More than two-thirds of ALL emails are read on a mobile device according to a new study by Movable Ink. What this means for marketing professionals is quite simple. The email blast you just sent was likely deleted without being read, and the viewer may have unsubscribed altogether, unless your email was designed for display on mobile devices.

Source: Movable Ink

The Fatal Mistake

While many organizations have recognized the importance of mobile and have created responsive versions of their websites, only 56% are utilizing mobile-friendly email design techniques. The rest are still playing catch-up and are using emails designed primarily for desktop platforms. This is a fatal mistake for email initiatives. According to BlueHornet 75% of all mobile viewers immediately delete an email that doesn’t render well on their device. More than 16% unsubscribe, and only 4% read it anyway. These are alarming numbers.

Research shows that open rates and conversion rates both significantly increase with responsive emails.

Responsive Email Design

Our solution is to take a mobile-first approach to email template design. There are a number of important considerations that our creative team applies:

• Designing in a single column so the email looks flawless on all platforms
• Designing with finger-targets in mind – requiring a minimum width for ease of navigation
• Keeping Calls-to-Action easily tappable
• Keeping the message short and sweet – studies show that mobile users tend to skip reading emails that involve a lot of scrolling – and only 1/3 spend more than 15 seconds reading an email.
• Using white space so readers can easily ski through and digest content more effectively
• Keeping the header clean and moving any required navigation to the footer
• Using fonts that are display well and are readable on mobile devices
• Making sure that any linked website landing pages are mobile-friendly

Our responsive email templates provide flexibility for all platforms while still allowing for significant creative freedom.

Responsive Email Best Practices

It’s critical for organizations to understand their audience, what devices and email clients they are using, what times of day when mobile devices are used most, and what marketing tactics are most likely to drive conversions or achieve other campaign goals.

Industry studies show that morning hours between 6-10AM have the highest peak in mobile email viewership — but that mobile email viewership remains strong and tops desktop viewing throughout the traditional work day.

Keep the subject line under 30 characters to display fully on mobile devices.

Display important content within an HTML text format to ensure that it will be seen because images are unreliable and may not load.

Finally, be sure to thoroughly test emails on different platforms and clients before distribution.

We encourage you to look at email marketing from a new mobile perspective and encourage you to reach out with questions or for help in improving your email campaigns.

A recent paper published by Lithium Technologies and Klout tackled the time issue by studying half a million Facebook and Twitter users and over 144 million posts. By examining post-to-reaction times and comparing behavior for users in different cities, the researchers identified the best time of day and day of the week to post content by geographic location.

The results were partially as one might expect—people do not read their social media feeds as frequently during the weekends. Activity plummets during the weekends, especially on Twitter. Instead, the days of the week with highest engagement were found to be Tuesdays and Wednesdays. However, the drop-off in activity on Facebook during the weekend was not as severe; interestingly, Saturday actually had the most consistent activity throughout the day. Regardless, the study’s takeaway is that posting in the middle of the workweek is your best bet for optimizing viewership.

What about how the time of day affects your post’s visibility? Again, when not to post is fairly self-evident—post reaction is at its lowest in the middle of the night when most people are sleeping. Visibility instead peaks during working hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and has a secondary peak between 7-8 p.m. As was with day-to-day reactions, Twitter post reactions were found to be much more sensitive to the time-of-day than Facebook. These findings were near universal for the cities observed—San Francisco, New York City, London, Paris, and Tokyo—with one small caveat; San Francisco users tended to interact with posts made earlier in the day whereas New York users responded more to posts made in the afternoon.

This report gives you a good idea of when to push new content out to your Facebook and Twitter platforms, but what about figuring out how to fine-tune your emails? We understand that every company’s audience segment is different and requires specific optimization in order to maximize readership. At Manning, our approach is to use this study as a guide to set up our own controlled testing that gauges response to your organization’s content.

In particular, we often implement A/B Split Campaigns in order to determine the best delivery time, subject line, and from name. This testing involves sending out a small sample of emails to be sent with two different variables—for example, sending out half of the campaign’s emails at 9 a.m. and the other half emails that at 3 p.m. We can track which set of emails has the highest number of clicks in order to determine what variables work best for your company. As there may be variations in response based on the type of content that you’re pushing—such as discount coupons versus posts about new services or products—we make sure to test across all of these potential variables. If you’re ready to include email and social optimization in your digital strategy, get in touch.

In the past, many B2B businesses have viewed mobile as a luxury add-on, but today, failing to embrace mobile is risky. Companies once slow to embrace mobile are now recognizing its potential to contribute to an effective mobile strategy that can positively effect every facet of the business, from marketing to sales and to the bottom line.

The Facts About Mobile Users and Your Business

Mobile Business Research

Mobile users are doing much more than accessing email and social media. The latest IDG Global Mobile Survey reports that 77% of business decision-makers use their smartphone to research a product or service for their business. Reaching these important executives wherever they work, whether it’s at the office, at home, or commuting is critical.

While this report shows that executives rely on mobile devices to conduct business research, many B2B sites are catering strictly to desktop users. One of the keys to long-term success and competitive advantage may be how quickly a company can develop and implement an effective mobile platform.

Responsive Response

Implementing a responsive web design is a cost-effective method of optimizing a site for mobile devices. With the growing array of mobile devices available to access the Internet, it’s important to ensure that every user visit is optimized. Marketers who implement responsive design report a 20 percent increase in clicks and conversions on average.

A responsive site automatically scales the layout to the screen size of the device. We often use an analogy that responsive design is like liquid that spreads out or in as the space of the container it is in changes. It’s the same for website elements as they flow seamlessly to fill the screen for different devices.

Benefits of a Responsive Mobile Platform

Excellent User Experience

Responsive sites provide optimal user experience on all devices. Our goal as web strategists, designers and developers is to create a site that allows any user on any device to easily and effortless access and consume content and create immersive interactive experiences.

Responsive Design Increases Mobile Traffic

Mobile traffic volume, conversions and other key metrics increase on sites that are responsive because of better user experience. Lack of mobile enabled websites remains one of the biggest barriers. Websites without a mobile framework offer poor user experience which dramatically impacts mobile traffic, conversions, page views, time on the site, and reduces return visits. Businesses without a mobile site cannot accurately evaluate the potential mobile audience based on the current website analytics.

Cost-Effective

Creating a responsive mobile site is efficient compared to having a separate desktop and adaptive mobile site.

SEO

Switching to responsive design will help attract customers searching from mobile devices. Google recommends responsive web design as the industry best practice, and tailors search results to favor mobile sites for queries using a mobile device.

Next Steps

Optimizing your B2B site for mobile, no matter how large or small the mobile audience segment is, can contribute not only to your digital marketing and your overall business success. Responsive web design is a smart, cost-effective way to reach and engage all your audiences no matter where they are or what device they are using. Contact us to find out more about our approach to responsive design and to talk about options to create a responsive mobile site for your B2B business.

If you’ve been keeping up with our previous posts about using Google Analytics, by now you should be able to briefly understand how each section of Google Analytics works and what it does. Although some of the modules are more advanced than others, most don’t require additional set up and (when read correctly) can provide you with a diverse amount of data about your users and their experiences on your site. Although getting comfortable with your Google Analytics reports can seem like a daunting and cumbersome task, leveraging your Analytics data helps you understand your audience so that you can determine the success of your site and digital strategy, and provides you a valuable return on your invested time.

Unfortunately, we’re at the end of this series but don’t fret because we never stop thinking about Analytics—so keep checking back for more! Just in case you missed any of the previous posts, here are the links:

• Part 1 – Audience
• Part 2 – Acquisition
• Part 3 – Behavior
• Part 4 – Conversions
• Part 5 – Leveraging Your Data

10 Tips for Leveraging Google Analytics

1. Paint the Full Picture

As a digital agency, we find data from Google Analytics very useful when optimizing any of the web projects that we are working with. We can analyze data to come up with better content, design, website flexibility (like mobile and tablet versions) and help create a more informed digital strategy that meets the needs and expectations of users. While looking at your Analytics reports, it’s integral that you cross-examine data and make informed conclusions about user behavior.

2. Filter Out Your Own Traffic

You may find that you access your website several times per day, and this traffic will contaminate your data. In order to have an accurate measurement of your website’s traffic, you’ll want to filter out your office IP address, or any IP address that you or your employees might be entering the website (like your home IP as well). You can do this by finding the Admin panel in the top nav, then selecting Filters. (Hint: if you don’t know your IP address, simply type, “What’s my IP?” in Google and voilá!)

3. Customize Your Dashboard

Despite all of the data you are tracking with Google Analytics, you have an option to setup multiple dashboards with snippets to data that interests you the most. Think of a Dashboard like a quick snapshot. By utilizing custom Dashboards, you can get a quick glimpse of data without having to dissect all the other reports. Dashboards are also nice for displaying a combination of measurements for comparison, and you can even share those via email or export as a PDF once, or setup a schedule to do it daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.

4. Back Up Your Argument with Analytics Data

If you are part of a bigger website team, there is nothing more powerful in backing up your idea or argument than with Analytics data. Your Analytics data never lies! Take screen captures, generate reports—do whatever you have to do to provide a sound argument to…

5. (Re)Define Your Goals

Because of the nature of websites—as opposed to print communications—they can and should be always be evolving. Therefore, once you have implemented a change to your site, give Google Analytics enough time to measure the results of that change. If you find that your audience is behaving differently than expected, it may be time to reconsider your goals and optimize your site to cater to audience needs.

6. Always Look Back in Time

When you are checking your website performance for last month, it is very useful to compare this data with a month before or even look back at the same month in the previous year. We use this technique to see if website traffic is consistent or if we are losing any visitors during certain periods, like say, summer when kids are out of school and parents are busy shuffling them around.

7. Examine Your Visitor’s Machine

There is a lot of speculation on what browsers or screen resolutions are the most popular, but you should base that knowledge on your own website data to make sure that your visitors are happy and fully satisfied with the experience you are providing. If you find that your users general have small screen sizes, just adjust by designing with that in mind.

8. Flow Chart vs. Sitemap

These are two different things, but you can find them very useful to determine which pages are most popular and how your visitors are browsing and traveling throughout your website by comparing your sitemap with the flow chart. For example, you can quickly see if users are coming in through the “front door” of your site (the homepage) or perhaps are clicking on a link that brings them to a different page. Then you can track what they do from that point by using the Flow Chart report.

9. Find Your Weakest Spot

In website statistics, bounces and exits show the weakest spots because we lose interested parties. Always make sure to check which pages are the highest in those numbers to make changes or tweaks. Don’t let them go too easily!

10. Site Speed Performance

It doesn’t matter how big or nice your website is, if it loads slowly, chances are that you are losing a lot of traffic. This is especially a major consideration as we see more users access sites through their mobile devices. You should check this frequently and optimize your website for the best performance possible.

Conclusion: Inform your Strategy

We know they may be a lot for you to consider. Remember that Google Analytics is a valuable tool, but it is just that—a tool. If you feel you’re not getting the full picture or are having a hard time deciphering reports, it may be time to hire a professional analyst. Remember that tool + talent = success. Good luck!

This is one of the most advanced modules in Google Analytics which require additional setup in order to show your goals and conversions. What is Conversions in Google Analytics? It is a completion of an activity on your website, and therefore the last step in the Acquisition-Behavior-Conversion (ABC) cycle, as mentioned in previous posts. When an audience member has acted on a behavior and created a conversion on your site or application, a conversion is typically defined as someone filling out a contact form, buying something from your online store, or maybe downloading something from your website.

We’re getting towards the end of our thoughts on Google Analytics, but in case you missed any of the previous posts, here are the links:

• Part 1 – Audience
• Part 2 – Acquisition
• Part 3 – Behavior
• Part 4 – Conversions
• Part 5 – Leveraging Your Data

Goals

First, let’s start by describing the meaning of Goals. Setting practical goals are important for helping you to measure how well your website performs. There are many ways to setup goals, and many different scenarios for you to track them. Each time a goal is completed, Google Analytics logs conversions in your account. You may also define a monetary value to see how much that conversion is worth to your business.

There are four types of Goals, and each one of them is used to measure different actions or kinds of content.

Type	Description	Example
Destination	Specific Location	Thank you page after completing a contact form
Duration	Session that last a specific amount of time	5 minutes or longer spend on a specific page
Pages/Screens per session	Session with specific number of views	10 pages have been loaded
Event	An action completed by visitor	Downloaded PDF or Social button

This is just a basic introduction and explanation of Google Analytics Goals, but if you would like to learn more Google publishes some great resources.

Ecommerce

Same as Goals, this module requires additional setup in Analytics and on top of that, you have to implement a code snippet with ecommerce tracking on your website. What can you track with ecommerce? As an online store owner, you should be able to the following:

• Products
  • What products users buy
  • What quantities they buys them at
  • What the revenue is that’s generated by those products
• Transactions
  • The revenue
  • Tax
  • Shipping
  • Quantity information for each transaction
• Time to Purchase
  • The number of days it took to purchase
  • The number of sessions that it took to purchase

With listed above information, you should get an understanding of how your online store is performing and if your products are best suited for your customer. If you’re interested in setting up this Ecommerce portion in Google Analytics, you can start by diving into this Google Support link.

Multi-Channel Funnels

Every time a conversion happens, it is indicated in the last campaign that aided the user towards that conversion. With Multi-Channel Funnels, we are able to discover the conversion path a user took from the very first channel referral. Basically, you can track which channels users travelled through on your website before committing to anything. You can see data from the last 30 days, and go back 1-90 days with Lookback Window. Listed below are channels included in the conversion path in Multi-Channel Funnels:

• paid and organic search (on all search engines along with the specific keywords searched)
• referral sites
• affiliates
• social networks
• email newsletters
• custom campaigns that you’ve created, including offline campaigns that send traffic to vanity URLs

Attribution

An attribution model is the rule, or set of rules, which report how each channel of a conversion path is credited for the sale that completed the conversion. Below is list of all available basic attribution models:

• Last Interaction – the last touch point before the conversion receives 100% credit for the sale.
• Last Non-Direct Click – same as Last Interaction, with the exception of not counting direct traffic
• Last AdWord Click – the first and only click through a paid search would receive all credit for the sale
• First Interaction – the first touch point in a conversion path would receive all credit for the sale
• Linear – each conversion channel included in the path would receive equal shared credit of the sale
• Time Decay – the touch points closest in time to the sale would receive the most credit
• Position Based – 40% is assigned to first and last interaction, and remaining 20% is given equally to all middle interactions
• Custom – there is also an option to create and share your custom attribution model

BONUS: Goal Flow

Here’s another great use of the Flow report in Google Analytics, only this time it allows you to visualize the path your traffic traveled through a funnel towards a Goal. It takes you through all the channels involved in the conversion, toward the final step—the goal conversion.

Conclusion of Conversions

We have given you a really broad overview of the Conversion section of Google Analytics, and although it requires additional setup in order to report your data correctly, you should now have a solid understanding of what makes Conversion a great tool to analyze and improve your site. If you read our previous posts you should now also understand the entire Acquisition-Behavior-Conversion (ABC) cycle—or how you acquire users, their behavior after acquisition, and patterns behind conversions. If you have some additional questions regarding ecommerce or the setting up of goals, don’t hesitate to contact an Analytics expert at Manning.

Lastly, for the final part of our series we’re going to give you a broad overview of how all these pieces of the Google Analytics puzzle fit together, and present some recommendations as to how to utilize these valuable tools. So stay tuned and see you next time!

Behavior

This is the mid-point of our series in which we are going to talk about the behavior of your users. User behavior is something we really feel you should be examining because it’s how you can evaluate the quality and performance of your website or content. This Behavior section in Google Analytics explores how people find and interact with your content—that’s why it’s the second step in the Acquisition-Behavior-Conversion (ABC) cycle. You can uncover such things like how long it took users to load your site, how deep a visitor’s interaction with your site was, what people searched for on your site, and how frequently specific pages were viewed.

We have mentioned Behavior before in Part 1 & Part 2 of this series, but this post is where we are going to get deeper into it. And in case you missed it, here are the other parts of this series:

• Part 1 – Audience
• Part 2 – Acquisition
• Part 3 – Behavior
• Part 4 – Conversions
• Part 5 – Leveraging Your Data

Behavior Flow

We mentioned the flow module before in the bonus section of our Audience post, and this flow works similarly. It visualizes the path that users traveled from one landing page to the next. This report is helpful to determine which section of your site or content keeps users engaged, or at which points they dropped off. You’ll also notice that where visitors drop off should also correlate to the bounce rate of that given page.

Site Content

This report is responsible for all data about how users interact with individual pages on your site. Under this view, we can see the following: views of individual pages, bounce rates, pages of visitor entrance or exit, and how often or how long they viewed an individual page. You can even dig deeper into a section of your site to examine where visitors went on certain page levels. For example, if “Blog” is a main navigational item on your menu, it is considered a level 1 path. When looking at the Site Content section, you can compare which one of those level 1 pages had more interaction—like “Contact” or “About” or your blog.

Site Speed

The Site Speed report brings us a more technical view with insight about loading speeds of your website and distinct pages. You can use this data to quickly compare load time across different devices, browsers, pages or locations. You can also track execution speed or load tome of any discrete hit, even or user interaction that you want to track. By monitoring load times and then examining how much mobile traffic your site gets (under the Audience section), you can make informed conclusions about how mobile-friendly your site is.

Site Search

Site search is an optional tool in Google Analytics that only works after an additional setup. This report provides you data on how many of your visitors are using the search engine on your site, search terms they are looking for and how the results are engaged through your website. If you’re looking for more information on configuring this report, please refer to Google’s documentation.

Events

Similar to site search, the Events module requires additional setup on your website in order to track the events that you want data on. Here’s an overall of the events you can track: downloads, button clicks, video plays, flash elements, AJAX embedded elements and more. Each event is built from the following components:

• Category – this the main type by which we track and sort events (example “download” or “video”)
• Action – descriptor for a particular category (example “Play” or “Pause” for Video)
• Label – an optional descriptor that you can use to provide further data
• Value – a numerical event value

AdSense

This is a similar module to an AdWords module from our previous post. AdSense is a platform run by Google that enables content publishers to put ads on their websites. This report provides you data on those ad banners after further AdSense and Analytics integration.

Experiments

This fun tool is perfect if you want to test different scenarios, designs, or content on your page for better goal performance or conversions. You can setup different designs for a landing page or buttons to test which design work better, and Google Analytics will bring you that report after creating and setting up Experiments on your website.

BONUS: In-Page Analytics

With this tool you can see a graphical replica of your website, overlaid with bubbles that display data (in percentages) of user’s actions in the exact places where those actions or clicks took place. This tool can work for every page with Google Analytics code embedded. Besides the click bubbles, you are able to see the Google Analytics header with knowledge on pageviews, unique pageviews, avg. time on page, avg. page load time, bounce rate and percentage of exits. You can also toggle between clicks and goal, a color/heat map view, and see data for different browser sizes.

Conclusion of Behavior

By now you have learned to check your visitors’ behavior once they get to your site. If you are considering making changes, you will find that this data is very important and helpful when planning any improvements, as you can always cross-check data through all the report channels in order to make informed decision about the types of alterations you’d like to make.

We hope you enjoyed this post on user behavior! Stay tuned to learn more about conversions and tracking goals for ecommerce or any other purposes. And as always, if you need help trying to make sense with any of your reports don’t hesitate to contact an Analytics professional at Manning.

Previously we talked about what kind of data is displayed in Analytics about your website’s visitors and how to read that data in order to identify your market and audience. If you missed the first post of this series on Audience, you can find it here on our blog. As promised, here is the second post on Acquisition, where we will teach you how to sort all the traffic sources of your website or app. Here are the other areas we’ll focus on in this series:

• Part 1 – Audience
• Part 2 – Acquisition
• Part 3 – Behavior
• Part 4 – Conversions
• Part 5 – Leveraging Your Data

Acquisition

Let’s start by explaining the concept of Acquisition in Google Analytics. As the word “Acquisition” suggests, the concept behind Google’s tool is very similar. In this area we access the data regarding how people reached a website, or how we have acquired our audience, and through which channels or referrals they were at before they got there. As with all the major sections of Analytics, we’ll go into more detail about how Acquisition is broken down:

Channels

This component is used to compare different channels from which you have acquired visitors to your website (example: Social, Direct, Referral). Besides regular acquisition information, you can also find a table with users’ behavior and goal conversations. Channels are helpful to determine which source of traffic is the best when promoting your website.

All Traffic

All traffic, as the name states, is responsible for showing all sources of incoming traffic responsible for visits, behaviors or conversions. It works similar to channels, but with a more detailed view of specific websites, displayed as URLs from those sites. Initially, the primary dimension the All Traffic section shows is “Source / Medium,” where “Source” is the specific URL of a website that visitors are coming from, and “Medium” represents the kind of traffic—like referral or organic. Referral traffic comes when a visitor clicks on a link from an external site and is brought to your site, whereas organic traffic comes when a website is searched for in Google or other search engines. You can also choose to look at other specific dimensions like just the Source or just the Medium, the Keyword searched, and others.

All Referrals

This view is almost identical to All Traffic, with the difference being that it only shows all referral traffic. We are able to see which domains are referring traffic to our site, and what sources of traffic we are getting. This might be helpful to you if you are placing banners or links to your site on different websites.

Campaigns

This is a great tool if you are running or planning different campaigns (AdWords or other) to promote your website. You can determine the number of visitors coming to your website from a specific campaign—for example, a “Fall Campaign” linked from an email blast. We find this tool beneficial for different email marketing campaigns, where instead of a regular link we insert one provided by Google Analytics URL Builder, where it can show us the specific Campaign Source, Medium, Term (optional), Content (optional) and Name.

Keywords

If your website is packed with good content and coded properly (with good heading tags, for example) then you should be experiencing high organic traffic. If you’d like to determine which keywords or content are performing better on your site, the Keywords section can provide you with that data, broken down into two segments—“Organic” and “Paid.” As mentioned above, Organic traffic is responsible for all visitors finding your website through Google or a similar search engine, while Paid is all your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign results.

Cost Analysis

Although at the time of writing this, Cost Analysis is in beta mode, this report shows session, cost, and revenue performance data for all your paid marketing channels. Here, you can compare your paid campaigns and associated revenue (ecommerce or goal value), in order to calculate your Return on Investment (ROI), Revenue per Click (RPC) and profit margin. Basically, you get insight into which of your paid campaigns are performing the best.

AdWords

This report would work the best if you are familiar with Google AdWords, which is pay-per-click platform provided by Google. In a few words, this report is an integration of your AdWords account with all the data from your campaign, accessible through Google Analytics. Therefore, it’s only helpful if you’re currently running AdWords campaigns.

Social

Social media is becoming one of the most important marketing channels on the Web in today’s fast-paced world. Google Analytics allows us to effectively measure that data and the impact of social media channels on our websites. The Social section is divided into four main elements, which define your social impact:

• Network Referrals – same as with “All Referrals”, it shows us data about which social network is bringing the most visitors.
• Conversions – by sharing our links across social sites and acquiring visitors, we are able to determine how and if they are converting into our ecommerce or value goals.
• Landing Pages – by looking at the Landing Pages report, we can see which of your pages are the most visited by social channels and exactly which channels.
• Social Plugins – by installing a social plugin (like a Facebook share button on your site), you allow visitors to share content from your site directly to social networks. Therefore, the “Social Plugins” report shows which content is being shared and on which networks.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) data provides you information about Google Web Search queries that have returned your website’s URL as a result, as well as the most popular landing pages or geographical summary of your Google searches. Each one of those views exhibits Impressions (the number of times your URL was displayed in Google Searches), Clicks (the number of clicks on those impressions), Average Position (the average page position of your website in a search index for a specific keyword—not available in the Geo summary) and the Click Though Rate (CTR). This report is only available if you have setup your Google Webmaster Tools and configured SEO reporting with Google Analytics.

BONUS: The Acquisition Behavior Conversion (ABC) Cycle

You have probably noticed that many sections in the Acquisition report contain information on behavior and conversion. This ABC cycle lets you figure out how you have acquired users, their behavior on your site after acquisition, and their conversion patterns. Instead of just looking on how you got the users, you get to analyze behavior and conversion in one place.

Conclusion of Acquisition

Now that you have learned the basics of the Google Analytics Acquisition section, we’re sure you are eager to see how your site has been performing when it comes to acquiring visitors. For our next post we’ll take a look at the Behavior section, which provides you with insight on the second part of the ABC cycle. We hope you’re having fun learning about Google Analytics! Make sure to stay tuned for all this series has to offer, including valuable insights and downloadable materials!

Here at Manning, we believe in creating results-driven digital experiences, and often times this means implementing a number of tools, software, and practices into our process so that we can uncover hidden behaviors about users and the applications or sites they’re interacting with. That’s why one of our favorite software tools is Google Analytics. Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed data about your website’s traffic and provides you with an almost infinite amount of customized settings and tools for you to examine your traffic data.

With advanced tools and software like Google Analytics, measuring your website traffic and analyzing data can seem overwhelming and complex, especially as new versions of Analytics become available. However, as long as you know what you’re looking to reveal with analytics and stick to a scheduled process, creating reports will get easier with time and provide you with valuable return on your invested time. We believe that it’s also best to assemble a good team around you so that you not only collect the data, but also have help evaluating it and gaining insight.

Since the sky is the limit when it comes to using Google Analytics, we decided to create this series. In the last articles of the series, we’ll give you information about how to maximize your insights using Google Analytics, and provide you with downloadable materials for future reference. Don’t forget to check out the topics below, and stay tuned for more:

• Part 1 – Audience
• Part 2 – Acquisition
• Part 3 – Behavior
• Part 4 – Conversions
• Part 5 – Leveraging Your Data

Audience

You can find Audience data useful to gain insight about guest demographics, how your website is accessed, and loyalty or engagement of your visitors. Within Google Analytics, there are a number of subdivisions under the Audience tab, which are explained below:

Demographics

Demographics is a new method of tracking recently implemented by Google Analytics. If you are targeting a certain demographic this would be the tool for you! It enables you to see information like the age and gender of your visitors.

Interests

Same as Demographics, Interests is a fairly new addition to Google Analytics and delivers information on preferences like “Sports,” “Computers & Electronics,” and “Travel,” or specific interests of people browsing your site. With this feature, you are able to determine if the service or a product that you are offering is targeting the interests of your audience.

Geo

Geo is one of the fundamental tools has always been associated with Google Analytics. As the name implies, it is responsible for reporting the geographical location and language of your visitors. The data reveals detailed information about a specific country, state or even city. This way, you can see whether your website is getting traffic from the areas that you are targeting, or optimized for the languages your audience speaks and reads.

Behavior

Behavior tells us how engaged visitors are with your website. You can get the data on “New vs. Returning” visitors, “Frequency & Recency” and “Engagement.” Let’s go a little deeper into the meaning of each of these metrics:

• New vs Returning shows us a data comparison between amount of new and returning users.
• Frequency & Recency shows us a data table comparing the number of new or returning visits, page views of visitors, bounce rates, visit duration, and more.
• Engagement shows us a data table of the duration of the visit—0-10 seconds, 11-30 seconds, and so on—number of visits, and page views.

Technology

Technology is responsible for delivering data on the browser & operating system (OS) that your visitor is using, as well as information about their internet service provider (ISP)—such as Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, etc. This tool is crucial in determining if your visitors are getting the best, desired experience on various operating systems and browsers.

Mobile

Similar to the Technology part, Mobile shows us data about devices that your website was viewed on. We can determine if the visitor was using their personal computer (desktop), their phone (mobile), or tablet. You can drill down to see certain brands of devices—such as LG, Google, HTC—or you can even drill down and find out exactly which model the site was viewed on—like the Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy S4, Amazon Kindle Fire, and others.

Since internet traffic on mobile devices has been steadily growing as more and more users migrate from desktop computers onto tablets and smartphones, we think that closely examining and analyzing your site’s mobile traffic is vital. If you see that your site is getting significant traffic—usually about 15% or more of visits—on mobile devices, you’ll need to make sure your site is optimized for this kind of traffic. If you need help on creating a mobile digital strategy, we’re always here to help!

Custom

Lastly, the Custom Variables report shows activity by custom segments you create yourself by modifying the Analytics tracking code. For example, you can track certain behaviors on forms or selections within pages on your site. This type of custom analysis is typically reserved for serious Google Analytics users and programmers.

BONUS: Checking out Visitors Flow

This great tool acts as a roadmap for your site, outlining the path users take from the moment they step in the door. Visitors Flow is a graphical flow chart which demonstrates how the visitors are acting on your website, where they are dropping and how deep is their path throughout the pages. We usually find this useful when looking to see which areas of a site are experiencing high amounts of bounces (visitors exiting the site). You can even customize this tool in a variety of ways.

Conclusion of Audience

Now that you have learned the basics of the Google Analytics Audience section, we’re sure you are eager to see how your site has been performing, although keep in mind that this is only a brief description of what you can uncover under the Audience section without going deeper into advanced settings and reporting.

For our next post we’ll take a look at the Acquisition section, which provides you with data on the user Acquisition-Behavior-Conversion (ABC) cycle—or how you acquire users, their behavior after acquisition, and patterns behind conversions.

And finally, make sure to stay tuned for all this series has to offer on Google Analytics, including valuable insights and downloadable materials. Of course, if you need help analyzing any of your reports, please don’t hesitate to contact an Analytics professional at Manning.

You might be thinking, “Get my red staples button, that’s easy!”   But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Here are a few fundamentals that need to be balanced when creating a website that accommodates both B2C & B2B customers:

Product VS Relationship Driven

Typically, a website meant for engaging B2C customers works at converting the “shoppers” into buyers as quickly and aggressively as possible. When on the web, end consumers want sales information handy and can easily be enticed with incentives.  In many cases only one or two people are making a purchasing decision and not interested in a long-term relationship – just a quick fix to their need or problem.

When it comes to a B2B experience the focus shifts from being completely product driven to one that is based on developing a relationship. In a business scenario, the first point of contact with a website is to gather research. Content is king, and the information available online is used for comparison and discussion among peers. It is critical that you have the information they are looking for, or you may be crossed off the list. At this phase, companies aren’t ready for a hard sell – just pursuing options.

Short VS Long Sales Cycle

Consumers as a whole are getting more impatient by the minute. The increase in mobile sales alone suggests that we can’t even wait to get home to make an online purchase. We want it all NOW. This is a big part of why B2C transactions have such a shorter sales cycle then B2B. While consumers are doing research before making a purchasing decision, they are much less likely to linger. Many of us buy on impulse and are looking for that instant gratification we are so accustomed to.

However when our jobs could be at stake, as in a B2B scenario, the buying process can be many steps and drawn out. Frequently, companies are looking for the best business value and will research for months prior to making a purchasing decision. They check competitors, references, require some hand holding and even months later still won’t make a decision. Aside from any red tape that may hinder the process, there can be many people involved in the purchasing process – all of which takes time. While they value information on the website, it is still important to remember to guide them to the next step when they are ready to move forward.

Emotional VS Rational Behavior

As consumers, we like pretty logos and graphics. Good branding is not only aesthetically pleasing but can build brand trust, confidence and loyalty. If a website is poorly optimized and not very interesting to look at, chances are many people will move on to their next option without giving your product/service a second thought. Consumers are heavily influenced by their emotions. Factors like desire, status of the brand, “coolness factor”, and price all weigh into the outcome. The website needs to accommodate all of this to be successful.

In the B2B world, branding doesn’t take the lead. Businesses work hard to mitigate financial risks and appreciate a website that can provide them with the information they need without much work. End decisions tend to be made through a rational, fact-based approach. What is the most economical? How fast can this be delivered? What is the quality of the product/service? Having answers readily available could be the difference between a captured or lost lead.

B2B meets B2C: FirstCharterBus.com

So how do you meet the needs of two very different audiences on one website? This was the challenge we faced with a recent project for First Student. The company wanted to grow it’s charter bus rental business beyond the B2C market to include a greater emphasis on the B2B customer. We were tasked with branding and designing a website that would engage and inform both of these distinct audiences. And as we’ve just explained that is no small undertaking.

Our solution was to create separate messaging, content and site features to help funnel each of these audience segments to the relevant content they were seeking. For the single-use B2C bus renter, we provided eye-catching “Choose Yellow” value messaging, trip ideas and a simple quote request form to encourage them to take action. Additionally, online tools were developed, such as a trip planning checklist and group transportation comparison chart, to help them make a quick decision.

For the B2B audience, we created a separate landing page that took a more concierge-like approach for these large group transportation planners. This area features detailed corporate case studies and testimonials with an emphasis on the company’s large fleet of buses, customer service, national reputation and reliability. The Corporate Services section also provides its own 800 number and quote request form to speed a response to busy event planners.

It’s not easy to walk this tight-rope between the B2C and B2B worlds, but it can be done successfully if you effectively understand and address the needs of these two divergent groups.