As we come to end of 2009 and look forward to the new developments for 2010 (& one big personal development, but more on that later) , I’ve got a little announcement to make before we all break up for a well deserved Christmas break!

Last week the Web Marketplace Solutions Blog went live!

There’s already several articles from the Web Marketplace Solutions marketing team and they’ll be many more to come, typically on a weekly basis.

Subjects covered will be across all areas of online marketing.  They’ll be insight from our both PPC & SEO teams, with new developments in the marketplace covered off, as well as strategies and tips for improving your search engine marketing – both natural and paid.  Expect usability and creative insight also from respective teams, & general company info about what were’ up to.

Today my first article has gone up there – covering off the new Google Analytics features launched in recent weeks.

Let me know what you think! As you might tell, I’m still very much learning the art of blogging, so all tips and criticism appreciated.

If I don’t get in touch before, have an awesome Christmas!  Oh, and don’t forget, they’ll be a big announcement coming in the New Year…

I had a recent poser a week or so back for a retail client – How should their sub-navigation be ordered on their website? I wanted to get some thoughts down on this, as long, unstructured navigations are something that highly annoys me on websites - especially ones I’m looking to shop on.

Retail navigation ordering typically follows the standard across the web – by key ‘type’ overall as a main choice, then breaking down sub types of this key type.  For example, a clothing retailer would typically break down their navigation by Gender as a main, and then clothing types within their sub nav (jackets, trousers, etc).  Other products similarly follow this fashion, usually broken down by their main type first, and then split out into smaller divisions within the type currently browsing.  In some cases a third level might be used.

This is generally regarded as a logical way to browse, and works well for the majority – you can quickly refine your browsing to specific ranges, and then filter and refine further as you require.

In terms of the sub navigation (second level), this usually ends up being the most comprehensive nav, typically having anywhere from 10 – 20 options within the sub-nav.  The issue that I have with most sites is their ordering of these options – nothing annoys me more than random ordering!

Random ordering your navigation for your website helps no-one.  It’s a bit of a personal issue for me, as it is such a simple fix and should be common knowledge; there’s no excuse for not delivering.

Randomising your nav provides absolutely no benefit to your visitors whatsoever – you are asking visitors to spend longer on your site, increasing annoyance and spending more of their time looking at your navigation instead of looking at what they want to buy. I’m really not buying the argument that ‘the longer they spend on the site searching, the more they will spend’.  It’s bad usability and bad practice.

As far as I’m concerned, the only ordering that should be used across the web for navigations are a choice of:

• A – Z Product Order
• ‘Popularity’ of Product (or relavancy)
• A combination of both

It’s pretty straightforward really.

• A – Z allow visitors to very quickly and easily scan the product ranges on offer.  In seconds, if they are looking for a particular product range, they can instantly jump around the list to find what they’re after.  It’s the most logical ordering method and one I think which should be adoped by all sites as a minimum requirement – no excuse!
• ‘Popularity’ of Product (or relevancy) lists most popular or relevant ranges closer to the top of the navigation, filtering out to smaller ranges and misc. items down the list.  I think in cases this can work well – if your navigation is quite short (maybe less than 5-6 items) or you are a specialised retailer in one or two particular products but sell accessories also, then putting your key ranges at the top and your accessories lower down can work well in some cases. For long navigations though, where the range is wide, structures like this can become horrible to scan through.
• A combination of both.  Usually the best method, but might require a little more work (whcih means hard cash spent on your website I’m afraid).  Listing one or two key product ranges first in the list (including special offers here is always a good choice), and having these then underlined or shaded differently before you list the whole range by A – Z can work really well.  It drives interest to the ranges you want, while providing a really good overview of your product range.

If the budgets there, I’d recommend option 3.  It gives more promotion to ranges you want to promote, while providing a nice, user friendly, structured nav for everyone.  However, for me, option one should be a minimum for all.

Some examples from the wild:

New Look

New Look order their nav in a related but random order overall.  At least that’s how it appears to the average user.  They win points for listing their new and closing lines first and second, meaning the majority of visitors will be exposed to these, and I’d chance that they are in the top 5 most viewed areas of this nav.  They’ve also dropped Sale in at the end (typically the first and last sections get good exposure) which is a good decision, however, I would recommend trying it at the front and seeing how it does.

They break down main clothing sections by type, and though they are grouped, I don’t think they’re that easy to browse.  I would recommend a feint green line once the main types begin, with them then ordered A-Z.  It could easily be tested for performance, eh?

Topshop

The groups work well, but their ordering can be a little confusing. They’re ordered by type within the groups, but I don’t think this is apparently obvious.  Sorting these by A-Z and separting out further (tops / bottoms) would make it even easier to take in I think. Worth a try!

TopShop get a little closer to the Holy Grail, but still not there yet! They adopt a grouped navigation, which works well with different types separated.  The also include sale and last chance items in their own group, though at the bottom of the page for some reason.

The groups work well, but their ordering can be a little confusing. They’re ordered by type within the groups, but I don’t think this is apparently obvious.  Sorting these by A-Z and separting out further (tops / bottoms) would make it even easier to take in I think.

LittleWoods

Littlewoods do a very organised, logical approach, with a breakdown by group, and then all products broken out A-Z.  This works well, but I think in this case the large product section could probably have done with being grouped out further – it can be a lot to take in all at once.

It does however get a lot of points – by maintaining a consistent A-Z order by Product, it does make it quite easy to scan the overall list and find what you’re looking for.

I’ve recently updated the theme for the site so bear with me while we go through a few teething troubles to get everything moved over to this new layout ok.  It’s looking a little cramped at the moment but hopefully should improve soon once I’ve had some tinker time.

I’ve got quite a lot of really good articles queued up, almost ready to publish in the coming week and needed a layout with wider space for article text and screenshots so will be going with this one for the time being.

Shame really as I really did like the last theme but it just didn’t have the space needed and I don’t have the to modifly themes that much!

Articles coming soon! If you have any suggestions for analysis or websites you would like me to take a look at and blog about, let me know!

Implementation

Implementation of analytics can be achieved through two main methods, each with their own advantages and disadvantages – via a page ‘tag’ solution (such as Google Analytics, HBX analytics), or through server log file analysis (such as ClickTracks or Affinium NetInsight).

Page tagging provides a relatively quick implementation, dropping a provider’s specified tag onto pages within the website. At its most basic level, this tag will then record and report back customer data to an online system, which you can access. Google Analytics provides a very good solution for this – more so because it’s free – the only cost to you being implementation. More advanced tags can be added where online purchases take place, and the system can be setup to provide you with conversion rates, bestsellers, and revenue generation across pages – all in all quite a thorough tracking solution.

It does however have its limits in terms of reanalysing data and ‘profiling’ visitors – if a tag isn’t implemented and specific information is required then you can’t go back into the data and reanalyse to dig deeper into the information. Generally this tracking would only be recorded going forward, so it’s important to perform a thorough audit of all the tracking and tagging required initially before implementing page tags to ensure no information is missed.

Server logfile analysis can provide more flexibility and depth of reporting, but can take more expertise and time. Database driven log file tools physically analyse the logs generated by the web server each day, compiling the information into a database which can then be manipulated. These logs are stored physically, so data can be queried and filtered, segregated and compared multiple times – once it is in this database format it can be manipulated as required and across multiple tools – something which is difficult for tag solutions to do. This is particularly useful when doing a detailed site analysis as filters can be constantly changed and re-generated as the analysis evolves and more issues are discovered.

Performance Must be Measured

Any company that trades online should have some tracking implementation at a minimum – in the same way shops and superstores change their layout to increase sales and promote product lines. With good analytics a site can be constantly optimised to drive conversions – without analytics, you will lose market share to the competition.

With so many good solutions now on the market such as Google Analytics, there’s really no excuse. Simple on site optimisations through results analysis can boost online sales and provide some informative insight into how your site is being used. Even if making a few simple changes increases conversions by 0.1% – on 100,000 visitors a month that’s an extra 100 orders @£65 AOV = £6,500) – a fraction of setup AND analysis costs.

In our experience, online activity is generally not being tracked as well as it could be across the majority of online ecommerce sites – and those that do have tracking, have it implemented incorrectly or at a very basic level. Usually in these cases, a small amount of work can provide so much more information and insight into how a website is being used – improving performance and sales as a whole.

Since writing this article, Google Analytics has seen some great improvements.  The addition of segementation for one, has been highly valuable and has brought it up to speed with many other analytics packages, allowing detailed analysis of specific visitor types to be analysed.  It’s such a useful tool I can’t recommend it enough – if you don’t have it on your site, implement it now!  For more info on the page tag vs log files debate, see my previous article.  Also, since doing this, HBX to my knowledge has ceased to exist, and has since been bought up by Omniture.  Expect to see some big developments there; it wasn’t a groundbreaking tool but was very straightforward and simple to use.

The morale of the story? If you’re in the business of having a website and using it for any customer/visitor activity – get some tracking on it! Would you open a shop and not be aware of how busy the shop is? How many sales you made? How popular it was? Doubtful!

Previous Blog Post – What to measure Online & How – Part 1

When looking at web analytics, there is always the face-off, the showdown – which tracking method of the two to use should I use? Logfiles or Pagetags?

In recent years, logfiles seems to be getting less and less attention, less dedicated software solutions & less talk.  Most of big players now are all using Javatag solutions, with little to no mention of any logfiles.  Several years ago, this was a different story. With Javatags in their infancy, logfiles were a readily available method of tracking a site that anyone could work with, and there were some excellent software packages out there to analyse them.  The most widely recognised one left to my knowledge would be ClickTracks.

Outlined below is an overall comparison between the two methods of tracking.  There is no right or wrong one to choose, but their maybe a preferable method of tracking for you, based on your experience, setup, & resources.

Log Files

When you load a web page in your web browser (Internet Explorer etc.), a request for the page is made to a web server; the server then returns the page. Whenever the server does this and any other task, such as loading images or Flash content, it records the actions it takes in a log file. The log file stores data on who requested the page, what site referred them to your site, what time they made the request, what page/image/object was requested etc.

Logs can then be thoroughly processed through various pieces of software, which allow you to extract relevant information about your site, and to manipulate and filter this information.

Page Tags

Using a piece of JavaScript code in each page of your website allows tracking through software. Every time the page is requested the JavaScript automatically runs in the web browser and sends information to a log file or database stored on a remote server which can then be processed to reveal relevant information.

Page tagging also allows access to capture user data such as screen resolution, screen colour depth and the java version they are running (allowing you to see how user friendly your website is), etc.

Comparison

There is no right or wrong method, just simply two methods of measuring – different methods may suit different requirements of the user. Below is a simple comparison.




As you can see each has advantages and disadvantages, combining methods can be used, but results from these are not really comparable because of the differences in collection.

More and more vendors are providing flexible solutions to be able to filter and manipulate pagetag information in the same way that logfile analysis can be. It’s been a while coming and pagetag solutions have been playing catch-up, but they are getting closer. Coremetrics Explore, for example, allows detailed segmenting & filtering across endless data fields and reports, albeit in a slightly long winded way. Unfortunately, you are still tied into a vendor contract with no access to the physical data itself, but you do get a detailed pagetag solution with lots of extras.

When conducting any online analytics the most important aspect is to ensure all data being analysed is derived via the same method and is therefore robust and comparable.