So many times I have come across reports that look great: lots of juicy data, trending graphs and conditional formatting. However, what’s the high level roll-up that all that data is stating? What are the key takeaways? If you opened up the report a year from now, would it still make sense when that call or meeting explaining the report is no longer top of mind? My tip of the week is a reminder that:
~SammieAnnieThe day has finally arrived. In July last year, we first announced the imminent Microsoft and Yahoo! merger. Today, antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe cleared Microsoft to take over Yahoo!’s search business, without any imposing restrictions on the partnership. This MSFT / Yahoo! partnership has been named “Search Alliance”.
~SammieAnnieA standard practice in any analytics package – not just Google Analytics, which is our preferred solution – is to block traffic coming through from your own IP address(es). This ensures that the data collected and utilized to develop actionable insights is pure and not skewed by data coming through from people designing your website, an agency or people testing the site.
~SammieAnnieYou may have noticed some additional placements in the Google Sponsored Results recently, particularly when doing a retail type search. Below is a screenshot of an exclusive beta offering by Google called Product Listing Ads. It is a CPA (Cost per Acquisition / Action) model, and it pulls from listings in the Google Merchant Center (Google Base/Google Product Search) so only clients with product listings will be eligible to participate in the beta if it opens up.
~SammieAnnieEven savvy marketers can sometime fall into the trap of “you get what you pay for” and thereby assume that if something is offered as a free service, it can’t possibly be as valuable as its pricey competitors. Towards the end of last year we had a client paying for an analytics solution. Granted many paid solutions are worth it, but in the case of this client, I would have to say that a paid solution was adding no benefit to them.
~SammieAnnie