My First Podcast

Hey everybody, so I've just began a new course in the Digital Marketing program here at West Virginia University called Digital Video Production. So far I love the hands on nature of the class. I'm having a lot of fun tinkering around with new programs and getting the chance to be creative with my assignments.

Here is my first podcast reviewing the Kindle Fire. Our assignment was: "Create a 2-3 minute podcast describing one of your favorite products. Tell a story about the product, brand or company. Give a personal example of why you love it. For example, I love my new iPhone so much I could go on and on about what makes it unique and useful. Be creative. Mix it up. Add music and/or other audio tracks from your own personal iTunes/mp3 files or audiojungle.net."

Disney and Web Analytics

For a company that has been around since 1923, I am sure everyone is familiar with the company we have grown to love and cherish, Disney. I automatically envision the shaky black and white cartoon of Steamboat Willie followed by a stream of other iconic images. Through the years, Disney has transformed itself in the entertainment industry through making movies, theme parks, resorts, and a mass amount of merchandise. 

Because of this rapid expansion, the internet plays an essential key role in the furthering of Disney’s evolution and success. Behind the show curtain of all of Disney web pages and applications waits the web analytics. In this post, I will discuss how and why Disney uses web analytics to collect information about their online users along with other key topics.

With all the separate entities owned by Disney (ESPN, ABC, Marvel Entertainment, etc.) you may be wondering how does Disney do it all? According to Ross McDonnell , who works with Disney Online, Disney primarily uses Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite of products for online reporting. McDonnell explains that they also use “an array of other tools for specific purposes, such as for in-game analytics, electronic panel measurement data for competitive intelligence and survey software for Voice of Customer data”.

To be more specific, a tool that has been openly advertised as “used by Disney” is SEOmoz. SEOmoz checks up on your website every week to figure out what the SEO tactics are doing and if they are working to meet goals. Using a tool like SEOmoz will also give your insights on the performance of specific keywords with advice on how to shift the SEO approach. Unlike its other search engine optimization competitors, G Shift Labs and Raven Tools, SEOmoz offers something called Open Site Explorer, which measures how many inbound links your competition gets. 

In 2007, Disney utilized Omniture, a leading provider of online business optimization software. Omniture’s CEO and co founder Josh James remarked saying:

“Omniture has always focused on and been very successful in serving the largest and most complex sites on the Web, and our unique experience in providing services and solutions to enterprise-class companies has prepared us to meet the Walt Disney Internet Group's needs and help them take advantage of opportunities to provide their customers with a world-class online experience."

• Registration information: Provided when a user creates an account. This includes a first name and surname, country of residence, gender, date of birth, email address, username and password

• Transaction information:  The user provides this when they request information or purchase a product or service. This information is shared on Disney’s varying sites or through applications, and includes a postal address, telephone number and payment information.

•  Public Forum information: anything a user creates on public forums based off Disney sites and applications.

• Communication: Information that is sent either to an individual or within a limited group using Disney’s message, chat, post or similar functionality. Interestingly enough, Disney is permitted by law to collect this information.

• Location information is used when one visits Disney sites or uses an application. This category also includes using a mobile device that is interacting with a sites or applications, or associated with the users’ IP address. Usage, viewing and technical data are collected using the IP address upon site visitation and application usage, or open emails Disney sends.

• Consumer information is gathered through technology (cookies), Flash cookies and Web beacons. Certain informative elements are acquired through other trusted sources to update or supplement the information already provided.

When it comes to managing the web analytics of such an extensive company such as Disney, it is going to take the hard work of a large team with each member focusing on their area of expertise. In addition, the amount of funding for web analytics will determine which tools are the right ones for the job. In Disney’s case both Omniture and SEOmoz are two excellent options for keeping track of their online power houses. Both tools offer extensive services that would benefit a large corporate company. This being said, I do not have any advice as to what tools would be better than what they are already using.

Types of Information Collected

There are two types of information that Disney collects - personal information and anonymous information. Both sets of information may be used and to create a third type of information that they call “aggregate information”.

Third Party information: Users provide this when using Disney sites and applications, applications on third-party sites or platforms such as social networking sites, or link their profile on a third-party site or platform with a registration account. Think of entering a contest for Disney using Facebook and you are required to enter through an application. Disney will have access to your profile information and anything you may fill out during the entry process.

How Your Information Is Used

• Provide consumers with products and services
• Communicate about account/transactions, send consumers information about features on the websites/applications or changes to policies
• Sending offers and promotions for products and services or third-party products and services
• Personalize content and experiences on our sites and applications
• Providing appropriate advertising based on user activity while online
• Improving products, services and operations

When I chose to analyze Disney, I realized that the bullets listed above may  not make sense to all audiences, and by this I am referring to children. Children make up a huge part of Disney’s demographic. Though they are not the primary audience when it comes to online retailing, they are still a force to be reckoned with and for this, there are specific guidelines that cover their safety. Some of the features on Disney’s sites and applications are age-gated so that they are not available for use by children. If information is collected by the falsifying of information, it is unknowingly done so.

Additional steps to protect children’s privacy include:

• Notifying parents about our information ( the types of personal information we may collect from children, the uses to which we may put that information, and whether and with whom we may share that information).
• Obtaining consent from parents for the collection of personal information from their children, or for sending information about our products and services directly to their children
• Limiting our collection of personal information from children to no more than is reasonably necessary to participate in an online activity
• Giving parents access or the ability to request access to personal information collected from their children and the ability to request that the personal information be changed or deleted

Understanding Google Goals, Filters, and Funnels

Before I begin to analyze Google goals, funnels, and filters, I would like to share this video I stumbled across through my research. If you are new to the Google Analytics game like me, you will appreciate how Google explains the concepts of goals, funnels, and filters. Because let’s face it. Rarely do retail sites have a one stop landing page. This is why using filters and funnels are important. They take the web user through a process to get to the ultimate destination.

Google Goals

Google Analytics goals can be defined as a means to measure business objectives, reports and improve on them.  Goals are essential for any business to function. Types of goals differ from business to business depending on the industry. Since we live in a technology centered society, nearly any business of any type can benefit from using Google Goals. Within Google Analytics, users have the ability to setup a specific action orinteraction that can be used to calculate the flow of users within the site. Google Analytics makes setting up these goals pretty simple. First off, when thinking of what final outcome you would like to accomplish, refer to the most common set of goals for E-commerce:

• Did the visitor search for something?
• Did they add it to their cart?
• Did they buy it?

Avinash Kaushik (2010) suggests you break goals into two types, Macro and Micro conversions, allowing the understanding on priority of the goals. Keep in mind that not every business’s site has a shopping cart, so one must think strategically on how to utilize Google Goals to meet the needs of their consumer. An example of the non- retail website could be a travel advice site. The travel agency may come up with a goal of getting users to use a tool, like a quick search feature. Other questions one might ask when determining what their goals should be include:

• What information is most important for you to track? Is this just for knowledge, or for potential changes of how your website flows?
• What are you expecting your visitors to do once they reach your website?
• What is considered “successful” to you? Completing a purchase, long periods viewing your site, newsletter sign-ups, 10+ total page views, etc?
• Could you change anything in your design to influence visitors towards completing these goals faster/easier?

When it comes to setting up Google Goals, there are endless amounts of combinations. A few key goals that beginning businesses should make sure to have are: tracking new account openings, tracking sales, and tracking comments. 

Tracking new account openings are crucial to keeping loyal customers. It is great that a user wants to give their information to a company and create that customer tie, but if the process is difficult then the chances of any memberships are doomed. Companies can use the tracking of new account openings to analyze the success of the initial information form (is it too long or is the captcha too difficult?).

Though tracking sales is an end goal, it is important because it demonstrates if the shopping process was a success. It might be difficult, but Ran Nir (2009) advises to include every step a user might take to better understand where to improve.

Tracking comments is mostly used on blogs or customer reviews. This goal helps determine what content is good and what content is bad. Like any social site, engagement tracking is key. Similarly to tracking new accounts, businesses can use the track comments feature to ensure that users are not encountering any technical problems that will hinder them from joining in on the conversation.

Google Funnels

Adding funnels will provide much more purpose if your goals require a set of intended paths. You can setup funnels or just a single step funnel which Google Analytics can use to create a goal. The key is to understand what users having been doing, in what order and trying to get an understanding on the value generated to the business of their visit..

If using a pay per click campaign, funnels are extremely helpful. After setting up Google Analytics Funnels within the pay per click campaign, you can use the information gathered about customer behavior so that the necessary changes are made to increase the success of the campaign. These changes will also increase the conversion rate and keep potential clients in the conversion process until the very last step.

Google Filters

Filters are applied to the information coming into your account, to manipulate the final data in order to provide accurate reports (P.I. Reed, Successful Approaches in Google Analytics, p. 1).  Choosing what filters to use depends on the site that is operating. For example, a college university web site may want to know what demographic is viewing their site that is not on campus students. These could be future students searching for specific programs, clubs, or an application.  In order for the university to track what non students are visiting their site, they would need to set up a filter that excludes a specific list of IP addresses.  To get even more specific, the university could also set up a country/region filter. This kind of filter would allow them to view where future students are currently living. Knowing this information could lead to a stronger marketing focus toward the most popular geographic location which could result in a higher attendance rate. 

A more advanced filter that I prefer to use on my personal site is the Full Refferal URL filter. This filter expands on the exact page on what site referred a user to your website. Though it’s nice knowing your top referral sites (Facebook.com, Blogger.com, etc.), pinpointing the exact page that links your site with a partnering site says something about where your demographic is spending their time and what element might have drawn them to visiting your site.

Conclusion

Though the terms funnels and filters may get confusing, it is important to be able to distinguish the difference of their functions because there is so much information that they bring to the table. Whether you are using funnels and filters to view what content is working or to track glitches in your web site, their purpose is to help.  

Taking Action with Google Analytics

There are several reports and metrics from Google Analytics that have helped me get a better idea as to what content goes onto my website and how it is presented. Below are a few of my preferred reports that have helped me alter areas around my site. Keep in mind that I have only just begun experimenting with the tools Google Analytics has to offer. This report only skims the surface of a vast ocean of information.

Unique Visits

It is interesting to see the amount of unique visits versus returning visitors. Google defines Unique Visitors as a cookie or a piece of data. This means that for every time a visitor visits a site Google Analytics checks for the cookie. If the cookie exists then GA knows the visitor has been to the site before. If the cookie does not exist GA sets the cookie and increases the unique visitor count. Since the majority of traffic consists of unique visitors outnumbering returning visitors, it is possible that this can be a processing issue. Or these results show that the reason returning visitors are so low in comparison is because of lack of advertising, word of mouth referrals, or lack of content.

Traffic Sources – Referral

Evaluating a website’s referral pages is easily done and essential to knowing what sources are giving your site traffic. GA shows a list of traffic referrers ranking them by most frequent visits. This data can be interpreted that tagged key words and photos linked to Google images are drawing new users to the site. Knowing where your traffic came from gives you an idea of where your target audience spends their free time. 

For example, my top referrer is Facebook. This makes sense because of I am broadcasting updates to a large audience who I have personal connections with. Seeing that the Facebook audience has visited my blog tells me that they are information seekers who like to learn through social activity. They did not search out the site, it was there waiting for them on their newsfeed.

Traffic Sources – Social Network Referrals

By examining the amount of visits from a social network, one can determine the interest level of the audience. If content is presented differently depending on the social networking platform, the amount of success from each network can determine if the company is using the channel to its maximum potential.

Jonathan Mumm of Banyan Branch Social says that tracking social network activity can be quite the challenge through Google Analytics because Google Analytics treats links clicked from Twitter and Facebook like a normal referral link source and URL shorteners appear as “Direct/None” traffic.  Mumm continues to recommend that using Segments can help improve the tracking of social media while still using Google Analytics. The benefits of using Segments are that Segments do not change any of your incoming data and they are easy to create and modify at any time. Segments allow for the analysis of historical data. One important factor to keep in mind is that Segments do not pull in any additional data, they use what Google Analytics already has and presents it in a different format.

Another method to track social media activity is using a custom campaign tag to the links shared on social networking sites. These campaign tags allow for Google Analytics to increase insights as to how well various social networking site presences are working for the campaign. GA offers users a custom URL builder, which allows for the creation of links for each of the assigned campaign.

Once the campaign tags are set, Google Analytics then give more information based on how people use your customized links. By knowing how the links are being used, one can gain And gain a better understanding of referral traffic and adjust the social media marketing for ideal results..

Traffic Sources – Keywords

Through analyzing the set of key words or phrases searched by users, one can gather what topics are of interest to the target audience. This metric can help businesses determine what key phrases to use in search engine optimization campaigns, like Google Adwords.

Behavior - Frequency and Recency

Marketing consultant Andrew Edwards says “Frequency and Recency are important because this is how you begin to understand how “interesting” your site is to the folks who visit." While the difference between Frequency and Recency can be confusing, David Crankshaw has helped me understand it better saying, “The Recency report measures the time between a visit and the immediate prior visit.  The Recency report does not distinguish between visitors who came to your site many times and those who came by fewer times. That’s the job of the Frequency report”.

Upon analyzing the Frequency and Recency report on my site, it can be seen that the users’ activity is more frequent and they do not wait long before returning to the site. This tells me that I should update content more frequently in order to increase engagement levels.

Demographic – Location – City

Knowing where your audience lives can aid any business or individual with targeting their website or altering its content. Google Analytics shows a list of cities that reveals the site’s demographic. The city that visits my site the most is Morgantown. My reasoning behind why this is the highest number is because I have posted about local Morgantown businesses and several of my followers on social media platforms currently live in Morgantown.  

To conclude, Google Analytics offers a wealth of information for potentially any type of business. It is always a good idea for businesses to listen in on what their consumers are saying and doing in order to improve upon their business practice. The combined use of tools and report ultimately depends on the specific goals of the company.

Key Words Are Crucial

(via webseoanalytics.com)

Using Google AdWords and Facebook Ads are two ways to appeal to a mass market. Though both services are useful, each serves a specific purpose that differs from one another. Three Ships Media describes AdWords as “The Library” and Facebook Ads as “The Party”. A consumer may genuinely want all kinds of information on a product and Google AdWords provides them with just that. Facebook Ads encourage engagement whether it is on the company’s Facebook page or official website. Companies using Facebook tend to focus on the engagement element leading consumers to a purchase.

To begin a fair analysis and description of each tool, I will start by taking a look at where the ads are placed from the viewer’s perspective.

Determining Goals: Content Vs. Conversation

( via acidlabs.org )

Before deciding the type of content a site should display, it is essential for companies to listen to the conversations of their target audience. Listening to the voices of the consumer will help generate the appropriate content to set a website apart from its competitors. While engaging in conversations with consumers is important for a company’s personal voice, it can only do so much without persuasive content. Blogger Nathan Pieratt says “Effective content has energy. It has passion and an agenda to spur a response from the reader. It is the energy behind the message that is important because it will drive consumer engagement and that creates a more personal experience with the reader”.

Entertaining and Engaging: Increasing Online Visitor Duration

( via sixrevisions.com )

When it comes to studying different web metrics, I find one of the most intriguing areas to be visitor duration. The amount of time a user spends on a specific site can say several things about the company, their message, and how that message is being portrayed through their website. Though companies fear short visitor durations because they insinuate that the customer was not interested in exploring all the areas their site may offer, long durations can be just as damaging. When a user is on a website for an exceptionally long period of time this may mean that they are lost and cannot find the information they originally sought out to find. Long visitor durations may prove that a site needs to adjust areas in its design layout and content. After experiencing a long visit with no ending results, a consumer may avoid going to the website again for whatever the reason (lack of organization, lack of content, poor design, slow loading, etc.) and the brand image will be tarnished. In the end, a lot can be learned from looking into visitor duration -the most important factor being a company or brand’s reputation.

A Friendlier Web: FOAF

“When we stand back and look at the Web and at history, the idea of humanity forming a single interconnected Web makes more and more sense" - Dan Brickley, founder of FOAF. Creating a single interconnected web is the goal of Friend of a Friend software (FOAF).

The software’s purpose is to gather self-submitted information about your friends' taste in music, food, vacation spots, etc. which results in making  suggestions as to what you might also like. According to FOAF founders Dan Brickley and Libby Miller: “The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do”.  The entire idea surrounding this concept fascinates me as I see how it can be used for business.