SiteCatalyst

This semester, I have done two projects with SiteCatalyst. First, the Omniture Web Competition and the second, a project for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These projects were great learning experiences on how to use SiteCatalyst and find meaningful data for different types of websites.

For OWAC, I learned about a business website and how to measure KPI's according sales, visits, order conversions, and others. There were product pages to follow, the order process to watch, and general format issues throughout the project. The company was profitable but the website lack a few things. First, the website had a poor design. We have all been visitors to a website. We do not read a website like a novel. We SCAN. Visitors are not going to read everything on the site, instead whatever satisfies their needs first is what they will choose. So websites need to get the most important information to visitors quickly.

Also, visitors do not want to be controlled by a website. The visitor needs to feel like they are sharing in the experience. And perhaps even feel in control. Navigating through the site was not very logical and certain links appeared only on a few pages. Unfortunately, it is asking too much of visitors to remember where to find a link or to know the site well enough to know where to go to find certain information.

For the Church, the website was informative. There were no sales or orders. It was all about sharing information. It was a little harder to evaluate a site that does not have so many numbers, but I learned a lot. It was fun to use the Click map and see where people were clicking and linking through the pages.

In the end, I can see how valuable SiteCatalyst can be to a company but it is not perfect for two reasons. First, most companies do not implement it correctly. They get it to the level of "it works" which is typical business but not always the best solution. Also, SiteCatalyst was not perfect. It is powerful and useful but I would rather use Google Anayltics for FREE then spend tens of thousands of dollars for SiteCatalyst.

A/B and Multivariate Testing

So for the past two weeks, I have been researching the topic of A/B and multivariate testing. It was very interesting. Basically, multivariate testing changes different elements on a website analyzes which element combination would be best to create the most compelling page. For instance, change the size or color of the checkout button. Better designed website allow for better conversion rates.

A/B testing is the simpler testing form. This type of testing is limited because only two variations can be used at one time but it is an inexpensive way to determine a few key elements of a website.

Multivariate testing allows for multiple components to be tested on a website in a live environment. It is based on statistical analysis to determine which components are most effective. However, this is a more complex process and usually requires software to track visits and elements. Omniture and Google both offer multivariate testing that use a Tugachi approach. The Tugachi test method takes a limited combination of elements to reduce all possible combinations.

So that is a quick overview of the basic ideas.

Great Expectations

My expectations for the Web Analytics class is to better understand website designs and how to create effective websites. I really don't know much about web analytics and so I am excited to learn these new ideas and concepts. I have worked a little with Google Analytics and it provided some interesting facts about my blog--like how many people visited it, how many clicks per visit, how long they stayed on a page. That information is interesting but to make it useful is another matter. I am hoping that this class with provide that connection.

Football For Blondes

FOOTBALL AND THE BLONDE......


Out of all the blonde jokes, this one has to be the best!

Football FINALLY makes sense..........

A guy took his blonde girlfriend to her first football game. They had great seats right behind their team's bench. After the game, he asked her how she liked the experience.

'Oh, I really liked it,' she replied, 'especially the tight pants and all the big muscles, but I just couldn't understand why they were killing each other over 25 cents.'

Dumbfounded, her date asked, 'What do you mean?'

'Well, they flipped a coin, one team got it and then for the rest of the game, all they kept screaming was: 'Get the quarterback! Get the quarterback!' I'm like...Helloooooo? It's only 25 cents.