PPC-Advice.com

Despite the recession and tough economic times, there still seems to be a huge demand for analytics talent in the industry, especially when it comes to individuals well-versed in implementing and supporting Omniture.  You have to hand it to them, they’ve become the defacto standard in web analytics through incremental in-house development of SiteCatalyst, and also through strategic acquisition of names such as HBX and Visual Sciences.  But before you go rushing into signing a long-term contract with Omniture, here’s a few things you should know.

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It pains me to have to write this post, because anyone who’s willing to throw their money at online marketing shouldn’t have to bear the cross of sitting through boldface lies.  Unfortunately, I’m brought into meeting after meeting to consult for my clients in an effort to qualify online marketing vendors that promise the world.  Fortunately, I’m always up for a good show, and don’t mind playing the naive web analyst. Read more…

Happy New Year to all my loyal readers and those of you finding my blog for the first time.  This past year has been an overwhelming success for PPC-Advice, with a record amount of visitors, pagevies, and referrals.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet several of you face-to-face in various conferences, and look forward to what 2009 has to offer.  That being said, let’s have a quick look at my 2008 Year in Review, the best and most popular posts that made 2008 special. Read more…

What’s the problem with most analytics solutions out of the box?  Nothing really.  In fact, most mainstream free analytics solutions are safelisted on many browser spam filters, or at least held in higher regard than their more expensive enterprise-level alternatives.  What the heck am I talking about?  Cookies.  Those little 1×1 pixels that track everything from the time and source where you came from prior to arriving at a site, right down to your browser type and increasingly – even your demographics!  Don’t accept them or delete them after and your tracking can be inaccurate. Read more…

If there ever was a reason to tighten your budgets and increase campaign conversion, this worsening economic climate is forcing many to reconsider the “eyeballs over all” marketing objective.  It used to be that many companies threw caution to the wind (and many still do) just to drive traffic, not for any particular goal, “just cuz”.  While that may work for some, e-commerce and retail sites are feeling the pinch, but search users are hunting for bargains out there – do you have what it takes? Read more…

Many online marketers talk about how they’ve performed multivariate tests, assembled focus groups, brought in external consulting companies, and maybe even overhauled their e-commerce engines to maximize conversion, but few actually share insights about how they do it.  Perhaps they have their own insider methodology or patented design concepts, or perhaps they’re embarrassed to admit it’s easier than you think! Read more…

Just when you thought it was safe to call a truce in the browser wars, Google comes up and hits you in the face with a cream pie.  Sure, you think it’s funny at first and perhaps it tastes pretty good, but it might spell trouble for online marketers.  Find out why Google Chrome, the newest web browser on the scene is causing a stir – good and bad. Read more…

Many of us already know, the labor and attention SEO demands can be tough to justify in an organization, especially when advertising budgets for pay-per-click are available and bring instantaneous results.  Many online marketers already make a point to implement site-wide changes with conversion uplifting tricks gleaned from PPC campaigns to other sections or public-facing areas of a site.  What isn’t readily known is whether PPC campaigns can actually help your natural rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), until now. Read more…

After having the pleasure of using Woopra for the past 24 hours or so, and keeping a watchful (and amazingly addicted eye) on my own blog’s analytics numbers and realtime visitors, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a great start to what will be an amazing tool.  Many other analytics suites such as Webtrends and Omniture claim to have the ability to track users from start to finish, but none of them do it in session-based realtime fashion like Woopra. Read more…

The newest – and admittedly the coolest – player in the web analytics market is Woopra.  The fine folks over at iFusion Labs were kind enough to furnish us with a free demo account and we’re all still a bit awestruck.  Woopra has a lot of things going for it from the get-go including sophisticated tracking features and metrics, but possibly the one feature that takes the cake for most interesting is Woopra Live, which streams realtime analytics info to a java client.  C’mon… that’s really cool! Read more…