Central Perk

luni, 12 august 2013

Custom Segments to Increase Sales

Posted: 11 Aug 2013 07:16 PM PDT

One of the things that I like most about Google Analytics is that it can be as simple or as complex as you like. Out of the box it's very easy to use. Without much experience, you can quickly see the basics, like the amount of traffic you receive as well as the medium and source of traffic. But: We have a problem. The problem is that that's where most people stop. Too many people are making bad decisions by looking at Google Analytics data from a 30,000-foot view. With a little more work you can reveal some quick insights that could reveal easy CRO wins. To demonstrate how, I'll cover a couple of advanced segments that I like to use and explain how to set each of them up using custom variables, event tracking, and filters. Advanced segments are a huge area; you can make almost unlimited variations, so I've just picked a few that will hopefully inspire you to create some advanced segments of your own (I'd love to hear about them in the comments).

Attribution

Before doing anything, it's important to have a data set that you can trust, and that starts with proper attribution. If you haven't already read Annie Cushing's blog post "Take Credit Where Credit's Due," I highly recommend it, as it goes into a lot more detail on attribution. The full video is also available on the Distilled store.

Attribution starts with ensuring the correct mediums and sources are getting credit for the sales and actions they generate. The opposite is also true: You don't want good channels getting diluted by cross-contamination of bad channels. By default, Google has the basics covered, as shown below.

But for some websites, that "(none)" category can make up a significant portion of your traffic. Referral traffic isn't great either, as it doesn't tell you about the "why" part. Was it a press release that drove a lot of that traffic? Or was it email?

Thankfully, we have the ability to do campaign tracking using URL parameters that can help make these mediums more useful. The medium that's usually impacted by this the most is email. By default, Google groups email into the referral bucket.

To avoid this, you can create a new "email" medium by tagging all links in emails with URL parameters. Explaining tagging in detail is out of the scope of this post, so I'm going to assume you know how to do it. If you don't, you can read up on how to track emails in this post.

#Protip: The most common objection people have to using URL tagging is that it creates ugly URLs for users. Here's a solution.

Let's assume I want to track the people that visit the Annie Cushing video I recommended. The URL might look something like this:

http://www.distilled.net/store/sl-bos-2013-cushing/?utm_source=moz.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=annie+cushing+video

Pretty horrible. But your users never need to see it, thanks to some HTML5 goodness. You put the link in some anchor text, such as click here. Then on that landing page you would add something like this:

  _gaq.push(function() {  window.history.pushState('','', 'some-page');  });

This means after the Google Analytics code has fired and collected all the attribution data from the horrible-looking parameters, the URL will be changed to whatever you set in the quotes. In this case it would change the URL to:

http://www.distilled.net/store/sl-bos-2013-cushing/some-page

But it could be anything you like. See this blog post from Rob Ousbey on the topic.

The downside to this is if people then share or link to that page it will 404, so if you just want to chop off the parameters, just replace the "some page" part with a â€˜#'. There's probably a better way to do this so that there's no #, but I'm not a developer so I settle for "good enough" on this kind of thing.

So, to be clear, the action here is to get all your attribution set up correctly. For lots of details on how to do that, see Annie's post. Doing so will allow you to do some proper CPA analysis for the various channels you use.

Tracking form errors

Regardless of how easy you make your checkout process, there will always be people that struggle with the forms, so we want to know how and where these people are having problems. If we manage that, we make more sales. There are solutions such as Clicktale that allow you to analyse the forms on your site, but they don't allow you to tie that together with other metrics from your GA, such as conversion rates. To do this, I want to use Google Analytics event tracking to create an event any time someone fails to do something correctly on any of the fields in the form. Events use the following format:

  _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)

In my case I want to set:

Category = Form Error
Action = Submit
Opt_label = A way to identify the field that caused the error, for example "Phone number" or "Post Code"

You then need to set this to fire only when there is a validation error on the page. A validation error is that annoying red text that appears when you mess something up on a form. From a technical point of view there are a couple of different ways this can be done, depending whether the form is validated on the client side via JavaScript or on the server side (in which case the page will be reloaded).

Server side

On the HTML that gets sent to the browser when an error occurs, you'll need to add the event tracking to the text that fires next to each of the fields. Doing it this way allows you to not only see users that had problems, but will also let you see specifically what fields people have the most trouble with. You can then slice and dice that data however you like in GA to find other things like browser OS, etc.

Client side

If the validation is being done on the client side using something like JavaScript, the same process needs to be used, but the events will need to be fired by the script that creates the errors.

  _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'form error', 'submit', 'phone number']);

Tracking email unsubscribers for content analysis

Most email management services will allow you to see stats like open rates, number of people unsubscribing, etc., but they don't give you many insights into why those people unsubscribed â€" which is what we really need to know. To help get some insights it can be useful to find out which content those people have read the most, as this could potentially let you see what kind of content your audience doesn't like. You could even go as far as looking at authors.

To do this, you'll need an email provider that lets you add some custom code to the unsubscribe page. At Distilled we use MailChimp, which I know has this feature, but I'm not sure about others. You can then use whatever method you like to bucket these users, you could add a custom variable or event tracking to your Google analytics code, like this:

  _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'email', 'unsubscribed']);

The advantage of events is you can use them with goals, which would allow you to track over time and set up alerts for spikes in unsubscription rates.

Once this is set up, you'll want to create an "unsubscribed" advanced segment in Google Analytics for the event name like that shown below in the example:

Once you have these people in a group, you can start to slice the data however you like to find trends among the people who don't want to be on your list anymore.

Logged in/out

Depending on the type of site you have, it may or may not make sense to create segments based on whether your users are logged in or out. For example, you may have a different checkout process if you're logged in. Wouldn't it be nice if you could see the difference between conversion rates between logged-in and logged-out users? Or compare the behaviors of logged-in users compared to logged-out users? Thankfully, this is pretty easy to do. In fact if you look at the source code of this page, you can see how. Do a search in the source code for "setCustomVar" and you'll see what I mean. You'll see one of a few options but they will all follow a format like this:

This sets a custom variable with "user-type" as "visitor." If you're logged in and a pro member, you might see "Pro." From a CRO perspective, the point in doing this is you can see how different groups of people act on the site and use that information to increase the conversion rate of each group. You'll typically find that logged-out users convert less, as they have extra steps in the process, but you can always optimize the registration process to make it as painless as possible. When possible, I'd always take the Amazon approach and leave people logged in as long as possible, and have their credit card details saved to allow for quick and painless payment.

Also, once you can track people that are logged in, you can create advanced segments for things like "logged in users that added an item to their cart but didn't buy." These are easy pickings; on the server side you can segment by these users and send them an email to remind them that they have items in their shopping cart that they are just one click away from buying.

Find the "whales"

Photo by Gerard Lacz

I got this idea from Avinash. You can read the full post here. The idea is that you create a segment of users that typically spend more than the average customer, hence the term "whale." This is also why it's a good idea to have your attribution tracking set up correctly from the start, as you need to know where those whales came from as well as how much they cost to acquire compared to the average customer.

To do this, segment by users that bought more than a certain number of items:

Image credit

Once you have this data, you can begin to focus on the other data that's available to you, such as the medium and source of those users, and double down on the best channels.

That's all for now, I hope you've found this useful and I'd love to hear some of the custom segments or interesting ways you use Google Analytics in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Seth's Blog : Magic + Generosity = the brand crush

Magic + Generosity = the brand crush

A decade ago, I was walking through Union Square in New York. The farmer's market was on, and the place was jammed with early adopters. Fortunately, I was wearing a Google shirt, a rarity at the time, a gift from a gig I had done for them.

Across the way, a woman shouted, "Google! Do you work for Google? I love Google! Google is my best friend..." as she waltzed through the crowd toward me.

How many brands get a reaction like that?

Let me posit for a moment that most people aren't capable of loving a brand, not if we define love as a timeless, permanent state of emotion, connection and devotion. I do think, though, that people have crushes on brands all the time. And a crush can get a brand really far.

The first element of a crush is magic. When a product or service does something so unexpected, so inexplicable that we are in awe of what just happened, it feels magical. It might be the mystery of how a 1969 air-cooled Porsche made someone feel when being driven for the first (or hundredth) time. Or, more recently, it might be the surge that comes from connections found, the sort that Facebook used to deliver to new users all the time.

Sometimes that magic is almost Jungian--the roar of the crowd, the smell of flowers on your wedding day, the look in a student's eyes when she hears she got into Princeton. Other times the magic is literally that, the magic of Arthur C. Clarke and any sufficiently advanced technology (the sort of magic that woman in Union Square felt in 2002).

Remember back to the first time you saw an iPhone or tasted a warm donut--these are leaps in experience that connect us to a feeling of wonder we don't often experience, one that (sadly) decays over time.

The second element? Generosity. When the wizard happily shares his potion, when the device or the service is affordable, sold for less than it's worth. Not necessarily free—Harley Davidson motorcycles were never free, but the magic of being accepted by a generous tribe was more than enough to overcome the price of entry.

In software, particularly online, generosity comes naturally. Not only does Google find you what you seek, not only does Twitter let you broadcast to your world, but they appear to do it at no charge at all. Magic and generous at the same time.

It's difficult for the day laborer, the replaceable freelancer, the commodity supplier to earn a crush, because they are cogs in the system... selling the expected, for a fair price. We complete our transaction with you and then move on, even steven.

The crush, in contrast, goes far beyond delivering what's expected. The crush builds value for both sides, delivering a quantum leap in the urgency of the interactions. Ask David Cassidy...

Here's where the famous, "don't be evil" mantra kicks in. When it was first uttered at Google, it meant, "don't be like Microsoft was." In particular in meant, "don't use the magic we're creating in one place to allow us to be ungenerous, and in particular, don't use our magic in one place to eliminate choice in others." When Microsoft used the hegemony of the Windows OS to force people to use IE, they were being 'evil'. They traded their magic and stopped being generous.

Crushes don't last forever. You need to keep adding magic and generosity.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 11 august 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

How Fast Can China Grow? Not as Fast as Most Analysts Think

Posted: 11 Aug 2013 06:31 PM PDT

Via Email, Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets quantifies various growth and investment scenarios. Pettis maintains 6% or higher growth is not plausible and that even 3-4% growth may be optimistic. What follows is from Pettis ...

Consumption and Investment Growth Under Rebalancing

Under specified rebalancing assumptions for China it is possible to calculate arithmetically the annual growth rate for consumption and investment under different GDP growth scenarios. This allows us to decide whether these scenarios are plausible or not.

Table: GDP, consumption, and investment growth in a rebalancing China

To read the table, let us start by assuming, as an example, that we believe the average GDP growth rate over the ten-year period will be 6%. For China to do a minimal amount of rebalancing that gets consumption to 50% of GDP and investment to 40% of GDP, we can quickly figure out what the corresponding growth rates of consumption and investment must be. Consumption must grow by 9.9% a year and investment must grow by 4.5% a year to get us there.

Notice the reason why I do it this way rather than the "normal" way most other economists would. Instead of estimating what I expect the growth rates in consumption and investment will be, and then calculating the implicit GDP growth rate from those numbers, I start with an assumed GDP growth rate and then calculate what the implicit growth rates in consumption and investment must be in order for rebalancing to take place. I am not making predictions, in other words. I am simply working out logically what any GDP growth rate must imply in terms of consumption and investment growth rates in order for China to rebalance.

This allows me to make statements like this: If you think that China's GDP will grow by 7% a year over the next decade, and if you expect a minimal amount of rebalancing, then you are implicitly predicting that consumption will grow by 10-11% a year for ten years and that investment will grow by 4-5.5%. If you believe these two implicit predictions are plausible, then your 7% prediction is also plausible.

I want to state again that these numbers are not predictions. They are simply the arithmetically necessary growth rates that are consistent with our assumptions. To return to the interpretation of the table, let us assume again that China does the minimal amount of rebalancing so that in ten years household consumption is 50% of GDP and investment is 40% of GDP, what are the investment and consumption growth rates consistent with, say, 6% GDP growth, and are they plausible?

It turns out that average GDP growth rates of 6% require, as an arithmetical necessity, that household consumption grow by 9.9% a year over the next ten years and that investment grow by 4.5%, after many years of high double digit growth and more recently growth in the low double digits. Is this plausible?

I would argue that positive investment growth rates for another ten years are highly likely to result in our reaching debt capacity constraints well before the end of the decade, so I am skeptical about the investment implications of this scenario. By the way some analysts have mischievously pointed to the very poor construction quality in China to argue that investment growth rates have to stay high just in order to account for higher-than-estimated depreciation costs, and that this suggests that China can grow faster than what we might otherwise assume.

This of course is nonsense. The fact that buildings and infrastructure are poorly constructed means that China is worse off, not better off, and the investment projects will ultimately be required to generate sufficient returns to pay off even more debt than originally estimated. Because it is debt capacity constraints that constrain investment, anything that creates debt without creating additional productivity to service the debt cannot possibly be a solution. Higher-than-expected depreciation increases debt relative to debt-servicing capacity.

I would also argue, more importantly, that if annual investment growth drops to 4.5%, and GDP growth to 6%, it will be very difficult, without significant and politically painful transfers from the state sector to the household sector, for consumption to grow at anywhere close to 9.9% a year for ten years. Consumption growth is, after all, positively correlated with investment growth, especially in the internal provinces upon which a lot of useless investment has been lavished.

In order to get Chinese households to increase their consumption by nearly 10% every year, I would argue that household income would have to grow at that rate, which means that wages, interest rates, and the value of the renminbi should in the aggregate increase rapidly to get consumption to rise fast enough, and of course since it is precisely low wage growth, low interest rates, and an undervalued currency that goose GDP growth, reversing them is not consistent with high GDP growth.

Can consumption grow at close to 10% for ten years while household income grows much more slowly? Yes, of course it can, if the household savings rate declines, but as China's economy slows and as concerns about debt rise, it seems to me a tad optimistic to assume that the household savings rate will decline sharply. Rising income and rising uncertainty both suggest that we should expect higher, not lower, household savings rates, which in turn imply that household income must grow faster, not slower, than household consumption.

All of this suggest to me that while 6% GDP growth for the next ten years might not be impossible, it is extremely unlikely because it requires what are to me implausible assumptions about the ability to maintain and increase already-high levels of investment without increasing the debt burden unsustainably and about the rise in the growth rate of household income as both GDP and investment growth drop sharply. This is why even 6% annual GDP growth rates, which are still lower than most current growth projections for China, are implausibly high, in my opinion.

What about if you believe that reducing investment is a much more urgent priority than raising consumption? In that case you might argue that China can grow at 6% while the household consumption share of GDP rises to 50% and the investment share of GDP declines to 35%.

In that case you are implicitly assuming that household consumption will grow on average by 9.9% a year for ten years while investment grows by 3.1% a year. Is this possible? Of course it is. Is it plausible? Again, only if you believe that investment growth can drop sharply while the growth in household consumption rises to nearly 10% a year for ten years.

So what is plausible? My working assumption, which I acknowledge is probably still optimistic, is that somehow or the other Beijing can keep household consumption growing at around 7-8% a year, even with a sharp decline in the investment growth rate and with the pressing need to clean up the banking system (and remember that traditionally, in China and elsewhere, cleaning up the banking system always means finding ways of getting the household sector to pay for the losses).

I know many consider assumption this to be a little optimistic, but if Beijing is worried about the social implications of adjustment, this is probably the target it will need to meet, and Beijing can do so even with much slower GDP growth if the leadership implements mechanisms that transfer wealth from the state sector to the household sector. I discuss why this is the right growth rate for to target in more detail in a recent piece published on the Carnegie Endowment website and in an OpEd piece in the Financial Times.

The table above shows that if China is to do the minimal amount of rebalancing, which requires that the world accommodate for another ten years large Chinese trade surpluses, and that debt can continue to grow – quickly but at a lower rate than in the past – for another ten years without pushing China up against its debt capacity constraints, 7-8% growth in household consumption is consistent with roughly 3-4% growth in GDP. It is also consistent with more or less no growth in investment, which would after ten years bring the investment level down to 35% of GDP.

These numbers are, I think, plausible if still a little optimistic. This is something, in other words, that I think Beijing can reasonably pull off – if it is able to manage political opposition from the domestic elite – because they can transfer resources from the state sector to the household sector at a pace necessary to keep the growth rate of household income and household consumption fairly high. However GDP growth rates significantly above 3-4%, I would argue, require assumptions that are unlikely to be met unless Beijing is able radically to transform its attitude to state ownership and the power of the elite, and so embark on a major transfer of assets from the state to the household sector.

This is why I have argued since 2009 that that 3-4% average GDP growth for a decade is likely to be the upper limit once Beijing seriously begins to rebalance the Chinese economy, and if the administration of President Xi and Premier Li is able to pull this off, it would be a huge accomplishment. China would rebalance substantially, the problem of debt would have been managed relatively well, and the income of average Chinese households will have nearly doubled over the decade. The key assumption, of course, is that in the face of a sharp drop in investment, Beijing is nonetheless able to maintain current high levels of consumption growth.

Before closing it is worth pointing out that many analysts have told me that they do not think it is possible for household income growth to exceed GDP growth for many years. But why not? After all state income growth exceeded household income growth for many years, and if Beijing reverses the mechanism that accomplished this – albeit with political difficulty – it can reverse the relative growth rates. More importantly, Japan did just this after 1990, when GDP grew by around 0.5% annually but household income and household consumption grew by between 1% and 2%. The US did this too in the early 1930s when, if I remember correctly, household income and household consumption dropped by a lot less than GDP (around 35%) and investment (around 90%).

But notice these two examples. One occurred under conditions of no growth and the other under conditions of negative growth. Severely unbalanced systems always rebalance in the end, but the process of rebalancing is rarely easy.

End Pettis

Michael Pettis stresses his table is not a series of predictions, but rather a mathematical model of what is probable or not. I agree with his model. If correct, a slow-growth China is baked in the cake, and that is going to catch nearly every economist off guard. Every country will be impacted, but especially the commodity exporters like Australia and Canada.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Marketing driven or Market driven?

Marketing driven or Market driven?

A marketing-driven organization is run by the Marketing department. It revolves around what marketers do.

A market-driven organization is driven by what the market wants, regardless of what the marketing department feels like doing.

(And of course, there are organizations driven by Sales, by Shareholder Relations and by Operations and Tech too. Even a few that seem to be run by the Employee-happiness Department. Not many, though. Even in these organizations, the option remains: you can be market driven instead. The first step is to choose your market...)

• Email to a friend •

sâmbătă, 10 august 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Obama's Cream Puff Plan to Reform US Surveillance Program

Posted: 10 Aug 2013 10:01 AM PDT

On Friday, president Obama announced a plan to reform NSA surveillance.

Don't expect much of anything to come out of it. It's a dog and pony show designed to make people feel better as opposed to any solid measures as to how much data government collects on everyone.

Here are excerpts from the above article with my comments interspersed.

Independent: President Obama told a packed room of journalists at the White House Friday afternoon that he will work to reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act - the provision which currently allows the federal government's intelligence agencies to collect domestic phone data.

The President also said that he will work to increase oversight with regards to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - the secretive judicial body that authorizes the government to collect data on communications coming in and out of the United States.

Obama said the reform will be accompanied with the roll-out of a new website which will provide Americans and people around the world the ability to learn more about the surveillance programs.

Obama: "The US will "make public as much information about these programs as possible."

Mish: Expect to discover that the only thing "possible" is a bunch of government propaganda designed to purposely mislead the public about the extent of government data gathering activities.

Independent: Obama said he is forming an outside advisory panel to review the surveillance programs, assigning a privacy officer at the National Security Agency and creating an independent attorney to challenge the government's spy policies in court.

Mish: The NSA advisory panel will have as much say as an advisory panel of ants at an anteater convention.

Obama: "No, I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot," Obama said. "I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks. My preference, and I think the American people's preference, would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws. A thoughtful, fact-based debate that would then lead us to a better place."

Mish: Snowden is a hero.

Obama: "So the fact is that Mr. Snowden has been charged with three felonies," added Obama. "If in fact he believes that what he did was right, then like every American citizen he can come here, appear before a court with a lawyer and make his case. If the concern was that somehow this was the only way to get this information out to the public, I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistleblower protection to the intelligence community for the first time. So there were other avenues available for someone whose conscious was stirred."

Mish: There were no other avenues that would have done anything about the blatantly illegal data gathering other than making everything public.

Obama: "If you are outside of the intelligence community, if you are the ordinary person, and you start seeing a bunch of headlines saying, 'US, Big Brother looking down on you, collecting telephone records, etc.,' well, understandably people would be concerned. I would be too if I wasn't inside the government. It's not enough for me to have confidence in these programs. The American people have to have confidence in them as well."

Mish: Obama has confidence in something blatantly illegal, and he has the gall to insist you should have equal confidence.

Obama: "The question is: How do I make the American people more comfortable?"

Mish: The answer is: Stop the spying on US citizens and stop the spying on our allies as well.

Obama: "I am comfortable that the program is currently not being abused"

Mish: Even if one foolishly believes spying on US citizens is constitutional, Snowden proved without a doubt the program was repeatedly and purposely abused. And that makes the president is a blatant liar.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

A Better Bargain for Responsible, Middle Class Homeowners

Featured

A Better Bargain for Responsible, Middle Class Homeowners

In this week’s address, President Obama says that the housing market is starting to heal, and now it’s time to build on that progress by creating a better bargain for responsible, middle class homeowners. The President announced steps he will take to strengthen the housing market, and now Congress must act to help make homeownership a source of pride and middle class security for generations to come.

Click here to watch this week's Weekly Address.

Seth's Blog : Why not give?

Why not give?

Not because it's the holidays or because you get a tax deduction.

Not because someone is going to match your funds or because your neighbor won't be able to enter a marathon if you don't.

Not because the kid is at the doorbell with those cookies or because it's pledge week.

And not because you read something that pulled your heartstrings.

Right now, for no good reason (and for every good reason), even if it's only $5. Pick whatever cause you care about. And tell a friend.

What if everyone did that, right now?

Generosity is its own reward. Go for it.

• Email to a friend •

luni, 12 august 2013

Custom Segments to Increase Sales

Custom Segments to Increase Sales

Attribution

Tracking form errors

Server side

Client side

Tracking email unsubscribers for content analysis

Logged in/out

Find the "whales"

Seth's Blog : Magic + Generosity = the brand crush

Magic + Generosity = the brand crush

More Recent Articles

duminică, 11 august 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : Marketing driven or Market driven?

Marketing driven or Market driven?

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 10 august 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

A Better Bargain for Responsible, Middle Class Homeowners

Seth's Blog : Why not give?

Why not give?

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 12 august 2013

Attribution

Tracking form errors

Server side

Client side

Tracking email unsubscribers for content analysis

Logged in/out

Find the "whales"

More Recent Articles

duminică, 11 august 2013

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 10 august 2013

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

Subscribe to