Datalicious Blog - Data Driven Marketing

New ClickTale segmented heat maps show mouse data for prospects vs. existing customers

ClickTale launched two new heat maps feature today that are worth mentioning.

The Segmented Heap Maps (see screen shot below) allow analysts to show mouse movement, mouse click and page scrolling data for different segments to analyse differences in behaviour. The segmentation options include customer status, conversion status, media channels and any other custom segmentation variables such as age, gender or location but I especially like the fact that we'll now be able to analyse website usage for new prospects vs. existing customers separately.

Ultra Scale Heat Maps on the other hand allow analysts to show aggregate mouse data from up to 100,000 visitors in one single image enabling usability testing on a super large scale compared to standard eye tracking methods.

"With an 84-88% correlation between our Mouse Move Heatmaps and expensive eye-tracking studies, website owners can now conduct incredibly accurate usability studies on a massive scale, and at a fraction of the cost."

ADMA survey reveals lack of web analytics data usage in media attribution and single customer view

Over the past few months the ADMA Data & Analytics Council conducted an online survey to establish how evolved the direct marketing industry in Australia really is in terms of data and analytics. 

Key findings of the survey included

  • Although 62% of respondents said that they tie sales data back to campaigns and media channels driving them, 59% admitted that they were not actually using web analytics which is interesting given the increased importance of online channels in driving sales.
  • A similar trend emerged when asking marketers about whether they had a single customer view. A surprisingly large amount of respondents (44%) said they had a single customer view but interestingly only 41% of those companies were incorporating web analytics data into their single view. Given the growing amount of online customer touch points this raises the questions how complete these single customer views really are.

Although the survey was only a quick and dirty exercise I think the results are quite interesting and the council is now considering to extend and refine the survey to shed some more light on the highlighted issues above.

Please subscribe to the ADMA Councils blog if you would like to hear about research like this in the future or email councils@adma.com.au if you would like to help shape similar future initiatives.

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Formstack online form builder that also integrates with Google Analytics to track form conversions

We've had a few clients now that were looking for an easy online form builder that also lets you integrate with Google Analytics to track your form conversions and and I think we've finally found one in Formstack.

There seems to be quite a few of these tools out there but the main problem with most of them is the fact that although they provided a simple user interface to build forms without any HTML knowledge they don't allow you to add custom code to your form pages which prevents people from adding the necessary Google tracking scripts. At best you might be able to track that a form was started but not if it was actually finished so there's no way to track actual leads or calculate a form conversion rate (and that's probably crucial for most forms).

Anyway, have a look at Formstack, it's an easy to use tool that lets you build all sorts of online forms from contact forms over surveys to order forms and integrate them with a wide range of other platforms such as SalesForce, Highrise, FreshBooks, Mailchimp and Paypal.

Another blow for web analytics: Google Analytics opt-out browser plug-ins now available in beta

It's been announced for a while but now it's actually possible, Google Analytics has just released the beta browser plug-ins that will make it possible for people to opt-out of Google Analytics tracking.  
The opt-out provides users with a choice of whether information about website visits is collected by Google Analytics. The add-on stops data from being sent from your computer when you visit websites that use Google Analytics Javascript (ga.js) to track usage. The beta version of the opt-out that we are releasing today is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome.
Read the official blog post here (and download the plug-in if you must, argh).
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/05/greater-choice-and-transparency-for.html
 
Or check out our earlier posts on privacy including how to track visitors without cookies.

Big blow for web analytics: Google search is going secure and along the way hiding all referrer data

Google search is currently in the process of beta testing a secure search, check it out yourself at https://www.google.com.
 
Even though this might be commendable from a privacy perspective, the move could potentially have devastating effects for all search marketers and online analysts. Turning the normal Google search results into secure pages will essentially hide all usage information including the referrer string which contains data on the used search term. So if you would like to know what keywords are driving your business, you're out of luck. For all secure searches, standard analytics software packages will no longer be able to see the what domain referred the visitor (i.e. search engine) and what search term was used (see screen shots below).
 
It's rumoured that China may be part of the motivation for the switch as this will prevent filtering of certain keyword searches as well as the ability to packet sniff the usage of Google. The switch hasn't rolled out in Hong Kong yet, but you can safely assume it won't be too far away!
 
For more information check out the following Google and Wired articles.

Datalicious is now officially a Google Analytics Certified Partner (previously Authorised Consultant)

Although we've been working with Google Analytics for years, we're excited to announce that Datalicious is now officially a Google Analytics Certified Partner.

According to Google (and we agree) "working with Google's worldwide network of Certified Partners specializing in Google Analytics, Website Optimizer and Urchin Software is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make. Certified Partners are carefully vetted by Google and meet rigorous qualification standards."

Read our earlier blog post for more information on our Google Analytics services or visit the official Google Analytics partner site.

Visible Measures: Video analytics service launched benchmarking and seeded vs. viral comparison

The online video monitoring service Visible Measures has just released some interesting new features but unfortunately they're only visible for paying customers.
 
Category benchmarking: Trends now automatically benchmarks campaigns against all relevant categories for demographics and distribution. For example, you can see how demographics for Evian's Live Young compare to beverage industry averages as well as campaigns using animation, humor, and music.

Seeded vs. viral Breakdowns: You can now see how much much activity for each campaign was the result of brand-driven video placements (i.e. seeded) and how much was the result of community-driven video placements (i.e. viral). Understanding the seeded vs. viral breakdown of an online video campaign is critical to understanding its overall performance.

For more information or a free account visit the official website.

Dwell rate: New display advertising metrics and benchmark report from Eyeblaster

Eyeblaster just launched an interesting new report that shows a correlation between dwell time for interactive ads and  increased conversion rates. 

The connection is sort of obvious but nevertheless good to see some confirmation and wonder if we will see some more mini applications within display ads now comparable to Facebook apps.

Highlights of the report include
  • Ads with a high Dwell Rate are more likely to have a high Conversion Rate.
  • A new study by Microsoft, comScore and Eyeblaster shows Dwell’s effectiveness.
  • High Dwell triples brand related search, increases traffic by 69% and brand engagement.
  • Placements in which users spend ample time on the web page increase Dwell Rate.
  • Ads that are more visible over the publisher’s content have a higher Dwell Rate.
  • Combining video into creative increases Dwell Rate by 29% and doubles Dwell Time.
Download the full research report here.
http://bit.ly/benchmarkByEb

New Google AdWords report called Search Funnels showing paid search path to conversion

Similar to Omniture's Campaign Stacking plugin Google has finally launched a new AdWords report called 'Search Funnels'. Unfortunately, it only seems to consider paid search interactions leading up to a conversion whereas Omniture can path all search activity, organic and paid. Email us at insights@datalicious.com if you would like to find out more or read our earlier post on how to actually do multi channel media attribution.
Currently, conversions in AdWords are attributed to the last ad someone clicks before making a conversion, masking the fact that many customers perform multiple searches before finally converting. AdWords Search Funnels help you see the full picture by giving you insight into the ads your customers interact with during their shopping process.
AdWords Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion. In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consist of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. For an overview of these new reports, check out this video:

Read the official article here

Click Tale offers free heat maps visualising mouse movements, clicks, scrolls and form analytics

Have you ever wondered where your website visitors are focusing their attention? What visual clues are they responding to? And wouldn't it be nice to have this data visualised in form of heat maps? 

Last week, Chaoming came across a new service called Click Tale which generates heat maps similar to the one below which shows mouse movements on our home page. Apart from mouse movements you can also report on mouse clicks, attention, scroll reach and forms. 

Register for a free account, copy and paste the generic code into your pages and wait until Click Tale sends you an email announcing that your heat map reports are ready (nice feature by the way), easy as that.