Last night I attended my first IDM event even though I’ve been a member of them for about a year now – actually it was a very timely piece of eDM that made me aware of the event so I guess from that point of view they know their stuff!

Entitled Emerging Digital Trends it had two speakers from very different areas, David Walmsley, Head of Web Selling, John Lewis and Katie Smith, Head of Digital Media, Macmillan Cancer support.

In addition to the two speakers there were also quite a large number of delegates from agency, client and consultancy sides, and I was pretty surprised at the turn out to be honest – pretty impressive.

When I write up events or conferences like this I tend to take short notes during the session itself and then blog it up on the train ride home – like I am doing now – so these are my interpretation of the event and obviously not official notes from the session itself.  Just to clarify…

…So, David spoke first, and went into some detail about what John Lewis have been looking into recently, and what challenges they have faced, and, looking forwards, what trends he sees that as a digital retailer could be important.

David started his talk on the subject of behavioural targetting, and how in terms of both email marketing and website strategy, John lewis have been paying this field a lot of attention.  As we converge in the digital and physical space he commented that in the future, he sees that in many ways our offline lives will be lived online – in as much as things we now take for granted as being not connected to the digital or online world will in fact become connected – but we won’t notice it.

He gave an example of how behavioural targetting is very easy to do in some ways, but it’s also easy to get wrong – using an amazon homepage example of when he bought his wife a Davina Yoga DVD, and for the next two weeks got nothing but Yoga DVDs on his custom amazon page (we’ve all been there David!)

With regard to a lot of the ad network behavioural targetting (BT) that is being offered by some of the biggest players at the moment, he thinks that it’s not really true BT in the strictest sense, but almost like a proxy via technology to really basic segmentation strategy based on the type of websites and nothing to do with behaviour itself.

In terms of email marketing, he’s been looking at RFM recently (Recency-Frequency-Monetary) and how it can be used to segment email lists and target consumers – but this on it’s own isn’t enough – and he believes that by overlaying BT on top of RFM you can actually end up with some very useful segmentations and targetting for your eDM comms.

For the website itself, he has looked into how they can replicate the excellent customer service they deliver in-store through their partners (I love how all John Lewis staff are partners personally!) within the digital environment – and he believes it’s pretty hard to do – but tools like basket analysis, post-basket contact, etc., can help to go towards that (would love to discuss this some more).

He also mentioned that goal tracking during user journeys was very key and also very hard at times.  For example, if a user is within the checkout page, the goal is pretty clear – get them onto the next page and purchase the items in their basket.  But, if the user is on the home page, what is their goal?  This is a much more complicated question and almost impossible to answer if they simply type in the URL and visit the home page afresh.

At the end of the day, it’s about using new tools to better suggest products to customers (in some way’s isn’t that what we are all trying to do?)

That’s current trends – so the future?

Well, from his own perspective, David highlighted the ways in which targetting may become more and more “accurate”, almost seeming like “magic” when we start to predict user behaviour rather than just respond to it – and with this in mind, he thinks PHORM is one to watch (right or wrong, they’re certainly one to watch I think!)

In terms of permission based targetting, he also sugested we look at APML.org – for details on APML, an XML based standard that “tells” advertisers and marketers what your ad preferences are in real-time and allows for very accurate marketing to travel around with you (I’ll def. be looking into this right away and posting my thoughts on it here – I have to admit I’d not heard of it before).

He belives that the best way to target your customers, is to get them to “design your emails and website for you” through intelligent suggestion, monitoring and targetting (seems like a good strategy to me).

He closed with an intersesting story.  Apparently, on their website, more people type the word “TOYS” into the search field, than do click on the top-level navigation button which is labelled as “TOYS”, even though it’s only 6 pixels away from the seach field   One for the IAs I fear!

After a short break for some much needed nibbles and wine, the second speaker, Katie, took to the stage.

Katie showed a very interesting and touching video about people with, or going through, or post, cancer and the issues they had to face for which Macmillan Cancer Support were there to help.

Katie pointed out that she isn’t a direct, digital or data person as such, more of a creative web designer and IA, but that she has been involved a lot in the more strategic elements of the online recently.

She also pointed out that on twitter she is @katie3059 (and if you’re interested, I am @howard_scott)

Digital, for her, has helped to clarify what they are as a brand, and it’s changed their positioning as well as their organisation as a whole.

People in general are now much more savvy [sic] when it comes to their own health, and the internet has played a massive role in that (who here doesn’t go straight to NHS Direct or WebMD when they find something weird going on? I know I do!)  As such, Macmillan have had to acknowledge that they, as “experts” need to provide information that the users will want and trust if they are to maintain a position as a major destination (something they achieved recently by merging with another cancer charity who were much more “techy” (for want of a much better phrase) than Macmillan.

One of the problems they face is that when people seach for them on google, they search for the word “macmillan” and so, when they do arrive, it tells them nothing about what they were looking for (as opposed to people who might end up on directline.com having searched the phrase “car insurance”).  In this way they had to try to work out what was an important goal for their visitors from the home page of the site – what did a visitor to the site really want when all they had typed into google was “macmillan”?

Katie also mentioned a couple of trends which they are currently riding on which are proving to be extremely valuable to them – user generated content (UGC) and social-network style community.

People with Cancer, or post-cancer, want two things when they look for advice.  They want expert advice, that they know is from a trusted and valid source – and macmillan can certainly provide this – but they also want reassurance and “insider information” telling them what it’s going to be like.  This is something Macmilland find hard to provide because they simply don’t know. This is where the users themselves can step in.  By providing forums, and other spaces on the site within which users can discuss their condition, symptoms, how an operation went, how they felt during treatment, etc., other people who want to know just how something is going to feel (because, let’s face it, it’s scary stuff!) all users can discuss just what’s concerning them with other people, and as we all know by now, people trust other people’s opinion on the web more than so-called “experts” in many cases.

This UGC aspect to their site, combined with the community they have enabled, means that the macmillan site can provide both the expert, medical, clinical advice patients want when they first do research into a cancer when they’ve been diagnosed with it, followed by the more human, personal, “this is how it was for me” kind of approach only the UGC can provide.

Katie referenced the site patientslikeme.com who have forums for almost every single ailment you can think of, and people who are more than happy to share it with other sufferers.

So, for a future trend?

Katie mentioned finally that they were looking into interactive conversation technology to help users of the site answer questions which they know can prove tricky if they’re not explained sufficiently.  She’s working with technology pioneered, apparently, by a company in the US called jellyvision.com, which kind of “prompts” a user through conversation style question-answer-question scenarios, each new question being based on the answer previously given.  (This is something I’ve seen on the NHS direct site myself, where in order to diagnose a condition, they ask you a series of pretty simple questions you can answer with multiple choice until you arrive at the end result).

Oh, and one last thing, Katie kept apologising for the state of her slides – I think because, as she said, she’s a designer at heart.  Katie, I honestly don’t think any of us would have noticed a great deal if you didn’t keep pointing it out – the content of your talk was interesting enough to make us overlook the slide design – and, let’s face it -it’s all powerpoint anyway!  It’s going to look bad

So, to wrap up, it was an interesting event – I met some knowledgeabe people on various subjects – interestingly there seemed to be people there from a whole variety of digital related fields – eCRM, Search, eCommerce, promotions, and I am sure there were more. There wasn’t anything too revolutionary presented in terms of future trends, although I am keen to now look into APML some more after David brought it to my attention, and of course PHORM was mentioned, but aren’t they often nowadays?

Thanks to the IDM for putting the event on. For those interested I should be getting the slides from it shortly, so when I do I’ll link them from this post.

Howard
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It seems my post last week on the "myfirstcomputer" thread which Rubel kicked off over on micropersuasion turned out to be the most popular post ever on AdventuresDM in terms of visitors (not comments), giving us a text book example of that long tail effect that Chris Anderson wrote about in his book.

without divulging the exact figures you can see from the google analytics chart above that the long tail spike is well and truly huge! and then, drops backs off to oblivion

This highlights two things.  One, posts about computers will always attract massive amounts of geek interest and, two, never doubt the value of getting linked from other blogs – 100% of that traffic came not from Steve Rubel, but from Make Blog.

Oh well, back to the grind I suppose now our fifteen mins are over.

Howard
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The Big G (that’s Google) have rolled out a new interface for their free, and excellent, web based analytics engine, imaginatively called Google Analytics.

Replacing the old HTML/Ajax based interface, Google have gone down the Macromedia / Adobe Flash route across all of the site’s key content areas including charts and maps.

Improving on the old site design, the new layout starts the user on a homepage entitled "The Dashboard" which features a host of small widget like report windows displaying information like number of visits, site usage,  visitor overview, map overlay, traffic sources and content overviews.  The user can then choose to go further into the site stats as they choose in the same manner as before, by selecting from any of the more specific reports in the left hand menu.

One thing I’ve instantly noticed is the addition of what appears to me to be a new category of visitor in the stats, that of a bounce rate.  Now, I know what a bounce rate is in terms of email marketing, but what I am not so clear on is it in terms of page visits.  I’ve simply never heard it mentioned like that before (maybe it’s just me?) but, thankfully, Google have a description of all the reports on it’s site, and their description for the bounce rate is as follows…

"Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in
which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is
a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates
that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.
You can minimize Bounce Rates by tailoring landing pages to each
keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the
information and services that were promised in the ad copy."

This is interesting for a blog, as I personally imagine a lot of people come directly into a blog via the RSS feeds, of via an aggregator site like technorati. As such, single page visits don’t seem that uncommon to me, but maybe that’s because adventuresdm.com isn’t such a pull?  Who knows, but it’s an interesting new stat anyway, and would certainly be of use for a site like eCommerce or so forth.

I must say that with the world overlay, I preferred the old style with the dots representing visitors to the site from around the globe.  Whilst the new one is more stylish and slick looking, it’s not so instantly easy for me to see the locations, and I do like that feature.

As with their iGoogle personalised homepage, if you want you can add, remove or move around the page these reports on the dashboard in the widget style, which makes for a very usable analytics package in my opinion – especially as it’s still free.

Google Analytics doesn’t as far as I am aware, go into the level of detail that a full package like hitbox or the like can do, tagging each page and link etc., but for free it’s a very well formed and useful app that I recommend to a lot of people and clients.

You can set up goals, track paths through a site and so forth – all the stuff you would expect – but the best bit for me, as a blog author, is you can check it religiously every morning to see how popular your blog is.

Sad?  Probably, but I recommend you check it out either for yourself, or for your clients.

Howard
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This topics been around for a while this year already but I recently discussed it with a friend of mine over lunch and so thought I’d stick a post up about it.

It seems that as we’re all falling in love with AJAX (and by association other technologies such as Adobe Flex which offer similar functionality) we’re forgetting about how these technologies are affecting the banner side of the industry which is, love it or hate it, a big part of what we as digital marketers do.

Basically, whilst AJAX improves the user experience bringing in the data dynamically, in the background, without reloading the page, it harms the number of banner impressions, the standard way of measuring ads online, because the page doesn’t reload.  Not reloading means that the number of impressions is basically way lower than expected.

What this is meaning in particular, is that on many sites, and one particular large portal, the number of impressions, when measured in the traditional way as set out by the IAB, is extremely low.  This calls for one of two actions.

First off, the easiest thing to do would be to remove the ajax, go back to the old ways, and let the page reload.  But this is counter productive and not great for the usability of the sites we’re now used to.

The second is to change the ways that impressions are created and measured, making them ajax friendly and to generate impressions either through timebased refreshing (although this isn’t ideal, as commented on here by Eric Picard in a great post on the subject over at Clickz) or by really looking at the application/site you are creating, and identifying points in it when the application would "traditionally" refresh itself.  Then, make an ajax based ad-refresh call at that point instead.

I guess overall the way we as an industry measure ad impressions will need to change as things go more and more down the ajax route – but for now, it’s worthwhile thinking it through so you don’t end up damaging potential ad revenue with an interface that is almost too clever for it’s own good.

Howard
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Every audience group has different needs and requirements from an
analytics professional. However, it is important to keep in mind that
various items are common to all like clarity of presentation
and a clear focus on the specific needs of the audience.

The key to presentation of metrics is the provision of “the exact
reports people need to succeed in their job, nothing more, and nothing
less, presented in language that they understand.”[i]

CEO:
Before starting I would try to find out what data would help the CEO do
his job. Web analysts need to “sit down with your core audience and
figure out what motivates them”.[ii] Metrics for a general manager type
CEO could include:

· Revenue (gross and net sales)
· Gross and net profit
· Sales per visit
· Cost per visit
· Conversion rate
· Competitive benchmarking rates
· Feedback from customers about the customer experience

Marketing manager:
Will want to focus on the most profitable campaigns, key metrics to
highlight (per campaign and across all campaigns and campaign types)
could include:

· Return on investment (ROI)
· Cost per acquisition
· Cost per new customer acquired
· Total net profit per newly acquired customer
· Average order value
· Conversion rates
· Prospect rate and abandonment rate – to improve the profitability of poorly performing campaigns

Customer service agent:
The goal here would be to increase customer satisfaction and decrease call centre calls volume and costs. Metrics could include:

· Number of visits to self-service area of the site
· Frequently asked questions (FAQ) visits
· Top internal search terms
· Successful and unsuccessful search rates
· Call center contacts per visitor

Finally, it is important that all information highlighted is
actionable. Actionable data enables people to make informed decisions
that will lead to continued improvement.

References
[i] Peterson, Eric (2006).
The Big Book of KPIs

[ii] Inan, Hurol (2006).
The Web Analytics Business Process: How to Drive Web Analytics ROI with the Tools and People You Already Have.
http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

I see two essential questions to the issue of privacy and the mania some people have for deleting all third-party and even first-party cookies.

Am I willing to give up my "privacy" in order to have easier-to-use websites?

Yes!

According to Jupiter research [1] 58% of users delete their cookies regularly and 40% of users delete them every month. Who are these people? Do they also avoid using credit cards and mobile phones? Everything we do is tracked, monitored and analysed. This is not possible to avoid, not if you want to be a part of our modern world. It seems that cookies have become the victim of a lack of understanding of the benefits they offer us.

“Cookies were implemented to allow user-side customization of Web information.”[2]

Now, customization sounds like a real user benefit. I want Amazon [3] to customize my shopping experience around my needs and desires. I want a shopping cart to remember the choices I made on my previous visits. Maybe those who delete cookies regularly are unaware of the benefits of cookies for ease of use. It’s up to all of us to improve the cookies’ reputation amongst the public at large.

Am I willing to give up my "privacy" so that the ads I see on websites are likely to be more relevant to me?

Spyware detection software employed by increasing numbers of users is crushing cookies [4]. In a recent study [5] of 11 spyware detection programs: Yahoo’s pay-per-click ad conversion tracking cookies were ensnared by six spyware programs, while none of Google’s conversion cookies were caught.

If spyware detection programs cannot delete all third party cookies then surely those who delete these cookies on a regular basis are wasting their time.

If some ad-related cookies can evade capture and deletion then how long will it be until all 3rd party cookies are written in such a way as to avoid deletion. Privacy fans may need to choose another battle.

1 Jupiter Research 2004
2 http://www.cookiecentral.com
3 http://www.amazon.com
4 http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623415

5 http://www.benedelman.org/spyware

As promised, I just wanted to follow up on the Nielsen Buzzmetrics webinar from earlier this week by posting links through to the PDF of the slides and the MP3 recording of the voice part.

Max Kalehoff and Pete Blackshaw were excellent hosts and speakers and I strongly recommend you listen to their presentation and, should you get the chance to participate in the future on another webinar, that you do.

Howard
–

Seth Godin has pointed to a great Web 2.0 traffic watch list that the folks at Alexaholic have put up for him.

I’m impressed by how much traction Linkedin still has. As an avid user myself, it does seem to be the community website for grown-ups. Although I can’t say that I have made any valuable business contacts through it, it does seem to have that potential. I wonder how much further it can still climb.

Jonathan

Ofcom have produced a report that highlights how media fragmentation is affecting a generation who have grown up expecting to have the world at their fingertips through the Internet, and are increasingly finding that traditional media isn’t giving them what they or want.

The report has been commented upon by BBC News who have come to the conclusion that the so called "Networked Generation" is using online media more and more and leaving the old world behind.

"Sixteen to 24 year olds are spurning television, radio and newspapers in favour of online services"

Shock!

"The 2006 Ofcom report also found that increasingly households are turning to broadband and digital TV".

A startling piece of insight.  Who would have believed that people are switching to broadband and digital TV in this day and age?

In seriousness though, there are some interesting facts in the report.  Firstly, there are apparently 1.8 million people in the UK who are now using a VoIP service, such as Skype, to keep in touch.  I can see this myself, let alone 16-24 yr olds, as a lot of my friends, many of whom I would never class as being very web savvy, have switched over to Skype as recently as a few weeks ago to speak to each other, especially when long distance is involved and it is effectively free. (Admittedly the tipping point for this was a close friend in Japan installing Skype and a lot of others following to keep in touch – had this not occurred I don’t think they would have been so keen to find out about the service).

The second interesting thing is in regard to social networking sites.  Apparently a massive 70% of the 16 to 24 age group have used a social networking site such as MySpace or Bebo (not saying how many regularly use it of course – I guess that could be a lot lower), compared with just 40% of the rest of the country.  The report goes on to say that 20% of them have their own blog, which might be, I suppose, contained within their MySpace usage.  This is a huge number of people regularly using the online space.

Focusing on the topic news itself, Kay Withers, a representative from the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) is quoted as saying:

"We want to find out what it means to turn away from newspapers and public service broadcasting, and to find out the types of news sources they are now favouring."

Which is an interesting thing to say. It assumes that the biggest impact the move into online media will have is in the news and current affairs area as opposed to anything else, such as entertainment or general communications.  The easy answer for someone like me would be to say that blogs and other forms of citizen journalism are drawing in the crowds as a result of increased trust due to the transparent nature of the new media but, in reality (and I have no data for this) I suspect that teenagers simply aren’t interested in the news.  I personally don’t know many of them who would gladly read the Guardian or switch onto News 24 to catch up with the latest on the Lebanon crisis.  Could it not be that these people are still too young, simply interested in having a good time, to be bothered with traditional media?  That will come later, when they have a mortgage to worry about etc. etc. (OK – sounding old now) and the biggest impact that they are having at the moment is in terms of light entertainment which is, for marketers of a more traditional TV led ilk, the interesting fact?

The IPPR go on:

"This could have a major impact on media regulation, public policy and on the political world too."

For this I offer one possible future (I am sure there are others) – there will be no regulation!  The whole point of "new media"/citizen journalism/blogging/web2.0/etc. is that it’s de-regulated or, at best, self-regulated. That’s the beauty of it. That’s why it’s so attractive in the first place, by bypassing the regulatory bodies, by placing the means of production and distribution into the hands of the consumer it frees the audience and the producer at the same time.  Public policy and the political World will have to adapt to the new generation, not the other way around (and that’s the way it should be after all!).

Of course I fully believe, and hope, that this trend in a move towards purely online (if not "digital" media, for it will be offline too before long if you consider offline to be "in your pocket") continues to grow at the pace it does, but I think the picture needs to be looked at in a wider context than simply saying kids don’t like old media in such an easy move.

If you consider Adam Curry’s 5/50 rule, which theorises that within 5 years 50% of the content will be generated by consumers, then the move over to those sources by the audience is a natural path for them to follow.

What the report does highlight very well is the increased fragmentation of the audience share.  The graph below goes to show this, and that’s probably the most interesting thing we can observe as marketers.

No single media is going to do the trick any more.  It’s a mixed bag out there, and only getting more complex and the trend is to move away from the platforms that have for so long been the bread and butter of the industry – TV and print. As TV, Radio, and eventually magazines and new papers, move over to purely digital platforms that allow for the same kind of interactive marketing as the platforms like the web and mobile currently provide we will be forced to adapt our thinking to take control (if possible) and advantage of the freedom/complexity that this fragmentation provides.

The graph has the same basic trend for all segments of the audience, the truth is, as always, that kids are doing it more quickly.

Howard
–

The Web Analytics Association has some great articles and resources for digital marketers. The area of analytics is, unsuprisingly, the key to improving ROI on your digital investment. Suprisingly web analytics are often an afterthought and reports are too often ignored.

The metrics below are taken from the most recent article on the WAA and from the great book Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business.

"Metrics to help measure Engagement

Percent of Visitors under 60 seconds

• Using this metric along with conversion rate will let you know if users are easily finding what they are looking for or not. A high percentage of visitors in this area with a low conversion rate indicate you should consider updating your material.

Customer Retention Rate

• Retaining customers is always a good sign that they are finding your website useful

Internal Search Terms

• This will give you a sense of visitors’ intentions on your website (are you offering the right content?). Avinash Kaushik had a great Blog post on this topic.

Average Number of Visits per visitors

• Monitor this metric to help determine how attracted your visitors are to your content. Remember, a return customer always costs less than a new one.

Top Pages and Content Requested

• Knowing what visitors are looking for can be helpful for site owners to tailor their content, making it more prominent and informative to the audiences’ needs. "

Jonathan