Eye on Analysis

One of our clients has had outstanding success since their launch back in Nov 2005. Strong growth month to month, great channel opportunities. We've been aggressively helping them build and execute marketing strategies.
When July hit, we noticed a strange hiccup in sales from one of our most reliable referrers. What tipped us off . . . ? Analytics reports. We run comparison week to week and month to month and noticed a change. Traffic from the referrer was going up but conversion was going down. Turns out there was some click fraud going on and the partner was quick to address it once we brought it to their attention. If we didn't pay attention to the details this would have just gotten lost in the sea of collective traffic. This just reinforces the "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it" rule we live by when helping our client build eCommerce profitability.

A Piano by any other name is not the same

I was reading an interesting article somewhere lately. Can't remember where for the life of me, but the gist of the article was the comparison of two phrases in a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign.

• "Learn to Play a Piano"
• "Learn to Play the Piano"

Any person with common sense would say that these two phrases will perform virtually the same in a Pay-Per-Click campaign.

The reality is that "Learn to Play the Piano" received 400% the click throughs that "Learn to Play a Piano" received. Additionally the term "Piano Lessons" received a similar 400% greater click-through rate to the term "Piano Lesson" minus the trailing "s".

If this is surprising to you let me assure you that the psychology of user behavior is in the smallest details. This is why a long-term commitment to A-B testing and measuring both website marketing and site usability will give you a greater opportunity to produce the maximum eCommerce profits from your website.

Ebay to buy Shopping.com

In a deal worth $620 million (wooo mama!) EBay agreed to purchase shopping.com. With both of these sites acting as powerful channel marketing partners for many of our clients we see this move as beneficial. Ebay plans to include auctions in shopping.com search results creating greater exposure for Ebay auctioneers. Auctioneers can also enhance their listings in shopping.com by paying for keyword targeted ads. All this leads to greater control and greater exposure. All good things.