Kirk Ouimet

One of the tracks at the Omniture Summit today focused on leveraging user generated content (UGC) to help accomplish a site’s goals. Focusing on UGC is a wise move considering some of these latest trends:

• Online spend is increasing
• More money is being allocated to social networking

Marketers will embrace social networking sites. The average social networker:

• Is 20 something with an opinion
• Is registered on several social networking sites
• Is heavily involved with friends and groups online
• Spends money and tells others what they purchase

Advertisers want:

• Credibility: UGC leads to viral campaigns based on referrals
• Targeting: UGC leads to niche social networking sites
• Frequency: UGC leads to high repeat visitation
  • Traditionally if you were lucky you would get 5-10 repeat visits from a user per month
  • Now, over 50% of adults engaged in social networks return at least once a day

All of the above trends show that UGC is something worth investigating. Some important metrics used to track UGC include:

• Number of registrations
• Number of message posts
• Number of message posts per visit
• Number of comments
• Number of ratings
• Number of ratings per visit

A valuable strategy for a web marketer is to use the above metrics to find and promote high value content. High value content includes both popular content and influential content. Popular content can be found by looking at raw page views. Influential content can be found by looking at the actions of users after they view UGC. Quality content can be promoted by making it a big deal:

• Put the most commented content on the front page
• Put the most viewed content on the front page

Omniture’s SiteCatalyst v14 has a really cool feature where you can have your site interface with the analytics API and dynamically use site statistical data to identify content that is making an impact. You can then have your site use that data to automatically promote high value UGC to the front page.

This summer I’m going to implement the things I learned today on my own site, Social Wallpapering.

I was lucky to have the opportunity today to attend the Omniture Summit hosted in the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Omniture Summit is an annual event where online marketers get together from around the world to network with other professionals and learn more about their trade.

Seth Godin, a marketing guru, presented to over 2,000 people on a few abstract marketing concepts. Seth made some points about marketing that I feel are worth noting:

• Past forms of marketing, which were previously tried and true, are no longer performing
• Being a huge company with tons of money doesn’t mean people are going to want to visit your website
• Marketing isn’t just about dumping money into AdWords, it’s about building a product or idea worth talking about to begin with
• Good ideas spread. Successful marketing is all about being remarkable, or in other words, having people value your idea enough to make a remark about it
• The best marketing is marketing done by customers who believe in you and want to talk about to their associates

Seth’s presentation was stellar. For more information on his ideas and books, see his website.

The current leader in the web analytics industry, Omniture, recently promoted a web analytics competition at Brigham Young University. I participated in the competition and had the opportunity to compete at Omniture’s office building located in Orem, Utah. I had a really enjoyable time, and was able familiarize myself with SiteCatalyst, Omniture’s flagship product. I’ve been using Google Analytics for the past couple of years on my sites, and I have been very impressed with SiteCatalyst. I learned that SiteCatalyst is far more customizable than Google Analytics and allows for the creation of much more extensive reports.

The idea for the competition was simple. Omniture gave everyone access to one of their current client’s web analytics data. Our job was to analyze the data and present our findings and recommendations to a panel of judges. The client this year was backcountryoutlet.com, and our team’s strategy was to focus on these three key performance indicators (KPIs) for e-commerce stores:

1. Yield (Revenue / Visits)
2. Conversion (Orders / Visits)
3. Order Size (Revenue / Orders)

During our analysis we quickly learned that the readily available data in SiteCatalyst was useful, but insufficient to draw any in depth conclusions. Given enough time to create custom reports and create calculated metrics, a web analyst can find some really cool correlations with a web site’s design and the KPIs mentioned above.

One of my favorite experiences from the competition was the chance I had to meet with a product manager at Omniture during lunch. Our team talked with the product manager about Omniture’s other upcoming products, including Discover and Search Center. We also discussed the process of choosing and bidding for good keywords using AdWords and other CPC advertising venues.

My experience in the competition has led me to ask myself how I could use what I learned about web analytics to further monetize my existing sites. Also, being able to see all of the web traffic data for a large online retailer has instilled in me the desire to start my own e-commerce store. We’ll see what I can do this summer!

I’m really excited to be taking a course on web analytics this semester at Brigham Young University. Over the past few years I have been heavily involved in web development and I have been using Google Analytics to track the visitors who come to all of my websites. Google Analytics has been particularly helpful to me by tracking traffic on my site www.socwall.com, a website focused on providing desktop background images. Here’s a snapshot of the primary data that Google Analytics provided me in the month of December for socwall.com:

Right now my understanding of web analytics is limited to my experience with Google Analytics. I’m excited to start working with other tools, particularly Omniture’s web tracking software. Some expectations I have for my experience in the web analytics course include:

1. Learn how to identify more detailed demographic information about the individuals visiting my sites
2. Learn how to identify what is driving traffic to my sites and how to maximize those drivers
3. Learn how to optimize online ad placement to maximize site monetization
4. Communicate with experienced professionals about the latest innovations in web analytics

I will use this blog to periodically post items that I find interesting about web analytics.