Monday was a dismal day for United Airlines (UAL) as their stock slid 75% into the depths of despair. The sky was falling, as news was released they are going bankrupt (again!)...
Its not surprising, with oil prices, our economy, and this looming (will it ever really be one) recession. Too bad it was a mistake.
wait wait, what was that? no really, it was all just a mistake. Google's crawler picked up a news story from a Tribune news site, and posted it to their headlines. This spread through the internet, and then spilled over to Wall Street where their stock took a dive. The Wall Street Journal lays out the events in this article, its worth a read: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122109238502221651.html
NASDAQ eventually stopped trading and all was thwarted. Unfortunately, their stock is still off about 9% from where they were the Friday before. A single click on an old article cost the company (and its shareholders) nearly $150MM.
How can this happen? Much of the market is now driven based on automated trading, and things called ALGOS (algorithm's) which constantly scan the web, news, and other information and make automated decisions to buy or sell based on market news; so presumably you can get an edge on the other guy. In a tumble like this however, with such a big company, it was cavalcade of failure as all of these ALGOS started to sell, then more sold because the other ALGOS sold, and so on. A good explanation of it is here: http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN1039166420080910?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
This will become even more prevalent in the future as we automate our market to search articles like this, which could be disastrous for some people. The SEC is investigating the whole deal to see what can be done to prevent slides like this in the future. ALGOS are great to have but could end up biting us even more, not sure if I have an opinion yet on where we need to take this but I may end up re-posting with more later. Something to chew on for the day...
Friday, September 12, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
WAA Championship - winners without scorecards!
I just spent some time reading a good post from Avinash about the WAA Championship (http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/wachampionship/) and the results are in. Sadly my comapny was not in the top 4, but this gives us a great opportunity to explore new things and see this in a different light.
Avinash brings up some good points I know we’re all striving for in our analysis: how to make it better and more actionable, without giving a data flood to our clients. He also gives 7 tips on how to improve the quality of analysis that I know we all think about but may struggle to put into action.
Here is a link to the article, I highly suggest reading it as well as the winning entries: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/07/consultants-analysts-present-impactful-analysis-insightful-reports.html
Notice a common theme among all of them… no scorecards! This might be a good approach if we’re looking to break out of the doldrums of scorecard data smog and really drive clients business forward. I often ask myself should we ditch Excel entirely for client facing documents. The more we allow excel to control our work, the more data-laden things can get. It’s the whole goldfish in a bowl thing…if we can start to change our own culture first, we can change our clients and push them forward!
Let me know what you think, I’m eager to hear your feedback.
Avinash brings up some good points I know we’re all striving for in our analysis: how to make it better and more actionable, without giving a data flood to our clients. He also gives 7 tips on how to improve the quality of analysis that I know we all think about but may struggle to put into action.
Here is a link to the article, I highly suggest reading it as well as the winning entries: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/07/consultants-analysts-present-impactful-analysis-insightful-reports.html
Notice a common theme among all of them… no scorecards! This might be a good approach if we’re looking to break out of the doldrums of scorecard data smog and really drive clients business forward. I often ask myself should we ditch Excel entirely for client facing documents. The more we allow excel to control our work, the more data-laden things can get. It’s the whole goldfish in a bowl thing…if we can start to change our own culture first, we can change our clients and push them forward!
Let me know what you think, I’m eager to hear your feedback.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Leaky Pages
I was asked recently by a client to do a deep-dive on their Home Page click-through rates. As I was pulling the information I noticed that only about 20% of all site visits enter on the Homepage, and that only 25% of all visits ever see the Homepage. This was alarming as I know they were very concerned with optimizing and making changes to the Homepage, as they just did a refresh a few months ago and are finally grasping the idea (and power) optimization, supported by sound analytics, can have on click-through rates.
The project bubbled over into an Entry Page Deep-Dive where I discovered that 68% of the traffic entered on 20 pages. For these pages I then pulled in their total visits, exits, and single page visits. Based on these 4 data points, and using some simple standard deviation, and median averages, I was able to pinpoint what pages out of these 20 were the best candidates for improvement. I ended up calling these 'Leaky Pages' because they were the ones getting the most eyeballs first (thus giving the highest amount of 'first impressions') but at the same time, also losing a lot of the traffic via exits, or bounces. A lot of these pages were downloads that people are searching on, and of course the goal of SEO is to get people exactly what they are looking for so there is a win there. At the same time however, these pages werent a big enough draw to keep the visitors, basically a good chunk of traffic was coming to the site for a specific download, getting it, then leaving.
By paring the 20 pages down to just the critical few, it gave the client something to work on immediately, rather than making sweeping changes to the entire site. If they make a few optimizations on these pages, they can surely drive people into the site more often, and keep them on the site longer. It also took the attention away from making immediate optimization changes to the Homepage because, if I've done my job correctly, they will see there is less value in optimizing for an increase of 1,000 clicks, vs losing 100k visits in a month due to a Thank You page that isnt engaging.
Check these two charts out, the first identifies the top 20 entry pages, and the second identifies which pages have a bouunce rate 1 standard deviation above the median average page-bounce rate, and which have a lower click-through rate than 1 standard deviation below the median click-through rate. Its a pretty simple way to see exactly where to focus your efforts.
The project bubbled over into an Entry Page Deep-Dive where I discovered that 68% of the traffic entered on 20 pages. For these pages I then pulled in their total visits, exits, and single page visits. Based on these 4 data points, and using some simple standard deviation, and median averages, I was able to pinpoint what pages out of these 20 were the best candidates for improvement. I ended up calling these 'Leaky Pages' because they were the ones getting the most eyeballs first (thus giving the highest amount of 'first impressions') but at the same time, also losing a lot of the traffic via exits, or bounces. A lot of these pages were downloads that people are searching on, and of course the goal of SEO is to get people exactly what they are looking for so there is a win there. At the same time however, these pages werent a big enough draw to keep the visitors, basically a good chunk of traffic was coming to the site for a specific download, getting it, then leaving.
By paring the 20 pages down to just the critical few, it gave the client something to work on immediately, rather than making sweeping changes to the entire site. If they make a few optimizations on these pages, they can surely drive people into the site more often, and keep them on the site longer. It also took the attention away from making immediate optimization changes to the Homepage because, if I've done my job correctly, they will see there is less value in optimizing for an increase of 1,000 clicks, vs losing 100k visits in a month due to a Thank You page that isnt engaging.
Check these two charts out, the first identifies the top 20 entry pages, and the second identifies which pages have a bouunce rate 1 standard deviation above the median average page-bounce rate, and which have a lower click-through rate than 1 standard deviation below the median click-through rate. Its a pretty simple way to see exactly where to focus your efforts.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Page load time and page references
Issues with your site or page loading? High Bounce Rates? Think you need better content? Maybe its the page itself.
This is a helpful tool when troubleshooting pages that load slowly. You can see if images are too big, or if certain css or script files are too big, etc. You can also see if a page is referencing images or script that are not in HTTPS format – which causes that annoying security alert.
And it's free!: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
I've tried it a few times on some of my sites, and have been able to cook it into some good analysis which leads to checking under the hood, rather than bringing in a copywriter. Check it out, see what you think...
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Facebook: first impressions, Vol1
So, I finally got a Facebook account yesterday. Instantly I had 15 friends, yay. Of course, these are people I know and are from work circles, and from my personal life, and a little of both. My partner has had a Facebook account for a few months now and he's been a great usability subject for the site. He is a BIG fan of the site and I can see why, he showed me different things to add, how to get around, how attack, and how to grow things. It all clicked that the reason its popular is because it reflects life, and prospers on what 'people are doing right now'. They're not looking for a log of a persons life (although this does give it), but people just want to know what Neil is doing today, for lunch, right now. Its fun, it works, and I only have it right now because a critical mass of my network has it right now, and I've succumed to the 'I cant-not have one' feeling. Its good though, a right of passage thing I guess...getting some 'net-cred if you will.
More to come on my first impressions with Facebook... stay tuned!
More to come on my first impressions with Facebook... stay tuned!
Ctrl+Enter: A quicker way to browse
Tired of typing in w..w..w..dot.../...c..o..m? Or searching in your Google toolbar for a company, and then moving your mouse to click the site?
Just type in the domain name (e.g.: 'nytimes', 'aol', 'microsoft', etc...) directly into your URL bar and hit 'CTRL + Enter' on your keyboard at the same time. IE & Firefox will automatically fill in the syntax (http://www/. and the '.com')
Now, if your site isnt a typical '.com' it may end up redirecting anyway to the correct directory so dont worry about that, try it and see. It saves time from doing a Google search in your search bar, and then mousing to the site, or typing in the entire address in the oh-so-tedious URL bar. Enjoy =)
Just type in the domain name (e.g.: 'nytimes', 'aol', 'microsoft', etc...) directly into your URL bar and hit 'CTRL + Enter' on your keyboard at the same time. IE & Firefox will automatically fill in the syntax (http://www/. and the '.com')
Now, if your site isnt a typical '.com' it may end up redirecting anyway to the correct directory so dont worry about that, try it and see. It saves time from doing a Google search in your search bar, and then mousing to the site, or typing in the entire address in the oh-so-tedious URL bar. Enjoy =)
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Technorati: infuse new ideas into your analysis
I've heard of it for a while now, but never went to the site and for some reason thought it was like Engadget, or Gizmodo. I didn't realize that its a site that scours millions of blogs and can give a great pulse on whats new in the blogosphere regarding technology. It indexes some 27 million blogs and gives you the most relevant and recent postings. Check more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati
I thought it might be a great way for new (ok... and experienced) analysts to get ideas on what people are saying about the site they are performing analysis on, or the client they're working with. Chances are if folks are blogging about it, they've been to the site and are directing more people there as well, with the bloggers sentiments in mind. It may sound elementary but its a great way to correlate what is being said to what is actually happening on the site. Is the blogger really liking a new product, do they hate the new technology?
Think to yourself, by them blogging about something, are people going to take them seriously and if so how can we use this to our benefit and recommend actions taking what the the data, shows, and the qualitative audience is talking about it? Obviously there are a lot of tools that do this, and take much of the manual work out of it, but sites like Technorati are a quick gut-check to brainstorm new ideas.
Here are some other really great resources a peer forwarded to me that allows you to do the same thing:
Searching Blogs:
Google Blog Search
Ask.com is also a good source for searching blogs.
IceRocket (can track conversations over time and display trends in graphical format; good for monitoring buzz. Also indexes MySpace posts and images)
Feedster
BlogPulse (tracks conversations like IceRocket. Also profiles top bloggers with info on who they are and what they write about).
Opinmind.com (classifies results by bias, i.e., tone)
TalkDigger (blog search engine aggregator)
BlogBlusiness.com (directory of blogs about different business related topics)
Technorati also has watch lists, like google news does. Also has a top 100 blogs list to see most influential bloggers, based on hos many links they have from other bloggers. Let’s you narrow your search by authority of blogger too.
Sphere.com results based on influence also.
Another good source for finding good blog search engines and directories: http://masternewmedia.org/rss/top55
Searching Podcasts
Harder to do but not implossible.
Podscope.com and Podzinger.com
Enter search term and get taken to a list of podscasts that mention that term. You can click on a control button and listen to the exact segment in the program where the search for term is spoken. Pretty damn cool. However, they don’t cover every podcast out there, so that’s a limitation.
Podcast Alley (owned by PodShow Network; is a podcast directory)
Podcasting News (also a directory)
Podcast.net (directory)
iPodder.org (directory)
Another good source for finding podcasts: http://masternewmedia.org/news/2005/05/20/where_to_submit_your_podcasts.htm
I thought it might be a great way for new (ok... and experienced) analysts to get ideas on what people are saying about the site they are performing analysis on, or the client they're working with. Chances are if folks are blogging about it, they've been to the site and are directing more people there as well, with the bloggers sentiments in mind. It may sound elementary but its a great way to correlate what is being said to what is actually happening on the site. Is the blogger really liking a new product, do they hate the new technology?
Think to yourself, by them blogging about something, are people going to take them seriously and if so how can we use this to our benefit and recommend actions taking what the the data, shows, and the qualitative audience is talking about it? Obviously there are a lot of tools that do this, and take much of the manual work out of it, but sites like Technorati are a quick gut-check to brainstorm new ideas.
Here are some other really great resources a peer forwarded to me that allows you to do the same thing:
Searching Blogs:
Google Blog Search
Ask.com is also a good source for searching blogs.
IceRocket (can track conversations over time and display trends in graphical format; good for monitoring buzz. Also indexes MySpace posts and images)
Feedster
BlogPulse (tracks conversations like IceRocket. Also profiles top bloggers with info on who they are and what they write about).
Opinmind.com (classifies results by bias, i.e., tone)
TalkDigger (blog search engine aggregator)
BlogBlusiness.com (directory of blogs about different business related topics)
Technorati also has watch lists, like google news does. Also has a top 100 blogs list to see most influential bloggers, based on hos many links they have from other bloggers. Let’s you narrow your search by authority of blogger too.
Sphere.com results based on influence also.
Another good source for finding good blog search engines and directories: http://masternewmedia.org/rss/top55
Searching Podcasts
Harder to do but not implossible.
Podscope.com and Podzinger.com
Enter search term and get taken to a list of podscasts that mention that term. You can click on a control button and listen to the exact segment in the program where the search for term is spoken. Pretty damn cool. However, they don’t cover every podcast out there, so that’s a limitation.
Podcast Alley (owned by PodShow Network; is a podcast directory)
Podcasting News (also a directory)
Podcast.net (directory)
iPodder.org (directory)
Another good source for finding podcasts: http://masternewmedia.org/news/2005/05/20/where_to_submit_your_podcasts.htm
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