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I’m happy to report that I no longer work at Commerce360.  I had a good time while it lasted, but it was time for something different.

And that something different is ClickEquations.  We’ve re-branded Commerce360 as ClickEquations to focus on our advanced pay per click software.  (Sorry, it was a little late for April Fool’s but I needed a dramatic intro :-) )

This is a bit of a personal post, which I almost never do, but worth reading if you care about paid search.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Back in 2007, I left Refinery (now G2 Philly, a division of Grey Interactive) to join Commerce360.  At the time, I was still a full time web analyst with strategic aspirations.

Commerce360 was then focused on being the next generation of agency: a team of smart people optimizing across channels based with data driven decisions.  I joined the team as an analyst on a course toward full time strategy.But, as I soon learned is the norm for startups (this is my first), we shifted focus entirely on paid search and SEO.

The Birth of ClickEquations

The vision of the company was always to have smart people supported by killer technology.  Search is among the most data intensive channels out there, so it was the obvious place to start looking for a tool that could do the heavy lifting while we focused on strategy and optimization.

After surveying the market, we just couldn’t find anything good enough, including Omniture Search Center.  Too much money had been spent building tools focused on a search engine-centric view of managing paid search instead of a customer and practitioner centric view.  It was a completely flawed way of attacking the problem and even the “best” of what was on the market was an expensive and clumsy solution at best.  So we hired a development team and began building our own tool: ClickEquations.

A Slight Career Detour

Search marketing is strategic, but it’s not the same as developing cross-channel strategy. Without a pure strategist role, I ended becoming a strange hybrid: part Strategic Account Manager (client relations), part multivariate tester, part guy-who-does-random-things.

When people ask why I got into advertising and marketing, I give them the same answer: Bewitched.  I used to watch the show as a kid and was strangely fascinated with the ad lifestyle (portrayed as a sanitized and more kitsch version of today’s Mad Men). I figured it was 3 martini lunches and everyone got to do fun pitches all of the time, right?

Without nose twitching magic powers, Account Management is a fairly high pressure job.  You’re the middle man between clients with high expectations (sometimes disproportionate to what they’re paying) and limited budgets and a services team with limited time and all of the pressure for results.

On the plus side, it’s a great way to learn a lot of businesses quickly, master contracts (write 20 contracts in 6 months and you pick up a few things) and practice the fine art of expectations management:  “Yes, we can do that, but we’ll have to push this off and cut that down by 20%”.

I worked on SEO and paid search engagements with clients from startups to large corporations.  Perhaps the most rewarding project for me was a multivariate testing engagement with Comcast.net, one of the most visited sites on the Internet in the US. It was my first opportunity to dive deeply into testing on a site with both large enough traffic to get statistically significant results from large, full factorial multivariate tests and with a client who trusted us to take most of our recommendations and make all of the pieces line up.  More on this in a future post…

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You could be losing visitors and business due to site issues that never register in your web analytics tool.

If you’re anything like me, you tend to look at your site’s performance mostly through web analytics data (maybe with some voice of the customer/survey data included). The problem is that web analytics tools don’t have all of the information you need.

Error Logs: Hidden Data You Need

This hidden data can be found in your website’s error log (aka apache error log). An error log is a simple file that lists all the errors your visitors encountered when trying to access your site. Errors are logged by IP address, date and time.

You can get them from your webmaster. If that’s you, the location varies but log into your host and look for the “logs” section.  Mine were at /logs/error_log.

After I got a “status 500 internal server error” screen when I tried to get to my own blog, I knew it was time to dig a little.

I found three common errors in my log:

1. Directory index forbidden by rule
2. WordPress database error Lost connection to MySQL server during query
3. Premature end of script headers: php4

One of my blog’s plugins was the source of many of the issues.  That was an easy enough solution — I just deactivated and uninstalled it.  The MySQL connection was lost.  It’s a relatively simple fix for Wordpress users, detailed right here.

If you’ve never seen a server log (I hadn’t, is that terrible?) , I pasted a portion of my own error log after the jump.

You can see how the error messages I listed show up repeatedly.  You may know that site speed is an issue, but you could  still be surprised how many people are encountering errors when they try to get to your site..  I was also shocked to see how much one Wordpress plugin was an issue (if you’re using Wordpress, I’d steer clear of Redirection)

I’m going to report back on how much (or how little) my site traffic increased/errors decreased.  Take a look at yours and comment so we can all see if you found anything interesting.

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This post originally appeared on Corry Prohen’s blog.  You might also enjoy my 10 tips on learning web analytics article and my advice about writing an analytics resume.

Eventually, your web analytics career is going to hit a wall.  Learning interactive marketing as a web analyst, you start with the numbers and then seek context.  When you stop to think about it, it’s really an inside out view, isn’t it?

You can master tags, logs and the many intricacies of implementation and that will get you so far.  If you want to go from good to great, then you’re going to have to stop learning analytics.

Advance Your Career with Action
Measurement craves action.  That’s why site testing (a/b and multivariate) has been such a huge hit.  Your success as a web analyst is defined by the impact of the changes your work inspires: more leads, higher revenue, greater customer satisfaction.

Start your search for by following the money.  In most companies, the budget is often biggest in one of these 4 channels:
1. Paid Search
2. Email Marketing
3. Organic Search / SEO
4. Landing Pages

1. Paid Search

eMarketer predicts that paid search spend will hit $10 Billion by 2010.  Each year, more money migrates from offline advertising to online buys, often starting with paid search (aka pay-per-click or PPC advertising).

Who’s to blame them?  PPC advertising, most often on AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, is among the most measurable marketing investments you can make.  That’s exactly why web analysts need to get up to speed… fast.

The basic structure of paid search advertising is simple: you select words, bid on them, write a text ad and send them to a landing page.  The reality is far more complex.  To get started, I recommend you start with a simple 5 point PPC questionnaire:
1. How are we performing against our yearly and monthly goals?
2. Which campaigns are driving 50% of our cost?  Which ones are driving 50% of our revenue (or similar KPI, such as leads)?
3. What are our ad groups and how are they performing?
4. What is our impression share for the top campaigns?
5. How is competition affecting our brand campaigns?

This is a mix of simple questions, but you’d be amazed how eye opening they can be for a web analyst.  I threw in “impression share”, because it’s a metric that few outside of paid search understand.  It once again highlights the need to move outside of just one tool.

You can get a good overview of paid search with this guide.  For free advice on measuring and optimizing paid search, check out the ClickEquations blog.

2. Email Marketing

Email is a rather unsexy channel.  Most people think of it as outdated at best or spam at worst.  The truth is that email is very much a part of online marketing in a basic way (support email, order confirmation) and more advanced uses (personalized offers, abandoned cart recovery).

As an analyst, you can lead the charge to maximize email ROI by asking:
• How does email stack up against other channels?
• What’s the most effective way to grow our subscriber list?
• What have we learned from past tests?  How can we structure future tests to boost results?
• Which segments of our list are most valuable?
• What kind of from and subject lines boost open rates?

I usually turn to the Email Experience Council to find resources for email marketing.  Their Email Stat Center is a really great collection of research and some stats for comparison.  The Email Benchmark Guide is a good starting point.  For more in-depth training, there is an Email Marketing Summit coming up shortly.

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On the topic of web analytics careers, this is a reprint of an article about web analytics training that originally appeared at the WAA.  If you could start your career over, what would you do?

1. You are Not the First Web Analyst - You do not need to invent web analytics. Somebody has encountered the problem you have. Establish a great base of knowledge by buying books like Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, joining the Yahoo Web Analytics Forum and subscribing to every measurement blog you can find

2. Go to Emetrics NOW - Your world view is likely to be very myopic: all about your tool, your website, your business. You need perspective. The eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit will open your eyes, especially if you’re just starting.

3. Your Tool Can Do More Than You Think - Most people assume that what you get out of the box is the limit of your tool. This is usually wrong 99% of the time. You must not be afraid to ask your vendor about what else it can do.

4. Start a Blog or Business - If you don’t really, really own the numbers you’re responsible for, you’ll never really, really learn the data. Pick some side project, start a blog or a business, and measure the hell out of it. Trust me, you will learn a ton.

5. Automate Your Life - I’m repeating June here, but you simply must automate as much as possible. You will be stuck in Excel hell unless you can use technology better.

6. Test! Survey! - Repeat after me: not everything you need to know is inside of your conventional web analytics tool. Say it again. Now, do it. There is NO excuse not to start gaining experience. If you listened to #4, then you don’t need anyone’s permission.

7. Learn Other Disciplines (like SEO and Paid Search) - You will be better at your job if you understand what you’re measuring. Start dabbling in paid search, SEO, affiliates, email, WHATEVER. Just stop focusing on measuring and start focusing on doing the things you measure.

8. Communication is the #1 Skill You Need - Measurement without action is failure. If you cannot communicate your findings and persuade people to act, you will not be effective. Learn to present. Master the executive summary. Be one with PowerPoint.

9. Be Not Afraid of Technological Terms - I’m not a technically oriented person. But, the very nature of internet marketing requires that you at least grasp the basics. The nature of web measurement requires that you grasp a step above the basics. Like it or not, you need to tackle this sooner rather than later.

10. Teach Early and Often - It is very easy for people to start relying on you to measure. Unfortunately, this can quickly become limiting to your career growth. Measure for manager and he’ll optimize for a day, teach him to measure and he’ll optimize for life!

PS: If you want to learn paid search, check out the ClickEquations Blog.  If you manage large paid search campaigns, check out ClickEquations.

I’ve been thinking about attribution recently — how your software decides which channel gets credit for conversion (see my article on campaign analytics).  Attribution is really a question of credit and influence.  Which promotion contributed to that sale?

I believe that previous ad clicks contribute to brand awareness and can drive future searches and response.  But, they place a lesser degree in future sales. Yes, I’m more likely to come back and convert if I previously found your site another way.  They deserve a some assistance credit, but it diminishes over time and with each subsequent click and channel.

Direct traffic is the biggest attribution hole.  All of that traffic originated somewhere, we just can’t directly trace it back and it’s deflating other channel’s performance.

I think this is a religious argument.  There is no obvious and easy answer.  The best answer is the model that ultimately leads a business to invest in the channels that produce more profit, etc.  That said, we are very far off from that state. That’s why I think that software should give people a choice, thus circumventing any nits they could pick with whatever one we forced them into.

What kind of attribution are you using today?  Which kind would you like to be using?

It’s a New Year which means… resolutions!  I’m trying to skip the meaningless, aspirational goals that I usually dream up.  Instead, I’m digging down into the things that I can really commit to.  I’m making 8 resolutions for Digital Alex and ClickEquations.com (which I’m responsible for).

1. I will integrate my data.  People come to my site.  Then, they become leads, customers and retained customers.  I really want to make decisions about where to spend my money based on who is the most valuable.  That means I have to connect the clicks to the customers with extra site and campaign tagging.
2. I will QA my data at least once a month.  I’m going to totally level with you here.  I’m guilty of some web analytics sloth.  Sometimes I’ll QA data once, make the fixes and only deal with spot issues.  We all know data is dirty and I just can’t assume it’s right.  Bad data happens!  This is especially true on B2B sites (see above).  I resolve to do a more thorough review at least monthly and act swiftly.
3. I won’t have an ego about my website. In the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, I concede that I do not know everything.  That’s why it’s probably better for me to rely on what customers care about what the data says.  Multivariate testing and voice of customer, here I come!
4. I will prioritize speed over perfection.  I’ve been accused of a “shoot first, aim later” style and, frankly, I’ll embrace the label.  In my opinion, it’s better to ask forgiveness instead of permission.  To me, it’s all about speed.  The same is true in online marketing, design and analytics.  It’s easy to obsess to the point of inaction.  I’m not saying to be sloppy, but I am say that something launched at 80% is better than nothing launched at 95%.  Speed has a tremendous value.  I will analyze until the answers are good enough and then correct.

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I was assembling a list of paid search blogs for Guy Kawasaki’s AllTop (which I’ve been featured on) and I thought you might enjoy them too!  If I’ve missed a good one, please leave a comment.

1. ClickEquations Blog
2. PPC Hero
3. Search Engine Land
4. Search Engine Watch
5. Rimm-Kaufman Blog
6. Inside AdWords
7. YSM Blog
8. Traffick
9. Clix Marketing Blog
10. eWhisper
11. Web Pro News
12. Search Engine Roundtable
13. MSN AdCenter Blog
14. Compete Blog
15. Quality in Search
16. Search Engine Journal
17. Paid Search on Sphinn
18. AdWords Agency Blog
19. SEMvironment
20. John Batelle’s Searchblog
21. Search Marketing Standard
22. Searching Beyond the Paid
23. Gordon Choi
24. Pay Per Click Journal
25. aimClear Blog
26. Fuel Interactive Blog

Additions from comments

• SEM Geek
• PPC Discussions
• eWhisper

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been reading books as much as I would like.  Mostly, I get snippets on blogs or bits in articles.  Case in point: I’ve been in the middle of Always Be Testing for months now (ack, sorry Bryan!).

Well, I’m trying to finish more of the things I’ve started and focus on only the things that matter.  In the world of optimization, landing page testing falls high on that list.

I wager that’s probably on your list too (at least, I hope it is), so I put together a quick list of three landing page books:

1. Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Book
2. Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer
3. Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

1. Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Book

Marketing Sherpa puts out a killer newsletter and regularly releases compilations of their own primary and secondary research.  Here’s a brief snippet:

8 Design tips for landing pages with links to other pages:

1. Ruthlessly eliminate click links that are irrelevant pages or advertisers, and minimize the typeface of those to privacy and legal information.
2. Make sure links change color after they are clicked by each visitor.
3. Make the area around each link clickable (even if the link itself only has a word or two underlined, or a small click button) so the visitor doesn’t have to hit the spot right on with their mouse for it to work.
4. Carefully copywrite your links so someone reading the first three words or so will understand what they’ll get from the click. People skimming a list of links rarely read more than a few words per line. Unclear, boring, or duplicative-sounding links won’t get clicks.
5. Make your hero shot clickable, with a separate window of information opening so the visitor is not taken away from the main landing page. A surprising number of folks will click on your hero shot.
6. Don’t make visitors click to a conversion form if possible. Clicks should be for more information, not for additional conversion steps. Include your form or the first step of the form on this page. Make this conversion step obviously bigger and graphically different from all other click links on the page.
7. If your page has to appeal to multiple audiences and there’s no way you can d a separate landing page for each, then the page should focus on the primary audience. Create a big fat link for the secondary audience to click on to go to a page specifically designed for them. Example: a page with info for kids with a fat link saying “Parents, click here.”
8. If linked information is critical to conversion, then consider including several different links to it on the same page in different formats. Some people will click on underlined text, others on graphics, and others on search boxes. You need to be sure all three surfing types are able to arrive at the same place for the next step in the conversion process. Don’t worry about duplicative linking. It’s reassuring rather than annoying.

The Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Book is 30% off until December 31st.

2. Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer

My guess is that most business who dip their toes in testing use Google Website Optimizer.  Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNow and GrokDotCom wrote his third book all about the software as well as the advice on persuasion and website testing.  Amazon has the book as well as reviews.  You can also get an overview at Testing Toolbox, a central location for everything related to the book.

3. Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

Tim Ash’s book is also pretty fresh off the presses, though he’s been around for a while.  His landing page book focuses entirely on the best and worst practices of landing page design and testing.  It piggybacks off of his writing at Search Engine Watch and the SiteTuner’s blog. 

Available at Amazon for the regular folk.  Die hard fans willing to throw the recession to the wind might want an autographed copy of the book, which you can purchase here :-)

Which landing page books do you recommend?

‘Tis the season to reflect on the most popular blog posts of 2008.  Following in my grand (1 year old) tradition, I scoured my Google Reader for those blog posts that I starred throughout the year as useful and entertaining.

These are the most popular blog posts to me, but I’d also like to know which ones are your favorites.  Feel free to comment and share either ones you’ve written on your blog or ones you’ve read on other people’s blogs.

Special thanks to Dennis, Li, Craig, Matt, Manoj, June, Rich, Lu, PPC Hero, Bryan, and Avi.

Digital Alex (most popular blog posts on my site per analytics data)

• Campaign Tagging with Google Analytics
• A Basic Website and Marketing Analysis Method
• 7 Ways to Measure and Improve Your Website

Web Analytics Blog Posts

• The Elements of a Great Web Analytics Dashboard
• Web Analytics Data Reconciliation How-To Guide
• The Difference Between a KPI and a Metric
• Measuring and Optimizing Engagement: The Audible.com Case Study
• Pinch Media Releases Free Analytics for iPhone SDK
• Online Video Analytics
• Alexa Overhauls Ranking System
• Striving to Be Below Average
• Die Chart :-)

Website Testing + Targeting Blog Posts

• Best of 2008: Top 10 Website Optimization Posts to Kick Start and Improve Your Website!
• Search Behavior Targeting: Determining Targeted Content Viability and Messaging on Landing Pages
• How To Do Efficient Optimization
• Optimizing Your Content Pages
• Offermatica’s Behavioral Targeting by Personal Affinity
• Multivariate Testing Series
  • Introduction to Factorial Designs
  • Choosing an MVT Testing Array
  • MVT Element Selection - Strategy and Tactics
  • Multivariate Element Test Variations
  • Test Setup and Implementation
  • Understanding Multivariate Test Results
• The Promise & Challenge of Behavior Targeting (And Two Prerequisites)
• Marketing ROI Workshop Reflections: Onsite Resourcing & Behavior Variables

Blogging

• How To Use Forums to Drive Hundreds of Thousands of Readers to Your Blog
• 10 Ways to Optimize a Popular Post on Your Blog
• 30 Free High Quality Wordpress Themes
• The Comprehensive Paint-by-numbers Guide to Writing and Publishing Your Ebook
• Nine Signs of an Effective Blog Post
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky
• How to Make Your Blog More Personal
• 2 Sure-Fire Ways to Make Money Online
• How to Use PR People to Build Traffic to Your Blog
• 10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Blog Traffic
• A 20-Step Process For Finding Your 1,000 True Fans
• How To Create a Sense of Anticipation with Your Blog
• Crafty Cart Theme Review
• How To Write Posts that Set Stumbleupon On Fire
• How I Increased My Blog’s Subscriber Count By Over 1000% In Less Than a Year

Paid Search Blog Posts

• Quality Score: Final Thoughts (For Now)
• The Match Type Keyword Trap
• Google’s Keyword Tool With Volume Numbers: Useful or Ho-Hum?
• Google Grants - Revolutionizing the Non-Profit Industry
• Truth in SEM Analytics
• Financial Services Industry Knowledge Center
• Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies
• Yahoo Tweaks Its (Advertising) Algorithm
• Helpful tips on our new content network tools
• Paid Search In The Hot Sun

Copywriting Blog Posts

• How to Say Nothing in 500 Words (A Lesson on Writing)
• Four Ways to Target Online Buyers With the Right Words
• Give More Than Words for Extreme Reader Response
• The Two Magic Words That Guarantee Limitless Copywriting Success
• Five Lessons From Newspapers to Boost Your Blog’s Circulation
• New Services will Monitor Your Site for Typos
• How a Few Measly Words Can Dramatically Improve Your Blog Headline and Content
• Just Say No to These Three Enemies of Clear and Direct Writing
• Are You Creating Bookmarkable Content?

SEO + Social Media Blog Posts

• Barack Obama: The First Social Media President?
• 10 Tips to Pick the Low-hanging Fruit
• Holy Mother of Linkbait
• Good Housekeeping (site tips from Google)
• How To Herd Organic Traffic to Your Blog
• First date with the Googlebot: Headers and compression
• SEO Swot Analysis
• Keyword Research for Bloggers
• 5 Basic SEO Rules for Launching a Website

Startup Blog Posts

• A Quick and Dirty Guide to Starting Up
• The Crisis in Venture Capital
• Fear is the Mind Killer of the Silicon Valley Entrepreneur (we must be Muad’Dib, not Clark Kent)
• PR Secrets for Startups
• Sequoia’s Gospel of Startups More True Than Ever
• After the TechCrunch Bump

Web Design + Visual Inspiration Blog Posts

• Five More Principles of Effective Web Design
• Andrew Bannecker (Illustrator)
• Grid-Based Design: Six Creative Column Techniques
• Free Credit Card Icons for Online Shops
• Shopping Carts Gallery: Examples and Good Practices
• Free Fonts of the Month: Myndraine, Museo Sans
• 50 Beautiful Examples of Tilt-Shift Photography
• Odopod Design Studio Visit
• Mustache Handkerchief
• 7 Deadly Glasses

Careers & Salary Blog Posts

• Resumes are for *Shit*.  The 4 Things You Really Need: LinkedIn, Blog, Keywords, Social Media
• You Make HOW Much? Getting Paid What You’re Worth
• Site Offers Peek at Salaries
• The Answer to the Toughest Interview Question

General Marketing + Strategy Blog Posts

• Thinking bigger
• Study Shows Targeted Ads Make Users Uneasy
• Permission Marketing

Presentation Blog Posts

• How Should I Format My Deck?

A few of these blog posts aren’t from 2008, but I discovered them in 2008.  So, they’re still the most popular blog posts of 2008 to me :-)