Google Analytics Helps to Optimize Minted Site

As e-commerce, or e-shopping as some call it, continues to be top-of-mind for consumers, marketers and businesses alike, it is important to understand how online retailers user web metrics to not only monitor on-site visitor traffic, but also to improve overall web analytic efforts. These efforts include on-page SEO, as well. Looking to a real-life example, let’s discuss online retailer Minted.

Founded in 2007, Minted is an online design marketplace. The company sources creative content from independent artists around the world in the form of greeting and holiday cards, stationary, prints and home décor and sells the best content online directly to consumers. As an early user of crowdsourcing, Minted holds monthly art and design challenges. According to Minted, “Challenges are open for both submission and voting, the ‘crowd’ curates Minted’s product selection by rating products, and Minted utilizes analytics to evaluate votes” (About Us, 2016). Winners of these challenges get their designs produced and sold on the Minted website. Designers are paid commission on each sale. Moreover, “…winning artists and designers have stores on Minted. They can launch any of their creations into their stores, utilizing Minted’s manufacturing, fulfillment, and customer service capabilities to run their businesses” (About Us, 2016). The Minted community of designers and independent artists span 48 states and 43 countries around the world (About Us, 2016).

Figure 1: Illustration showcasing Minted’s process of sourcing and selling products (About Us, 2016).

While Minted is primarily an online e-shopping retailer, they do have one brick-and-mortar storefront in San Francisco called Minted Local. It is the company’s first-ever physical store and features e-commerce products, such as art, home goods and stationary (Lee, 2016). Lee (2016) states, “The boutique also emphasizes the work of California-based artists and offers original art and one-of-a-kind items (which we’ve never done before!)...Minted Local also will feature workshops, artists-in-residence programs, styling services, as well as interactive crafts and complimentary mementos to keep children entertained while you’re shopping.”

E-commerce Opportunities and Challenges

Before we dive into Minted’s online strategy and the analytics they use to guide their business decisions, it is important to examine the current state of the e-commerce (or online shopping) industry and how this popular stream has turned the traditional purchase path on its head. According to Abramovich (2014), “Online shopping retail sales are predicted to grow steadily to $370 billion in 2017, up from $231 billion in 2012.” Moreover, when it comes to mobile, this channel is expected to dominate in the e-commerce world. An article by Internet Retailer explains, “The numbers are already impressive: U.S. mobile commerce sales last year totaled $104.05 billion, up 38.7 percent from $75.03 billion in 2014” (Hughes, 2016). So, what does this information mean for online retailers? A lot of opportunity!

However, while e-commerce is on the rise, it is not going to be easy for online retailers – as with anything else in life, there are and will always be challenges. For e-commerce, those challenges surround consumer expectations and include the demand for out-of-this-world mobile experiences; cross-channel integration that provides a seamless experience; the constant need for innovation (which is continuously impaired by upgrade requirements of platforms); and improved and flawless payment models that speed up the purchasing process online.

In order for businesses, and specifically Minted, to take advantage of e-commerce and mobile’s influence on online shopping and to address challenges as they arise, they need to understand how their website is performing and use that data to make informed decisions. This is where web metrics lends a valuable hand. Not only do web metric tools, like Google Analytics, help improve your site, but they also allow businesses to get to know their audience – both of which unveil return on investment (ROI) for marketing campaigns (and more) and help to maximize the bottom line.

Minted’s Current Web Analytics Strategy and Results

The online retailer currently utilizes Google Analytics (GA) and employs a robust data collection approach to feed the platform in order to obtain insightful results that helps them make marketing and business decisions.

When on the Minted website, the data collection approach is easily recognizable through obvious data capturing techniques. These methods include having a comments section via the company’s Julep blog, entering visitor contact information into a pop-up window on the website homepage, filling out an online contact form for more information/questions, signing up to receive a free Minted catalog and regular emails or signing up to participate in any of the design challenges. After making a purchase, current customers’ information is also collected, as you have to create an account with personal information to order products. With regard to specific data collected, each method mentioned requires at least your full name and email address. These techniques, of course, once completed by a visitor, add to their GA profile, and in particular boosts their overall traffic and conversions.

 

Figure 2: Various Minted.com data capturing methods (Minted, 2016).

In addition to collecting a visitor’s personal information, Minted also collects information about other people, such as your friends and family that you provide when using their services. When visitors access Minted through third party platforms, information is collected that way, as well. According to Minted, “We may also automatically collect certain information about how you access or use the Website and our services including, but not limited to, information about your internet domain address, clickstream information and other electronic markers and identifiers. We may also collect information through the use of cookies, web beacons and similar technologies and use third-party service providers that may use cookies, web beacons and similar technologies to help operate their services. We also may receive certain personal information about you from other users when they upload your contact information to their address book, send you correspondence through Minted services including Online Invitations and Wedding Websites or perform other related activities” (Information Collected, 2016).

While Minted collects a plethora of data, they use it to primarily improve overall customer experience. The company states, “We use your personal information to fulfill your requests for products and services, to improve our services, to customize the advertising and content you see, to share with third parties pursuant to services that we offer to you and to contact you” (Use of Information, 2016). Furthermore, Minted also takes part in conducting surveys, sweepstakes, promotions and contests. The data gathered from these methods is matched up with current customer accounts to also help provide better customer experiences.

These data collection methods are also part of Minted’s on-page SEO. They are used as calls to action (CTAs) across pages and house keywords and keyword phrases, such as invitations, save the dates, announcements, wedding décor and more. These effective CTAs add to the site’s overall user experience (UX). In addition, the site is easy to navigate, loads quickly and features crisp and vibrant imagery that’s laid out in a modern template. Content across pages is clear and to the point. There are also links included for users to share products via social networks. Moreover, the site is mobile optimized.

Figure 3: Minted website (Minted, 2016).

It is apparent from viewing Minted’s website that it is optimized for on-page SEO. Their sophisticated data collection methods work hand-in-hand with GA, as well. According to Minted Founder and CEO, Mariam Naficy (2016), “Google Analytics helped us optimize our art marketplace, resulting in 400% year-over-year revenue growth for our art business.”

Minted utilizes GA to function. According to a “Business Analyst” (2016) job posting, “All business functions within Minted are designed to be data driven, and decision making is dependent on critical data being available to make the decision.” The job description goes on to explain that the Minted roll will qualify accurate data and support it with analysis in order to advise the company, which involves “working across functional teams to gather and synthesize data from multiple sources including the transactional database, web reporting solutions and islands of data” (Business Analyst, 2016). This role also supports company research needs by designing surveys, holding focus groups and executing A/B testing. Other job responsibilities that give great insight into the importance Minted places on web analytics include: tracking key metric performance against established goals; defining metrics and reports; understanding transactional and behavioral data; performing ad hoc data gathering from web metrics tool; and creating different Minted customer profiles (Business Analyst, 2016).

Recommendations

As evidenced above, Minted already collects a wealth of data (transactional and behavioral) that feeds their internal CRM as well as their web analytic tool, GA. In order to improve Minted’s overall web analytics approach, however, there are a few recommendations they should consider. It would be beneficial to use the GA platform with others to collect additional data or to enhance current data. For a web analytic snapshot of the Minted site, click here (SimilarWeb, 2016).

I can’t imagine they aren’t already using social analytic tools (like Cyfe and Keyhole) to scan their social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and the Julep blog, but if not, this would be highly recommended so that they can understand what they need to do to connect with their audience better and develop and maintain customer relationships. Another recommendation would be to use metrics that specifically track geographical data. As an online retailer that crowdsources products from around the world, it is important for Minted to know where website traffic and purchases are coming from worldwide to target those visitors effectively. Lastly, emphasis should be placed (if not done so already) on collecting sufficient mobile data. While GA tracks from which types of mobile devices websites are accessed from and other key metrics, utilizing an additional mobile analytic tool would be helpful.

References

About Us. (2016). Minted.com. Retrieved on June 19, 2016, from: http://www.minted.com/about-us

Abramovich, G. (2014, May 7). 15 mind-blowing stats about online shopping. CMO by Adobe. Retrieved from http://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2014/5/6/Mind_Blowing_Stats_Online_Shopping.html

Business Analyst. (2016). SmartRecruiters.com. Retrieved on June 19, 2016, from: https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Minted/71670715-business-analyst

Hughes, B. (2016, January 29). What’s next for ecommerce in 2016? Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269933

Information Collected. (2016, June 9). What is the minted privacy policy? Help.Minted.com. Retrieved from http://help.minted.com/articles/General/Privacy-Policy

Lee, H. (2016, May 23). Minted launches minted local (our first retail store!) [Blog Post]. Minted.com/Julep. Retrieved from http://www.minted.com/julep/2016/05/23/minted-local-san-francisco-retail-store/

Minted. (2016). Minted.com screenshots. Retrieved on June 19, 2016, from: http://www.minted.com/

Naficy, M. (2016). Google analytics minted quotation. Google.com/Analytics/Standard/#Quotation. Retrieved on June 19, 2016, from: https://www.google.com/analytics/standard/#quotation

SimilarWeb. (2016). Minted.com overview. SimilarWeb.com. Retrieved on June 19, 2016, from: https://www.similarweb.com/website/minted.com#overview

Use of Information. (2016, June 9). What is the minted privacy policy? Help.Minted.com. Retrieved from http://help.minted.com/articles/General/Privacy-Policy

Google Analytics Partner: Dailytics

In the last few posts, I have focused on what web analytics can do for businesses and their revenue. However, this week I want to address how this data can be used from a marketing perspective, which essentially helps the bottom line, as well.

We have discussed Google Analytics (GA), but let’s take it a step further and look to a GA app technology partner: Dailytics. Really quick before we dive into the app – it is important to note that Google partners with a host of service and application providers to optimize and complement GA. According to Google, “Google Analytics Certified Partners are service providers who have qualified expertise with Google Analytics. Our Partners have gone through a significant quality review during the application process and deliver optimized product implementations and high-impact analysis. Technology Partners offer applications that integrate with and/or complement Google Analytics” (Become A Partner, 2016).

As a GA technology partner, the Dailytics app extends GA in a convenient way for marketers to digest data easily in order to streamline campaigns. The free (for now) app helps them get the most out of their GA data. While marketers are always on the go and oftentimes managing multiple campaigns at once, Dailytics provides marketers with an easy-to-read emailed report that includes yesterday’s traffic data so that they can take action today. According to the Dailytics website, “I was very disappointed of the solution that Google Analytics gives: a PDF report attached to an -almost- empty email...Google Analytics is a great tool, but it can be a little bit complicated. Some of us just want to know how was our site's traffic yesterday in order to take actions today” (About Dailytics, 2016). Thus, the Dailytics app was created.

Dailytics reports are delivered to your email inbox daily. They are full HTML (and responsive) and are configured with three widget types: Top Page, Top Pages and Charts. Here’s a breakdown of what each widget means per Google (Dailytics, 2016):

• Top Pages: This represents a list of the five (5) most visited pages that have the open graph type meta tag article, product, or any other type that means that it’s a leaf page (not an index or landing page). 
• Top Page: This widget will select the most visited page that has the open graph type meta tag article, product, or any other type that means that it’s a leaf page (not an index or landing page). 
• Chart: This represents a graph with the sessions of the last 60 days. If the report was configured to be compared to previous year, then the chart will have two lines: current year and last year.

In addition, marketers are able to filter widgets by the URL path and/or by source, such as Facebook. Reports are emailed to users between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. of their local time zone (Dailytics, 2016). See this video for a sample report (Garcia, 2015).

Figure 1: Dailytics BBC News daily sample report. Dailytics states, “This is a sample report. The articles were taken from the BBC News feed and the numbers were randomly generated. Please note: BBC News isn’t a Dailytics user yet” (Homepage, 2016).

Housed under Google Analytics Partners’ “Content Management” category, Dailytics is of great benefit to marketers handling or considering content marketing. We have all heard this phrase before: “Content is king.” However, we have also heard that this is not necessarily the case, and rather: “Conversation is king.” While both are believed to be true, the simple fact remains that marketers are constantly sharing meaningful information with consumers in order to maximize engagement. Marketers strive to provide consumers with greater value, rather than more advertising. Utilizing Dailytics, marketers are able to understand which of their content resonates with their audience so that they can better target users and connect with them.

Take this blog for instance. Marketers may utilize a blog as part of their content marketing plan. According to a report released by the Content Marketing Institute, approximately 76 percent of B2C respondents said they use content marketing (B2C Content Marketing, 2016). They define content marketing as, “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action” (B2C Content Marketing, 2016). What is more, the creation of meaningful content continues to rise. The same Content Marketing Institute report revealed that around 77 percent of B2C respondents said they would produce more content this year than they did in 2015 (B2C Content Marketing, 2016). With Dailytics, marketers can approach content marketing in a strategic manner, based off of their GA data.

Figure 2: Content Marketing Institute report illustration – content creation expected to increase in 2016 from 2015 (B2C Content Marketing, 2016).

As marketers often express that producing meaningful content and measuring its effectiveness are a couple of their biggest obstacles, the Dailytics app helps in both of these areas by offering a snapshot of data that in turn helps them to: better understand their audience, what type of content resonates with them (which content is more effective), become better storytellers (based on the most read content), personalize content, curate content, test visual content (infographics and videos) and more.

In addition, as marketers are able to filter Dailytics’s widgets by source – like Facebook – this helps when it comes to social media marketing, too. And as we have seen across the industry, a solid social media plan and a content marketing strategy go hand-in-hand. As I explained in a previous post, social media is a way for businesses and marketers to engage with their audience, to create meaningful relationships (and sustain them) that encourage two-way conversation. Understanding the type of content that attracts more visitors and on which social platform is valuable information for marketers. According to Pick (2016), “Social is important today, but even more so tomorrow. 90% of young adults—ages 18 to 29—use social media (compared to just 35% of those over age 65). Fully a third of millennials say social media is one of their preferred channels for communicating with businesses.” Moreover, to put in perspective how important it will be for marketers to interact with consumers (especially as demographics prioritize social media high on their lists), familiarize themselves with strategic content marketing and communicate via social media, here are a few stats (Pick, 2016):

1. 52% of online adults now use two or more social media sites.
2. 70% of the U.S. population has at least one social networking profile.
3. Of the 7.2 billion people on earth, 3 billion have Internet access; 2.1 billion are active on social media; and 1.7 billion use social networks from a mobile device.
4. The number of worldwide social media users is expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2018.
5. The average social media user maintains five accounts.

Dailytics is but one of a handful of apps marketers can use to complement their GA data. For more information on additional GA technology partners, click here.

References

About Dailytics. (2016). Dailytics.com. Retrieved on June 12, 2016, from: http://www.dailytics.com/about

B2C Content Marketing. (2016). 2016 benchmarks, budgets, and trends – north america. Content Marketing Institute. Retrieved on June 12, 2016, from: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2016_B2C_Research_Final.pdf

Become A Partner. (2016). Google analytics partners. Retrieved on June 12, 2016, from: https://www.google.com/analytics/partners/apply

Dailytics. (2016). Google analytics partners. Retrieved on June 12, 2016, from: https://www.google.com/analytics/partners/company/5116874014588928/gadp/5629499534213120/app/5707702298738688/listing/5639274879778816

Find a Partner or Solution. (2016). Google Analytics Partners. Retrieved on June 13, 2016, from: https://www.google.com/analytics/partners

Garcia, G. (2015, May 6). Dailytics (google analytics) email report sample [YouTube Video]. YouTube.com. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K3WAlZ0xX8

Homepage. (2016). Dailytics.com [Image]. Retrieved on June 12, 2016, from: http://www.dailytics.com/

Pick, T. (2016, January 19). 47 superb social media marketing stats and facts. Business2Community.com. Retrieved from http://www.business2community.com/social-media/47-superb-social-media-marketing-stats-facts-01431126#2QxhpRmVgoexjtBL.97

Social Media and Your Business. (2016, June 3). Interconnect [Blog]. Retrieved from http://imc642interconnect.blogspot.com/2016/06/social-media-and-your-business.html

Adobe Analytics vs. Google Analytics

As we continue to explore web analytics and what it can do for marketers and businesses, we have to touch on the fact that there is a plethora of tools out there to use. From Google Analytics (GA) to Yahoo! Web Analytics and IBM Digital Analytics to Webtrends Analytics, the list goes on and on. And not only are there web metric tools that analyze company websites, but there are also tools that specifically monitor social media platforms, such as Cyfe, Klout, MyTopTweet, HowSociable, Pinterest Analytics and many more.

These tools are essentially used to monitor website traffic in order to discover where visitors came from, what made them visit (i.e., a link to your website from a social media site), what did they do while on the site, etc. With more sophisticated web metric tools, companies can determine ROI based on set campaign goals, evaluate more detailed information like behavior about their audience or users and use these tools to monitor consumer-related activities via social media platforms that also impact conversions.

Pricing for web analytic tools vary from being free to costing businesses thousands of dollars depending on the features and functionality included. One thing that the majority of these tools have in common is that they are web-based applications that allow companies and marketers to collect and analyze meaningful data and gain insight into consumer behavior across multiple channels, including email, mobile, advertising and social.

When it comes to choosing a tool, it really depends on the marketer’s or business’s budget, any specific requirements for the tool and its level of complexity or sophistication. According to Zamanian (2012), “The tool must provide the appropriate abstractions to categorize and present the important information (and hide unnecessary details) in an intuitive, user-friendly and flexible manner...Acquiring the right web analytics tool will have a huge impact on the success of a company’s digital marketing initiatives.”

While GA continues to be top of mind for marketers and businesses, let’s explore another tool and how it compares. Adobe Analytics (formerly Adobe SiteCatalyst), which was originally created by Omniture prior to being acquired by Adobe, focuses on improving conversions for organizations. As I discussed in the "Web Metrics Part II: Conversion" post, “conversion” is the number of times a visitor performs a desired action, like making a purchase. However, a conversion is not restricted to purchases. Other types of conversions include user information inquiries, consumers signing up to receive emails or e-newsletters, comments made on websites, user profile creation and registration and more. With conversions comes the ability for businesses to evaluate ROI and increase their bottom line. And this is exactly what Adobe Analytics does for businesses – the tool allows companies to identify trends in order to maximize conversions and revenue.

Businesses can choose between Adobe Analytics (called Adobe Analytics Standard) and Adobe Analytics Premium, both of which are a part of Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite. According to Gaines (2013), here’s the difference between the two tools:

• Adobe Analytics Standard combines the capabilities of multiple analytics tools that have been available from Adobe to date: reporting and dashboards (functionality available previously in SiteCatalyst), ad hoc analysis (Discover), Excel dashboarding (ReportBuilder), a raw data repository (DataWarehouse), tag management (TagManager), and data connectors between Adobe and its partners (Genesis). When you use Adobe Analytics, each of these capabilities will be available to you centrally and seamlessly via Adobe Marketing Cloud.

• Adobe Analytics Premium includes all of the capabilities mentioned above, but goes a step farther by including customer analytics, multi-channel capabilities, and statistical/predictive modeling (primarily delivered through Insight) to provide a more complete view of your customers.

Figure 1: Adobe Analytics Standard and Premium features comparison (Gaines, 2013).

Both Adobe Analytics Standard and Premium enable marketers and businesses to generate insightful data that then allows them to understand how their online efforts impact their organization. According to Demers (2013), some of the key features of Adobe Analytics include A/B testing, reports that are embeddable, a handful of customizable options for users and a “drag-and-drop” dashboard. As for cost, Adobe asks that businesses call them directly for a quote.

Now that we have Adobe Analytics defined, let’s compare it to GA. Demers (2013) goes on to explain GAs key features, including being able to benchmark data against “all other analytics programs” and conducting content experiments for A/B testing. Cost-wise, GA is free. But aside from those distinctions, there are a variety of capabilities to know and think about when deciding between GA and Adobe Analytics or even opting to use both tools at the same time. Here are some key takeaways of the two platforms.

Figure 2: Google Analytics vs. Adobe Analytics illustration

(Suryavanshi, 2015).

1. When it comes to real time data, GA allows users of the tool to see how many people are on their site in real time. This also includes referred traffic sources, where they are located throughout the world and what content they are viewing at that moment. Whereas, with Adobe Analytics, Suryavanshi (2015) states that “Current Data” reports “provide low latency real-time reporting” and “allow the user to view nearly real-time data on traffic reports, and about a 20 min delay on conversion data.”

2. Adobe Analytics includes more custom variables than GA provides users. While both tools provide users the option to set the expiration date for variables, Adobe Analytics variables “can also be stacked on top of each other, giving you the chance to identify a sequence of events” (Suryavanshi, 2015).

3. Backing up data housed in each tool is approached differently. For GA, data is kept for up to 25 months. In Adobe Analytics, all website data is stored for as long as the organization is a customer.

4. Both tools use their own custom filtering methods. According to Matisoff (2015), “Adobe Processing Rules cannot be used to move data from one report suite to another, whereas Google Filters can filter data to a specific View. In addition, Google Filters can also be applied to completely remove data from a specific View.”

5. Adobe Analytics and GA include bot filtering capabilities. Both tools use the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) list.

So, which platform is better you ask? I’m not falling for that! Each tool offers unique advantages. See for yourself by clicking here to learn more about Adobe Analytics or here to explore GA.

References

Demers, T. (2013, May 10). Guide to analytics software platforms: 25 analytics tools compared. Search Engine Land. Retrieved from http://searchengineland.com/web-analytics-software-comparison-identifying-the-right-web-analytics-tools-for-your-business-149373

Gaines, B. (2013, March 12). Under the hood with adobe analytics and adobe analytics premium [Blog Post]. Adobe Digital Marketing Blog. Retrieved from https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/under-the-hood-with-adobe-analytics-and-adobe-analytics-premium/

Matisoff, E. (2015, April 2). Comparing data: Adobe analytics vs. google analytics [Blog Post]. Search Discovery. Retrieved on June 8, 2016, from: http://www.searchdiscovery.com/blog/comparing-data-adobe-analytics-vs-google-analytics/

Suryavanshi, G. (2015, October 26). Google analytics vs adobe analytics [Blog Post]. The Digital Group. Retrieved from http://blog.thedigitalgroup.com/gajendras/2015/10/26/google-analytics-vs-adobe-analytics/

Web Metrics Part II: Conversion. (2016, May 28). Interconnect [Blog Post]. IMC642Interconnect.Blogspot.com. Retrieved from http://imc642interconnect.blogspot.com/2016/05/web-metrics-part-ii-conversion.html

Zamanian, K. (2012, April 2). How to evaluate and choose the right web analytics tool [Blog Post]. Oracle Modern Marketing Blog. Retrieved from https://blogs.oracle.com/marketingcloud/how_to_evaluate_and_choose_the_right_web_analytics_tool