Chris McElwein answers a question at the annual Chicago Small Business Expo

The annual Chicago Small Business Expo arrived with no small fan fair. Thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs attended panels to learn how to build effective businesses. Among the best panels was Avoiding Risky Behavior by Saper Law Offices of Chicago. Its principal, Daliah Saper, has seen a number of cases involving internet and entertainment law; She is also an adjunct professor on the topics at University of Illinois and Loyola University.

Lawyers Chris McElwein and Shyla Jones offered the attendees more than a few great tips on legal issues on the internet, such as copying, sharing material, trademark usage, cybersquatting, and defamation.

Here are some highlights I caught while sitting in on the session.

Repinning and retweeting is among the causes for legal questions regarding image ownership and usage. According to Chris, "everything involves reproduction, but copywrite laws have not caught up".

Copyright - can be music, books, picture, expression. the 101 - if you have the right - then you can reproduce it, make derivative works, distribute, perform, and display

Do social media sites own a photo upload?

I thought this question was a good one raised. It's been referenced a number of times, especially with Facebook, and probably more thanks to Google's inclusion of images into ads. The answer? For the most part, no, not true.

The team also explained the concept of public domain, in which a work is considered open for use 75 years after the author dies. This falls under fair use, but for works which are not open, users must be careful. This is a "loose doctrine"; there are four factors that must be in place to be considered fair use.

1. Purpose and character of the use
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality used
4. The effect of the use pun the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

If you business is interested in more on internet legal issues, the Saper Law team has a number of workshops available. Plus you can catch Daliah Saper online to learn her take on various issues of the day.

- Pierre DeBois

Asking for analytics help can seem a bit daunting for managers unsure of an analytics. There are a number of reports and a number of items that need to be checked to get to answers about marketing or objective.  Taking the time to check can eat up well beyond the scope of the time available in a small business.  If you are a bit unsure of where to start, here are four initial ideas to share when asking for analytics help.  

• Frame your objective for the site relative to the business - Because there are a number of technical ways to display a webpage, there can be a number of ways to arrange analytic tags and goal setting.  Frame objectives narrows the technical scope of goals and tags; It makes no sense to tag a page that is not representing a transaction or objective.
• What has been checked technically about the site? - Reviewing the facts can give users an idea of what diagnostics have been previously tried.
• Review the reporting used. Reveal what reports that are consistently checked, to understand what metrics are important .
• What online and offline marketing media has been used? - Answering this question helps to frame referral sources, useful for understand what marketing is impacting more detailed reports, such as multichannel reports. It can also be useful in deciding online marketing choices, ranging from augments to SEO to strengthen relationships gained from content marketing.

Do not assume that a lot of website traffic is needed to gain answers.  Analytics provides value when it is linked to marketing planning, not just "accounting" for what is arriving (though there can be some diagnostic review of the data involved). Reviewing what has been tagged and the importance of settings can get into "coding minutia", but they are valuable in making sure the data is collected as accurately as possible.

There are more technical diagnostic to analytics - tips will be covered in a few upcoming Zimana posts. But for now, use the above for approaching analysts specialists and starting the initial discussion on what to do.

There are standard report settings within every analytics solution that can segment website traffic.  New visitors versus returning visitors is an example. But there are times where a setting has to be tailored to text related to a visit.  This is where filters come into play.

The skinny: Filtering limits reporting to specific kind of traffic in which you know you would or would not consider. The benefit is a more efficient reporting. Filters should be planned to that they compliment a specific strategy, layout, and traffic trends. For example, a filter can be set so that reports show activity that occurs on a certain set of subdirectories.

Just about every web analytics solution provides a filter capability. Because it focuses on text, filters can assist in narrowing the data in a variety of different situations.

• Filters can help gather text shared across a number of domains.
• Filters can include or exclude IP addresses (or a range of address) - A possible usage can be eliminating site visits by employees, keeping the data more accurate. It can also be used to interpret data across
• Filters can be set by geography
• Filters can also reflect segments of data - referrer, client browser settings, page titles, etc. - this can be handy for a segments which reflect a persona of a target market.

Filters aid your business operations by narrowing the reporting scope on the activities that relate to your business. This saves time in developing strategic solutions based on the data reported.

Analytics solutions like Google Analytics provide filtering capability

This Google Analytics feature for Multichannel shows the number of assists that can occur in a path. This kind of reporting can assist e-commerce sites in understanding how their digital marketing and social media is impacting their online sales (image: Google Analytics)

Reporting on E-commerce related analytics is more specialized than most other analytic reporting requests.  The reports tie visits and associated metrics to the products and services offered on your website. But the complexity of adding a number of details, such as SKU information, increases the number of reporting segments that can influence conversions.  This increase can feel daunting if time is of the essence for your business (and when is it ever not?!!)

To have some at-a-glance performances for setting up a dashboard, retailers should consider the following metrics as a starting point to quickly assess the health of their business:

• Days to purchase: Gaining a sense of how long customers are taking to purchase is among the most useful metrics for e-commerce reporting.
• Conversion rate: Comparing conversion among traffic sources can reveal the traffic sources on which more improvement is lead to activity.
• Average Order Value: This indicates the typical amount being purchased through an E-commerce site.
• Total revenue by sales per day: Examining this metric over time can indicate seasonality trends that can crop up.  Reporting this can be helpful for businesses starting out, or for those who have been in business for a short period and need to know when to adjust their marketing for seasonality needs.

When developing reporting ideas to monitor, consider segmentation based on how your point of sales are organized.  Segments that can be developed for e-commerce include top selling items by quantity and top selling items by sources.

Also consider speed to purchase. Reports that can reveal metrics such as "visits to purchase" and "days to purchase" are valuable in determining how quickly purchases are being conducted.

Another "speed" report is multichannel marketing reports to show how many "assists" are occurring to begin a sales transaction.  The more assists means a potentially lengthy time to gain a sale.  It may mean opportunities to use ad techniques such as remarketing to help "shorten" the sales cycle.

In fact, multiple actions are typical for an e-commerce site, given the number of items made available. Thus the value of e-commerce goals set in Google Analytics reporting differs from goal setting in the admin by representing both a conversion in a visit or actions associated with a visit.

No matter what analytic solution you use, always verify how conversions are recorded. This may yield analysis insights regarding the speed and volume purchases are made from marketing online.

Upset about Not Provided in the Google Analytics? Don't despair. There are other tactics available to strengthen an online presence. One way is authorship, the association of one's Google Plus page with written content. This infographic from Internet Marketing outlines the value of the authorship protocol and what it can mean for business.

Zimana has partnered with Blue 1647, a Chicago start up and entrepreneurship incubator in the Pilsen neighborhood. Founded by Emile Cambry, and co-managed with Antonio Rowry as Chief Operating Officer, Blue 1647 provides a working space for 32 companies and a number of workshops centered on web technology and app development.  The center is part of a burgeoning Chicago tech scene. The incubator offers programs such as Project Exploration, i c Stars, Code Chicago (a web & app development program for adult-learners), 21st Century Youth Project for young adults including our Girls in Fashion Tech program!), and data science courses.

The partnership consist of web analytics workshop presentations created by Zimana, with the workshops hosted at Blue1647.

The first session, held September 23rd, provided an overview of SEO, Paid Search, and Social Media, all from a content marketing approach. Analytics concepts were then introduced to help answer questions about how digital marketing works for a small business. The sessions have brought in the highest response for Blue1647 workshop registrations to date.

Check out some pictures from the attendees as Zimana founder Pierre DeBois walks through the presentation. For more information on future sessions - a new session is being planned - contact Blue1647.

Zimana founder Pierre DeBois explaining how analytics organizes the marketing choices for a business

Zimana founder Pierre DeBois explaining how digital marketing has impacted the choices facing small businesses.