When it comes to web analytics, there’s always more to learn, and the best place to learn is from your peers. The majority of my web analytics learning these days comes from a select group of web analytics masters. I’ve put together a Twitter list of people and organizations that I follow that I thought I’d share with you.

Web Analytics Twitter List  http://twitter.com/Bobbyhewitt/web-analytics

If you follow any let them know I sent you and happy learning.

In no particular order:
@Madison_metrix, @lunametrics, @brianclifton, @jonnylongden, @vkistudios, @immeria, @webtrends, @omniture, @jimsterne, @garyangel, @jimnovo, @erictpeterson, @googleanlytics, @YwebAnalytics, @waworld, @WAAorg, @anvinashkaushik

If you know of any other great web analytics gurus to follow on Twitter, please leave their @handle in the comments, I’m always looking to expland my knowledge and i’m sure the Creative Thirst blog community would appreciate it also.

YouTube Insight, is the new Free web analytics tools that reports context for online videos. This will fundamentally change the way videos are used as a marketing tool on the web and is a major leap for web analytics, thank you Google.

Anyone with a YouTube account can view video analytics that they’ve uploaded, just by clicking on the “About this Video” link under My account > Manage my Videos > Videos, Favorites & Playlists for your uploaded videos.

• How often are your videos viewed?
• What geographic regions have viewed your video?
• How popular is your video is relative to all videos in the market over a given time?
• How long does it take for a video on YouTube to become popular?
• What happens to views as your popularity peaks?

Right now the tool is only showing Views and Popularity broken down by country or USA State but new features will be available soon according to YouTube. The insights and learning that marketers can gain from this new analytics tool could very well change the game entirely. Perhaps this is one step closer to understanding how viral videos really work and how to make them more effective and how video can be designed persuasively.

If you’re not using web analytics to continuously learn and improve your website’s marketing results you’re marketing with a bag over your head.

The problem with analytics in most companies is that they don’t know what to do with all the data they can pull from the plethora of robust web analytics vendors on the market.

Where should online marketers start? Page views, unique visitors, leads, top exit pages, etc. it can all be overwhelming and daunting just to stay on top of and report much less use all of that information to improve your marketing results and be the superstar of the next Monday morning meeting.

The data in and of itself is useless, unless you:

1. Establish Key Performance Indicators that are aligned with your unique business bottom line goals.
2. Have a plan to produce measurable results from your web analytics.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) allow you to see at a glance the current state of your web site as it relates to your specific business. Each business is different and requires a unique set of KPI’s that are relevant to achieving the business objectives you’re accountable for.

Your KPI’s are directly tied to a continuous improvement process. The measurement of your desired results against current conditions and changing the direction of ebbs and flows over time to increase your results is what the continuous improvement process is all about. Success in optimizing your web site is based on incremental and constant improvements. A website, unlike print collateral is never really finished. Web design is organic and flows back and forth constantly improving and learning from your unique visitors.

The combination of web analytics and persuasive web design is where measurable results are formed. Persuasive web design guides users, influences human behavior and motivates your visitors to take action that is measurable through web analytics.

Persuasive design is both visual and verbal. Visual persuasion successfully guides your visitors through your site by using persuasive principals to compel visitors to take more action more often. Some ways visual persuasion accomplishes this is by removing roadblocks, improving visual communication and enhancing the usability of your site resulting in a better user experience with your company brand and your website.
Verbal persuasion provides the right content at the right time in the right way to effectively encourage visitors to take action on your site. Content on your site designed around a persuasive path touches on a visual mental image within the imagination of your prospects. Compelling verbs, attention-grabbing nouns and spell binding adjectives will pull your readers through a persuasive pathway, at each step bringing them closer to closing the action that meets your business goals.

Do all customers have the same value? Sure everyone’s money may be good inside of an ecommerce shopping cart but are some customers more equal than others?
It would certainly seem every customer is equal on the web right? After all we’re all hiding behind a few mouse clicks. Just imagine what it would be like if marketers knew that some customers were more valuable than others. Now of course we all know that it takes less marketing dollars and less effort to increase sales for existing customers than it does to get new customers but what if the value of each customer was dynamic and it changed all the time.

Well actually it does if you think of it in terms of a buying funnel.
1. Need - the process by which a need is determined and identified.
2. Awareness - determining what solution will satisfy the need.
3. Research / Consideration - gathering of information to proceed with a purchase. Determining which solution will best meet the requirements and satisfy the need.
4. Decision - finalizing the details, including pricing and solution support.
5. Rationalization - qualifying the purchase after the fact. Was the correct choice made in the selection process?

The further a customer goes down the funnel the more valuable they become because they are getting closer and closer to a purchase. The size of a market segment further down the funnel is much smaller however but the value is much greater. Media buyers have always based campaigns on the size of the segment, how many eyeballs see an ad, and online media has been guilty of this as well. There is been a marketing allure to 435,000 views but what does that really mean to marketers? If only 100 people walked through your door and all them bought, signed up, converted, etc. isn’t that better than 1000 people showing up and 999 of those people leaving after hearing your offer? If this is the case it’s just a matter of finding the right people or attracting them.

Before a potential customer enters the funnel they are not interested or they don’t even know they need for your product. Marketing has handled this in a traditional approaching through mass media. At this stage the value of the customer to the retailer is at it’s weakest yet this is where most of the marketing effort is, i.e the 30 second spot, etc.

An interested buyer at the research / consideration level, obviously has a greater value than someone at the top of the funnel. Just ask any car salesman who pounces on some poor schlep that just finished a test drive.

Online it is possible to orchestrate a users pathway and optimize it for persuasion. Think of your website as the buying funnel. The further a user gets into the site the more valuable they become which means you have an opportunity to market to them differently the further along they are.

A website provides the potential to focus on different messages to different segments of your market in many different ways, for example.

• Customer database email lists – different messages to different groups, one to one marketing approach.
• Product selector tools – lead a visitor down paths based on what is important to that individual visitor with a unique message at the end and along the way of that path which speaks directly to that segment. (being able to talk differently to people who are at different stages of the buying process.
• Customer segmentation based on type of customer.

Persuasive design combines with performance metrics tracked across different customer segments allow for rapid adjustments and continuous improvements which maximize the value of each individual group, by increasing the value across each segment more value is brought to the consumer and also the business profit and brand, the costs of efficiently targeting each segment online are minimal at best after all there are no print costs, or distribution costs associated with a web page. Therefore the size of the customer segment is of less importance producing a long tail effect for the marketer.

In today’s fast paced world of content hungry intelligent consumers who have seen every marketing gimmick out there it is becoming increasingly difficult to successfully sell your products and services. Marketers need to constantly innovate and connect with their customers on deeper levels across the entire relationship of consumer to company. A long term approach to marketing communication is the key to achieving this. Usually when the marketing message begins to slip, if a company is even lucky enough to keep a tight view on analytics long enough to determine it has slipped that is, the first reaction is always the same, “Let’s get a new agency, we need some fresh blood.” This knee jerk reaction is based on the idea, at least subconsciously that success happens in creative sprits thus it must be time to find new creative to put some new life into marketing.

Success however doesn’t work this way. Success is more of a series of continual improvements over time rather than a short sprint.

Jim Sterne – wrote in his book, Advanced Email Marketing:

“The secret to truly successful marketing is actionable measurement. Measuring your results alone isn’t enough; the key is feeding them back into your sales and marketing process to make continuous improvements. Many marketing projects fail in this regard.”

This is the basis for the continual improvement process which makes small improvements overtime, learning from each success and failure with each improvement. These small and consistent improvements in design, ad copy and web usability have a much larger impact than wiping the slate clean and starting with a fresh agency.

The first step in the practice of implementing a continual improvement process if to define your business goals, which was discussed in another blog post. Once a clear definition of success has been squared away you will need to be able to know what your current situation is in the form of measurable metrics by defining what key performance indicators are important to your unique business goals. Your key performance indicators need to be constantly measured so that your current conditions can be compared against your desired results. Without knowing the distance of this gap there’s no way of knowing how far design will need to jump to get you to the other side.

The Internet more than any other medium lends itself to measure ability, perhaps because of the availability of immediate information one can get on web site visitors with products like click tracks, google analytics and webtrends in the form of analytics. In this fast paced world it is increasingly important to generate results in less time, and there is no better method for doing that that to leverage design and analytics.

Web analytics is the analysis of how visitors use a web site. Once visitor data has been collected, analyzed and measured over time against clearly defined goals for your specific web site, design can be used to convert analytics into actionable results through a continual improvement process. Design can then become empowered through analysis and user testing; metrics can provide insight on the success of an online strategy.

Several factors including design and usability to name a few impact a users experience with your site, product, message and brand. By minimizing the guess work and combining analysis of visitor behavior over time design improvements can continually advance specific key metrics that are important to your business model and your success.

The true value of design is in it’s effectiveness in meeting the desired business goals. Improving communication as a result of better design means a web user can be impelled to act more often ensuing higher returns to your bottom line.