Archive for Optimization
Standard Deviation and Marketing – How, Why?
Posted by: | CommentsWhat Is Standard Deviation?
Standard deviation is used to measure the average difference between the individual numbers that make up your data sets’ arithmetic mean (mean being the average or center) and their mean value.
Example 1:
You have 4 numbers; 7,10,6, and 7 again, their mean ((7+10+6+7 =30)/4) = is 7.5, but their standard deviation is 1.5 (I’ll explain later how to calculate the standard deviation). So the average of the numbers is 7.5 plus or minus 1.5. You will usually see it reported as 7.5 +/- 1.5. The addition of the standard deviation number enables you to tell a more complete story of the data spread in the data set allowing viewers to see the average difference between the individual numbers that make up your mean and their mean value.
Example 2:
Below is a more of an extreme example, but it shows you the importance of knowing what the standard deviation is when reporting on an average of a data set:
Now let’s assume you are doing a poll of all 4 people that work in your small office (including yourself) because you want to know the average number of pens everyone in your office has at their desk. The answers you get are 5,7,10, and 200 pens. Their mean (or average) is 55.5, but their standard deviation is 83.4.
By reporting it as the workers in your office have an average of 55.5 plus or minus 83.4 pens really lets the reader of the data know that data set has a large spread. Although the average is 55.5 pens, it really doesn’t give any insight to the fact that 1 of your coworkers has 200 pens while the rest have less than 10 pens.
What happens if all the numbers in your data set are the same? Well, if all 4 people reported that they had 2 pens each, then your average or mean would be 2 pens with a standard deviation of 0 because all of the numbers that make up your data set are the same as the average number itself, so there is no deviation from the average for the number of pens each individual has.
Why you need to understand standard deviation in Marketing and Optimization?
So now you’re thinking, OK, so how is this applicable to Marketing and Optimization?
Let’s say you want to know the Average Order Value (AOV) of a particular channel that sends visitors to your eCommerce site (some people dont like to use standard deviation when working with value, so you could replace AOV with average order size in this example). For simplicities sake (to keep this explanation short- so go along with this) let’s pretend that you have 10 orders (yes this is small, but again to keep this simple) during the period you are viewing – 4 orders at $99, 1 order at $1,499, and 5 orders at $5. Your AOV is $192 (all 10 numbers added up and divided by 10), but the standard deviation is $437.91.
Telling someone that you’re AOV is $192 really does disservice to the real truth of your order values. By stating that your AOV is $192+/- $437 lets the viewer take a step back and realize that there is an order or orders that are spread out far from the mean. Yes, some people will remove the outliers, etc., etc., but if you do that, you should provide that as an additional metric alongside the mean and the accompanying standard deviation – but that conversation is better set for a different time (kind of like discussing politics as you will get all sides and opinions).
Can you think of other areas where knowing this in your marketing would really help understand the numbers better? Rarely do you have such small data sets that you want to base decisions on for marketing’s sake as I have presented here for simplicities sake. But imagine if you had 1,000 numbers to report on that were all over the place with varying spreads? How about comparing performance of various test panel results in your online testing?
The closer the individual numbers are from your mean, the smaller the standard deviation will be. And, the further the individual numbers are from your mean, the larger the standard deviation will be.
How to Calculate Standard Deviation in Excel
In Excel to get to standard deviation is for the most part really simple:
If your data is from a SAMPLE, use this Excel standard deviation formula (a sample is a portion of the total population, i.e. 300 employees chosen randomly, 500 orders chosen randomly):
=STDEV(Cell Range)
I should note that you don’t want to actually type in Cell Range, but put in the cell range or individual cells that you are your data set: so if you have your data in cells A1, A2, A3, and A4, then you would use the formula =STDEV(A1:A4) to get your standard deviation.
If your data is from a POPULATION, use this Excel standard deviation formula (a population is the total population, i.e. all employees at work, all orders received):
=STDEVP(Cell Range)
I should note again that you don’t want to actually type in Cell Range, but put in the cell range or individual cells that you are your data set: so if you have your data in cells A1, A2, A3, and A4, then you would use the formula =STDEVP(A1:A4) to get your standard deviation.
Hand Calculating Standard Deviation (not advised for large data sets)
- 1. Add up all the numbers in your data set to get a total
- 2. Take that total and divide it by how many numbers you have in your data set (this is your mean)
- 3. Subtract the difference of each number from the mean and square each difference
- 4. Add each of the squared differences together
- 5. Take the sum of the squared differences in step 4 and divide it by how many numbers you have in your data set (this number is your variance)
- 6. Take the square root of the variance
- 7. The answer is your standard deviation
Online Standard Deviation Calculator
A nicely done online standard deviation calculator can be found at Math is Fun Standard Deviation Calculator page. Definitely take some time to play with this; well I think its fun at least.
So the next time someone gives you some “average” ask them what the standard deviation is and you probably will throw them what they think is a curve ball, but it will give you much clearer insight into what the real info is behind that average. And for your own marketing purposes, it will give you a better understanding of your data and those who need to view it (after of course explaining what standard deviation is and why it’s important!).
Tips to Analyzing Poor SEO eCommerce Conversions
Posted by: | CommentsScenario:
Like clockwork as you do every Monday morning at 10am (after you third cup of coffee and a morning snack) you log into your analytics account to view how much organic traffic is being driven in to your eCommerce website. You’re extremely excited when you see that the number of visits from organic search is growing steadily from last week’s numbers, and the week before, and even the week before that. Your hard work optimizing your pages for the SERPs is starting to see results and your boss is going to be thrilled.
But wait, although organic traffic is climbing up, up, and away, week over week, you cross-reference your sales data again and notice that you aren’t getting any more orders with all this new organic traffic that you have been receiving. How can this be? What could be going on?
Investigation Scenario Tip #1: What keywords are they arriving on?
It’s really important to make sure that you are driving the right search engine traffic to your website. Extract from your analytics account what keywords are driving this newly acquired search engine traffic that you are receiving. To oversimplify, if you’re selling toothpaste and your recent boost of traffic is from searches on arts and crafts paste, you’re driving more traffic, but it’s not the right traffic.
Investigation Scenario Tip #2: What pages are they landing on?
If you notice that many of the keywords that are sending organic traffic in to your site are in fact relevant to what you are selling, then you must dig deeper into your analytics and see what pages visitors are landing on when they are searching on those keywords or phrases. Let’s use the toothpaste example again; you sell toothpaste and your visitors are searching on Google with the end goal of purchasing toothpaste. You notice that they are landing on the page about how toothpaste is manufactured. A closer look and you notice that the bounce rate is high and reviewing your page there is no obvious way to know that you actually are selling toothpaste on that page.
In this situation you are getting the visitors that you want to sell to (those searching for a product that you do indeed sell), and they are searching for keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business – but you are not giving the visitor what they are looking for or a clear way to get to what they are looking for when they land on your page.
In Closing
If either of these two scenarios is happening to you then you will need to work on the optimization of your pages from both an SEO perspective of getting the right traffic, and getting the right traffic to the right pages and from a conversion perspective of keeping them in the continuity of continuing on for what they came in to potential purchase with the least amount of effort and friction.
Email Marketers: Be Careful What Your Email From Line Says
Posted by: | CommentsToday I received an email from the Web Marketing Association that made me chuckle when it arrived in my inbox and I read what the From Line stated. Slightly immature on my part, but at the same time a good reminder to always review all aspects of your emails. Although this is their proper name and it did get my attention (and as a matter of fact I forwarded the screenshot for others to look at too), Outlook only displayed a portion of the from line for me.
Click on image below to see full size:
I should note that this was in Microsoft Outlook.
Rethinking your Continue Shopping Button to Increase eCommerce Performance
Posted by: | CommentsThe continue shopping button on your eCommerce website is an incredibly important feature and its use is many times over looked or under appreciated. Linked from properly it can contribute to increased sales or at a minimum reduce online friction for your customers, or on the other end of the spectrum it can drive your visitors away to your competitor’s website. How so? Imagine this real life scenario:
You are at your favorite brick and mortar store, you navigate the aisles looking for the first item on your list to purchase, you see it in all its glory on the shelf, you smile and reach out to pick it up and place it in your shopping cart-ah that was easy. But now you’re ready to find the next item on your list so you decide to continue shopping…but wait, POOF, suddenly you immediately placed at the entrance of the store again. You now have to navigate through the entire store again to find your next item. You find it, this time you’re not smiling, you place it in your cart, and you’re ready to get your next item. Again, POOF, you’re back at the entrance of the store.
How long would you be willing to go through this scenario – would you quit after the first time you were sent back to the entrance of the store? Would you rethink visiting the store next time you have to go? Would you purchase the item that you have already have in your shopping cart but no way even attempt to get the other items you need?
This scenario happens over and over again when you link your continue shopping button to your home page. The user adds the first item to their shopping cart, they are presented with a continue shopping button, they decide to look around more, but where you link this button to can decide how their experience will fair.
Link from the continue shopping button properly and truthfully the user may never consciously even notice (however, their actions will display that they subconsciously do), but link from it incorrectly and you could hurt the chance for an increased order size, lose the order totally, or even possibly lose the customer.
So where can you link to from it? You can link back to the page they were on when they chose the item they added to the cart. You could give them a few choices of where they want to go such as the page they were previously on (the product page); the category listings page, and here even the home page. Some sites even use an AJAX pop-up letting the customer know that the item is in their shopping cart – in this scenario the customer doesn’t even have to leave the product page they are on. Using this presentation style you could still even present the customer with multiple options to choose where they want to go next.
Now you know why where you link to from your continue shopping button can mean so much to your eCommerce websites performance and to your wallet.
Blogging Optimization Best Practices?
Posted by: | CommentsMost likely you have a blog or have thought about creating a blog for your business. There is minimal financial cost involved in starting a blog if you don’t have access to a lot of capital, but the time and thought investment can be equally as “expensive” as other marketing objectives if not more so. Either way, you might learn a thing or two from the top audience acquiring and retaining blogs in the blogosphere if you are trying to create a profitable business blog.
Technorati, the leading blog search engine, recently completed their 2008 State of the Blogosphere report which has been released annually since 2004 reporting on their analysis on the trends of blogging.
The 2008 report consists of the who, the what, and the how of blogging; blogging for profit; and the brands entering the blogosphere.
In The How of Blogging section of their 2008 State of the Blogosphere they nicely break down what the top bloggers are doing compared to their blogging counterparts based on Technorati indexing data.
Audience Building Strategies – listing, commenting, linking, and tagging.
“Top audience-building strategies include: listing their blog on Technorati and Google, commenting or linking to other blogs, and tagging blog posts so that they are more easily searchable. Active bloggers have learned a variety of techniques for attracting visitors to their blog, conducting an average of five different activities to attract visitors. 28% do at least seven activities.
Posting -The top blogs post daily and post multiple times per day.
“Technorati Top 100 bloggers are twice as likely to post ten or more time daily compared to the next 500, and 14 times as likely than the next 5000. Looking again at Technorati’s tracking data shows how often the Top 100 bloggers post each day compared to the next 500 and the next 5000. The Technorati Top 100 are prolific, with 43% posting ten times per day or more often. Only 8% post once a day or less frequently, compared to 13% of the next 500 bloggers, and 22% of the next 5000 bloggers.”
Linking Strategy – The top blogs consistently link from their website to other blogs.
“Bloggers are also adept at linking to and from other sites – they have a median of 29 links from their blog to other web sites (with a mean of 3400), and a median of 30 links from other web sites to their blog (with a mean of 4800).”
Reader Loyalty – The top blogs actively pursue ways to create reader loyalty.
“To build loyalty with readers, bloggers create events for their readership. In order to retain visitors to their blogs, sophisticated bloggers are creating readership events.”
In Conclusion – Should you adopt ALL of these blogging strategies?
Although these may sound like good ideas or no-brainers, are these strategies the right choice for your blog? Technorati has an obviously large user base, but at the same time they are also a “technically advanced” audience. The average consumer, be it B2B or B2C doesn’t visit their site or possibly even know who they are.
Does your audience need 5 posts per day, or will it annoy them enough that they delete you from their RSS feed or stop reading your blog. Is your blog’s goal to convert visitors to purchase your products, think of you as a thought leader, or to increase page views so that you can sell more ads or increase your advertising rates? These are three totally different strategies that require strategic planning that comes from different angles. As with anything in internet marketing optimization, no one strategy is right for every website or blog so you will definitely need to test to uncover what works best for your readers and your blogs goals with the least amount of compromise.
For the business bloggers out there reading this, check out LinkedIn’s corporate blog editor Mario Sundar’s post on 7 Habits of Highly Effective Business Bloggers that are takeaways and a slideshow from a presentation he did with Lionel Menchaca from Dell, Nicki Dugan from Yahoo!, Carolyn Abram from Facebook and Thomas Hoehn from Kodak. This will help get your mind on the right track.
