Could YOU start a 'Project Mayhem'?

How Fight Club is a metaphor for the struggle for economic independence

The First Rule about Project Mayhem is...screw that, let's talk about Project Mayhem. It's an interesting idea!

What was Fight Club really about?

Remember Fight Club? Remember the reality questioning, neo-anarchist/surrealist (classic IMHO) from '99 by David Fincher? Thought provoking stuff for sure. This is how it makes me think...

Not like a terrorist is the first and safest thing I should say! No, it makes me think about economic independence. Think about the scene where Pitt crashes the car with Ed Norton and the two drones. It's about letting go of control. Can you stop trying to control everything and just let go? Why do this? What is the benefit and when is this a realistic option?

Fight Club (to me) is a Blue collar reaction to big business, big brands, controlling society, banks and a crumby system. The backlash manifests itself as (ultimately futile and destructive) terrorist activities. I think there is a different, more positive approach: letting go, not trying to control everything, not being controlled and aiming for economic independence.

What is Economic Independence really about?

Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, has already captured a richly ironic flavour of economic independence earlier in the movie with his notorious soap. The famous but rather disgustingly sourced lipo-suction fat based soap is hotly demanded and commands a premium price. He achieves economic independence by offering a product (and being known to offer a product) that the Market comes to him for. Typically we are economically dependent in that we have to go to the Market to deliver a loud message regarding our product or service and really try very hard to engage in commerce. We're active rather than passive in our economic destiny.

We normally have no option other than to play the most active role in 'controlling' our economic destiny. Perhaps controlling is too strong a word...steering...coaxing...hoping. Maybe those are more accurate terms? To me they certainly better reflect the plight of the economically dependent. Just that - dependent, shackled, constrained and restricted.

So, we start to see what economic independence means. We're clear that independence is preferable but what does it really mean?

To me it emphatically does not mean being able to wander into the Lamborghini showroom Knightsbridge and drive out with their latest, shiniest and loudest creation. Nope. That comes later. That privilege is a by-product of what economic independence really means. And what it really means is what Fight Club was actually about: FREEDOM! Economic independence gives you freedom of choice. Freedom to choose what to do, when and how. When you have the liberty to choose when to work and when to play, you really have thrown off the shackles of the rat race. Again, I'm not talking about not having to work again. I personally don't want that. I like what I do but I also like to choose when, how, how long and with who to work.

Freedom is a lifestyle 'enabler'.

For me, (and I'm sure we've all had the idea on a Sunday night) the ideal scenario is a longer weekend than a working week. The icing is the prospect of looking forward to the week AS MUCH AS the weekend. Right now, the weekend is oh-so-precious. The balance is not quite right.

And that is the right point to conclude this missive on. The real motivation for penning this baby manifesto is not financial, it's about lifestyle and seeking the best ROI. The need to make an investment is key and is not in doubt. Getting the maximum return from this investment hinges on the freedom of choice on how and when the return is to be spent.

What is so cool about delivering Actionable Insights?

As a Conversion Rate Optimisation Professional (CROP?) I have to deliver Actionable Insights to my clients. This means that if I have to tell them that their website is the Internet equivalent of an Ugly Baby then I have to back up my damning appraisal of their efforts with quantifiable opportunities for optimisation.

WTF?

Look, if a website sucks, it can be made to suck less. I state how to do this, what it will cost and what return the investment will yield and when. Standard good business practice, no?

So, the form goes (in my own paraphrase, this is not normal vocab!):

ME: Dude. Your site sucks...
CLIENT:(tiny hurt look, bottom lip aquiver, tear budding on corner of their eye) Oh...
ME:(Wise and sage like) But lo! All is not lost and we know why!
CLIENT:(Hope springs to their darling visage) Hussah fine sir! Pray tell and explain to us the details of your machinations.
ME:(earnest and serious) Because of A, B and C you are leaving £X on the table every month. Do Y and Z by investing £T and you'll make £X back in 6 months and then get into mega profit. (£T is some proportion of £X depending on the issue at hand)

And the cool thing here is the turnaround from hurt and hate to adoration, frantic note taking, nodding and maniacal zeal is almost instant.

The eagerness to get on and do whatever it takes to improve the site is partly driven by the realisation that in making their site better, the Internet as a whole exudes a little extra polish. It's like an insurance policy underwriting their intent to optimize: by improving their little corner of the good ol' WWW that they have the opportunity to refine the balance between the good sites and the YouTube comments. Make their bit of the web suck less and by definition everything gets just a little bit better. We can say how much better too with a fine degree of accuracy.

They get to make a better honest buck in the process.

I do too.

'Tis a fine and correct feeling.


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A sincere request to clients all over the world.

Please don't...

With all due respect - and I mean that from the heart of my bottom, pretty please, whilst I cherish your business and admire your entrepreneurial spirit, drive and abilities, I take my hat off to your tenacity and guts but for the love of all that is harder than you can appreciate, don't try to tell experts how to do their job.

I see this ludicrous phenomenon on a daily basis. Poor designers, copy writers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, analysts and even cleaners are all subject to the entrepreneur who knows best, laying down a new set of rules by which recognised experts have to proceed whilst suppressing the bile and shame rising from doing what the pay-master insists on regardless of what might be best practice or even slightly good practice let alone common sense.

What gives the owner and master of a business that they have built up from nothing using their own ballsiness, capital, wit and wherewithal the brazen right to stomp over recognised experts and their life-long, hard won experience and knowledge in preference to there own limited and ignorant whim/view/current brain fart?

Well, exactly that. The fact that they have built the bloody business - no one else. It was their cash, their idea, their spirit and spark, so by crickey they've earn't the right to run the business how they see fit, no?

Well, no.

Great minds talk about ideas. Average minds talk about events and weak minds talk about people. What sort of minds tell smarter people what to do? Shudder...

The entrepreneurs in question once had a great mind. They had an idea and they bloody well made it into something that worked. Kudos my friends. You had a moment of 'great mindedness'. Thing is, now, when you need the input of experts, when you need the smart people you surrounded yourself with (kudos again btw) to guide you onwards and upwards to a whole new level, you decide to regress to a weaker mind than the average mouth breathing TV watching pleb. Engage that great mind and talk about ideas (your ideas) with the experts. Then listen and engage with the serious minds and employ them to the best of their abilities to get the most value from them. To employ the expert and then try to do their job by stomping on the honest and best input you could hope for is near criminal. If this is done through honest ignorance the light may yet appear. To do this through 'smart commercialism' is fucking idiotic and to do this in the sincere belief that you know better is the business equivalent of running with scissors...on a tightrope..over flames....blind folded...whilst sneezing uncontrollably. I hope you fall.

Really I do. Not out of spite. Not out of envy. Remember my opening caveat - I get the businessperson and their admirable qualities: they have done something I haven't. I hope they fall but will become richer from the fall and come back stronger having learnt from the experience. That would be a good thing if it happened sooner and quicker without having to crush the poor experts in the process.

So, if you employ a decent, honest, reliable expert to do a job, bloody well listen to them and don't try to be a smart-arse. You'll be better off in the long run.


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Delighted with customer service!

I took my little car in the it's first service today. Being pre-owned but still under a year old I decided it was worth hanging on to the 'full service history' aspect.

I was anticipating the usual 'main dealer' level of expense and true enough - it was more than my usual 'Mick the Mechanic' level of cost. But - and no disrespect to Mick here at all, but, the customer service was excellent. I got a nice (but very metro) Fiat 500 courtesy car to use for the day and my car was cleaned to within an inch of it's life inside and out when I picked it up. Cool.

From now on I won't bother cleaning the car....I'll just take it for a service! :-)


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What a cracking good weekend that was!

Despite 100% gilt edged, triple grade 'arse' rated weather on Saturday, the weekend has panned out nicely.

Okay, though it may seem trifling and mundane, the main aim of Saturday was to secure a less tenuous grasp on sanity by getting caught up on important real-life matters. It is less important what they were, they are just those things that need doing and it is good that they are done if not necessarily good to do them.

Some work things are caught up on or nicely teed up for a sweet Monday morning work slam dunk. The sweetest Mondays start with that satisfying 'clunk' of a deliverable being engaged with the trustworthy movement of expertly designed engineering. Some products feel like Victorian signal box mechanisms - chunky and course grained where others feel more like mountain bike 21 speed indexed gear sets - more precise and delicate but nonetheless effective and valuable.

The big feature of the weekend was the opportunity to get out. To leave the house and be in the big wide world of my locale for a couple of hours. When I was marathon training every week, I had the chance to clear my head with 2 or 3 hours of solitary long run. This was fine. Good. Healthy. It was also very hard and quite lonely sometimes. Today, I went mountain biking with @mrsfastbloke. Having spent so much time solitary marathon training, it's a different prospect to engage in a 'do something physical and fun on the weekend' with someone. Rather than having to plan a selfishly large chunk of of the ever-limited weekend 'play time' JUST FOR ME I get to democratise leisure time which is much more palatable AND fun!

So, where are we going with this? I need to plan my fun time as I plan my work. Precisely, efficiently and with a serious goal in mind - less ad-hoc in other words.
I haven't nailed many BIG life goals for a while. I mean serious, chunky, make-a-difference-and-have-something-to-talk-about-for-years type goals.

I will be using this blog for more planning and description of my *serious* goals I want to achieve in the near future. Why? I need to make things happen.

Time to do some big things.


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Watch out...poor grammar may cause time travel...

Think of the most incredible reason you have ever given or heard for leaving a job and triple it. Triple it again. Nope. Not even close! How about this example from a credible source found recently:

"I am leaving as I am going to live and work in Birmingham in the near future."

I love it. Not the past. Not the sci-fi ray guns and space ships future but the 'near future'. How near?

"I'm-spending-the-rest-of-my-life-ten-minutes-ahead-of-the-rest-of-you" near?

Bookmakers would be miffed for sure. I'd happily play with the stock markets given a ten minute head start on the rest of the world.

Such gentle, modest, whimsical, ambition is possible because of ignorance. Ace.

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iPad blog post

Right, this blog IS going to get more love now I have an iPad blog editor.

Just finished my first AGM (A Grown up Meeting) with WebExpectations/ ConversionWorks.

What a GREAT company. The folks there just rock!

Doug is happy.


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Are browser bookmarks dead?

It occurred to me recently that I no longer use bookmarks. I used to and very useful they were too. Nowadays I just don't bother with bookmarks. Why? What is forcing bookmarks out?

Tabbed browsing
If I really need to remember a site, it's because it's an 'internal' system (intranet) for example and I'm just too lazy to remember the URL. Solution? I set my homepage tabs to open on startup effectively replacing the need for bookmarks in that instance.

Browser history
If I think I can sorta remember the start of the URL, I'll chuck a few attempts in the browser address bar and see what suggestions pop up. Easy, quick and convenient. Certainly quicker than a nested menu of bookmarks.

Multiple machines and browsers
Counting up very quickly I reckon I could use up to 3 different machines on a daily basis - sometimes more if I am lending a hand or sharing work with someone else. These machines are likely to have Chrome, Firefox, Safari and....ahem..IE (Eeew - I feel dirty just saying it) - no point in using bookmarks in this instance...Yeah, I could use Google bookmarks but I don't want to put my Google account credentials into just any old machine or have to log anyone else's Google account out.

Google
So, my home tabs don't contain a certain site and I can't find it in my history and I can't guess the URL from my sketchy memory....Hmmm. What now? GIMP duh! Google Is My Pal. For heavens sake, obviously the biggest and bestest search engine on the planet is making it soooo easy to find a site that bookmarking a site or page is less than worthwhile.

If I made a bookmark in the past, it was quite possible that the page URL might change or the page could go away etc etc. So I had to maintain my own bookmarks. Meh, I think I'll just let the big G maintain it's own index and I'll search like usual if that's okay?

So, bookmarks anymore? I wouldn't be surprised if a total newbie to the web doesn't 'get' the concept or see the need for bookmarks. Similarly I wouldn't be surprised to see bookmark functionality disappear from browsers in the future too.

Funny how culture changes huh?

Engineers are from Mars, Marketers are from Venus, Designers are from Jupiter.

Why traditional, isolationist approaches to marketing, engineering and design are not effective approaches to growing online businesses.

Engineers consider design to be ‘packaging’ and marketing to be ‘headaches with pictures’ (I know this as I was/am an engineer!).

Designers consider design to be the process where the product of engineering is made less ugly.

Marketers consider design and engineering to be servants to capitalism - of their making.

These essential groups of business functions seem destined to be at odds. Historically the functions of engineering, design and marketing are discretely serialised and compartmentalised. As will be demonstrated, there are clear historical precedents that should be heeded lest we all make the same mistakes again and not realise that the best engineering/marketing/designing is a accomplished through a single cohesive entity.

To sell all you can make or to make all you can sell?

Product design, engineering and marketing are all influenced by economics, politics, consumerism and social upheaval. We can see now the degree of influence and significance of change the industrial revolution had on the process and science of design and engineering in the 18th and 19th centuries. So, consider the innovation and disruption being caused right now by a contemporary revolution sparked by the iPad -1 million units sold in 28 days after launch and analysts predicting double digit millions to be sold by year end.

Consumerism can be defined as the buying, selling and recycling of products: a major catalyst for change. We should take note of change like this. We ignore the powerful effects of consumerism during ‘iPad style’ social upheaval at our peril...Henry Ford learnt the hard way:

Fighting to reduce unit costs through maximising volume, the model T production line reduced the time and therefore price to build a product from 12 hours down to 93 minutes. An incredible accomplishment but this economic scalability came at the price of aesthetic appeal notable by his most famous quote - ‘Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black’. Ford’s achievements and failings don’t necessarily reflect his original and noteworthy intentions:

"I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one—and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."


Had Ford met his goals as stated, this would have been a sustainable commercial success for much longer but the execution of the strategy had shortcomings. Where mass production gave economic scalability, the over-specialisation and in-built lack of business agility rendered the Ford production machine unable to respond quickly or accurately enough to the consumer’s new-found fickleness. Where standardised parts and specialised tools can be combined with relatively little skill to achieve mass production, the over-reduction of the skill element and the over-specialisation of tools are symptomatic of engineers ignoring the design and marketing aspects of building businesses. Ford confessed that the design of the model T was secondary to the engineering brilliance that enabled mass-production.

Are you a Roundhead or a Cavalier?

It has been suggested that two schools of design can be considered:

Roundhead - focussed on function
Cavalier - focussed on form and aesthetics

Some aspects of each school will be appealing to engineers, some to marketers where one might suggest that traditional design is cemented in the Cavalier camp.

Japanese design considers simplicity (both aesthetic and functional) to be a virtue in terms of economics and design. One might suggest this also applies to business solutions.

There are myriad advantages to such a philosophy. Aspiring to fewer moving parts reduces complexity and eases comprehension. Simple and elegant solutions generally pose fewer risks and present a smaller cost. The simple solution is inherently flexible and agile. Let us avoid the confusion between over-complex and sophistication. One can achieve sophistication whilst retaining the qualities of simplicity and elegance.

Now, Ford was a hard-core roundhead, de-skilling is labour force and specialising his tool set for mass production and aligning his output for mass use rather than mass appeal. Barely an after-thought nod to the neglected Cavaliers.

Putting this history lesson into context, let’s think about online businesses...Clearly, we can see merit in functional (Roundhead) and aesthetic (Cavalier) philosophies. Can we honour both approaches and in essence harmonise the functions of design, marketing and engineering to capitalise and the respective strengths without rendering our solution overly complex and unwieldy?

The question is how do we effectively re-skill resources and be agile enough in our respective disciplines in order to deliver an online business that has both mass appeal (Cavalier) and mass use (Roundhead)?

Catering for the market of one

First of all we need to be aware of the combination of relevant skills that are to be employed. I’ll pick a few out of a hat...

• Commerciality


• Engineering/Technical


• Statistical modeling


• Qualitative, quantitative and competitive intelligence analysis


• Communication


• Design


• Strategic leadership


• Rigour


• Discipline

In isolation these are all really strong, marketable skills. They are all relevant and are used to deliver solid, sustainable growth to online businesses.

I recently migrated from a hands on technical leadership role that combined a number of the ‘roundhead’ skills and qualities above to an online marketing leadership role that would have been thought of as a ‘Cavalier’ mindset by my previous peer group. I am met by some perplexed enquiries as to what drove me to be a turn-coat:

‘CTO to Head of Marketing? Chalk and cheese surely?‘

No - I’m not a turn-coat and there isn’t a huge difference in terms of the skill sets that need application. The big change is in terms of mindset regarding how to apply the skills and why.

Recognising that the skills are present (throughout the team) and that they need simple, cohesive application to extract maximum value (for the clients) was somewhat of a House/CSI style epiphany. It’s really obvious but a formulaic approach of broadening and strengthening the skills of existing assets enables the roles of design, engineering and marketing to be combined into fewer resources (ideally one individual).

Simples! It ain't as simples as it seems...

Simples! Isn't it?
I always look forward to a new Avinash blog post. The title of Avinash's blog is Occam's razor - the simplest explanation is usually the best one (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem as I always say!...)

Unfortunately the simplest and best solution, it seems, is seldom chosen. Why is this? What problems does this cause and why did I choose to waffle about this today?

Why so serious?
So why choose to over complicate? What is the motivation to choose complexity where simple answers with fewer moving parts, lower risk and lower cost are available and more appropriate? Brand fixation? Misplaced loyalty? Vendor favouritism? Ignorance? Cognitive miserness - too stingy to think beyond...oh, whatever! Perhaps it's too hard to choose? Perhaps...just perhaps it's the case that a chosen solution is perceived to be better due to the presentation of the solution? Appearing to be simpler or better or requiring less effort (at least in the short term - cognitive miserliness?) is a strong decision making trigger.

Why is this common occurrence a matter for discussion and exploration? As with ANYTHING in life - if the barrier to entry [for a solution] is too high then the level of average quality [of the solution] will be low(er). Take the state of the economy in the UK as an example. Pubic spending has been 'out of control' for years...well, it's been massively wasteful and inefficient due to massive complexity - this much is clear. Is the new government seeking to simplify and add efficiency to resolve the situation? I bloody hope so but this is not a political blather...I want to contextualise on tech..soon.

So, you see what happens when over complex or JPW (Just Plain Wrong) solutions happen? Badness - simple. The fix? Adjust the perception of the actual simple solution compared to that of the complex solution in order to trigger the right choice.

If the simple solution becomes the mean choice this will, in general, lower the bar to entry and the inverse (dis)proportional relationship with quality will yield many more smiles per gallon. Simples, right?

Appear effortless
Well, not quite...The oxymoronic art of presenting a simpler yet better solution still requires a whole bucket of clever!

My TV set has one button - On/Off. Modern aircraft are designed to be simpler to fly through fewer levers and buttons in the cockpit. Automatic gear boxes in cars simplify the job of driving. Heck, I can even use a washing machine (and do!!). These real life examples of 'simpler is better' still contain some mega-clever action under the hood. We don't see (or care) about it though. We see the simple and subconsciously blank out the clever. Our perception of these solutions for life problems is that they are simple. They are presented in a way such that the 'simple' is IN-YOUR-FACE. You can't miss the simple. The solution appears effortless whilst in actuality they are 110% smart. Tricky but so worth the effort.

Get to the point already
Yes - where is this going? So - the crux...I can't tell you the full details yet. The solution will be an Open Source product for the measurement and control of website performance. It is clear that the majority of Web Analytics solutions whilst appearing smart and good are actually harming rather than helping. There is a better way and it will be delivered democratically, for free and doable with apparent effortlessness. Think 'one liner' solution that does all the things you need with little or no thought.

Interested?

Here is a promise - simples will be better and unavoidable.

Understanding the Mclaren F1 rear wing 'stall' device

The 2010 Mclaren F1 car has a clever device to make the car go faster on the straights be reducing drag from the rear wing. Martin Brundle (and many other journalists) has, I think described the so called 'Rear Wing Stall Device' poorly.

Here is an explanation using basic aerodynamic theory that shows that the wing does not actually 'stall' but appears to 'get smaller'.

Here is a normal aeroplane wing:



Air flows over the curved top surface of the wing as it moves forwards through the air. Because the air is being made to change direction the air molecules bash into each other as they bend around the curved wing. All this bashing around makes the molecules move further apart - they need more space to bash and move and bend. Moving further apart reduces the pressure of the air on the top of the wing. This reduction in pressure on top actually sucks the wing up.

The stall.

For this suction effect to work properly, the air needs to move around the wing surfaces and stay nice and close to the surface. If the direction of the airflow changes so that the flow is perpendicular rather than head on then obviously the wing will not work. It presents it's bottom surface and behaves like a fence panel being blown by the wind in a storm. Lots of force in the wrong direction = drag! This is a stall. A stall does reduce the downforce of a wing but it will INCREASE a wing's drag - NOT REDUCE it!

Here is a normal formula one wing:



See how the wing is angled to optimise the downforce but not cause a stall as described above? Notice also that it appears to be upside down? A formula one wing wants to push/suck down where an aircraft wing wants to push/suck up.

So, if the Mclaren rear wing device is not stalling the wing what is it doing? A non-stalled wing will create a force in the correct direction (down for F1) but in doing so it will also cause another force to act one the wing - drag. The wing creates this force as described earlier by creating a pressure differential - the high or ambient pressure on the flat side of the wing and the low pressure on the curved side of the wing. The Mclaren device essentially opens a channel through the wing to remove or reduce the pressure differential between the surfaces.



This reduction in the pressure differential will reduce the downforce but also reduce drag all without stalling the wing.

The super clever bit about this device is how it is controlled. No clever computers involved - just a knee! The driver opens or closes the channel by blocking a vent with his knee thus controlling the pressure differential over the rear wing.

Smart.

Selling PPC to your clients - how hard can it be?

The Challenge of Selling Paid Search.

What? Selling PPC? Well, I have a wide range of tools at my disposal to help optimise the return my clients get from their sites: Paid Search is one of them. So, I need to sell the idea, the concept and the benefits to clients to get them to make an investment. Not everyone gets it though. Not all clients see why they should run the risk of (potentially as they see it) hemorrhaging cash to Google/MS/Yahoo to get traffic that they could get through a nice safe strategy like their trusted paper catalogue...

Sell on benefits, not features

So, this missive is not about PPC itself but more about selling PPC to those who can really get benefit from it but are frozen by doubt. Let's discuss what buttons need to be pushed to persuade business owners that paid advertising can provide a good return on investment.

Theirs is an understandable sentiment: As a business owner unfamiliar with PPC, you don't know how much it'll cost to put an advert somewhere on a search engine results page potentially near a competitor without knowing exactly what caused the advert to show when and where it did.

Start small on safe ground
How do you even know if your products will sell well through PPC? Just a little legwork will provide some pretty compelling arguments. Simple tools like http://www.google.com/sktool or https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal are easy to use and free. The information that can be found through these tools can be a gold mine. Just gotta find the seam...Hey! Why not start with a small time 'punt' using campaigns and keywords centered around the client's brand?

The so called madness of bidding on own brand keywords is actually a really good candidate to demonstrate great competitive advantages that can be gained through using paid advertising. Some examples for clients:

If you don't someone else will!
Beat your competitors on your own turf. It's your backyard - own it.

Turbo charge the Click Through Rate on the account
CTR has a significant effect on your campaign quality score. Get the positive cycle going with Click Through Rate. Strong brand keywords can kick start your campaigns

SEO benefits - KNOW the keywords that work for you
Transfer keyword learning into site copy which leads to...

The halo effect
Starting out with paid advertising will quite often cause a boost in organic traffic performance too.

Target Cost Per Acquisition
Seek to maximise the lifetime value of PPC customers and transfer this strategy to other channels for optimal ROI.

Okay, the last point there is suitable material for a whole blog post in it's own right but nonetheless, this handfull of straightforward, easy wins provide enough of a comfort for clients to dive in the shallow end of the paid advertising pool.

More often than not, they find the water is lovely!

Web Analytics - Don't get caught out by averages and ratios.

The Scenario

We sent an email to a few thousand customers. It was utm tagged so the performance of the email could be measured.

If you don't measure it, you can't improve it!

The Headline Results

The graph of visits over time, below, from Google Analytics shows a familiar shape:



Now, visits are great - we like visits. Our customers are wonderful and it's great to know they like our website...enough to buy stuff? Show me the money! So, let's bring in some more metrics on the graph. Say, visits and revenue:



Okay, visits and blue and $$$ in orange. Looks about right. Yup. So, visits and transactions. How many orders does our email generate?



Great - clearly our back to back email testing is looking great! We wanted to drive more sales but what happened to our average cart value? Lets drag in another metric to compare with our visits:



Huh? That looks odd, don't you think? It seems as if our average order value seems to increase as our visits diminish...

First mistake

Look at the average order value metric over the life span of a campaign. If you haven't changed the campaign during the chosen time period, AOV will be independent of the visits metric. Don't look at AOV by day - it's an average so use a wider date range to pull a richer body of data together.

So, we understand a little more about how to use the average order value metric but the title of this missive is a warning about ratios as well as averages...let's look at visits compared to conversion rate:



Now this does look odd - isn't it somewhat counter intuitive that the holy grail of all metrics should go up...after visits trail off and then dip and rise again. Gah!

Think about what's happening here: We saw that our AOV was roughlyconsistent...rising slightly even. Well, we can see our visits peak early on and then exhibit the classic long tail pattern. Given that we have seen a close correlation between visits and transactions and our conversion rate is the ratio of transactions to visits, clearly we will see our conversion rate change with the inverse of transactions.

So, in the same way that we would examine the average order value over a multiple day period, we would apply the same analysis methodology to conversion rate.

So, as we were testing one email design against another, we would look at the average order value and conversion rate over a period of say, a week after the email was sent and look for a difference in the metrics. Then of course, seeing mathematical confirmation of statistical significance (say through a simple Student's t-test) is the next step to confirm (or refute) the hypothesis that gave rise to the test in the first place.

RealTime Analytics Part 2

The second part of the Real Time Analytics blog series is found over on 'my other blog':

Analytics in Real Time - What IS art?

Real Time Web Analytics

S'up ya'll?

So 'the kids' greet each other these days. A question. What's happening? An informal contemporary slant on the classic plum filled mouthful: 'How do you do?'.

The desire to acquire information is part of the human condition. The fresher the news the better. This modern media-fueled era provides a massive real-time information stream. Inevitably the majority of the data in the myriad real-time streams is fecund and worthless - still we feel the need to seek out newness. Vanity? Probably...but every so often, as if panning for gold, in the flowing, babbling stream, we find some juicy, valuable nugget of goodness. It's hard to put down after that.

It should already be obvious that the title wraps some context around this missive. I have thought long and hard about the subject of real time web analytics data capture and usage since reading a (typically) cracking post by Avinash Kaushik. In general, I agree with what Avinash (and many others) say on the real time subject but... Always a 'but' ;-)

The post in question was published back in late 2006. Since then, the zeitgeist has changed massively and continues to do so. For example, smarter and more powerful mobile devices coupled with Twitter and Facebook and real-time search results influence how and when our messages to the world are consumed. Sooner! The degree of urgency with which individuals and organisations can now communicate on a global scale is remarkable and, I think, changes the web analytics game somewhat.

Solution in Alpha

I've been trying to find a good name for it. Play around with the word order and you get Web Analytics Real-Time which delivers a less than frisky acronym as a solution title. Imagine the pitch - 'Would you like to see our W.A.R.T.?" Nah. Just doesn't fly.

Forget the product name for now, I am rolling out a private Beta programme for my W.A.R.T. in the next week or so. I'll get a clear idea of scalability, how hard it is to use (knife and fork complexity is the ideal) and with a big nod and doffed cap in the direction of Avinash for the original inspiration, what value can be delivered.

Further posts will reveal more details about what it can do...

And finally...

On a non-technical subject, I would like to re-focus my flying on SSDR Flexwings. I wonder where I can learn flexwings near London?

Social Media Analytics - expanding the envelope

Avinash...Avinash...AVINASH!

I'm not turning into Steve Balmer (thank goodness) just enthusiastic and inspired by a recent blog post by Avinash (general Web analytics Guru and all round good chap).

In his blog post Avinash points out a fine set of actionable insights that can be gleaned from metrics generated by social media. For example, beyond the 'x followers' type metric on Twitter, Avinash describes how we can look at # of retweets per 1000 followers. Indeed - the impact of one's Twitter stream goes beyond the simple action of following a Twitterer because of an occasionally amusing or interesting 140 char missive. What happens when it turns out the Twitter stream in question is lame? Unfollow...sad though it may be.

Fastbloke...Fastbloke...FASTBLOKE!!!

Ahem, sorry about the outburst there...moving swiftly on:

So, looking at social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter etc.) from a Web Analytics 2.0 perspective we can treat a simple retweet or new follower/feed subscriber/friend as 'outcome proxies'. What might be called 'vanity metrics' actually have more use than you might think.

One outcome we are interested in from our social media marketing efforts is the delta in long term subscribers/followers/friends. Assume that we can see with our classic Web Analytics analysis techniques that social media 'customers' add value to our business...given the meager spend on Tweets and blogs, the cost of acquisition of a loyal friend on Facebook is really quite slight compared to say a PPC or email click. There is insight to be had here!

In other words, a significant delta in our outcome proxies needs to be understood so it can be fully capitalised. What if I suddenly get a massive leap (OR DROP!) in followers/friends/subscribers? What were the influences? Was it the last post or update? Can external/offline marketing influences be attributed?

Social media outcomes need to be tracked and analysed

In the same way as one analyses the performance of entrance and exit pages on a website we can consider a tweet that yields new followers as the 'entrance tweet' and a corresponding 'exit tweet' for the converse situation.

Did a certain blog post cause subscribers to unsubscribe? We consider 'unsubscribe rate' as an email marketing effectiveness metric - does the same apply to other forms of social media? Can we consider segmented friends lists? Consider (read test) tweeting and blogging at a certain time of day or day of week or frequency?

Always consider content first though!

Viral quotient is an awesome metric but the basic building blocks of analytics 1.0 can still add value.

I'll be starting with the new annotation functionality in Google Analytics real soon but I will also be experimenting with techniques to integrate friends/followers/subscriber metrics with current web analytics data sources.

Maybe Google/Yahoo/Omniture or some other web analytics vendor will beat me to the solution. I look forward to it.