Despite having started writing while still part of the sales department, I decided from the outset to have a strong focus on the fundamental principles behind conversion optimization through dialog personalization, and less of a focus on promoting Sitebrand.  The assumption being that if you agree with the concepts behind creating marketing driven dialog with a traffic segment, there is really only one game in town….But I digress.

I am talking about the focus of my blog because it is rare that I get the chance to leave the cube here in Gatineau and go out and talk to practitioners of digital marketing to hear what they currently do and what they want to do when it comes to optimizing visitor outcomes.

Last month Stephane Hamel of Immeria and WASP fame invited our CTO, Falk Gottlob, and myself to attend a Web Analytics Wednesday event in Montreal.  Not a lot of hesitating on my response, and going to Montreal was just icing on the cake.

Falk and I got the chance to have a few cold beers and a few heated debates about the state of analytics and optimization, and met some fantastic people.

So I was both surprised and excited to be invited to come back and be the presenter at the next event, which will take place next week.

Much like my blogging, the emphasis of the presentation will be less on Sitebrand and more on how a marketer can understand a specific traffic segment, and then optimize their experience to increase their goal conversion.

Per my last post, I will be sticking to my current favorite segment, the First Time Visitor, and I am jazzed to see what the questions and responses will be to the talk.

A few important points for those attending: I love questions and Sitebrand is buying the beer.

Looking forward to seeing you in la belle province.

Cheers,

Jim

Click Here to register for this Web Analytics Wednesday event, Oct 15, 2008 @ Le Local

Click Here to learn more about WASP, a must have tool for any practitioner of analytics.

Because the impact of how you market this huge segment is so significant, Sitebrand invites you to register for our Oct. 30th webinar called: “Your Website and First Time Visitors: Friend or Foe?”. 

And who better to co-present than Bryan Eisenberg, best-selling author, publisher of award-winning blog, ClickZ columnist and co-founder of FutureNow. In just 29-minutes, this webinar will offer advice and tips around:

1. Using data to build an understanding and framework for first-time visitors, aka personas.
2. Building targeted messaging to grow the engagement and sales of first-time visitor segments / personas.
3. Mapping the real estate on your site toward your messaging.
4. Launching your cycle, watching results, and planning for re-optimization.

We’ll conclude with questions and answers!

Got a scheduling conflict? Register anyhow so you are notified when the webinar is archived for on-demand viewing at your convenience…

GET SMART EVEN FASTER! To study up on some of what we’ll be talking about, you should go ahead and download our new whitepaper by Jim Cain, a senior analyst (and fellow blogger) here at Sitebrand. The whitepaper is called  “First Time Visitor: A Marketer-Oriented Approach to Optimizing Online Conversions” and it also features a foreward by Bryan Eisenberg.

1) WAA Standards Document first release!

Last week, the web analytics association published an updated version of the Web Analytics Definitions document, which outlines all the key terms that are used by practitioners in our industry in an attempt to codify and standardize.  Believe it or not, but until the first iteration of this document last year, there were no defined terms in the analytics space, only a tribal agreement on certain terms in principle.  I have been on this committee for several months, and it has been both interesting and very informative.

I highly recommend that anyone who uses web analytics as part of their job click here to download a copy of the document, and post any and all feedback to the WAA blog.  A number of very talented people did a lot of work to make this document happen, and it won’t achieve its goals unless it is read, discussed and adopted by our industry at large.  As a further plug, each term has an ‘ask your vendor’ section, so that you can see how different terms are applied in different analytics products.

2) Rise of the First Time Visitor!

Waaaaaay back in March of this year, I referenced in the blog that I was working on a whitepaper regarding the First Time Visitor segment of website traffic, and how it could be understood and optimized.  The ensuing document is entitled “First Time Here?: A marketer oriented approach to optimizing online conversions”.  The always amazing Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNow and Always Be Testing fame wrote a great forward for the piece, and we will be doing a webinar with him next month on this segment.

Jason Burby of ZAAZ also referenced the whitepaper recently in his column on ClickZ.  He is also a prolific writer on our industry, having penned a great book on Actionable Web Analytics.   It has been pretty exciting to have two of my favorite writers in the industry think well of this work, and I hope it inspires debate about how to understand, and talk to, the first time visitor segment. Click here if you would like to download a copy.

Those are the big updates for now, and I will be back online in the next week or so with a more formal post.

Cheers,

Jim

UPDATE - Since the original publishing of this blog, I have been asked to give a presentation on the First Time Visitor Segment at a Web Analytics Wednesday in Montreal, October 15th.  If you are in the area we would love to meet you. Sign up Here if you are interested.

In order to better optimize the web site potential, Wholesale Tool turned to Sitebrand. In addition to the goal of increasing conversion online, Wholesale Tool was also very interested in driving traffic to their seven physical store locations. In addition to finding success using personalization for first time visitor segments, lost shoppers and cart abandonment to name a few, Wholesale Tool takes advantage of geo-segmentation opportunities. Before I get into that, let me show you a screen shot of a Sitebrand powered first time visitor experience. The first time messaging is populating a pre-determined smart content area of the web site – just under the main top banner, under search and in bright yellow… 

Wholesale Tool First Time Visitor

Charlotte Geo

Prior to serving these campaigns, Wholesale Tool was getting lots of comments  (on the website) from people saying they didn’t know there was a store near them. After implementing these geo-campaigns, they immediately saw these types of comments drop…

For all the scoop, read the full Wholesale Tool case study which is part of Sitebrand’s ever-expanding library of case studies. DMNews picked this story up as well = check it out!