Sergei Krylov

Twitter, online marketing and online advertising

Website Optimization and Conversion Rate Boost

Web Analytics Is In Details

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Sergei Krylov | 2010-06-19

Are Twitter and similar microblogging services effective for online marketing and online advertising?

Currently, Twitter is very popular, and microblogging services - clones of Twitter - spring into existence like mushrooms after rain. (Here I'll talk about microblogging, implying Twitter, and vice versa: speaking of Twitter I mean microblogging services in general.) This is a "fashion trend" that many strive to follow as fashion. It would seem, Twitter's popularity speaks for itself. It is hard to imagine that such a popular service that half of the Web is buzzing about (for example, this post about the Twitter itself can be "tweeted" in just one-click) would not be effective for the purposes of online advertising and online marketing. But let's not jump to conclusions - the reality is never brighter than it seems at first glance.

Let's start with skepticism. First of all, the effectiveness of Twitter for online marketing and online advertising campaigns depends on how popular the Twitter is. And this is primarily determined by how universally attractive Twitter as a way of communication. And here I must say that not all active Internet users understand the benefits or even the meaning of Twitter. You can often hear something like this: "Well, what should I write there? That I am drinking tea at the moment? It's ridiculous. A nonsense!". And there are many a like skeptics.

Microblogging, including Twitter, compete with other modern means of Internet communications: the (already) usual blogs, social networking websites and instant messaging (eg, ICQ). And, accordingly, as a means of online advertising campaigns and tool of online marketing microblogs, including Twitter, also compete with those similar services (ie, the same conventional blogs, social networks, instant messaging etc.).

If you consider Twitter only as a means of "tracking" the sources of information, there are alternative instruments available: subscriptions to Atom/RSS feeds, including that ... Read more...

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Sergei Krylov | 2009-07-13

Conversion is all about getting right people to meet right products/services.

Thus, there are no other ways to boost conversion except make those people find products that they need on your site. Contrary, if web marketing efforts are managed poorly enough to bring people who do not need your product, or product is not good, nothing under the sun will save the conversion rate.

Those are fundamental factors that determine conversion rate levels and they are orders of magnitude more important than website optimization and conversion fine tuning. I can probably write the whole book on it. It is up to online marketing strategy, advertising expenditure and lots of work to establish this conversion fundamentals.

But imagine that you've spend a lot and worked hard to make right people to meet right products that they need on your site. The conversion process is almost done. But at this point conversion process is not yet complete and – most importantly! – vulnerable to few otherwise minor factors that may prevent converting those visitors into buyer, killing hard-earned conversion rate and revenues. These factors, if neglected, may put at risk entire investment into online marketing campaigns, SEO, PPC, social marketing, brand awareness building and many more.

Although this factors are not of strategic, fundamental importance, they still very important. They are subject of conversion process optimization and tuning. In fact, this is what we mean when we talk about website optimization.

Here they are – two major groups of those factors (most specific factors that various optimization publications mention actually fall into one of theses two groups):

Copy. Even if you know for sure that your site offers best products/services that your visitors can ever find, remember that they cannot read your thoughts. Visitors of the site should be presented with all information relevant to their purchase decision easily and instantly. If there is ... Read more...

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Sergei Krylov | 2009-07-09

Devil is in details – this is about web analytics.

Here comes the illustration: I just came across interesting post (read them all just after you read my post – this way will save you a lot of time and puzzle) Does Google Analytics overstate the value of search? by Paul Cook, in which he refers to original post by Francois Derbaix in Spanish (most of discussion takes place here, see translation) or in French (see translation).

What that issue is all about?

It is all about details and how important they are in web analytics. Web analytics is everything but trivial, simple, clear, despite it may deceptively look as such.

Essentially, as it happens, people misunderstood the intricate tiny little details of the way web analytics tools work. Myriad of theories (sure including conspiracy), calls for remedies and lengthy discussions (in multiple languages) were born immediately and spread like fire. That is natural, when everyone is in the same bot – everyone depends on just a single mass commodity web analytics tool and understandably feels uncomfortable and paranoid about that.

Some people wrongly decided that Google has intentionally set up its cookie window to 6 months to "impose conditions that make its services look good when you analyse your site traffic". Although this specific conclusion cannot entirely be rulled out (hey, its a competitive world after all), I can assure you that premiss is entirely wrong. The reason is very simple. Even if we assume that the first click gets attribution (which is VERY unreasonable assumption, see below), the 6 month cookie would same way result in sticky attribution for ABSOLUTELY ANY campaign, not only Google. So, it is not likely to be a conspiracy from Google.

Why the assumption of the first click attribution is wrong? Because otherwise web analytics reports would portray 6 month old source campaigns in current reports, making web analytics information completely stale. No ... Read more...

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Sergei Krylov, web analytics expert/consultant

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