Part 1. Using web analytics to benchmark website performance and drive insight through data

This is the first in a 12 part series on website optimisation to boost natural search traffic.  The series started in 2011 and will continue into 2012. We're featuring it as a part of a series of posts about optimising marketing in 2012. You can see all my posts in the series here. I hope these articles will provide you with a solid framework to review and improve your current approaches to SEO or to apply SEO to a new site. I've discussed this advice with Dave Chaffey and Dan Barker who write for Smart Insights too, so I'd like to thank them for their input. As this data on site visitor traffic sources shows, search engines are still one of the major drivers of visitor traffic to sites, so there's good potential for driving more visitors…

An interview on best practice Ecommerce analytics techniques with Dan Barker

Much of what's written about successful Ecommerce sites focuses on the big brands we all know like Amazon, Argos and Asos. But within each sector of retail, there are many Ecommerce outfits outside of the spotlight - some very successful, some looking to improve practice. With this in mind, I have been looking for a while to hook-up with an Ecommerce specialist who understands the ingredients for success. In this interview, I'm pleased to introduce Dan Barker who manages Ecommerce for two companies (B2B and B2C) operating in the Children's products sector. Some of you may know Dan for his willingness to offer detailed advice via Twitter and digital marketing blogs - he's also a regular contributor on Smart Insights and also writes his own blog. We're republishing this post from March 2010 as a refresher for Jan 2012 as part…

wherever in the world you are...

We're about to take a bit of a break, so we thought we'd say "Hope you enjoy your break". I'd also like to say a big "thanks" to all who have shared ideas on marketing better through posts, comments and shares over the year. We're looking forward to sharing more of the latest insights with your help next year. We would also like to thank all the talented folk who worked hard to create the new SmartInsights.com including designers Anna Weaver and Chris Leach of First 10, Paul Rouke of usability company PRWD, plus James Wray and Alasdair Wightman. Thanks guys!

Introducing Clicky Analytics

We've covered a lot of tools to help with analysis and planning, so will end the year with one more recommendation. Since we've launched the new site we've started using the excellent Clicky alongside Google Analytics. Here's an idea of where our site visitors are…

In our previous guidance notes on solutions to comply with the "cookie law" we have covered: A cookie-free analytics system The Cookie Collective cookie audit and toolbar toolkit In this article Tim Gurney of Wolf Software takes us through his cookie privacy software solution which uses a modal dialog similar to the one below. Thanks for your detailed response Tim! We think it's great this has been made available as a fee free solution if the Wolf Software brand mark is shown - a good option for SMEs? For larger companies the system can use the companies own brand ident for a fee. This is an example of a un-tailored implementation:

Question 1. Please describe your solution to cookie opt-in compliance?

Our current solution evolved from our original standalone solution for Google Analytics. This provided a simple drop in compliance solution specifically…

6 E-CRM Trends to consider for 2012 planning

I've recently asked several CRM specialists including Paul Greenberg and Shaun Smith to describe how they see the key ECRM trends from 2011 which will also be important in 2012. I've picked out 5 key trends

E-CRM Trend 1. Brands as curators

Shaun Smith, founder of Smith+co believes there are a number of innovations that have become more popular this year as businesses seek to deliver deeper customer experiences. This includes brands positioning themselves as curators to ensure that they provide added value to their customers. “Increasingly, brands that are really clear about what they stand for have the credibility and the authority to be able to recommend other things associated with that brand,” he explains. “So Nike, for example, has an app called True City that will recommend all the best places to go to in a city you are unfamiliar with. If you like driving, BMW…

Our interview with Richard Beaumont of the Cookie Collective

This is our second look at a technology solution to help marketers comply with the new "cookie law". This was the first - an interview about a cookie free analytics system. The Cookie Collective have created a toolkit which can help site owners do a free cookie audit and place a consent message on the site giving information about cookies. This is how the consent message looks for the Cookie Collective script: So, onto the questions, thanks to Richard for his clear responses.

Question 1. What solutions do you have to help marketers many compliance with the EU directive relating to cookies?

The Cookie Collective wanted to create a complete end to end service enabling any website to become compliant with the new law, and we have built a suite of products to achieve this. The…

An interview with Oliver Birleson of Maxsi Limited

Following on from our posts and discussions on how to best implement the cookie law by May 2012, we're going to take a look at some of the technology and consulting solutions available to help marketers comply. Our first post is an interview with Oliver Birleson of MaxSi Limited who are offering a cookie free analytics system based on their established eVisitAnalyst product.

Question: Why have you developed your solution?

We have developed eVisit Analyst 8 due to the demand for an analytics system which retains optimal functionalisation regardless of whether or not visitors have disabled cookies. Moreover, as the Information Commissioner's Office have deemed analytics as 'non-essential' cookies, there is the need for an analytics system that is not reliant upon visitors giving their positive consent to store cookies. Users of eVisit can therefore have an analytics system which does not fluctuate dependant…

5 Examples of Facebook Brand Pages to learn from 

As marketers constantly look for better ways to use social media to engage with customers and generate positive word-of-mouth and sentiment, a well-designed, thought-out Facebook page is a key platform to target consumers. Facebook brand pages can offer businesses, both large and small, an excellent opportunity to create a presence and a brand experience, but only if this experience is well planned and executed. In this post I'll look at some examples of companies that I think have created a great experience on Facebook that fits their brand well. I hope these "best practices" give some ideas of improvements that could work for your Facebook presence.  These examples all show these key ingredients of a great Facebook brand page including: A clear objective and raison d'être for the page A good, professional design which is consistent with all other marketing communications An impactful welcome page with a clear…

A simple way to compare the engagement of customers on email and social networks

In 2009, Dave Chaffey wrote a blog post on Smart Insights in which he introduced the concept of the EFT Ratio. EFT stands for Email: Facebook: Twitter Ratio and, as an example, he used ASOS. Dave was explaining that, at the time, it showed how email gave a capacity to reach many more customers with tailored messages. It also showed how ASOS used Email for a combination of engagement and driving sales as shown by their current email signup page:

ASOS EFT ratio

I thought it would be interesting to see how this looked today since ASOS has been very active in social media marketing. This is how it looks: 2009 ASOS EFT was 100 Email : 8 Facebook : 1 Twitter This was calculated from a total of two million…

A B2B case study (with learnings for B2C too)

Here's an interesting case study about how Eloqua ran a project on Facebook company page optimisation. We've summarised some tips based on this project run by BrandGlue, which grew the Eloqua Fan page by 2,500 percent, increased Facebook-referred traffic by 150% and increased Fan engagement to about 3x industry averages. The creative was executed by JESS3 and PageLever supplied the data. These are main learnings we took from the case: 1. Know Facebook's "Golden ratio" The overall Facebook ratio for status updates is: 27% have a comment 73% have a like The study show the breakdown for B2B and B2C; they're similar: 2. Start by stopping. If you fall behind this target avoid: Declarative status updates Text-only status updates Inconsistent posts Repetitive topics Back-to-back frequency Don't forget referral sources - 92% of referrals within Facebook…