SEO Werkt!

Online video is a continuously growing sector. According to comScore, more than 180 million U.S. internet users watched 36.6 billion online content videos in May — of which more than 10 billion were video ads, setting a monthly record. Furthermore, eMarketer projects that $3.1 billion will be spent on online video ads this year. With so much money being invested into the medium, it is important to ensure the highest ROI possible. The best way to do this is by applying the appropriate metrics to your online video. Here are four ways you should be measuring your campaign.

Average time per view

Consumers are watching your video(s) and most are even “converting” by watching it in its entirety. That’s great, but what about the viewers that are abandoning your video midstream? It is important to know when this is occurring and understand why it is occurring.

One of the best ways to begin to investigate this problem is by examining the average time per view of your video by taking the overall time spent watching your video and dividing it by the number of total views. Chances are the closer this statistic is to the actual length of your video, the higher your conversion rate will be. However, that’s not what is important in this case.

If your ATPV is much lower than the length of your video, it’s likely one of two things — the video isn’t loading correctly or the content simply isn’t very enjoyable to watch.

Mode of abandonment

To dive deeper into this matter, an analysis of each individual view should be taken into consideration to determine the point of abandonment. While the ATPV will give you an approximate average time of abandonment, it is important to know when viewers are exiting your video most frequently.

That’s why a mode of abandonment should be calculated. If a larger number of viewers are abandoning your video at relatively the same time, there is likely a good reason for it. As stated before, it could be because of loading errors or poor content. This statistic could be very useful for pinpointing a problem at a specific point in your video.

Post-view conversion rate

Just because viewers are watching your video and it is receiving high conversion rates doesn’t mean you won the battle. The question now becomes, are consumers really paying attention to your message or just simply streaming the video because they have to (which is often the case with pre-rolls and mid-rolls).

The best way to understand how your viewers are watching is by implementing some type of post-view action. This can be as simple as adding a link to a website or adding a short poll question at the end of the video. If they are truly engaged in the content, then they are likely to complete these actions as well.

High post-view conversion rates means that consumers are actively watching your videos while low post-view conversion rates suggests little mind is being paid toward your video.

The best part of incorporating this metric is that it provides yet another portal for your brand to engage with consumers.

Unprompted engagement impressions

While converting on prompted engagements is great, receiving un-coerced user-generated content and social media impressions is even better. The most successful video campaigns have been the ones that compel consumers to not only watch, but also actively engage through social sharing, commenting, or even making their own offshoot videos.

Along with traditional video metrics, it’s also important to track your videos with social media analytics to see what people are saying about your campaign on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

While most of these impressions are beneficial to your brand, there is a chance that you come across some negative sentiment. However, this data can be an extremely useful learning tool. The feedback can be used to augment your approach to create an optimal online video.

As you can see, a truly successful campaign goes well beyond views and conversion rates. While there is much debate as to what metrics are useful, it is extremely important to measure your online video. These four metrics are ones that deserve great consideration while tracking your campaign.

Joseph Deluca is Marketing and PR Manager for SponsorPay.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.

“Old circular industrial temperature and pressure meter” image via Shutterstock.

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Right now, literally as you read this post, a triggered abandonment campaign is emailing a great offer to someone who had problems using a preferred payment method during check-out. Instead of recovering a transaction, that email is sending her back to the website to experience the same problem that drove her away in the first place. This not only costs you an order, but could alienate a customer and cause negative impact on your brand. Is this your abandonment program? Hopefully not.

A refresher course on abandonment

Every website has a funnel that visitors move through as they progress from a visitor to a purchaser. It starts with the first page they view on your website and continues all the way through the confirmation page. If they leave without making a purchase, they are considered abandoners.

Forrester Research and other trade associations report “purchase abandonment” of carts and check-out at roughly 60 percent — which whets the appetite for most retailers to take action. The issue? Most vendors selling “remarketing technology” push a general “one size fits all” solution and in doing so, fail to account for a critical component of any abandonment program: the “context of abandonment.”

The basics of context: Cart vs. check-out abandonment

Context is about understanding who abandoned your website, why, and what you need (and should) to do to recover them. The most basic step in “context” is asking where and why someone abandoned the site — starting with cart vs. check-out abandonment.

Why recognize the difference? We know a lot more about a check-out abandoner than a cart abandoner, including the higher purchase intent. Check-out abandonment happens for a host of traceable reasons that can be acted on. Shoppers abandon because of high shipping rates, issues with a preferred payment method, or when a promo code wasn’t working.

By the numbers: Real-world metrics from real world retail

Now you might be asking yourself, “Are shoppers really struggling with payment methods that often?” The answer is yes. Below are some metrics retailers experienced during the 2011 holiday shopping season. They are inclusive of payment methods, alternate payment methods, and promo code abandoners.

Check-out abandonment causality: Payment methods
Payment method abandon = 17.5 percent in fashion
Payment method abandon = 11.9 percent in children’s products
Payment method abandon = 10.8 percent in health and beauty
Payment method abandon = 17.8 percent in pet supplies

All in all, when aggregated across all of our clients, of the 64 percent of individuals who abandoned the check-out process, nearly 70 percent could have a “cause of abandonment” identified. Why would you send them the same generic email?

Honoring “context of abandonment” (or ditching dumb abandonment)

Retailers must address and acknowledge when someone is abandoning, what items they’re leaving behind, and who the shopper is that’s leaving the cart without purchasing.

The following is an example of an abandonment program that identifies visitors based on a recent problem experienced with payment methods.

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I just got the new iPad in the mail, and naturally the first thing I did was load up a few of my old apps and throw some content on there. Oh god! Oh no!

One of my favorite apps, GoodReader, which opens a great variety of files and which I use to consume the enormous PDFs from Google Books, is a patchwork of pixels. My go-to Mahjjong game, aliased to hell! Muji notebook – my pencil leaves a chunky trail!

Developers, I just want to tell you how critical it is that you upgrade your app to look at least passable on the new displays. The full-on big update can come later. But Apple has thrown your standard-def apps under the bus, and you need to drag yourselves out before your capricious iPad users lose faith.

It’s not some big revelation — we all knew there would be a transitional period — but I underestimated how bad it could be. Apple has not implemented any safeties for displayed content: the PDFs in GoodReader and the graphics even in premium games are being resized in the poorest possible way. Not even a bilinear filter to save the eye!

Look at how awful text looks without handling (open in a new tab):

Millions of new iPads are going to be opened up over the next few weeks, and every app that hasn’t made the change is going to be wide-open to a Cuckoo attack by competitors. Right now Kindle is threatening to unseat GoodReader on my iPad, because it displays text clearly. For developers offering “lite” versions and hoping to capture users, failing to support the new resolution will, plain and simple, result in lost users and potentially lost income.

If your app renders text or graphics, for the love of god update it, or don’t be surprised when a lower-quality app takes your place on a user’s iPad because that user didn’t feel like waiting another hour for the update that will make their content look good.

You can worry about app size, truly redone icons, and the other details later. Just get something out there! Every hour counts!

The opinions on what makes a form or Web application user friendly may vary but most everyone dislikes Captcha fields. Some Captcha’s are so difficult to decipher they actually increase form and page abandonment. Along with the freedom the Internet provides humans, it is unfortunately humans who…



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Driving traffic to your site is all well and good, but how do you turn that traffic into customers? To make your growing web traffic worth something (ahem, money?), the first step is to convert those visitors into leads, and landing pages are an efficient, low cost way to get that done.

But if you’re noticing that some of your landing pages perform better than others, there are some logical explanations behind your underperformers. Let’s take a look at the 5 most common reasons your site visitors click through to your landing page and then abandon it in a flash.

5 Reasonable Explanations for Landing Page Abandonment

1.) Your landing page didn’t pass the blink test. The blink test refers to the first three seconds a visitor spends on any page of your website during which they orient themselves and glean what they can do on that page. The user clicked to your landing page with a vague idea of what they might find there, but in the first three seconds, it is your duty to make it abundantly clear what they will find on that page. You can do so by crafting a clear headline, call-to-action, and providing a form above the fold.

2.) Your landing page had too many distractions. If you only have three seconds to orient a new visitor, you need to let them focus! Remove all visual distractions such as Flash or animation, a navigation that lets them click away, and large and intimidating blocks of text. Instead, include a pleasant (but reasonably sized) image that is relevant to your offer, and make use of all those wonderful formatting tools like bullets, numbers, and bolded headlines to break up text.

3.) You didn’t use actionable language. It’s not that your readers aren’t smart; just don’t make them think too hard while they’re on your landing page. Tell them exactly what to do by using verbs and explanatory language in your headlines and on your ‘submit’ button. Let’s do a little compare and contrast. Which headline do you think will result in more conversions on a landing page?

Your How-To Guide

vs.

Download Your How-To Guide About Creating Content for the Holidays

If you guessed the second one, you’re right on the money! It tells visitors explicitly what they should do on the landing page, and what they’ll receive for doing it. Just be sure to explain the value of your offer with some brief copy after you write your awesomely actionable headline.

4.) Your form just wasn’t worth the work. There’s a delicate balance to strike between gathering enough qualifying information about your leads, and losing leads to excessively long forms. If you’re not sure how many form fields are too many, start small and build up. Through the magic of A/B testing, you’ll be able to find your sweet spot where neither leads nor information is compromised.

5.) Your offer didn’t match your call-to-action (CTA). If your call-to-action was enticing enough to get a visitor to click through to your landing page, make sure what you actually offer aligns with the original CTA. You can prevent visitor disappointment by being as specific as possible with your call-to-action. If you’re offering a how-to guide, mention what it’s about in both the call-to-action and on the landing page. Use the same language so continuity is maintained throughout the conversion process.

If you’re experiencing dismal conversion rates on your landing pages, do a quick check for these five common problems. Once all of your landing pages are in line with these best practices, you can fine-tune and A/B detailed aspects of your page like button color or page layout to get the best possible conversion rate from each landing page you produce.

Have you seen a lift in conversion rates from solving for landing page abandonment? What was your most common landing page offense?

Image credit: Post-Software

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With the holiday shopping season about to begin — “Black Friday” this week and “Cyber Monday” next week — it’s a good time for online merchants to ensure they’re not going to suffer from the dreaded abandoned shopping cart syndrome. The cure for that…



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Ugly though they may be, these Swatch watches have a trick up their sleeves. Using the same technology found in the Tissot T-Touch line, these Swatch Touch watches are touch-sensitive and allow you to swipe through different functions and control most of the watch features with a simple finger tap.

The Touch 2011 models support two timezones, a date display, chronograph, alarm, and timer. There are no buttons and it has a curved glass display and weirdly proportioned numerals. It has an integrated strap.

The watches will ship on October 26 and cost about $150.

Adding touch capabilities to watches isn’t new – there was a clever Swatch model that allowed you to switch timezones by tapping on the crystal – but this wholesale abandonment of buttons and controls is fairly intense.