"4 minutes" was the name of a popular song by Madonna and Justin Timberlake, but it can also be an anthem to the amount of time retailers must target in improving their e-commerce product pages.
When launching a website, a retailer should convert product details into the following page elements:
To best refine those details, a retailer should consider a few ways to conduct an A/B test. An A/B test examines to variations of a website element to determine if visitors are responding to one version over the other.
The test durations can vary, but teasing page elements for basic element qualities can yield quick analysis. The tests can consist of basic straightforward elements such as:
Landing pages and test pages can be tested in conjunction with each other, or mixed. For example, one test would cover newsletter A with landing page A, and newsletter B with landing page B. A second test experiment would run with newsletter A with landing page B, and vice versa. This methodology can offer a more clarity regarding which broad elements such as offer and call to action are best, particularly if the results are very close.
To gain a reasonable comparison on test results, ensure that each page visitor is always offered the same promotion. For example, consider a test of a free gift (A) against a discount (B). An A/B test should reflect that the same visitors see the free gift as well as the discount.
There are other tips that can make an A/B campaign straightforward. Here are some ideas:
A heap of leaves comes from an accumulation of time...and raking. Javascript calls can act in a similar manner.
In my childhood days I brought home the Sunday newspaper and clipped coupons from it. But like many people today, I tend to look for coupons delivered to my smartphone while I am on the go.
Delivering mobile coupons to customers have altered the value coupons have for marketers. That value is now a meaningful connection to customers carrying mobile devices. Shoppers are acclimated to digital retail offers. Take loyalty programs for example. Customers in these programs want rewards for their loyalty. A coupon associated with a reward level can be a natural fit in saying “thank you” to customers.
Marketers should appreciate shopper attitudes that have arisen from better smartphones and programming technology. Recent research notes that mobile smartphone users are more likely to act on a purchase. Chain Store Age illustrated in a 2012 post that four our of five smartphone users access retail content through their phone.
The end result is a steady surge of mobile coupon usage. eMarketer noticed that mobile coupons are becoming more popular for in-store deals, albeit with a slow growth. The research firm predicted that over 100 million customers would use a digital coupon by 2014. In 2015, MediaPost reports how consumers are adopting mobile tools, especially coupons.
Coupons can be combined with other digital marketing media to increase awareness of a retail event. Mobile coupons for products advertised on a digital signage can be the impetus for customers to try a new product or to head towards a nearby store. In either case coupons can take advantage of smartphone-owning customers propensity to act.
In fact, a coupon strategy integrated into an overall digital marketing campaign may be the best bet in attracting fence-sitting customers into a retailer’s store. eMarketer also noted in a separate NPD survey that US internet shoppers indicated price as the number one consideration in deciding where to shop. The second ranked consideration was sales or special deals. These influences overrode shopper interest in receiving one price across multi-channels, implying a strategy for personalized pricing through coupon offers. The strategy can also serve as a countermove against showrooming.
To make the most of a coupon trial campaign, retailers can add an analytics tag to the coupons or a landing page related to the coupon. Custom variables can also be used for tracking response to several groups of coupons organized across several campaigns. Incorporating analytics tracking can reveal how well a given campaign succeeds.
The behavior associated with the Sunday newspaper may be gone, but customer appreciation for a sale is not waning. Digital coupons on mobile devices can potentially change that appreciation into a meaningful connection with retailers.
Does your campaign have the blues about ROI? Maybe it’s because of a misguided focus on attribution.
One of the easiest ways to get more sophisticated in a marketing campaign and in using analytic reports is to get past “last click” attribution - this is an assumption in which a referral source in an analytics solution is the only influence for a click that is recorded. So for example, a click from an email newsletter that leads a reader to an analytics-tagged website means that the email is the referral source.
But these days one channel is typically not the sole source of a website visit. Having a message appear on multiple platforms is the typical influence for a conversion action. There can be a sequence of visitor touch points to a conversion activity.
So consider the email example again - that reader may not click immediately to arrive to a website, but instead may additional view an ad in Twitter or receive a Facebook friend's shared article - either may remind the viewer to go back and click the email. So in that instance, what is the cause of the click?
An analytics solution can rate different channels as significant contributors to conversion goals, as opposed to last click attribution – the assumption that an action from one channel is the main contributor to conversions. This Inc article notes that value in determine marketing attribution within a marketing campaign.
Many marketers have "LCB" or Last click blues, due to struggling with applying multichannel marketing measurement. eMarketer noted how marketers are confused with establishing a ROI and associated metrics for multichannel marketing.
There are some aspects that a small business should maintain in building an understanding in attribution. The best is considering how analytics reporting differs. Reports in an paid search campaign (Adwords, Bing, Facebook) or a social media platform (Twitter Analytics, Pinterest pins report) are meant to analyze performance without the context of a website.
Google Analytics reports are meant to add website-related context to the data. An example would be a reveal if an ad influenced an increase in goal conversions on a website.
So to minimize the "LCB" blues, understand how your media platforms connect to your analytics tags and how those platforms appear in analytic reporting. AdWords accounts can be linked into Google Analytics (though connection with other analytic solutions are also valid). Ads for other platforms like the Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp ads mention can have tagged URLs, that appear something like this below:
http://www.your website.com?utm_src=linkedin&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=easter
Understanding these kinds of tags and how the are reported can help reveal clues in the multichannel reports in Google Analytics. Moreover, creating a tag has been made easier with tools such as the Google Tag Manager (Click on this link to learn more about implementing tags within Google Tag Manager).
For Adobe users, consider reviewing how its tag management system works in conjunction with Adobe Analytics. Adobe announced that it will integrate the tag management system into its Analytics solution.
Regardless of using Google or Adobe, understanding how to connect your media platform to your analytics can help bring better value from multichannel reports, and better understand where your dialogue with customers can take place.
The march of JavaScript's influence with other programming language continues. One discovery is the connection with Ruby on Rails, which at first blush may sound confusing (especially with the current adoption of JavaScript frameworks with server-side operations such as Angular.js and Meteor.js). But the connection is to address datacalls while minimizing time spent in the DOM.
The April meetup for the group Chicago Ruby (@ChicagoRuby) addressed this discovery. Titled Ways to Use JavaScript in Your Rails App, the meetup took place at Blue1647, a business innovation center in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. Founded by Emile Cambry, Blue1647 has had a banner year in 2014, and has attracted more developer interest from the Chicago tech and business community. Blue has become the regular meeting place for Chicago Ruby.
The speaker for the JavaScript/Ruby on Rails topic was Rebecca Miller-Webster (@rmillerwebster), Managing Director of thoughtbot's Chicago office. Her background includes a career as a software engineer, conference organizer, and teacher. She is the founder of Write/Speak/Code, an organization dedicated to encouraging more women to code. She is also the Managing Director for thoughtbot Chicago. Rebecca has been developing software professionally for over 10 years.
Check out this video for Rebecca's discussion.
"Project success is not about technology choices; It is much more about development and management teams doing the right things for you."
So says Justin Meyer, web developer who presented for Chicago JavaScript meetup, a monthly gathering of developers hosted by Enova and Bitovi in the Chicago Loop. The attached video is from a November 2014 meetup.
Justin's 15 minute presentation focuses on the value of a checklist to JavaScript debugging and web development overall. Justin notes the history of checklist. I liked that Justin noted a book I reviewed for Small Business Trends, called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. The book explains how a doctor established a medical checklist based from flight check techniques learned from the World War II era.
The reason the book and Justin highlights a checklist is because of the need to manage process. As was pointed out in the The Checklist Manifesto - “Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us” - so it has become easier to overlook details. Given the advancement of JavaScript over time, the need for a checklist has become clear.
To learn more, watch this video of the meetup featuring Justin Meyer.
