Empirical Path Web Analytics & Market Research

Brands might "have to be in social media"...but not in every single outlet or on every single day.

We just published a case study of how we helped a university measure the impact of its investment of staff time in social media.  While social media monitoring tools like Radian6, Sysomos, and (in this case) Scout Labs tell brands where they are mentioned, we opened our client's eyes to the downstream impact of Tweets, posts, and comments: website visits and engagement with the university:

"A top research university engaged in social media on a smattering of platforms, but wanted to better understand the impact on its marketing goals before investing more resources.  The Communications Department subscribed to Scout Labs to monitor mentions and sentiment about its brands and campaigns, but wasn’t fully leveraging the software.  The university also deployed Google Analytics on its sites, but had no way to distinguish social media from other traffic sources, much less to distinguish the impact of staff social media outreach from that of naturally occurring social media activity.

Empirical Path tied Scout Labs’ measurement of social media at the top of the consideration funnel – mentions and sentiment – to Google Analytics’ measurement further down the funnel – visits, content consumption, and contacts."

Click here to see how we help this not-for-profit understand which social media channels and topics are delivering more than just mentions and buzz...and which are worth assigning even more staff time.

Federal marketers, start your engines cookies.

As we helped our social marketing agency partner explain in its blog, .gov websites can now deploy the persistent cookies needed to count unique visitors and power some of the leading web analytics software tools. Being Google Analytics Certified Partners, Empirical Path is particularly excited that we can combine our experience on Federal websites with our expertise in Google Analytics now that the Office of Management and Budget has refined its rules about cookies and measurement.

DC-based Noral Group International wrote about the rules' impact on the public education and social marketing campaigns the agency delivers, providing an easily digested primer on the relevance of analytics to government marketers:

"While commercial marketers worry about how they fill their online shopping carts, Federal agencies and social marketing campaigns have an even bigger worry.  They need to worry about their progress in moving people towards behavior change: a long and complicated journey. Relative to the shopping cart, there may be many more “clicks” along the path of building awareness, changing attitudes and generating action.  It’s good to know what’s happening along the way, address what works and doesn’t work and make sure that every visitor is at least a little closer to your behavior goal, not frustrated by a failed website visit or disappointing experience.  More specifically, if you are a Federal agency using web components as part of a social marketing and public service campaign, what exactly might you learn with web analytics?   Here’s a just a short sampling:"

Empirical Path has helped Noral, a GSA Web-based Marketing contract-holder, with web analytics and quantitative market research since 2002, including Noral's multi-year public health marketing campaign for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

"As a case in point, Noral used our public health client’s web analytics data to measure the number of monthly visits before the campaign, then compared subsequent efforts against that baseline.  The software’s reports also helped us choose — based on metrics like bounce rate, time per visit, and pages per visit — the best landing pages for web surfers who encountered the campaign online via its syndication feed (RSS), social media profiles, and search engine marketing (SEM).  To validate the campaign’s investment in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, we performed custom analysis of web analytics data to confirm that visitors enticed by search engine ads were engaging with website content as hoped."

Please contact us for more information on analytics for Federal websites or an introduction to Noral.

As part of our trade marketing campaign, Empirical Path has been offering readers of Silicon Alley Insider and other Business Insider titles a ridiculously low price on conversion optimization. Now we've extended the deadline and expanded the eligibility so you can try split testing: 

"Business Insider readers [People] who respond by August 13 receive a Google Website Optimizer split test for $99, an astounding discount from typical fees of $1,000 to $4,000.  Contact us to boost the conversion power of your key website page...

Empirical Path tells the story behind your numbers by fixing web analytics software implementations, optimizing conversion rates, and translating data into business insights.  Now, you can benefit from the same expertise that helps Business Insider optimize its sites by contacting us for a deeply discounted A/B or multi-variate test of your most important landing page or funnel stage.

Whether the goal of your website is to sell goods, gather leads, or amass subscribers, Empirical Path experts will test copy, forms, layouts, graphics, or calls to action to maximize conversion."

So how much would your conversion rate have to go up to justify $99 and some time with us on the phone?  Contact us and we'll clear that hurdle!

Mini Me, you complete me.  By which we mean, "help wanted."

As Empirical Path has grown our Web Analytics Practice, we've realized that we need junior clones of Jim and me to more quickly serve clients and respond to new business opportunities.  My junior clone would complete me by applying analytical, marketing, and client service skills to every step of the client life-cycle.  Or, in job-description-ese:

"The Web Analytics Reporting Specialist is responsible for helping our clients understand their audiences, enhance their digital user experience, and increase their online conversions. The Specialist will assist multiple engagements at all stages, including:

• Understanding client needs
• Drafting proposals, timelines, and budgets
• Creating Key Performance Indicators
• Developing and interpreting web analytics reports
• Finding actionable trends and segments
• Articulating data-driven recommendations
• Answering ad hoc questions
• Identifying opportunities to capture additional user behavior data"

Please see the job description for details on qualifications and how to apply (hint: phone calls and the contact form do not allow candidates to include the required cover letter; we gotta know that you care and that you can write).  And look for Jim's upcoming description of a Web Analytics Technical Specialist on these pages.