The Media Supermarket

One of the reasons why eyes hurt more on the computer than on TV, is that for every click we do (every page we view) we have to get acquainted with that new page. On TV the picture moves on its own, and the only interaction we do is very basic (changing channels, adjusting volume, etc.).

On the web, each part of our journey on a site needs a decision on our part, so every new page we view needs at least a couple of seconds for us to get familiar with it, and then decide which links we want to click on or whether or not we want to continue reading, or just leave the site.

If pages in a user's journey are very different from each other, then each click will require a certain amount of extra time for the user to adjust to the new page, and that consumes a good part of the visit to your site.

This becomes much more important in pages that are part of one process on the site (registration, shopping cart, uploading photos, etc). Ideally these processes should run as smoothly as possible. The only changes among these pages should be related to what the user did. If they uploaded a file for example, only an indication to the succes of failure should be given, and the only part changed on the page should be clearly showing the next step in the process.

"The Next Big Thing" is a very nice thing to figure out. To be ahead of the market, to invent something that nobody thought about, and make a revolution. That's all cool stuff, nothing against it. As everything else, because the potential gains are enormous the risks are enormous too.

You can't 'know' what the next big thing is. You can speculate, do your homework, take the risk, and hope for the best. Again, nothing against that. I'm just analyzing what needs to be done.

The preious big thing, however, is the trend, brand, or idea that is no longer in fashion and buzzing, but started to gain credibility as a viable business option, and it is on its way to maturity.

In this case you have the most profitable option because you are benefiting from the momentum, maturity, and experience that has been gained in the industry.

Email marketing is a great example. It even sounds outdated! But it is still one of the most cost-effective and profitable marketing methods out there. There are many providers giving you tons of options, the analytics and testing are evolved, and there's a ton of data about people's behavior and responses. Furthermore, you can learn a great deal about it, and become really good and sophisticated in your offering.

All these factors make it much easier for you to sell the previous big thing, and since it is still not completely flat in terms of growth you can charge a big premium for it.

Unless you can afford the risk and budgets of going into the "next" big thing, sticking to the "previous" one can be much more profitable.

I previously discussed the relationship between Web 3.0 and SEO. This is the presentation version which was shared in our last meeting.

Web 3.0 - Semantic Web Basics

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"Not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that can be measured matters" said Einstein. This is the main problem in the thinking behind my first post about making analytics actionable.

The assumption is that what you can control will immediately influence results on your site. There is also an implicit assumption of a linear relationship and direct correlation.

The most important things have an exponential effect after being done consistently and for a long enough period of time. For example, if you do a lot of research and reading, it will reflect on the quality of content, people will find it useful, and they will promote it for you. There is no metric that measures what you do outside your website.

So, to refine the first argument, we need to assume that all variables are held constant, and then we can correlate some actions to certain outcomes and results.

Another important thing is to know that there are things that have to be done outside the site, but will have a huge impact on the reputation and brand, thereby affecting results of the site.

Having actionable insights is one of the most important things in any analysis you do. Ok, understood. But now what? How do we "make" our analytics actionable?

Page views increased by 15%, or page / visit went down 17%. So what?

These are the results of things that happened on your site, and caused page views, pages/visit, or whatever you are measuring to go up or down. After discovering the disaster (or the great news) you will have to dig deep and know why it happened in order to remedy the situation.

But there is another approach, which starts the other way around, preempts problems, and gives a clear action path in situations like the above.

This is inspired by a sentence that Bryan Eisenberg said in a webinar,"It doesn't make any sense to measure anything if you don't know what you are going to do with it."

Bingo!

This approach starts with the available actions you can influence in your site, and then builds the measurement strategy based on that:

1. Start by asking,"what actions are available to me on the site?"

Possible answers: I can change the content, I can change the layout of the page elements, I can change PPC bids, etc...

2. For each action, list all the possible things it can affect so that you have a ready action list during analysis.

Possible examples: Adding/removing keywords from my PPC campaign affects my conversion rate, getting high quality links affects my position on search results for keywords X,Y, & Z.

3. Build you KPIs based on the things that are affected by what you have control over.

Possible examples: Conversion rate of campaigns if you have control over, pages/visit for traffic sources you can control (like PPC), user experience of a process that you can influence the business rules.

With this approach you almost automatically know what you need to do when KPIs tell you something, because you know how they are affected, and because you already chosen the ones that you can influence.

The answer to "how to make analytics actionable?"...

You don't. You see what you are already empowered to do and analyze accordingly. Important things that you can't control should definitely be reported and you should seek to influence them, but in the current situation you should start with what you have.