As the holidays approach, many consumers turn to online shopping
for inventory that is rarely out of stock, favorable pricing, and the
convenience of home delivery. Considering Overstock.com’s
longevity and e-commerce success, it is an ideal subject to study in terms of
web analytics and search engine optimization.
Google Analytics (GA) analyzes traffic to approximately 55%
of websites around the world. Dozens of other web-metrics solutions are
attempting to chip away at its market share; still, Google Analytics’ closest
competitor claims its technology is used by only 5% of global websites (W3Techs, 2016).
Some
Challenges. The popularity of Google Analytics may be owed to the fact that
it produces a wealth of powerful insights at a bargain price – $0. Alas, the
technology’s robust set of features is also its undoing for some users. The
following remark sums up that sentiment (Karr, 2016).
“Let’s face it, Google Analytics is
a mess for the average business…As an agency, we are not the average business, but
even we have issues dissecting the data at times.”
Yes, GA is fairly difficult to learn, never mind to master. It
requires an investment of time and mental energy. In a dynamic industry driven
by deadlines, both can be hard to come by. Under-utilized or inactive GA
accounts in marketing departments are not that uncommon. Fortunately, a variety of free apps ease the pain.
Website metrics tools enable organizations
to understand their audiences’ online experiences, and leverage insights to
achieve strategic goals.
Google Analytics is the towering
giant in the web-measurement-technology space, dwarfing all global competitors.
Even so, a dynamic marketplace is teeming with solutions, both established and emerging,
some claiming new customers while others struggle for relevance.
When
considering companies that have built a successful social media presence, several
familiar consumer brands come to mind: Red Bull, Airbnb, Nike, Coca-Cola, GoPro….
But
100+ year-old manufacturing giant General
Electric? There’s a company that doesn’t scream “social.” Yet remarkably, GE
has taken social media to new heights by publishing high quality content on multiple
channels. And, the plot thickens. In mid 2016, GE sold its consumer appliance
division (Hudspeth, 2016). So now it concentrates its marketing resources fully
on industrial manufacturing, not the most dazzling subject matter. Or is it?
Household
products like washing machines, refrigerators, ranges, etc. are out of the
picture. Taking center stage are power plants, turbines, aviation engines, locomotives,
healthcare equipment, generators, and other products/systems in the company’s
vast business-to-business portfolio.
Yes,
GE’s product line is a bit atypical for social media.
What social media platforms does
the mega B2B corporation use? General Electric is currently most active on:
An Example. In August, a General
Electric team entered an active Nicaraguan volcano, live on social media. The team
proceeded to install sensors to monitor volcanic activity. GE set up an
early-warning system for the surrounding area. Videos of the descent into the
volcano were stitched together via Instagram Stories and promoted on Snapchat
(Heine, 2016).
What might be behind GE’s
choices of channels and activity? With 2015 sales topping $117 billion in 2015, an
increase of 21% over the prior year, GE dominates industrial manufacturing
worldwide (Hudspeth, 2016).
(Image: Hoovers)
It
makes sense that a company at the top of its game would want to lead in
marketing, too. GE’s mix of social channels enable it to reach businesses and
consumers with a diverse assortment of copy, images, videos, music, sounds,
animations, etc. A lagging ROI on a few other social media platforms – Google+,
Vine, Tapestry – may have caused GE to leave them behind.
Oh, the humanity. Web analytics authority,
Avinash Kaushik’s, notes that B2B companies should resist seeing business
audiences as monolithic, robotic decision makers. “As a B2B company, you are still
trying to sell to other human beings” (Kaushik, 2010). GE actually does that
pretty well. An enormous wind turbine is more than a spinning abstraction on
the horizon; it is a sustainable, life-giving force in all its curving,
glittering power.
Like
any good conversationalist, GE wants to engage people meaningfully, and also be
a good listener. GE’s Chief Marketing Officer, Beth Comstock, echoes Kaushik’s argument,
saying, “Since when does B2B have to be boring-to-boring? Business people are
people, too.” Ms. Comstock says that the company uses what she calls
“micro-targeting” to share the wonders of science with customers (Neisser,
2015).
Conversing with Content. General Electric may
gravitate towards a traditional “Content is King” model, reliably producing
gorgeous, stimulating content. “Without content, there is not a whole lot to
talk about,” proclaims loyalty-program marketer Michael Greenberg (2009). But,
as Catherine Novak (2010) warns, “Content without conversation is just
broadcasting, or just advertising.” GE’s content contains plenty of wows with
the intention they be shared, but it walks the edge.
This
tweet is impressive. GE’s advanced technology enables an airplane engine to be
built from 11 printed parts, instead of usual 845. The tweet points to newsletter
content.
You talking to me? General Electric’s social
media posts target countless audience segments: governments, businesses,
non-profit buyers; stockholders; current and future employees; research
universities and their students; merger partners; strategic collaborators, etc.
Seeing that GE makes more than half of its revenue by reaching across markets
in 100 countries, being a good corporate citizen is important, too. The
effective use of social media may help humanize GE in communities around the
world and bolster good will (Hudspeth, 2016).
At
a minimum, General Electric must maintain its authoritative presence on the
same social channels as its primary competitor. Siemens, Europe’s largest
industrial manufacturer, is on Facebook,Twitterand YouTube. If anything, Siemens has a long way to go to catch GE
on social media. Since Siemens’s content sticks to familiar conventions, GE
stands out by comparison
Here’s
a humanize-the-brand videoSiemens published on YouTube.
And
this is one of my favorite videos on GE’s YouTube account.
Affinities. I may have a special
fondness for the GE video because several of the sounds were recorded at a GE
site in Niskayuna/Schenectady, NY where I live. (Schenectady is the home of
Thomas Edison, founder of General Electric.) Here are the audio files on GE’s SoundCloud account, if you are curious. And another video, Over
2 Million Containers, 2,000 Routes, is a memorable homage to GE’s transport equipment and
logistics systems. This production is so strange, beautiful and assured, it
veers into the realm of art.
If
the target audience for these two GE videos is young adult males, the content
may perform double duty: elevating GE as an innovative maker of cool things,
and also acting as a talent-recruitment tool. Judging from a couple of the
comments on the 2-Million video, it may have resonated as intended.
“…Amazing,
critical thinking and imaginative ideas. GE=awesome.“
“That's
what I want to do when I grow up”
A
statement submitted by marketers with GE’s entry to the annual Shorty Awards
competition contains clues about their social media approach (the bolds are
mine).
“For
GE, social media success isn’t measured in sales, but rather in awareness and affinity. As GE works to gain visibility
as a connected and competitive technology
leader with advanced research
capabilities, the brand turns to both established and emerging social media
channels to deliver its message.”
Here
are a few other key points interpreted from the Shorty Awards statement (Shorty
Awards, 2014).
Goal: Position GE as a “thought
leader[s] in advanced technology” emphasizing humanity and relevance to
consumers.
Rationale: A technology leader must
leverage leading social technologies. Marketing Strategy: Champion science and celebrate
innovations.
Tactic: Distribute engaging,
visually striking, sharable narratives on social media.
By
embracing the challenge of presenting inaccessible industrial products in bold,
captivating ways, GE is engineering something different: its own social-media
genre.
Heine, C. (2016, August 3). General Electric is using
Instagram Stories to promote its Snapchat series about volcanoes. Adweek.
Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/general-electric-using-instagram-stories-promote-its-snapchat-series-about-volcanoes-172791
Hudspeth, C. General Electric Company: Financial Summary.
Hoovers. Retrieved from
http://subscriber.hoovers.com.www.libproxy.wvu.edu/H/company360/financialSummary.html?companyId=10634000000000&newsCompanyDuns=001367960
Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online
accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.
The Web
Analytics Association (2008) defines a landing
page as “a page view
intended to identify the beginning of the user experience resulting from a
defined marketing effort.” It is the destination on which a visitor “lands”
after clicking on an organic/paid search result, ad, link in an email campaign,
etc. Landing page views are counted and reported through a tool such as Google
Analytics.
The landing
page metric is classified as a visit characterization. Visit characterization
metrics enable marketers to study the behavior of visitors and determine ways
to improve their online experience (Web Analytics Association, 2008).
The Skinny on Micro
Conversions. Views and
subsequent actions performed via the landing page (say, downloading a coupon)
are often micro conversions that marketers have specified. Businesses track micro conversions to try to
understand where customers are on the road to conversion. According to Google
(2013), a micro conversion is “an important action but does not immediately
contribute to your bottom line. It’s usually an indicator that a user is moving
toward a macro conversion.” Landing page views
contribute toward website goals, a business’s KPIs, and overall business
objectives.
Example. Here is an email sent by CVS. Each
call to action points to a designated landing page.
(Image
Credit: CVS)
And below is
one of the landing pages. It echoes CVS’s traditional website but foregrounds
the deal. As you can see, the landing page presents additional calls to action
(customer profile set-up, more specials). Marketers are clearly interested in
knowing whether the email triggered landing page views – and other features on
the landing page help generate more sales and promote customer loyalty, too. A
clue that landing page metrics are being utilized to deliver insights is the
tracking code: https://www.cvs.com/weeklyad/browse/browse-home.jsp?WT.mc_id=EM_ECE_102316_CAPS&stop_mobi=yes&eval=Q6J8OpfyNalte4dGmApCFJ0mB8YwkyikEVm81kMI_U2mfaeC2pyC9wDrE82WWvX_#Detail/41414
(Credit:
CVS)
If a landing
page is under-performing, CVS marketers might choose to tweak and test
alternatives to improve results. Optimization tactics might include removing
extraneous calls to action and simplifying the design. Of course with its
legendary record of success, CVS’s efforts are a case study in marketing
effectiveness. That said, a discussion of other landing-page
design considerations (with examples), courtesy
of Kissmetrics, could be helpful to readers (Chapman, 2011).
The Landing Page Has…Landed. Consider that marketing initiatives
drive people to landing pages deep inside a business’s website, many for the
first time. Therefore, first-time visitors’ favorable impressions are vital.
Some experts, including web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik, contend that “home
pages are dead” and entry pages (by loose extension, landing pages) act as home
pages (Kaushik, 2010). As such, it is all the more important to align landing
page content with the expectations set by marketing messages. Visitors who see
value may stick around for more, or at least be receptive to the next marketing
message.
They came. They clicked. Then what? As noted in the CVS example,
monitoring landing page views and other activity helps marketers evaluate the
effectiveness of their efforts, and take steps to improve a page’s performance.
For example, if an unexpectedly large number of people click on a paid ad,
arrive on the landing page and leave immediately, this could indicate the
content does not deliver on the ad’s proposition. To improve landing-page
views, variations of ad messages could be tested. By contrast, a
well-performing ad and landing page could offer lessons to under-performers.
A large
proportion of bounces could also indicate that the problem is not an ad-landing
page mismatch, but with the perceived value or design of landing-page content
presented to the visitor. Again, marketers might choose to enhance the content
of landing pages, and test to see whether that improves things. Exploring templates
at Unbounce and other providers can be a good
way to become acquainted with landing-page elements.
(Credit:
Unbounce.com)
Landing pages
typically focus the customer on a message and an action. Measuring landing page
views enables marketers to quickly take the pulse of multiple campaigns.
References
Chapman,
C. (January 2011). Beginner’s guide to landing pages. Kissmetrics Blog.
Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/beginners-guide-to-landing-pages/
Google
Analytics. (2013, October 7). Digital Analytics Fundamentals: Lesson 2.3
[video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/xLJt5A-NeQI
Kaushik,
A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of
customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.
Most people grasp the concept of unique visitors to a website.
The official definition is“the number
of inferred individual people (filtered for spiders and robots), within a
designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits
to a site. Each individual is counted only once” (Web Analytics Association,
2008). Actually, persistent cookie IDs of visitors are counted. Avinash Kaushik
(2010) calls the unique visitor metric “a superior approximation of the number
of people visiting your website.”
The term “unique visitor” is what’s known as a foundational metric.
Other basic building blocks of analytic reporting are pages, page views, visits
(sessions), and events. If one is unfamiliar with a business, a glance at the
counts and trends of foundational metrics provides a simple overview of a
business’s online presence. In Google Analytics, unique visitors are known as
“users.” (Schwartz, 2014).
(Credit:
B.Schwartz)
Why Measure
Unique Visitors? Although the number of unique visitors may ebb and flow,
an upward trend is typically what businesses want to see. More unique visitors,
qualified through search, advertising, marketing or social referral, translates
into more potential for conversion. Hopefully, a portion this audience takes
action that contributes to KPIs.
Spikes in unique visitors may indicate that discrete marketing
efforts are working. A persistent dip in unique visitors could indicate a need
to re-test and adjust marketing messages. Perhaps more resources should be
dedicated to relevant, high-value content to retain unique visitors and
cultivate their loyalty. A number of other factors could swell or shrink the
number of unique visitors.
For example, a period of unusually warm weather in the Northeastern
U.S. might send people outdoors for recreation, and away from their computers. Shopping
seasonality could have an impact, as well. For example, the holidays and a marketing
promotion converged on Cyber Monday last year, and masses of unique visitors crashed
Target’s website (Wright, 2015).
(Credit: International Business Times)
Evaluating historical, unique-visitor volumes with an analytics
tool could help marketers and IT anticipate issues and collaborate on
solutions. In fact, Kaushik (2010) recommends retaining unique-visitor and
other data for at least a year because of seasonality.
Unique-Visitor
Subsets. Segmentation can reveal the composition of unique website
visitors, how they are being referred, and what they are seeking. Google
Analytics can also display visitor demographics and interests, collecting
information from from unique visitors via DoubleClick, Android app activity,
and iOS app activity. Marketers may find it useful to segment unique visitors
to obtain additional user insights (Google, n.d.).
(Credit: Google)
And because Google Analytics uses the same age, gender and
interest categories in its reports as in AdWords, marketers can target ads
based on intelligence drawn from analytics reports (Google, n.d.). For example,
if a business sells kitchen gadgets and Google Analytics shows higher
conversion rates for unique visitors 35-44 years old than 25-34 year-olds,
marketing might shift its efforts toward advertising to this group.
Besides measuring volumes of traffic from individual users, the
unique-visitor metric is also the denominator in the popular Conversion Rate calculation
(Kaushik recommends employing unique visitors, not visits, in this formula. As
of the writing of his book, Google Analytics uses visits by default.)
Although unique-visitor data might sometimes be overshadowed by other
metrics (characterization, engagement, conversion), it is a dependable workhorse
in the marketer’s analytics stable.
References
Google.
(n.d.). About demographics and interests. Google Analytics Help. Retrieved from
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2799357?hl=en
Kaushik,
A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of
customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.
Schwartz, B. (2014, April 17). Google Analytics: Visits now
sessions & unique visitors now users. Search Engine Roundtable. Retrieved
from https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-sessions-users-18424.html
Wright, B. (2015, November 30). Target’s website crashes over
‘high traffic’ during Cyber Monday. International Business Times. Retrieved
from http://www.ibtimes.com/targets-website-crashes-over-high-traffic-during-cyber-monday-2204194
