Bango Mobile Analytics and Adversitement have joined forced to give access rich PC and mobile web metrics through one console, by combinging Omniture’s Sitecatalyst and Bango Analytics.
Sounds interesting to me, however I was wondering if Omniture, who also offers a mobile analytics solution based on WURFL, agrees to this partnership.
Anyways…great to see the integration of both systems. It will open a lot of new opportunities for webanalysts.
Just a quick note: Dr. Peter Meyers aka Dr. Pete just released a 30-page ebook about “Converting The Believers: How to Turn Website Visitors into Buyers”
Interesting read. Head over here and download it.
Just received the email….2nd time I was lucky picking the right hosting company
“The majority of non-obstaining Board of Advisors from the World Association
of Domain Name Developers Inc. has voted to revoke the WADND Registrar Seal of Approval awarded to Tucows.com. Tucows has continually chosen stockholder interests over domainer interests. The latest plan, selling expired domains they kept from their own customers for failing to timely renew.”
I was asked to be a guest blogger here at Webanalyticsbook.com and figured that I would follow on Sebastian’s post regarding Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop directory featuring Webanalyticsbook.com.
Although I had already heard of Guy Kawasaki and even read some magazine articles of his, I still didn’t know (really) who he was a couple of years ago when we were both speakers at PubCon. Okay, he was the ‘keynote’ speaker and I was a ‘regular’ speaker. Anyway, I sat pretty close and watched him deliver a really great presentation: down to earth, but with personality and humor that carried a truly uplifting message. So then I start to understand that Guy is a total legend of Internet entrepreneurship. I became a fan (bought his book) and now on to the meat of this post: What does Guy think about analytics? I sent him over a few VERY insightful and probing questions to get his thoughts - below are the unedited answers.
Derek Vaughan: How important is it to carefully track and analyze what’s happening on your website (or mobile app, or other media). In brief how important are analytics?
Guy Kawasaki: Honestly, I try to not track things too much. I find that when Alltop has a busy day I get elated, but when it has a slow day, I get depressed. Bottom line: the stats make me crazy so now I just do the best I can and don’t obsess about it.
I hope we’ll “tip” someday and then life will be good. Until then, I just grind it out more or less in blissful ignorance. I depend on my partner to tell me when we had a great day and not say anything when we had a slow day.
Derek: What’s the most important metric for you that you focus on in your online business? Unique visits, time spent on site, where the visitor goes, something else? (and why?)
Guy: The most important metric for me is the one that shows the most improvement from the previous day. I tell Web 2.0 entrepreneurs that the most important metric is the one that is going up the fastest. Like I said, metrics drive me crazy. Rationally, the most important metric is page views because that’s how we will sell ads.
What drives me crazy is that other than Google Analytics, I think most metrics are almost random. There are so many ways to be deceived or to deceive others with metrics that I don’t know why anyone believes any metrics at all.
Whenever I hear someone’s public numbers, I divide by ten because I know most of the time they are referring to server logs and who knows how they are counting spiders, if the entire page is loaded, etc. If you really want to know someone’s numbers, you should ask for a copy of their daily Google Analytics report.
Derek: We all know that the Mac and the iPhone will rule the world When will that happen exactly?
Guy: That’s a set up. Will Macintosh ever have 95% market share? I doubt it. Iphone–depends on what you mean by rule the world. It will dominate smart phones but all phones in general? That’s tougher.
Let me put it this way: with Apple, things are never as good or as bad as they seem.
Derek: What’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen lately that has changed your view of how a modern business can thrive?
Guy: What kind of question is that? That’s the kind of question a tv producer puts up on a teleprompter for a clueless reporter to ask. 
Ouch! Okay Guy - I get the point. So here’s one other item that I think tells us something about Guy. At the bottom of his email reply was the following message:
”Not sent from an iPhone.”
This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for Webanalyticsbook.com. Derek is working for several companies including 34sp.com. If you are interested being a guest blogger on webanalyticsbook.com, feel free to get in touch with me
I haven’t had a chance to post lately since my past three days were spent at my best friends wedding in Germany.
However Greg from Mobilytics sent a mobile Analytics whitepaper over to me.
The whitepaper explains the main reasons why regular analytics won’t work and what methods mobile vendors use.
Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop is a directory of the best blogs around a specific topic and Webanalyticsbook.com has been featured in the top web analytics blogs.
Thanks Guy! You are not only extremely funny, but also one of my personal book recommendation engine.
Google Analytics Apps has been secretly rolled out Monday. Not really newsworthy, but interesting to see how Google is utilizing their Analytics tools:
“Google Apps administrators can now have a wider range of Google’s Web Analytics
tools allowing them to gain detailed insight into how users are working
with Google Docs and Google Sites, according to a company blog post Monday.”
Entire post here.
When Bango surveyed the Top 20 most trafficked PC websites* (according to Nielsen Online), they found that half of these sites did not work well on leading mobile phones – despite the fact that typically 5% of visitors to PC websites now come from mobile devices, up from 1% a year ago. The problem is that PC websites are not adapting fast enough to match mobile browsing trends and are failing to present mobile-friendly versions of their sites.
Many online businesses questioned by Bango admitted they do not know how much mobile-originated traffic is hitting their PC site. Bango’s research reveals that between 3-10% of on-line traffic to a PC website now comes from users entering web addresses on their mobile device.
Bango has responded to this significant trend by releasing a service called “Analytics for PCs”. This simple plug-in tool measures the actual number of mobile phone users hitting a PC web site and provides detailed metrics of these mobile visitors including the percentage of mobile traffic as a unique visitor count plus the country, network and device mobile users connect through. It provides the vital data needed by on-line brands to develop their mobile web strategy.
It’s not just iPhone users that are regularly accessing the internet from their phones. Researchers at IDC say that 1.3 billion people will connect to the Internet via mobile phones by end of 2008, and the vast majority of these mobile browsers are using mass market phones from Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
“Our figures indicate that up to 10 out of every 100 customers are now routinely entering web addresses from their phones and hitting a site designed only with PC users in mind, which results in a bad experience,” said Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances at Bango. “Businesses should be asking now which handsets, countries and languages matter most to their business and developing a mobile strategy to match this.”
Some mobile network operators are routinely transcoding desktop websites to fit better on their subscriber’s phones. While this improves the formatting of PC web pages when viewed on a phone, it is no substitute for a properly designed mobile site, with thought given to relevant content, the right mobile feature set and easy mobile navigation. Made-for mobile websites generally have a simpler layout with content that’s relevant for a mobile user in the top slot on the home page.
Bango Analytics for PCs is available as part of an Early Access Program at www.bango.com/eap. The webmaster puts a line of code into the home page of the PC website and Bango starts measures unique visitors to the website from mobile devices with specific details on the users’ country, network and device. All the data is viewable from the Bango Management tools console in real-time.
* Bango surveyed the Top 20 most trafficked PC websites as published by Nielsen Online, July 2008. Tests were carried out on the Motorola V3 Razr and Nokia 6300 on AT&T in the US and Vodafone in the UK. The full results are published at blog.bango.com.
Disclaimer: Bango Analytics is a sponsor of this blog
There is a great interview with Coremetrics CEO Joseph Davis over at Mycustomer.com. A few quotes I really liked and for a lot of companies this statement is so true:
“We have an inherent advantage in the way that we deploy our
applications in that everything is the same, we don’t do customisation.
So while Omniture can take months to deploy because they continue to
customise and customise, our implementations are all the same. So if
you’re a retailer, then the implementation can be up and running and
there are 60 or so reports sitting there waiting for you. So the ROI
comes quicker”.
Here the entire interview
This is a guest post by Sarah Keefe - VP Marketing Bango Analytics
FMCG giant Unilever has published some interesting stats on a mobile marketing campaign they ran recently for their Peperami brand. The campaign allowed users to send prank calls to their friends and download ringtones and wallpapers of the Peperami “animal” from the Peperami mobile site.
You may, indeed, be wondering what Peperami is. It’s a snack food that’s popular in the UK with the tagline “Go balmy for Peperami”. Peperami is in fact a 100% spicy pork salami that delivers a big flavour kick. Speaking from experience I can certainly vouch for this!
The campaign used mobile analytics to measure how much traction they achieved with the target youth market. The site was launched on September 16th and already it has seen over 24,000 unique visitors with 7,000 ringtones and 3,500 wallpapers downloaded during the period. Knowing the unique visitor count is very important as it provides an accurate measure of the success of the mobile advertising campaign and is a key mobile metric.
Cheryl Calverley, marketing manager at Unilever, said mobile was vital for engaging with a target audience of 16-24-year-old men. The good news is that Unilever has committed to increase mobile marketing spend for its youth brands, having seen the high level of click-throughs from mobile advertising. No doubt, we’ll be seeing more of the Peperami animal!
Disclaimer: Bango Analytics is a sponsor of this blog. If you want to be a guest blogger, contact us here.
