Handmaidens tale

Few marketers dispute the wisdom of Carly Fiorina’s quote above — but when it comes to transforming data into valuable insights, the question is often where to look to find this data. Analytics platforms offer entire worlds of detail for our interpretation, and in one corner of the Google Analytics universe that’s well worth exploring, you’ll find the Multi-Channel Funnel (MCF) reports. The MCF tab of Google Analytics strictly represents those sessions that have ultimately resulted in a conversion, which means that your insights will solely be based off converted traffic. Chapters could be authored on the uses of the Assisted Conversions, Time Lag, and Path Length reports, but this article focuses on the application of your Top Conversion Path report, my favorite of the MCF reports. About The Top Conversion Paths Report This report is hands down one of my most treasured possessions when it comes to evaluating the multi-channel pathways of your users. The … [Read more...] about 2 Tales Of Clarity Using Google Analytics’ Multi-Channel Funnel Reporting

In the last few articles, we focused on minimums of keyword research and measuring performance, and now we can extend that process to budgeting. With search budgets, especially for paid search, we have three different options for budgeting. As the fairly tale goes, Goldilocks samples each of the bowls of porridge to see which was the right one for her. In developing our global search budget, we need to build our same three bowls, and lets call these bowls of budget could, should and would. Since they are a global brand, they set a benchmark of 80% share-of-voice from a combination of paid and organic. We pulled search volume from data from Google resulting in over 850 million keyword searches a month for this portfolio of keywords. We went on to replicate this exercise for fourteen countries with various edits. Starting with deleting products not sold in the market, then adjusting for language and buy cycle nuances such as multiple keywords, varied purchase cycles and English local … [Read more...] about The Tale Of Goldilocks & Global Search Budgeting

Whenever I’m asked what usability is, I get tongue tied. “It’s about humans and computers,” I may say, but they’ll picture robots and talking cars. “I help make web sites that work,” is closer, but vague because technically, if it’s on the Internet, it’s working. Then I’ll hear myself try to make it clearer by bringing up the “abilities”, such as credibility, understandability, accessibility and findability. Of them, the most nods vote for understandability. It’s in our nature that we all want to be understood. We each want that something that fits us just right. We all want…. A Website Usability Fairy Tale Once upon a time, a long time ago, but shortly after animation and Adobe Flash were born, there lived in the deepest, lushest jungle of suburban homes outside the quaint town of Webby Hollow a lovely family called the Allaboutus’s. Everyone in town knew the Allaboutus family, because it was, … [Read more...] about Does This Website Usability Fairy Tale Have A Happy Ending?

Sites around second-hand car sales tend to be heavily invested in online. However, due to tired legacy e-commerce platforms and challenging listing issues, sometimes their SEO problems can add up to massive traffic and conversion headaches. Today, I’ll take a walk though some of the more painful issues for site architecture and their solutions. Local Dealerships & Indexing Woe Let’s start with a quick look the UK’s largest second-hand car listing site: Autotrader. With 3.6 million indexed Google listings, you’d expect every car type possible in their inventory — and you wouldn’t be far off! But when you kick the tires (sorry!) on their local dealership subdomain, razsor.autotrader.co.uk, you’ll find a confusing blend of 200 Page OK header responses, 301 redirects, and 302 redirects. The upshot is that these pages should all be 301 redirecting to local dealership sites, but this is not happening consistently. As a result, Google is failing … [Read more...] about Used Car Sales & SEO: Two Tales Of Woe

Heal’s has been designing, making and selling quality furniture since 1810. Periscopix has been working with them for many years now to drive their digital strategy forward. Testing generic keywords can be troublesome for any client, but those that sell high-end products can find it even more difficult. Before Product Listing Ads/Google Shopping, Heal’s was spending most of its marketing budget on search text ads, trying to capture consumers who weren’t looking directly for their brand. Today’s article showcases the company’s transition to pushing more of its budget into Google Shopping and the measures of success it has seen from this transition. The Story So Far… The Heal’s strategy has always on brand terms and generic terms, including product categories, brands and items through standard search text ad advertising. In January 2013, Product Listing Ads (now Google Shopping) were launched in the account, and the battle for where was best to … [Read more...] about A Tale Of 2 Ad Types, Text Vs. Shopping