Matt Bailey of SiteLogic has agreed to join us as Market Motive faculty covering social media marketing. And we couldn't be happier. There were a handful of other worthy candidates and I'm convinced that Matt is the best choice for our subscribers.

Matt Bailey: Fast Rising Star At a dinner after Search Engine Strategies An Jose, Matt described himself the "Scrooge of social media". That might confuse folks who have heard Matt present. He's an authority on the tactics and still eschews the sensationalist "flavor of the month hype" that drives folks to… Continue reading

Those that know me will recall I periodically rant about bone-headed features in software, especially web analytics tools. One of the things that really makes my blood boil is a funnel report. The user/analyst typically adores this report because it seems to focus all attention on the crucial problem of abandonment, ie I have a form on my website and 97% of people fail to fill out the form having arrived there.

Web analytics vendors in turn have designed their funnel reports to be incredibly pretty, and to highlight this abandonment in bright red with arrows showing the countless visitors who reached sight of the goal but jumped over the precipice instead, to be lost in the seas of competing sites like so many ecommerce lemmings. The WA vendors wisely realise that a demo of a funnel report creates a strong desire to purchase the product. All those abandoning visitors, and finally you get to see why!!! Sign me up!!!… Continue reading

Search Engine Strategies sent me a Client Newsle... today. What's wrong with this email? Here's my short list. Do you see anything else?

#1. No use of preview text. Solution: Use your preview text. Your email software has the ability to set the preview text either in an explicit value or, at minimum, in the "alternative text" email content.

#2. The sender text is duplicated in the From text. Solution: Use unique content in both the Subject and From lines. While it is good to name your company in either the From line or the Subject line, it's a waste of space… Continue reading

I recently had the opportunity to directly compare products from two of the most respected names in web analytics. Each product has distinct strengths and weaknesses, but perhaps most interesting is how much the designs share in common, as this inside look at the tools will reveal.

Accuracy

My first priority was to analyze the accuracy of each tool. In the past I have been known to dismiss accuracy as unimportant, but with the possibility to directly compare each, very close-up, I simply couldn't resist. I carefully set out the parameters for my accuracy test, and performed the comparison under the strictest conditions possible.… Continue reading