As you may have noticed, some of the groups ran long on the Marketing Strategy side of the presentation, so there wasn’t a lot of time to demonstrate how the website is meeting the objectives.

I suggested to the groups that they spend no more than 5-6 minutes describing the business objectives, defining IMD, and explaining the basic strategy.  It is more important to show the website on HOW you are achieving the objectives rather than spending so much time describing.  SHOW us more, TELL us less.  We can all read bulleted lists, and the client knows their business well.

It may be a result of not being fully prepared, so you don’t maximize your time, rambling occurs and time gets away from you.

The final is from 10-12 on December 16th; we will start with BB-Traveler, BB-Management.

CDs of today’s presentations are available here.  I will be available Friday, Monday, Tuesday to meet with you.  My Google calendar has available times.

Carla Murray has been in the hospitality business for many years and as times begin to change due to the current economic situation. The most prolific problem that the hospitality business is facing is with AIA.  AIA is holding her company back because of the poor choices that they have made, and it is making it difficult for advancement. Murray considers AIA to be H1N1 dieses of travel and hospitality industry, because when people are sick, traveling is a backburner issue. In America 2.4million jobs alone are related to the travel industry, and growth deceleration has affected many jobs. Murray seems hopeful that the situation will get better as she states, “The industry is getting better, but slowly… Always remember life is always better when share is gained… share is in single digits, the double digits, but its still progress.

Before she closed n her presentation she left us with some advice for the future….

1)      Chance favor the well prepared

2)      Go the extra mile

3)      Don’t bare responsibility alone

4)      Communicate openly and listen

5)      Choose adventure

6)      Be fixable

7)      Live your values

8)      Personal time

This lets you do a little countdown on your website if your looking forward to something big.

21st bday, wedding whatever!

OutlinePresentationThe Back of the Napkin which was written by Dan Roam is stating the very obvious, that pictures are easy to understand and sometimes might  be worth a thousand words. However, when talking about visual images, people always misunderstood them as a form of artwork while they might not be. In the case of The Back of the Napkin in particular, people do not really need artistic talent in order to be successful in using pictures to illustrate the points. Roam was trying to imply that simple pictures or sketches on a paper, or even a napkin while we’re in hurry could be understood more easily rather than some complex sentences or perfect Photoshop computer design.

Roam provides some step-by-step methods of basic marketing which correspond to his visual images, almost the same as marketing methods taught in college classrooms. This book could be very useful to teach some basic understanding of marketing to people who lack a formal education. However, it could be very boring for people with formal education backgrounds, particularly people who are in Business departments because they already understand the concepts. Roam’s examples from his so called business experiences in this book undermine the human resources and formality of corporate environments. While he has had big name companies, such as Google, Wells Fargo, Boeing, and the US Senate among others as his clients, he has a lack of knowledge of how the corporate world works.

The author Brian Clifton, an expert in search engine optimization and web analytics, had never written a book before, but published his first piece of work this last year titled ‘Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics’. His organization throughout the book is phenomenal and he has written a useful guide to turn to again and again for help regarding Google Analytics issues as well as several other useful tips. The book is broken down into four main parts:

Part 1: Measuring Success

Part 2: Using Google Analytics Reports

Part 3: Implementing Google Analytics

Part 4: Using Visitor Data to Drive Website Improvement

Part one provides a good introduction to what web analytics is and why understanding web traffic is vital to your business. He explains in detail the available methods for tracking and comparing data by describing how Google Analytics works and how you can make it work for your particular business.

Part two dives right in on how to properly navigate your way through the Google Analytics interface, and examples are provided of report layouts and how to effectively organize your web traffic information. There are over 80 default reports Google Analytics has that can be used, but Clifton does a great job at highlighting the top 10 reports and explaining their functions and usability.

Part three explains how to get started on your journey towards making Google Analytics work for your website. This section shows how to make an account if you didn’t already have one, how to start tagging pages so nothing is left out of your reports, and takes a deeper look at advanced implementation methods for tracking E-commerce, online campaigns, events, and customizing GATC (Google Analytics Tracking Code). Clifton provides several techniques for measuring visitor behavior and the best practices and tools you can use to get the most out of your website.

Part four is all about using the visitor data collected to help your website improve. This sections talks about KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and what they are, how to prepare them, how to present them, and gives tips for benchmark considerations. He finishes the book with real world tasks that can be performed to start effectively measuring the success of your website on, and offline.

This book was well thought out and has a plethora of information showing exactly what you can do, through detailed instructions, on how you can track your websites traffic correctly, present it effectively, and implement your findings properly.

I have little experience in the web analytics field and some of the reading was well over my head and a better background of JavaScript and HTML would have helped greatly. However, this book taught me interesting and useful facts about the technical tools of Google Analytics and also how to interpret the results. I give this book five stars for its excellent organization, and I would recommend it highly for marketers and web masters.

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Web Analytics for Dummies by Pedro Sostre and Jennifer LeClaire is a great book for those who are looking to understand how to utilize Web analytics for their own companies. It takes you step-by-step through the process of why you should use web analytics for your company and how it can help develop a stronger company. With intense discussions varying from the terminology and how to avoid blunders based on the wrong words through to redesigning your Web site based on the analytical data that’s collected. It develops a tone of guidance throughout the book which is helpful and non-condescending. It serves as a phenomenal reference guide that can be used for individuals or small companies as you don’t have to read the book from cover-to-cover in order to understand where it’s coming from and where it will lead you. It discusses the software products, how they differ, and why each one would work in different situations which is very helpful for those who are not technically savvy.

Sostre and LeClaire developed a book that is handy at the least for all levels of learning in the Web analytics field. This book would be a great asset to those just starting a company, growing into a mid-sized corporation, or going full-out enterprise level. It gives many options at all stages of the business cycle and from formation to conglomerate, there is something for everyone in the book. The book can be improved upon in a few ways. First, the terminology is quite intense for those who don’t understand the differences in the terms. The appendix explains a lot of it but it’s still not at the “dummies” usual level of understanding. Second, the corporate business level has very few options in how to improve what they are currently doing in Web analytics. A consideration could be to either lengthen the sections into more level-specific options or to write a sequel for those dealing with corporate-level analytics. Overall there are many helpful hints, tips, and step-by-step instructions in this book to be worth the purchase price and to clarify what is usually quite a clouded subject.

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The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords by Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd goes through the basics of how to set up a successful pay-per-click advertising campaign through Google. The two most important keys to having a successful Google AdWords campaign is the keywords you choose to advertise on and the spilt-testing you do to constantly improve the ad itself. Your keyword research is paramount to the success of your ad campaign. Marshall and Todd go through the different steps of choosing your keywords, grouping your keywords together and showing an exclusive more targeted ad in that group, and equally important but not often done choosing which keywords that you don’t want your advertisement to show up on. However, both Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd will admit to you that even with amazing keyword choosing and grouping you can still lose money with pay-per-click advertising. The second most important key to successful Google advertising is what is known as spilt-testing of Google advertisements.  Testing Google advertisements next to each other and comparing their effectiveness, then repeating this process will give you higher click through rates to your web site and higher quality traffic. The different way they suggest you improve your advertisements are with headline relevance, the offer presented itself, and how effective your ad catches the attention of the customer or person searching.

Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd do a good job explaining many different techniques to effectively advertise your small business. This book I presume is primarily for small business as bigger businesses would not go to a how-to book to more effectively use Google AdWords. The information presented is clear and understandable for a reader of most if not all technical skill levels. It also provides many relevant examples on how you can improve your own click through rates and get higher quality traffic to your web site. The book however could be improved upon. I wish this book would have given more information in its chapter about turning visitors into buyers as it is a very important chapter and is literally 2 pages of actual content. Also for a book about Google AdWords to suggest you use a tool by Yahoo! does not make the most sense. Finally my last complaint about this book is Marshall and Todd self promote their own web sites too much throughout the book. Overall there are many useful take ways from this book for any small business looking to improve the effectiveness of their advertising.

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Tim Ash, a self-proclaimed “internet thought leader”, gives the world his thoughts and expertise in relation to the world of Internet conversions.  Conversions are simply when a web user takes a desired action (whether it be signing up for a news letter or purchasing a product).  The book begins with explanations of all the terminology and then takes the reader through the whole Landing Page Optimization process.

Readers first learn how to recognize common problems in landing page design.  The book then covers the testing aspects of web design, and finally arrives at the tuning process.  Tuning for conversions is the real reason why anyone would want to read this book.  Ash covers multiple phases of tuning including page structure, information architecture, presentation, and emphasis.  The last big chunk of this book explains the web analytics side of landing page optimization.  These final chapters explain in great detail everything involved with tracking the success of the changes that have been made to the readers website.  In all this is a very thorough book on the subject of landing page optimization, but it may have had a little too much theory to be really helpful.

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This book is great for those who wish to grasp a better understanding of why analytics are such an important tool in today’s business world. Although this book is not very long, Davenport delivers some of the most dry information into a relevant, easy-to-read format for the average student, professional, or those just seeking analytical education. This book provides an in-depth look at how the growing amount of company information can be utilized as a competitive edge. Much of the content consists of analytical theory, however Davenport backs it with real-world brand examples such as Netflix, Amazon.com, Progressive, and Capital One. You will see that not all industries are equally susceptible to using these techniques to improve business processes. Davenport shows the reader that there are many companies on the verge of competing with their analytical process and some are already at that level. You will begin to understand why so many companies perform poorly even though they collect mountains of consumer data. Some of the information is a little repetitive, mainly previews of further chapters that go into to much detail. This would not be a book for those who are familiar with current business intelligence models and trends as the information is presented to a general audience. Overall if you are looking to expand you knowledge about business intelligence and don’t want a “dry” book, I would recommend Competing on Analytics!OUTLINE

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On Thursday, Dr. Gregoire is doing a guest presentation based on his recent Journal of Marketing Article. Please be prepared by skimming the beginning of the article.

Extra Credit is available for a short comment (2 paragraphs) before his lecture, and another after his lecture [5 points each].

So please be certain to be logged in, and comment to this short note. [Refer to the course calendar to access the PDF of the article]

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