl with the white background, or the man with the blue background works better. Find out if the long form with detailed instructions works better than the short form with short instructions.

Not only will you learn which works better, but also, which combination of elements works best. In the above example, you might find out that a long form with short instructions actually works best. You never even included this in the original test. Or you might find the best combination in the first example is a man with a white background, another combination that you never considered.