In July 1999, Chris Elwell, at the time the general manager and senior vice president of Jupitermedia, approached Danny Sullivan, then the founder-editor of Search Engine Watch, with the idea of sponsoring a conference focused on search engine marketing. Sullivan jumped at the chance, and the first Search Engine Strategy Convention was held in November 1999 in San Francisco. Both Elwell and Sullivan were thrilled when 300 people showed up for the inaugural SES, the first such show entirely dedicated to search engine marketing.
Though speakers no longer roller-skate on to the stage as Google's Sergey Brin did in 1999, the SES Conferences & Expo, in its 10th year, has grown into the SEM standard for industry insiders. The convention attract thousands of attendees from hundreds of companies large and small seeking to optimize their search campaigns, promote their products and services, network and cut deals and just schmooze with colleagues and competitors they would not otherwise get to see in person. On behalf of ECommerce-Guide.com, I attended the 2008 SES in New York City held in late March.
With the Conference starting on St Patrick's Day, one company sponsored a pub-crawl for Monday evening, actually e-mailing to invitees a map of the half-dozen or so Midtown bars on the tour. That and the slew of other parties aside, the SES Convention is serious business, with the week-long attendance fees at $1,900 for access to the Expo and over 60 presentations by leading players and companies in the SEM world. I sat in on the "Analytics: Data Into Action" seminar to save you the entry-fee.
Analytics always attracts a crowd, so we were not surprised when the 500-seat room filled to standing-room-only a half hour before the presentation began. Moderated by veteran SEM consultant Kevin Ryan, the speakers were Matt Bailey, president of Site Logic Marketing, and Steve Keller, director of marketing at Assurant Health.
Not all speakers are created equal, and Matt Bailey stands out as skilled, dynamic presenter. With an energetic voice that commands attention, Bailey's presentation was loaded with useful insights preceded by quotes and graphics with plenty of 'whiz-bang,' beginning with a paraphrasing of Socrates, "The Unexamined Web site is Not Worth Having," and moving on to graphics that included Captain Kirk's conquest rate of alien women to make certain points about how important it is to analyze and interpret raw data.
Studying Entry and Exit, Landing Pages a Priority All joking aside, Bailey of course provided use analytics advice and strategy:
Web analytics work best when measurement expectations are clearly defined in advance, not after the fact or on an ad-hoc basis," advised Bailey. This means a specific set of goals should be established in advance.
"Don't compare yourself to your competition," said Bailey, compare your site to itself, your visitors to your visitors. Comparing your site to your competition "will only tend to make you run your site like theirs — and they may be failing."
"Spend 10 percent on the product, 90 percent on the person." The best software in the world is useless if its quality is not matched by an analyst able to think outside of the box and convert the stats into 'actionable data.' Bailey advises analysts to spend the majority of their time analyzing data rather than tweaking their analytics software programs.
"Hits are cave man," yet another of Bailey's expressions, refers to his belief that counting hits is outdated in terms of understanding site performance. He also said that knowing the top 10 pages, keywords, path and page views is useless unless the information helps to identify trends.
Segmenting visitors is the best means of finding trends. Visitors from links will behave differently than 'cold' visitors. What are they looking for, their motivations, goals? You must have two conversion rates for the two types of visitors. You should also study the context of their behavior at the site, for instance by finding out how they were referred to your pages and what they did once they landed there.
"The home page is dead," said Bailey. There is no such thing as a home page anymore, Bailey tells us, meaning every page should function like a home page so that visitors are comfortable and able to quickly find whatever they want where ever they land on the site.
Regarding social media traffic, Bailey compares it to a sugar high: "There is a flurry of traffic that leaves as quickly as it starts, and sometimes there is less of a result than desired. Apart from the sheer volume of traffic, the link benefit might be of temporary benefit for rankings, but the volume and type of traffic are not helpful…" In short, social media is still maturing, so think twice before getting your site listed on Digg and the other social media properties.
Ad Copy can Convert Steve Keller of Assurant Health had a much different style than Bailey, more low-key, though just as insightful. He, too, started by offering a quote, from Einstein: "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."
At first Keller's presentation seemed a bit promotional in that he went on at length about Assurant Health, an insurance company with $25 billion in assets, but then it fell into place as he clearly, and with impressive candor, demonstrated how a huge company goes about its analytics.
Here are the highlights of Keller's tips and strategy points:
He advised e-tailers to establish a return on ad spend (ROAS) model. This can be done by determining an estimated customer value that must exceed the bid cost (a ratio of less than one to an ROAS is not worth doing.) In short, what is the amount you are willing to pay for the sale?
You must pay attendtion to ad copy. Understand the differences in CTR (click-through rate) and conversions occurring with different ad copy. Assurant found that "cheap," "low cost," "affordable" and ample use of the word "quality" in the copy, and the phrase "Official Site," work well. He also said that seasonal keywords do well. For instance, the phrase "college grads," works in summer when graduates began thinking about insurance. Small changes in copy can lead to dramatically improved conversions.
If installed properly, log file analysis provides extremely accurate data. Keller states that ClickTracks Analytics, dollar for dollar, is best at achieving segmentation.
It is important to study how quickly visitors leave a site so you can determine factors that contribute to poor quality traffic (visitors who don't buy or stay engaged on the site) and try to eliminate it as much as possible.
As opposed to just several months, use data going back a full year to determine when a trend will hit.
While Web analytics can be a complex and on-going challenge, you can reap benefits for your business by taking the time to at least cover the basics. For more information on seminars and training session being held throughout the summer in different cities, visit the SES site. You can view, for a fee, some of the SES workshops online by registering here. You can also register for SES Online Workshops at the site.
Frank Fortunato is a frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com.
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