Nike and eCommerce

Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, is used to refer to any type of business that is conducted over the internet. It consists of the buying and selling products and services through a website or online store.  An organization's e-commerce website makes it easy for customers to research, choose, and purchase items online.   E-commerce has emerged as a vast revenue stream for companies.

This year, retail sales across the globe will reach $22.049 trillion and eMarketer estimates sales will top $27 trillion in 2020.  Retail e-commerce sales in North America will rise 15.6% this year to reach $423.34 billion, maintaining the area’s status as the world’s second largest regional e-commerce market. These statistics reinforce precisely how important it is for businesses to have an e-commerce website.

For this discussion, we will examine Nike’s e-commerce website.  Nike, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design, development, manufacturing, and worldwide marketing and sales of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories, and services. Nike is one of the world’s largest suppliers of athletic shoes and apparel.  In addition to being a major manufacturer of sports equipment, its website offers a variety of Nike-branded sporting equipment and apparel for men, women, and kids.  

Customers can register to receive e-mail blasts, receive customer support, manage account information, and design and customize their very own Nike sneakers.   Users can share content to various social media platforms, adding to the company's strong social media presence.  All of these great benefits means Nike has to provide customer support, fulfill orders, create content and special programs, and be able to manage and maintain the effectiveness of the website in order to keep customers coming back and purchasing.  

Executives at Nike Inc. revealed to investors their plans to grow web sales 600% by fiscal 2020 to $7 billion from $1 billion today. While the web currently represents only 2% of its total sales of $30.6 billion, Nike projects that portion to grow to around 14% in the next five years.  However, before the organization can reap the financial benefits, it must ensure that it is utilizing and evaluating its web analytics to the fullest.   

Nike operates its mobile, domestic, and international shopping sites on one platform, which is surprising.  Many would speculate that with the company's various products and services it would possess multiple websites.   Nike uses a mixture of IBM Inc. and Oracle Inc. e-commerce platform technology, which allows it to be responsive and make changes simultaneously across all web and mobile properties instead of multiple changes.. 

Nike has taken a single website approach, hosting all of its domestic and international content on the nike.com domain and redirecting its various content to that one domain.  Having a single website is easier to optimize and will lead to higher rankings in SEO results than having multiple websites.  Also, a single site is more likely to attract links from a wide range of third-party sites. All of these third-party links means better search engine results pages. Even if your site is not attracting many inbound links, a single site with more content allows you to create internal to related content on your site that can also help to increase your site’s ranking.

Liversidge, 2015

Nike is also making a big push to reach online shoppers abroad.   Knowing the location where visitors are originating from helps Nike develop localized and optimized marketing strategies.  The company can produce and target specific ads or messages based on user locations, allowing Nike to capitalize on customers who purchase more than those from other regions.  In addition to tracking users, Nike can capture the data and information from those who visit the website.   The company then utilizes that knowledge to closely monitor those customers, build an online community for them, and build a stronger relationship, leading to long-term engagement.  

Nike fully discloses how it captures and utilizes its customers’ information in its Nike Digital Privacy Policy.  Some key findings are:

WHAT THEY COLLECT

                We collect information you give us or permit us to access. Information may include, but is 

                 not limited to, your name, image, birth date, email and physical address, telephone number, 

                 gender, contact lists, social media information and profile, location (GPS) information, 

                 activity and performance information, and when necessary, credit card information.

                 We may automatically collect information regarding your interaction with, and use of, our 

                  products and services. Information we may collect includes, but is not limited to, your 

                  telephone number, Device identifier and hardware information, IP address, browser type 

                  and language, cookie information, system type, whether you have enabling software to 

                  access certain features, access times, referring website URLs, information about your    

                  purchases and other information about your interactions with us.

COLLECTION TOOLS:

                  Nike automatically collects information within our products and services or stored by your        

                   browser or Device. We use a variety of methods to collect this information, including,     

                   but not limited to, cookies and pixel tags/web beacons 'Collection Tools'.

                   We also work with other companies who use tracking technologies to serve ads on our   

                    behalf across the Internet. These companies may collect information about your 

                    interaction with us, including advertising. These companies may not recognize or 

                    respond to DNT headers from web browsers. If you would like to opt-out of receiving 

                    ads tailored by 3rd party tracking technologies associated with our website, please click 

                    here. Note that if you opt-out from these third party tracking technologies, you may still 

                    see our ads at other websites, but the ads will not be tailored using third party tracking   

                    technologies associated with our website.

What else can Nike do?  Not much.  According to McNew, Nike.com sales increased a full 49% year over year. This follows a 46% rise in fiscal year 2016 over 2015. The surge in online sales comes not only from the growing trend toward online shopping but also from some key investments Nike has made.  The company is a great example of the convenience of online shopping, a variety of products, and high customer engagement.  Nike has been doing a great job building their website and expanding its mobile apps to connect with more consumers and to make purchases from smartphones easy..

Google Analytics Technology Partner Gallery

In 2010, Google Analytics launched the Google Analytics Application Gallery. The thought behind the resource was to identify ways to improve their web analytics, and make it easier for Google Analytics account members to receive additional web analytics through Google Analytics' certified partners.

The Google Analytics App Gallery lists a wide variety of applications (apps) that integrates with Google Analytics in different ways. When Google Analytics introduced the first generation of integration, it was made using the Google Analytics Application Program Interface (API). Application program interface is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. An API specifies how software components should interact and APIs are used when programming graphicaluser interface (GUI) components.

Today, it is known as Google Analytics Technology PartnerGallery and still offers GA member the tools needed to effectively evaluate the effectiveness of its website, in addition to any support and help needed.  When it was first launched, the gallery consisted of 32 apps, and today there are 447 available apps. Previously, users would have to visit multiple websites to find all the services and applications. Today, both services and applications are located in the same location, making it easier for users to gain the help and information they need quickly and efficiently.

How does it work?  The gallery is broken up into two segments: service and applications.  The service section provides members with a certified GA partner, which can be an individual expert or an entire company that understands various web analytics and metrics.  The application portion is a list of apps that extend Google Analytics or compliment some of GA’s features.  These are, for the most part, developed by third-party companies as opposed to coming straight from Google.

Third-party companies, called Google Analytic TechnologyPartners, provide ready-to-use applications that extend and increase the value of GA.  These applications help analysts, marketers, IT teams, and executives to obtain above-and-beyond solutions.

Developers can create a variety of applications on the Google Analytics platform.  According to Google Analytics, "the goal of this partner gallery is to help the Google Analytics community find partners that enable and extend the functionality of Google Analytics.

To become public, "each partner wishing to publish software, service, content, or other digital materials (collectively, "Products") created for use in connection with Google Analytics must comply with both the Google Analytics Partner Gallery Agreement and the GoogleAnalytics Terms of Service, each of which is modified from time to time.  Click here for a list of qualifications

Google Analytic members can visit the gallery and choose from a variety of web analytic tool that are grouped by the following categories. The figure listed next to the category is the number of apps within the category.  Click here for a listing of each app within the various categories:

• Business Intelligence (72)
• CRM (12)
• Campaign Management (21)
•  Content Management (15)
•  Dashboard / Visualization (66)
•  Data Connectors / ETL (20)
•  Ecommerce (22)
•  Email Marketing (7)
•  Experiments (5)
•  Mobile App Attribution (15)
•  Mobile Reporting (10)
•  Phone Call Tracking (26)
•  Reporting Tools (78)
•  Search Marketing (12)
•  Search Optimization (5)
•  Site Audit (16)
•  Social Analytics (11)
•  Surveys (5)
•  Tag Management / Config (13)
•  URL Building (Link Tagging) (8)
•  Widgets & Gadgets (8)

Of the 21 categories, we are going to focus on Phone CallTracking.  Most marketers measure the success of a website or marketing campaign by the amount of visits, page views and/or conversions completed on the site.  Many consumers will call a business after they have researched the information on the internet.  This action is technically a conversion, but not many marketers are keeping track.

Google Apps has partnered with 26 software companies that provide tools and services to track phone calls.  These apps allow a marketer to track calls back to the keyword, ad group, and campaign from where the call occurred; some can record phone calls and evaluate whether the calls caused conversions.

One of those companies is called WhatConverts which offers “a full circle lead tracking system

 where you'll no longer be left wondering where leads, quotes and sales originated or what leads converted. Using our simple feedback loop we are able to provide deep data analytics into source tracking, lead quality, and revenue generation".

Call tracking is the center piece of the WhatConverts solution for agencies and companies that want to see the complete marketing picture. However, the company goes beyond phone call tracking to track all marketing through phone calls, web forms, and e-commerce transactions. 

According to Mongoose Metrics, call tracking is one method of lead generation measurement that brings valuable and highly measurable insight to the issue of understanding online-to-offline (web-to-phone) conversions.  It enables clients to migrate from merely tracking the number of phone calls they receive from online advertising campaigns to understanding each caller’s online behavior and buying persona. Call tracking (with local or toll-free numbers) enables businesses to answer marketing questions such as:

• Do my Web marketing campaigns generate phone calls?
• Do these phone calls generate revenue?
• Do certain pages or sections of my website cause visitors to pick up the phone?  Do they take action over the phone?
• Do prospects who call end up back on the site? 
• Do they end up purchasing online? 

Forty-three percent of all search-related conversions happen over the phone, and 65% of businesses consider phone calls to be their most valuable, highest quality source of leads according to AdInsight 

In short, any business could benefit from using call tracking. Phone calls are a critical component of gaining new business across multiple industries. In fact, calls are the most important lead type for many businesses and are often worth 5–10 times as much as form-fill leads.

Also, if you fall into any of the following businesses, you should take notice that you could be incorrectly evaluating and analyzing your marketing efforts:

• Home services (plumbers, painters, landscaping, flooring, etc.)
• Dental and cosmetic Dental & Cosmetic Surgery
• Legal
• Real Estate
• Hotel & Travel
• SaaS
• IT
• Education
• Automotive
• Mortgages & Loans

In summary, call tracking has become crucial for businesses whose advertising goal is to generate phone calls.  As a business generating phone calls through your search engine marketing campaigns, it is imperative you know which parts of your paid-per-click campaign is driving calls and not just traffic.  Having this information is crucial for your optimization strategy.  WhatConverts is a simple to setup and seamlessly integrates with Google Analytics and Google AdWords and would be essential for any business to incorporate into its web metrics.

Web Analytics: So Many Choices

Web analytics can provide an immense amount of data and metrics regarding how well your website works. It provides critical information on how it’s being utilized by consumers and their behavior while visiting. Web analytics can have an enormous impact on a business’ online presence, and by that, the data collected can be used in making critical adjustments to its website, how it interacts with visitors, and if a marketing campaign is working.

To access this data, a business would need to turn to various companies that provide web analytic tools. To date, Google Analytics (GA) has been touted as the best of the best when it comes to web analytic tools. Google Analytics is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin. Google Analytics is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. It is a great way for a business with a website or anyone with a blog to measure traffic on the site. It can assist in answering important questions:

• How long are visitors spending on my blog?
• Are users sharing my blog on social media?
• How  people visit my blog/website?
• Where is the traffic coming from to my site?
• Which pages are receiving the most traffic?
•  How many visitors have I converted into sales?
• Where did my converting visitors come from and go on my website?
• How can I improve my website's speed?

Is Google Analytics the only option available for businesses?  It isn’t!  There are many others such as but not limited to the following:

• Clicky
• KISSmetrics
• Bitly
• Piwik
•  GoSquared
• Woopra
• Mixpanel
• FoxMetrics
• GoingUp

For this discussion, we will focus on KISSmetrics.  The company says it is a very easy to use, insightful web analytics package that sets your sights on metrics that matter (e.g., your bottom line).  KISSmetrics is a paid analytic tool that makes it easy to track your customer process and discover areas where you are losing potential customers, for small and mid-size companies.  People wonder if the ‘KISS’ in it’s name is an acronym for ‘Keep It Simple Stupid,” but the company boasts about the ease and simplicity of its usage.

Here is a brief  demo video on KISSmetrics:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zdfjah%K4A


A few features of Kissmetrics:

• Analyzes changes in user behavior
• Timeline view of visitors
•  Easy-to-understand visual format
•  Track URLS by adding parameters

One of the most important features is “Path Report,” which will help you analyze the pattern of user interaction with your site. A few features, which are essential to Google Analytics, like “Traffic Data” are missing in Kissmetrics.

"When it comes to tracking individuals, you can tie inproperties in KISSmetrics to a single visitor. For example, a new customer is a writer and used a 10 percent off coupon, found you on LinkedIn via your company page services link, and works for a Fortune 100. If you “tell” all of that information to KISSmetrics by associating properties with this customer, KISSmetrics will remember it. You can then use it to create advanced segments and data slices on your data".

Cost KISSmetrics is not a replica of Google Analytics. Yes, they both are analytics tools, but they each have their own benefits (KISSmetrics, n.d).  One advantage that Google Analytics offers that KISSmetric doesn’t is cost.  A starter company can begin looking at 500,000 events with KISSmetrics for $150 per month while Google Analytics is free for users up to a certain point.

Reporting: An event is similar to the Google Analytics event, but it's a little more defined with KISSmetrics. KISSmetrics will only report the events the user has selected to review, like watching a video, shopping cart activity, or page views. Google Analytics will give its users various metrics in addition to the events the user has selected.

When it comes to tracking visitors (the number of actual people who visited the site) and visits (the number of times the website was visited regardless of repeat visitors), Google Analytics is the best tool if these are the main events you want to track. While KISSmetrics can track visitors, it's not feasible to pay for the service if this is all the reporting you need. There are several free web analytic tools that could be better utilized.

Google Analytics is key when tracking bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who navigate away from a particular website after viewing only one page), time on page (the average amount of time all visitors to a page spend on that particular page), and exits (for page views, the rate that each page is last accessed in a session). Google Analytics has better reporting for these metrics. You cannot currently track these events in KISSmetrics.

KISSmetrics is great at tracking users and, combined with Google Analytics, adds an extra layer of people tracking that GA lacks. "Google Analytics is one of many services that KISSmetrics works well withvia API integration, and the setup is simple".

Here is a detailed info graph comparing Google Analytics and KISSmetrics.

Social media: Which is the right choice?

Before we get into which social media outlet to use lets first define what is social media?

Social media is a catch-all term for a variety of Internet applications that allow users to create content and interact with each other. This interaction can take many forms, but some common types include:

• Sharing links to interesting content produced by third parties
• Public updates to a profile, including information on current activities and even location data
• Sharing photos, videos, and posts
• Commenting on the photos, posts, updates, videos and links shared by others

In the digital world social media, like many digital buzzwords is a moving target that gets defined according to what the individual who is using it wants it to mean.

With so many social media website should a marketer use one as its main channel, a few or all of them? There are so many social media website, and the numbers continue to grow.  According to Statista there were roughly 2.15 billion people using social media sites in 2015, and by 2018 that number is to exceed 2.6 billion.  It’s easy for a marketer to salivate at the thought of reaching so many potential users.  These users are actively connecting and engaging with brands through social media.  Implementing a social media marketing plan and having a presence on social sites is essential to tap into these customers.  Also, if executed correctly, utilizing social media can have huge benefits.

Social media is a great way for a business of any size to promote its business, engage with users, and gain new ones.  Businesses should definitely take advantage of this marketing vehicle, but it should not be on every social website.  It is important for a marketer to pick a social media website that reaches its target audience.  If you’re selling luxury vehicles like Range Rover, what social media website would be beneficial to the brand?  What about Musically, a social media website that consists of a video community that allows users to create, share, and discover short videos?  The social platform has 70 million users who post roughly 11 million new videos per day.  Sounds great!  Wrong!  The users of this social website are mostly tweens and teenagers.  This is a very popular social media website, but not every social media website is right for a brand.

How many social websites should one use?  It could be one or a few but definitely not all.  Aside from making sure the social site reaches your target demographic, here are a few important things to consider:
1. Establish a plan and do research:
Before you begin advertising what are your goals, what are you hoping to achieve, who is your target audience, what social media website or websites aligns with the target.  What is your creative message?

2. Set Goals: What do you hope to accomplish by using the website?
Are you looking to increase website traffic? Conversions? Increasing brand awareness? Improving communication and interaction with key audiences.

3. Measure results: There are about 35 key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge if your social media campaign is successful and working.  Here are a few:


• Alerts (registration and response rates/by channel/clique through rate/post click activity)
• Bookmarks (onsite, offsite)
• Comments
• Downloads 
• Email subscriptions
• Fans (become a fan of something/someone)
• Favorites (add an item to favorites)
• Feedback (via the site)
• Followers (follow something/someone) 
• Forward to a friend


4. Test: Be sure to test various creative messages to see how your customers react to them.  If you’re not sure which image or creative to use, testing will let you know which your clients prefer.  There are many elements you can test via social media, but here are a few:

• Headlines
• Calls to action
• Images
• Reviews

Almost anything on a marketers website can be A/B tested, so anything that affects visitor behavior its wise test before releasing.

Finally, there are the thoughts on content versus conversation when is comes to social media engagement.  Content marketing takes place both online and offline created and shared for the purpose of directly or indirectly promoting a business. More people and businesses are aware of content marketing due to the accessibility of online social networks and social media tools that allow anyone to publish WOW, share-worthy content. This empowerment of publishing content has drastically changed the online environment.

Then there are those who believe social media is a conversation. It’s a way for folks to talk about anything in public, ranging from current events, life’s successes and failures, or even about our passions like sustainability. It’s just another medium to have a conversation.  Some may say that social media isn’t a conversation at all, but rather a form of publication. It is a way for anyone to publish anything from anywhere on the Internet.  Who is right?

While content is an important part of social media, more so, social media itself thrives not on the act of content, but rather on sharing and conversing about that content.  From that tidbit, it seems we can assume that we need to content to start the conversation   Content marketing establishes credibility, trust, and loyalty because the organization is helping people and/or supplying content that interests them.  That content is then shared, liked and retwitted which is causing the user to be engaged and start a conversation.  Also, I agree that conversation is an important aspect for engaging users on social media that is why many people are visiting social media website.  Both are beneficial, and a company can choose to do both or either.  Again that’s where testing comes in to play to see what your users are interested in content or conversation.

Here are the top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites as derived from our eBizMBA Rank which is a continually updated average of each website's Alexa Global Traffic Rank, and U.S. Traffic Rank from both Compete and Quantcast."*#*" Denotes an estimate for sites with limited data.

Web Analytics Conversion

Web analytics “is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage” (Web Analytics Association, n.d).  Web analytics provides organizations insight into what is going on inside its website.  Web analytics answers important questions, such as how many visitors there are each day, week or month, what a visitor is doing once they are on the website, how easily they can maneuver through the website and if they are completing a desired action.

There are numerous metrics that can be used to determine the success of a website and to answer those important questions.  Here is a list of metrics grouped by category according to Avinash Kaushik.

1. Category:  Building Block Terms or Foundational
• Metrics: Page, Page Views, Visits, Unique Visitors, Event 
2. Category: Visit Characterization
• Metrics: Entry Page, Landing Page, Exit Page, Visit Duration, Referrer, Page Referrer, Internal Referrer, Session Referrer, Visit Referrer, Click-through, Click-through Rate/Ratio, New Visitor, Returning Visitor, Repeat Visitor, Visits Per Visitor, Recency, Frequency
3. Category: Visitor Characterization
• Metrics: New Visitor, Returning Visitor, Repeat Visitor, Visits Per Visitor, Recency, Frequency
4. Category: Engagement 
• Metrics: Page Exit Ratio, Single-Page Visits (Bounces), Bounce Rate, Page Views Per Visit
5. Category: Conversion 
• Metrics: Conversion, Conversion Ratio
6. Category: Miscellaneous
• Metrics: Hit/Server Request, Impressions 

Utilizing these metrics can provide an immense amount of data and information into how well a marketer’s website is working.  However, for the purpose of this discussion we will focus on one metric in particular: conversion.  

What is a conversion? The Web Analytics Association defines conversion as a representation of important business outcomes, such as completing a purchase or requesting a quote.   They are also known as goals, outcomes and success events.    Conversions "are sometimes chosen because they indicate potential for future behavior, such as clicking on an advertisement, registering for more information or starting a checkout process" (Web Analytics, 2008).

Knowing the conversions of a user is important in that it tells the marketer which customers are performing the desired outcome.  Also, once the organization has this information it can track back where the users are coming from, what their behavior is, letting them target more of the top converters.

As an example, Nature Air had 17 separate landing pages. They did a single A/B test on each landing page and the conversions went from 2.78% to about 19%. The control did not make the call to action prominent:

Then they put the CTA in the content area:

Metrics gives businesses the opportunity to figure out what is working and what is not working to improve engagement with the audience. However, the problem is that most businesses do not know how these metrics work and how they are beneficial. Kaushik makes a valid point, “you worked hard to get them to the site, if they did not convert did you accomplish nothing”. Many companies assume that if the customer didn’t buy then, it didn’t work, but that’s not regularly the case. Getting someone to open an email is a conversion. Having them click on the call-to-action link inside that email is another conversion. Going to the landing page and filling out a registration form to read your content is a conversion. And, of course, buying your product is the ultimate conversion.





References:
Kuashik, A. (n.d). Web Analytics Standards: 26 New Metrics Definitions. Retrieved from: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-standards-26-new-metrics-definitions/

Kaushik, A. (n.d). Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets Retrieved from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-101-definitions-goals-metrics-kpis-dimensions-targets/

KissMetrics, (n.d). 100 Conversion Optimization Case Studies. Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/100-conversion-optimization-case-studies/

Web Analytics Association (2008). Web Analytics Definitions. Retrieved from http://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/Files/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitions.pdf

Kirkpatrick, D. (2012). Marketing 101: What is conversion?  Retrieved from http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/marketing/conversion-defined/

Web Analytics Unique Visitors

The Web Analytics Association defines unique visitors as “the number of inferred individual people (filtered for spiders and robots), within a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site. Each individual is counted only once in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period” (Web Analytics Association Definitions, 2008).

A unique visitor is an individual user who has accessed an organization’s website. It is determined by the internet protocol (IP) address of a device or computer that the user is browsing from, combined with a cookie on the browser they are using.  It doesn’t matter how many visits a visitor makes, if they are on the same device and browser, only one unique visitor is counted.  For example, if you visit rareperson.com, you will be counted as a unique visitor. If you come back to this website five more times, in a defined time set for the site, you are still counted as one unique visitor. If you visit the site from another computer, or it will count you as a new visitor.  Because the website is monitoring the IP address, the downside of unique visitors is that a single user could visit a site from five different IP addresses and be counted as five unique visitors. Also, different users accessing the same machine/same IP address would be counted as one user when accessing a website.

As a side note, an IP address “is a logical numeric address that is assigned to every single computer, printer, switch, router or any other device that is part of a TCP/IP-based network. The IP address is the core component on which the networking architecture is built; no network exists without it. An IP address is a logical address that is used to uniquely identify every node in the network. Because IP addresses are logical, they can change. They are similar to addresses in a town or city because the IP address gives the network node an address so that it can communicate with other nodes or networks, just like mail is sent to friends and relatives” (techopedia.com, n.d).

As a marketer, you want to grow your website and attract new audiences.  When you look at your analytics, a website’s unique visitors is one of the most prominent numbers to analyze. This metric gives you a sense of how many individuals are visiting your website and gives some key information, depending on the type of website.    

If you are an e-commerce website, then you want to get as many visits to your website to make purchases as possible. The number of unique visitors will help you to gauge how many people are coming to your site.  An increase in unique visitors is a good indicator that the website is working.  Marketers can then verify where that traffic is coming from and do more of what’s increasing traffic. There is also the opposite if you see that your unique visitors are decreasing you can pinpoint what led to this occurring.

As an example, Facebook received millions of unique visitors in the United States from April 2011 to July 2015. In those months, "there were approximately 163.69 million US users visiting the social networking site. As of the second quarter of 2015, Facebook's worldwide user's numbers were confirmed to be approximately 1.49 billion, making it the most popular social network worldwide” (Statisa, n.d).

Though social websites may not need users to make purchases, they want as many unique visitors as possible in order to monetize their success.




References:
Web Analytics Association (2008). Web Analytics Definitions. Retrieved from: http://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/Files/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitions.pdf

Statista (n.d). Number of unique U.S. visitors to Facebook between April 2011 and July 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265831/number-of-unique-us-visitors-to-facebookcom/

techopedia.com, (n.d). Internet Protocol Address (IP Address). Retrieved from: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/2435/internet-protocol-address-ip-address

Valela, A. (2016). What’s More Important: Page Views or Unique Visitors? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://blog.agilitycms.com/content-managers/what-s-more-important-page-views-or-unique-visitors

Welcome To My Blog!

I’m Josette Franks, a seasoned sales and marketing professional with over 15 years of sales and marketing experience. I’m currently attending WVU Reed School of Journalism, pursuing a graduate degree in integrated marketing and communications.

This blog is for my Web Analytics and SEO class, IMC 642. This course examines  how marketers strategically gather online information to measure traffic, engagement and potential impact on ROI. Explores search engine optimization (SEO) and social media optimization (SMO) strategies used to build an online presence for clients.

In this blog, I will  share, and review web analytics and SEO topics that are old, current and groundbreaking.  Also, examine how these tools work and can help build an online presence.   


Enjoy, and please share!!!

Connect with me on linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/josettefranks