The Advantages of Social Bookmarking

I have been thinking about posting on this subject (slightly different to my normal 'how to' and 'techniques' postings that I normally do) for quite a while. It actually comes out of analysis that I have done for several websites that have benefited from the Social Bookmarking in a big way in terms of driving traffic to the site. Bearing in mind that the sites that I work on tend to be media sites that sell advertising, you can see where the potential is. I am going to tell you what it is (although I am sure you all know), how it works (again, I am sure you all know) and some fringe benefits that I've discovered.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata. Anyone can look up the meaning of a term in wikipedia, so what does this mean in real terms. Basically it means that if you like something, you can post it to a social bookmarking site who'll then put it on their site. If other people also like it, they can vote for it and give it a better ranking and thus more prominence.

It's something that tells you that the page that is linked to has been voted as one of the best pages.


Who uses social bookmarking?

Lots of people. Hitwise has Digg in the top 250 websites used in the UK and stumbleupon in the top 125. These people are young, they might be a bit geeky, but overall they are the people who are going to be contributing to your website. Want User Generated content? Get this lot in here - not only do they go around bookmarking pages, but they'll comment on your pages as well. They'll make suggestions of things you can change. They'll blog about you on their own websites. These are the people who generate the noise.

Remember that 90% of your audience will only read. 9% will contribute comments. 1% will go that extra yard for you. These are the ones that are giving you stuff that you never dreamed of and don't really need to work to get.

Essentially our job is to make it as easy as possible first for that 9% to contribute or interact with our pages. Secondly we want to make it as easy as possible to for the 1% to do that extra stuff for us. If that means that we have to put some buttons on the top or bottom of our pages, then so be it.

Other Benefits of Social Bookmarking

For years now we have been told that to get a better SEO system going on, we need to build more relevant links. This is all very well and good, but how do you do that in a mass scale without going round lots of sites asking them for links. Or going around blogs and posting comments so that they'll link back. Social bookmarking is one easy way of doing this.

Take for example the New Scientist story about 13 things that don't make sense. Ignore for the moment that some of them do make sense. This got picked up about two years ago by Digg. 2102 people digged it. That means that at least that number of people read it. That article was published in March 2005 almost 3 years ago now. That means that a year after it had first been published it go picked up and over 2100 people voted for it as a popular argument. Don't forget that we have a 90/10 rule so that means that probably over 20,000 visitors clicked on the links (although actually it is more like 150,000 visits).

Don't forget our little rule of one as well - 104 people commented on the Digg page. They've gone the extra mile and decided that not only are they going to look at the page but they are going to add extra bits in for the other users who may look at the page. That is the bit that adds the extra engagement and gives value.

Ok, so we've got 104 people commenting, but look at this - there are actually over 2,000 pages that have "13 things that do not make sense" on their page outside of New Scientist. All those posts, articles, forums, etc that have been ranked in google that are referencing the New Scientist story can only be good for firstly traffic to the page (generate pound sterling for the company) and for the SEO effort surrounding the pages (generating even more pound sterling for the company).

All this means that Digg has actually only generated less than 30% of the traffic to this page (long tails). Bearing in mind that all this was done a year after the article had been first written, it shows how NewScientist has benefited in the long run from being picked up by social bookmarking sites.

And just to prove that NewScientist aren't the only ones who can do it. Here is Flight Global with their take on a NASA story. Here again we've ended up with some 1,250 pages with the title of the FlightGlobal article in it.

So what do you need to do? You need to make sure that you are building your pages to allow Social Bookmarking sites to pick you up. How do you do this? Well apart from the BBC's way as mentioned earlier - there is always the Guardians approach. Or I am sure you could be inventive and come up with your own way.

A/B testing to improve engagement

In a shock turnaround in fortunes this week I am going to blog about something I am planning on doing rather than something I have just done. Ergo this is probably not going to make much more sense than my ramblings about how I think the best way of doing it should be. Then in a couple of months when I've hit all the pitfalls of doing it and realised that this post was a 'dream' scenario, I'll come back and tell you all about where I went wrong. Sound like a deal?

This was actually coming out of an Omniture Webinar that myself and Mr James Kelway were listening to that gave us a whole host of ideas for things that we could do in the future. Specifically it was around how you could use interaction design and 'persuasion architecture' (are they the same thing said in slightly different ways?). Whilst James got excited very quickly about the sorts of things that he could test to see if they improved onsite engagement, it fell to me to come up with the sort of ways we could prove it had worked (when we do it, if it works, etc).

First off, we came up with a couple of changes we wanted to make that were relatively minor (they are text changes, small bits of functionality, etc). However the idea of A/B testing (or even multivariate testing) is that you have to build each slight change into the site, with a control, so that you can work out which option is the best. So with that in mind, we picked two changes that we want to include and set up about setting up our test. It would involve 4 versions of a page:

• Control (the original site design)
• Page with change A
• Page with change B
• Page with change A & B

Ok - we want to find out if change A works. That means that we have to compare it to a control (the original version for a page that is already there or a standard control for one that isn't). If we want to make two changes, then suddenly we need 4 pages (we need to test that changes A and B work together).

Now what we are talking about is making some changes that will affect a series of pages (they are the nice fluffy bits around the outside of an article). We don't really want to just test it on one article, we want to test it on all articles, so this gives us a bit more of a dilemma. Now we don't just have 4 pages, but we have 4 sites. This makes the whole thing more troublesome because step number one in the whole process is not to muck up any existing reporting - that would just make us look like idiots if it turns out that the best option is to stay as is.

So this is how to do it in HBX. Use your custom metrics. You may already be using your custom metrics, but this shouldn't have to impact that (even if you are forced to use one that you already are using). Each custom metric has two dimensions to it - this will allow you to give your first custom metric as the fact that you are doing an A/B test and your second associated dimension as the type of test (ie control, A, B, A+B).

These custom metrics now allow you to do some clever segmentation without mucking up your existing reporting. All you need to do is set up a segment that relates to a visitor visiting each of your site types (A, B, A+B and control). You can then compare each of these segments (either using the active viewing or the user interface or report builder) to work out which one works best (more of that in a second).

Obviously this gives you a few technical headaches. You need four concurrently running versions of the site (that's easier if you have a natural load balancing set up). You need to ensure that each one is just as equally likely to get to (otherwise you'll end up with skewed results) so that means that they should all have the same url. You'll also need to ensure that the same version is given to the user each time they visit the page and throughout their visit (cookies coming in here).

Persuasion Architecture is all about getting the user to go down the route that you want them to on the page with the minimum fuss. That means that each step needs to be made clearly and concisely so that the user wants to continue down the route that you have made for them. Forcing a user down a funnel that they don't understand why they are going down or what they are getting at the end is just going to make them want to leave (which they will do in droves).


This means that when you are looking at your results you need to consider two things. Firstly, what is the point of the page (ie what do you want the user to do on the page). Getting the user to do more of one thing (eg looking at the specifications of a product) at the detriment of another more profitable one (eg buying the product) is not the ideal situation.

In our case we want our users to stay on the site for longer and consume more of our lovely pages (whilst coming back more often in the future). So when we set up our persuasion architecture tests we want to ensure that we are not trying to force our users to consume the pages we are pointing our we have. eg if we are promoting/pointing our users to the 'related articles' or 'most read today' links in the right hand nav, we need to ensure that it is not at a detriment to in article links, or the natural left hand nav. We also need to make sure that we aren't directing the users away from other parts of the site that may be more beneficial (sign up forms, email newsletters, sponsored white papers, jobs, etc). Therefore a bit of weighting may be needed to each set of links.

The advantage of this test in HBX (and I am sure other analytics tools) is, however, that with the active segments set up, we should be able to find out which one works best for not only all pages (with our page impressions, pages per visit, bounce rates, etc) but also for each page individually (entry pages v single access for each segment per page, links clicked on per segment, conversions per segment, etc).

Conversion Funnel Analysis: When, How and What

How often do I start a post of saying that I was doing a presentation this week and thought that it would be useful to give my findings (in a broad way) on this blog? Far too often. However this week I was doing a presentation....

EDIT: This post has proven popular, so I have done an update on how you can use Omniture's Fallout reports to put some of this stuff in practice. End EDIT

Actually, the presentation whilst spawning this blog post wasn't actually about funnels, but I think that maybe it should have been. I've never really used them in Google Analytics, but this doesn't mean that you can't follow the process and I think that this will give you some ideas on the situations to use them. Don't worry though, given the current way of the internet, the funnel is not dead.

Lets start at the beginning. Back in the day people would use funnels to work out how their site was performing. Web Analytics companies realised this and created fancy software that would allow you to visualise your funnels. Essentially they all do the same thing. You work out how much you put in the top and how much you get out the bottom. The more you put in the top, the more you'll get out the bottom. If you create steps in your funnel, you can work out where you are bleeding visitors and then you can look at those areas as places to improve to get more out of the bottom without putting more in the top. Here is how HBX's conversion funnel Analysis looks:


This is a good example of where you can look at the steps in a process and work out which steps need the most attention, before piling more visits into the top. Essentially most funnels will look like one of the following four:



You want to lose as few people at any point in the process as possible (not always possible) so you end up with a 'Shot glass' effect.

However this approach only works if you have a defined process that all users must go through to complete their transaction. In modern day web this isn't always the case. No longer are your users arriving in at the home page before searching for their product, before adding to a cart before going to checkout and then buying.

Now users arrive in all sorts of various places. They move around the site in between pages. They use tabbed browsing. They go off and make a cup of tea or answer the door and get timed out so retrieve their position from your clever front end.

When should you create a funnel?

You should create a funnel if you have a clear goal that you want your user to make. If this involves going through a series of forms, then this is better. Don't be worried that because your goal is not selling something, you can't create a funnel.

Think sign up funnels. Think lead generation funnels (eg filling in a form with their details). Think downloading a pdf. Think applying for a job. Think anything where your users are going through a process to sign up.

How should you create a funnel?

The first thing that you need to do is work out your site. I always find a piece of paper and a load of boxes work well, but you can turn those into funny diagrams. This is a real visualisation effect that although you may have in your mind, you probably won't have on a piece of paper. Work out the process of the steps and draw them as boxes one after the other with interconnecting lines, like you would in a flow chart. If there is a point where you can go one of two ways - show this in your diagram. If there is a point where some users may view an extra page, show this in your diagram.

You should end up with a flow chart with some clear steps at the end towards your goal and some fuzzy ones at the beginning like Stéphane does in his blog.

Work out the visits to each of those pages (or groups of pages if you have them like that). Jot them on your piece of paper.

Work out how many visits have joined the journey midway through without going to the previous step. Work out how many visits have exited the page and never come back - jot those on the diagram too with arrows in and arrows out.

Don't forget on your diagram to include the pages (groups of pages) where a user can jump deep into the funnel.

What should you do with your conversion funnel?

For each level of the diagram work out how many visits have not moved on to the next step ([step 1 visits]- [step 2 visits] - [step 2 entries]). These visits that didn't move onto the next step are what I like to call 'drop offs'. They didn't carry on in the journey. They may be more or fewer than the number who exited the site at that page.

Now you have a nice flow diagram that looks a bit like the one that we got out of HBX (which are really easy to set up), but also contains information on who joined the process in mid funnel and who exited in mid funnel as well as the visits to each stage.

Note this funnel carefully. You'll lose people at an early stage of the funnel. This isn't uncommon. You might find that you gain a load of new visitors at a later stage in the funnel (they jumped in the middle from external sources of from within your site), which you had previously lost. Or that you lose a load of visitors on step 2, but then on step 3 you get a whole load of new ones - however if you had used a HBX funnel you wouldn't see this (because you can't jump in mid funnel) and you wouldn't see this if you just looked at visits to each step (because you wouldn't see losing loads of visitors and getting the new ones).

Use this to prioritise where you want to work to increase your conversion. Focussing on landing pages may not be the best place if you have a small percentage drop off for that page. Focussing on areas further down the funnel will not be good if everyone gives up after the first page.

More importantly try changing a few things and seeing the effect it has on the funnel. You might find that changing something at the beginning causes more people to drop off at the end as you have just moved the bottle neck. There is nothing better than trending something over time whilst you make changes.

5 simple tricks to work out why your traffic has gone up

Ok, last week I talked about why January was great for traffic, but you can't just leave it there. I finished the post with a comment saying that you need to find out why users are using the site more and what they are doing. This week I'll give you my top 5 tips on how to work out what your users are doing on the site and why it is performing well. These will be your first port of call every week when you look at what is going on with your website.

Tip 1 - look at where they came in

Don't forget that your whole process is a top to bottom thing. Step one is to look at where your users came into the site to. This may not be as easy as it sounds, but in any common Analytics tool you'll have a report that is either called top Entry pages (in HBX for example). Or it is called top landing pages (as is it in Google Analytics).

Lets be straight about this now - your top entry page (landing page, whatever you want to call it) is probably going to be your home page. That is probably going to be fairly static in terms of traffic (unless you are doing big brand advertising on the telly or the radio). You don't really send any of your campaigns to the home page any more (they all arrive at nice bespoke landing pages).

Here are my top 5 landing pages for this blog. The top one is the home page. The second one almost has as many, but that isn't surprising because it was quite an important event.

Woah, Woah, Woah, Alec. The second one being an important event doesn't mean that it will just automatically generate traffic.

Tip 2 - look at where they came in from

There's definitely two parts to this. Let's look firstly at our individual pages:

Your page (home page or other) has lots of traffic arriving at it. Where has it arrived from? This is usually really simple to do in web analytics tools. In Google Analytics you need to drill down to your page and then there is a big link on the right hand side that says 'Entrance Sources':


In HBX, it's just as easy - you can be in any of your pages reports - top entry pages, Most visited pages. My favourite is the 'Page Analysis' screen because from here you can look at all of your metrics in one go - Visits, Visitors, Entries, Exits and Single Access. All you need to do get the referring urls is to click on that infamous grey arrow and then referring URLs:


Once you've seen your landing pages and you know where the users have come from to get to them you should be able to get a better impression of what you need to do to those pages (why did the user click through from this site to my site and what did they want to achieve when they got to that page). Each landing page/referring page combination is unique, you need to set the landing pages (and build your links) to make that work best.

Tip 3 - look at where they came in from (macro)

We've gone micro here, but lets go back out to the macro level. What do I mean by that? I mean two things:

Look firstly at your whole site. In Google do your 'All traffic sources' and in HBX do your 'top referring domains'. These will tell you where your traffic is arriving from generally. It'll probably be Bookmarks and directly referred urls number one. This is your brand traffic - those you have got to type in your url, those that have signed up for email (don't spam!!!) and those that have signed up to RSS. Then look at the rest of the sites - there'll be some there that you weren't expecting, so go and have a look at the site and find out why. Drill down to the urls, and get onto their site. Get into the mind of your user.

Secondly look at your content groups. This is more difficult and requires a bit of manipulation. For those of your with report builder it is really easy because you can specify your content group as a filter when you cross-reference to your top referring domains. If your content is set up well, this will allow you to split those pages designed as landing pages, the home pages, the other pages, however you want to split them. If your a commerce site, you've probably set up a segment relating to your conversions, so you can even look at this report within that segment to see if you are converting.

Tip 4 - look at where they came in (macro)

Well having looked at where they came in from on a micro level, where they arrived from on a micro and macro level, the obvious upshot is to look at where they cam in on a macro level. The advantages of setting up good content groups in HBX will be apparent here. Assuming your table lengths are long enough you should be able to search for your content groups in your top entry pages (you can do this too in Google Analytics if your folder structure within the site is set up ok). This will give you a nice total at the bottom that you'll be able to see as a percentage to work out which types of content are generating the most traffic (home pages, landing pages, etc). Trend this over time and if you're like my sites then you'll probably notice most of the increases in traffic coming into a certain content type.

Why is that? Do you have a lot of it? Do you produce more than other types of content? Is it better? Is it more relevant? Have you been building links to it more efficiently? These are all things to think about rather than jumping on the 'It is better lets make more of it' bandwagon.

Tip 5 - look at where they came from

Because I like looking at maps? Because I think I can name all the countries before I scroll over? Quite possibly both these things, but there is a more important issue here. You'll get such a better impression of what is going on. Are they US? Are they UK? In the case of my blog - do the people in Spain, Canada, Germany want to know about my subject?



In the case of my company's main jobs page, do the people here want to come to work in the UK from Zambia, Latvia or the UAE?