Impact of Collecting User Information on Web Site

Recently i realized that there is a great opportunity to collect information about visitors who come to my website.  I wish i had done this years ago.  So i decided to do a test and see what kind of impact my site’s revenue would have if i were to put a form on page that drives majority of my site’s traffic.  Test Time period: 7 Days (i realize that this is pretty short time).  Purpose of this test was to collect email addresses of my niche audience.  At at the end of 7 day period i had collected approximately 450 email addresses, which is not bad.  However, impact on various site KPIs were interesting:

I kept the form short on purpose and it consisted of only 4 simple questions:

Impact on various KPIs:

KPI	Feb 3rd to Feb 10th	Feb 11th to Feb 17th
Time Spent On Site
Bounce Rate

Results: 

-  Ave time spent on site decreased by 28 seconds

-  Bounce rate, which i have tried so hard to bring it close to 50 increased

-  WoW AdSense revenue decreased by 17%, impressions decreased by 26.51% and clicks decreased by 28%

Key Learnings:

1)  When doing any kind of tests on your site check your site/page on most popular browsers to make sure it is showing up the way you want it show up.  Before taking off the form yesterday i checked my page on Firefox and guess what?  Form never displayed there.  It was still showing the old content.

2)  I learned more about my audience.  Google analytics told me that 53% of my audience came from India and only 12% came from US.  However, here is what i didn’t know: Of the people who filled out form, approximately 96% were male from India.

3)  Test for longer period of time.

4)  To increase revenue and other KPIs find what kind of topics attract male? (besides girls :))

 

If i were to do it again, here’s what i would change:

1)  Instead of making my users require to enter the information before showing them content, i can collect information about them by asking them to join my mailing list

2)  Put the form on high traffic but average revenue generating page

 

What kind of results have you seen when you have put form on your page? Do share success as well as failure stories.

Super bowl Ads – Quarter by Quarter Analysis

Super bowl 44 is underway, my money is on Colts – so far I’m doing well 🙂

Quarter 4:  Colts 17 – Saints 31

Vizo ad showing integration of internet application to HDTV was nice. I would like to actually see how it works. Will it allow me to watch my show and update my FB and Twitter and browse the web? Point was well demonstrated in the ad, would love to see the demo.

Budweiser ad with a horse and a longhorn: lame. Not this year Budweiser.

Again an E Trade ad with funny baby, still a winner in my book.

Great win for New Orleans Saints, they played really well and came in the game with tons of energy.

Quarter 3:  Colts 17 – Saints 16

Of course Google Ad: I’ve already seen the ad on internet. When I saw it for the first time, I thought it was a great way to tell a story. However, I do not understand the motive behind Google advertising during Super bowl. They have 65% market share and no one anywhere close to them. I understand the value of brand awareness etc, I’m wondering beyond that. They have lot of other products that could use some advertising. Like Google Phone with only 80,000 units sold in first month.

E Trade had really nice ad. Still sticking with their baby theme and it is still funny. There is something about kids in the ad, especially kids who talk like adults. This is probably one of the best ads tonight so far. “Milkaaaa whattt?”

Coke ad about a dude in middle of Africa was kinda good but not as good as Simpson one.

Quarter 2:  Colts 10 – Saints 6

Colts owned first quarter by running the bowl, while Saints found a hole in secondary in 2nd quarter.  Good game so far, expected more points.

Quarter 2 had interesting ads. So far I have seen CareerBuilder, Hyundai, Budweiser, Dove, Bridgestone, FloTV.

Hyundai ad featuring Brett Favre was nice, showing his indecisiveness and other things that I missed.

Budweiser’s analogy of Lost was funny considering Lost last season just started last week and it is being shown on CBS. Tons of Lost fans can relate to plane crash and people being stranded on an island with nothing left.  This was probably the best Budweiser ad so far tonight.

In battle of CareerBuilder vs Monster, CB wins. Not pretty ad, but funny ad J.  Definitely expect lot of buzz around this in office tomorrow.

Dodge Charger: really nice beginning, didn’t expect it to be car ad. I thought it’d be may be a tv show or something related to sports or beer, but not a car ad. Either way, it should have gotten the attention of intended audience, Male consumers.

FloTV – Super bowl is great place to introduce a new product, as people are actually paying attention to the ads and looking forward to watching them. Seems like a cool concept, I’d buy it, don’t there is a need for it, may be want.

So far all the ads are targeting only the male audience, which is understandable considering it’s football game and it’s Super bowl.  However, advertisers have missed reaching female audience who may be actually watching Super bowl just for the ads.

Quarter 1:  Colts 10 – Saints 0

Let’s talk about the Ads.  In the first half, so far i have seen Doritos, Coke, Boost Mobile, Go Daddy.com, Budweiser, Monster ads.  Did i forget anything? 

Best:

From humor perspective Doritos have the best ads so far, hands down.  Everyone will be talking about Doritos ads in the office tomorrow and you will see more of it on TV over the next few weeks.

I also like Coke ad, even though it came only one time, it had great recall.  Plus being Simpson’s fan doesn’t hurt either.  Also, the point of the ad was well portrayed considering current market situation.  Towards the end of the ad, did you see Homer getting being spattered by Coke?  If not, you should be able to see it on Youtube shortly.

OK:

GoDaddy.com ad was alright.  Nothing too exciting.  In Super bowl ads i don’t think there is a need to tell consumers what they sell, unless you are new company.  Everyone knows GoDaddy, you don’t need to tell me i can buy cheap domain name on GoDaddy.  All i want to see is humor, make me laugh.

Budweiser ads have been also ok.  Nothing extra ordinary.  The ad with robot kind of voice is not same as “Watsssssssupppppp” ads.  Now that is something guys can relate to.

Bad:

Boost mobile ads have been by far the worst ad.  It didn’t connect for me, they could have done better having such cool name as Boost.

Stay tuned for Quarter 2.

Social Media This and Social Media That

Everywhere you go everyone is talking about social media.  Hell there is even social media advertising consortium.  Everyday a new report comes out saying social media is really important for businesses.  There is even a new position created called “Social Media Analyst”, if you know the job description of this position do let me know.  You can find tons of presentation on Slide Share that will give you brief tutorial of what social media supposed to be. 

What is all this fuss about?  No one knows.  What everyone knows it that Dell made additional $3 million by using Twitter, so next natural question is:  how does my business make money with twitter?  I am glad you asked.  It’s pretty simple.  It’s all about audience, that’s right.  It’s about audience, it is about who you reach.  Everyone is trying to measure social media but no one is talking about targeting audience in social media.  Measurement is without a doubt really important for any marketing effort.  It is something you do after you launch your campaign, use number of KPIs to see how well your message was received.  But even before you launch your marketing efforts, you need to make sure you are reaching the right audience. 

Big question is how do you reach your target audience with Twitter?  It does not allow you to target people, it just allows you enter you message in 140 characters and basically says let’s hope people will read it.  Plus, depending on how many people an individual is following, many people may not even read your message due to how quickly their twitter stream is moving.  Plus there is not a way to make your message stand out from this clutter.

I realize i still haven’t answered the question:  How do you target people on twitter?  Well, i’m kind of working on that :)  Of course i’m not going to tell you how, so stay tuned.