Web

Optify Measures the Current State of B-to-B Online Marketing

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Optify logoEach year Optify, a developer of digital marketing software for business-to-business marketing professionals, analyzes web behaviors to develop a “benchmark” report on B-to-B marketing.

The annual Optify benchmark report is interesting in that the findings are developed not from surveys, but from actual web activity. 

Optify’s most recent report, released in early 2013, was produced using data gleaned from more than 62 million web visits, ~215 million page views and ~350,000 leads from more than 600 small and medium-sized websites of B-to-B firms.

Optify used its proprietary visitor and lead tracking technology to collect and aggregate the data.  U.S.-based B-to-B sites that garnered between 100 to 100,000 monthly visits were included in the research.

There are many interesting findings – enough to chew on so that I will cover them in several blog posts.  In all likelihood, some of the findings will confirm your perceptions … while others may be a tad surprising.

Web Traffic

As in business-to-consumer web marketing, there is cyclicality in web traffic in the B-to-B world.  But according to Optify, it’s almost the polar opposite:

  • Higher traffic:  January through March + September and October
  • Lower traffic:  Summer months + end of year

Source of Web Traffic

Optify found that the overwhelming amount of B-to-B web traffic comes from two main sources — organic search and direct traffic.  Other sources – particularly social media – are a good deal more peripheral:

  • Organic search:  ~41% of web traffic
  • Direct traffic:  ~40%
  • Referral links:  ~12%
  • Paid search:  ~5%
  • Social media:  ~2%

Lead Conversion Rate

Optify defines the “conversion rate” as the percent of web visitors who submitted a query or filled out some other type of form during a single visit.  Using this definition, Optify found that the average conversion rate was around 1.6%. 

But the best sources for lead conversions differ from the most prevalent sources of web traffic:

  • E-mail source:  ~2.9% conversion rate
  • Other referral links:  ~2.0%
  • Paid search:  ~2.0%
  • Direct traffic:  ~1.7%
  • Organic search:  ~1.5%
  • Social media:  ~1.2%

Page Views per Web Visit

Optify found that the average visitor viewed three pages on the website during their visit.

… But Big Variations

Optify found a good deal of variability in web activity.  To illustrate this, it has published findings broken out by medians and for percentile groups as follows:

  • Median visits per month per website:  1,784
  • 75th percentile of websites:  4,477
  • 25th percentile of websites:  339
  • Median page views per website visit (monthly average):  3.03
  • 75th percentile median page views:  4.04
  • 25th percentile media page views:  1.80
  • Median lead conversion rate (monthly average):  1.6%
  • 75th percentile median conversion rate:  3.3%
  • 25th percentile median conversion rate:  0.5%

There’s much more in the Optify report that’s worth reviewing … which I’ll share ina follow-up blog post.

Fourteen billion web pages … but you can get from any one to any other in 19 clicks or less.

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Opte Project Web Network Map
A visualization of the ~14 billion pages that make up the network of cyberspace. Red lines represent links between web pages in Asia … blue lines for North America … yellow for Latin America … green for Europe, Africa and the Middle East … white for unknown IP addresses.  (Opte Project)

There are an estimated 14 billion+ web pages in existence. But even with this massive number, you can navigate from any single one of those pages to any other in 19 clicks or less.

That’s the finding of Albert-László Barabási, a Hungarian-Romanian physicist and network theorist. He’s constructed a simulated model of the web, and in doing so discovered that of the ~1 trillion web documents in existence (this figure includes every image or other file hosted on every one of the ~14 billion web pages), most are poorly connected.

In other words, they’re linked to just a few other pages or documents.

But the web also has a smallish number of pages associated with search engines, indexes and aggregators that are highly connected and can move from one area of cyberspace to another.

It is these “super-potent” nodes that allow people to navigate from most areas to most others relatively easily.

Physicist Albert-László Barabási
Albert-László Barabási, physicist and network theorist.

Hence Barabási’s “19 clicks or fewer” finding.

He posits that the web mirrors fundamental human experience: the impulse for people to tend to cluster into communities (both real and virtual).

Thus, the pages that make up the web aren’t linked randomly. They’re part of an interconnected organizational structure that includes country, region, subject/topic area and so forth.

That interconnectivity is illustrated nicely in the Opte Project’s “map” of cyberspace. This endeavor, spearheaded by Internet entrepreneur Barrett Lyon, gives us intriguing visualizations of the web and how it is interconnected.

The resulting picture (see above) is impressive, visually arresting … and even a bit scary.

Password Pandemonium

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Too many user names and passwords to remember ...It seems that many people have been heeding admonitions from seemingly everywhere that they should refrain from using the same user name and password for their various online accounts.

“Password creep” has been the result. Just how much so is revealed in a recently published research studied from social web SaaS provider Janrain, in concert with Harris Interactive.

The 2012 Online Registration & Password Study found that nearly 60% of online adults have five or more unique passwords associated with their online logins.

One-third of the respondents report that they maintain 10 or more passwords. And ~10% report having more than 20 individual passwords.

These figures are up significantly from the first Janrain study, which was conducted back in 2006.

Of course, when one considers the myriad of online activities many people engage in, it’s not hard to fathom how the number of passwords per user has become so large.  Consider all of these possibilities just for starters:

  • Retail sites and loyalty programs
  • TripAdvisor, Angie’s List, Yelp! and other review sites
  • Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites
  • LinkedIn, Career Builder and other career-oriented sites
  • Google, Yahoo and other e-mail/search portals
  • PayPal and other payment, banking and financial sites
  • Hobby sites and discussion boards
  • Personal blogs

And the list goes on …

The Janrain/Harris study also uncovered several interesting findings based on age and gender demographics:

  • Older people (age 55+) are more likely to have a higher number of unique passwords than younger adults.
  • Men age 45-54 report having the highest average number of unique password (~10).

There’s no question that people have heeded the warnings about using passwords that are too easy to “game” … and thus are creating passwords that incorporate a combination of letters, numbers and other symbols.

But the downside is a considerable percentage of people forgetting their passwords frequently. 

In fact, more than one-third of the respondents reporte that they have had to ask for assistance on their user name or password at least once in the past month.

And another thing: The vast majority of people (~85%) dislike being asked to register to access information on a new website.

What did they dislike in particular? Half of the respondents complained about having to create and remember yet another user name and password. And ~45% believe that online registration forms are too long and time-consuming to complete.

Despite the irritations of “password pandemonium,” it’s doubtful many online consumers are going to be changing their behaviors very soon.

One alternative would be to create a few strong, secure passwords that are used across multiple sites but changed regularly.  But to many, that “cure” is no better than the “disease” they have already.

Tablet Computer Adoption: Fast and Furious

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Tablets are growing faster than smartphone adoptionThe tablet computer hasn’t been around long at all.  But it’s making a huge splash in the digital arena … and giving not only laptops but also smartphones a run for their money in the bargain.

Consider these data points as reported on recently by Mark Donovan, a senior vice president at comScore, a leading Internet cyber-analytics firm:

  • Tablet adoption is happening significantly faster than what was experienced with smartphones.
  • The majority of iPad users don’t own an iPhone or some other type of smartphone.
  • Tablet “early adopters” are equally male and female – a departure from the norm which typically finds early adopters of new digital technology being primarily young men.
  • There is very high usage of tablets for shopping, watching video, and other media consumption. That’s also a departure from what was experienced with smartphones, where it took much longer for consumers to become comfortable shopping from their smartphone devices.
  • People use tablets and smartphones differently – and at different times. For example, smartphone usage peaks during the day whereas tablets are used more in the evening.

That tablets are making big gains on laptop computers is no surprise at all, considering their lighter weight, nearly effortless portability, brighter screens, and the ease of using them in environments not conducive to a keyboard-and-mouse (like in bed).

But of the trends noted above, I think the most intriguing one pertains to tablet computer usage versus smartphones – specifically, how tablets are becoming an alternative to smartphones rather than an adjunct.

Indeed, it seems as if some people aren’t making the transition from feature phones to smartphones that everyone expected; they’re opting for tablets instead. We may see the adoption rates for smartphonesbegin to flatten out as a result.

Indeed, Adobe Systems reported in May 2012 that tablet traffic is growing at a rate ten times faster than smartphone traffic.

But if you really think about it, maybe these latest developments aren’t so surprising: Many folks have long complained about the “miniaturization” of display screens that are a necessary evil of mobile phones. Now that the tablet has come along, there’s finally an effective solution to that dilemma – and the market has responded accordingly, blowing away even the most optimistic sales forecasts for tablets.

B-to-B e-mail marketing: From sleepy to creepy?

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Unwanted e-mails from businesses and brandsThe amount of information that companies know about the behavior of their customers has been growing, thanks to the “digital footprints” people leave all over the place when interacting with companies and brands via web surfing, e-mail and e-commerce.

Still, up until now, there’s been a polite dance wherein the companies don’t acknowledge the degree of that knowledge. Call it a sort of digital politeness.

But that seems to be changing, as the stakes have grown higher for engaging with customers via online, social and e-mail communications rather than traditional advertising.

Take Pitney Bowes in the B-to-B world, for example. In recent months, its marketing staff has sent out e-mail communiqués to their opt-in customers containing messages like, “We notice it’s been a while since you opened an email from us.”

That creepy little missive is as impertinent as it is likely false. Considering the wide swath of people who use the Microsoft Outlook e-mail platform – and many of those use preview panes and have set their default preferences to block images – in reality Pitney Bowes doesn’t actually know if its customers have been reading its e-mail messages or not.

It’s also unclear whether Pitney Bowes really wants its opt-in recipients to go away rather than just browbeating people into engaging with their e-mails more.

This has manifested itself in e-mail messages sent asking if customers are still interested in receiving e-mails so they can “continue receiving the latest from PB.” But despite this implicit threat to be dropped from Pitney Bowes’ e-mail database, ignoring those e-mails doesn’t seem to result in that actually happening.

Rather, it’s just a continuation of more borderline-creepy e-mails with messages chiding the recipient for potentially missing out on “valuable information about supplies, offers, discounts, new products and thought leadership pieces.”

Thought leadership pieces? The leaders of Pitney Bowes may think quite highly about their company and its “vaunted” position in industry … but self-describing itself as being the fount of industry-leading knowledge is a surefire way to get laughed out of town.

Just like the obnoxious teacher’s pet in school or the crashing bore at a cocktail party, no one enjoys interacting with a know-it-all who just can’t wait to corner you and tell you all about his or her latest feats of accomplishment.

In a world where most businesses are spending more effort than ever trying to collect e-mail addresses for ongoing engagement with customers and prospects, here’s a little reminder to them: Try disseminating content that is actually of value to people … which is what will get them to engage with you.

More often than not, that content won’t be about their products and services.

Coming Attractions: A Newly Sanitized YouTube

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YouTube Cleaning up its ActThe YouTube phenomenon has been one of the biggest success stories of all in cyberspace.

Over the years, YouTube has gone from being a weird corner of the web made up of curious, strange and often forgettable video clips, to a site that attracts millions of viewers every day – some of whom have essentially ditched all other forms of video viewing in favor of mining the vast trove of material YouTube carries on its platform.

In the years since Google acquired YouTube, traffic and usage have exploded, even as the video fare has become more varied (and also more professional).

But there’s one holdover from the early years that continues to bedevil Google: YouTube is a repository of some of the most inflammatory, puerile and downright disgusting commentary that passes for “discourse,” posted by all manner of rabble.

But now, Google is signaling a strategy that has the potential to clean up the crude comments on YouTube – and in a big way.

YouTube is now strongly encouraging users to post their YouTube comments using the name identity associated with their Google+ account.

In fact, if you decline to do so after being prompted, you’ll be asked to state a reason why, underscoring the nudge away from “screen name anonymity” and towards “real-name identity.”

The notion is that people will be less likely to post flaming comments when their “true” web identity is known – that people will exude good behavior in “polite cyber-company,” as it were.

Of course, one needs to possess a Google+ account in order to link his or her identity on YouTube. But that’s for today only; some observers see YouTube’s move as just the first step toward hiding – and eventually eliminating – all comments coming from anonymous accounts.

So the new bargain will be something closer to this: “Open a Google+ account and link your YouTube account to your Google+ account … or else forfeit your ability to post any comments at all on YouTube.”

The likely result will be a much more “sanitized” YouTube – less edgy, but also less red-faced embarrassing. And that’s just what many brands, businesses and advertisers would like to see happen.

Of course, YouTube’s moves may well spur the launch of an alternative site that seeks to preserve the (nearly) anything-goes environment of the YouTube of yore.

Perhaps it could be called “YouCrude,”  But, as it happens, that handle’s already been nabbed — by a fellow WordPress blogger!

Facebook’s Interesting Week

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Facebook's_first_day_of_tradingBy now most people have heard all of the news reports about Facebook’s initial public offering, and how the world now has a new crop of instant millionaires and billionaires.

But the news last week wasn’t all roses for Facebook. For one thing, it became clear as Day 1 of trading ground on that Facebook shares weren’t going to increase in value. Indeed, it took the underwriters stepping in with institutional buying to keep the share price (barely) above the initial offering price of $38 per share.

And there was the news of GM dissing Facebook by announcing that it is dropping its paid advertising program with the social network … evidently due to Facebook’s failure to convince GM marketing execs of the effectiveness of its program.

But there was even more. Consider this news report: Facebook was hit with a $15 billion privacy lawsuit on the very first day of public trading. Filed on behalf of a number of Facebook’s users, the class action suit claims that Facebook invaded personal privacy by tracking users’ web usage.

The lawsuit cites a bevy of case law and regulations as part of the briefing documentation, including the Federal Wiretap Act, the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, and various California statutes.

Consider the implications if this suit is at all successful:  Now that it is a public company, Facebook is under increased pressure to increase its advertising revenues rapidly – which means collecting yet more user data to help it target paid advertising effectively and thus command premium pricing.

But if the lawsuit is successful, it could prevent Facebook from collecting the very data it uses to serve up advertising based on relevant audience targets.

On the other hand, similar cases brought against Facebook in recent years have been thrown out of court because browser cookies haven’t been viewed as “wiretaps.” Moreover, plaintiffs have had difficulty in proving any “harm” as a result.

Of course, there was some additional very good news this past week for Facebook – at least for CEO Mark Zuckerberg: He got married.

… Which in the end may turn out to deliver far more happiness and fulfillment than all the money in the world ever could do.

Good marriages are like that … so let’s all hope for the very best for Mr. Zuckerberg.

Is our hyper-connected world changing us for the better, or the worse? Pew looks for answers.

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One of the great questions about the digital and interactive age is how it may be affecting the way people fundamentally think and behave.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has been studying this question, too. In late 2011, Pew queried a group of technology experts and stakeholders and asked them to prognosticate on the impact of hyper-connectivity on today’s younger generation.

It is the fifth in a series of surveys conducted by Pew on “The Future of the Internet.”

The question posed to these experts was: Looking out to the year 2020, will the younger generation’s “always-on” connection to people and information turn out to be a net positive or a net negative?

And the consensus response to this question is … no consensus at all. In fact, the experts broke down in roughly equal camps on either side of the issue.

The optimists believe that:

 The brains of teens and young adults will be “wired” differently from their older counterparts … but this will yield positive results.

 They will not suffer any notable shortcomings as they cycle quickly through work-related and personal tasks.

 They will be more adept at finding answers to questions, and will be learning more precisely because they can search effectively and access collective information in cyberspace.

An equal proportion of experts holds a decidedly less optimistic view of the future. Their opinion is closer to this:

 Even though teens and young adults will be “wired” differently than their older counterparts, they will not become more knowledgeable as a result.

 They will use cyberspace not to become better informed, but to be “faster” informed.

 Instead of becoming better educated and better informed, they will depend on the Internet and mobile devices to deliver quick results, with little retention, introspection or further study.

 They will spend most of their energy sharing short social messages, being entertained, and being distracted away from a deep engagement with knowledge and with people.

Here’s a link to the Pew report summary, and the results are well worth reviewing.

As for my own view, it seems to me that the environment we’ll see in 2020 is probably somewhere in between these two posts.

It’s true that many people will interact with digital technology in ways that have little to do with any sort of hard, intellectual labor. But is that so different from what we’ve seen in society in general over the past half-century?

There are thought leaders. There are thought consumers. And then there are the clueless. The digital tools and techniques people choose to use just make it easier to play in whatever league they wish.

It reminds me of that old adage about the three types of people found in the world: Those who make things happen … those who watch things happen … and those who wonder what happened. (And there are precious few people who fall into the first group.)

The fact is, no degree of Internet connectivity and social interactivity is going to change fundamental human nature. It doesn’t matter whether we’re hyper-connected or not.

… But let’s hear some different perspectives from others …

The Google+ Social Network: Net Plus or Net Minus?

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Google Plus, Google+What’s the latest with Google+? The big splash predicted when the new social platform hit the web has been more of a ripple instead.

Underscoring this, recent news reports have suggested that Google basically missed the boat on social media … and that rival Facebook is far too well-established to face anything more than just token competition going forward.

It’s true that many people find the prospects of building and engaging in yet another social media channel a wearying thought, to say the least. There are, after all, only so many hours in the day.

But Google doesn’t want to cede the social media marketplace to Facebook without a fight. That’s understandable, considering the billions of dollars in potential advertising revenues that come from being able to serve ad messages to people who are connected to others who “like” a product or service.

The results charted to date on Facebook confirm that displaying friend “likes” adds an extra measure of credibility to advertising. That’s manifested in a clickthrough rate that’s three times what’s typical for other advertisements on the social platform.

The launch of Google+ this past summer hasn’t resulted in huge user adoption, that much is clear. The Google+ social platform has managed to nab ~40 million users, which isn’t a shabby number in and of itself. But it pales in comparison to the more than 800 million active users on Facebook.

But despite this less-than-stellar performance, we see clues as to where Google is going with its social platform. That’s because Google’s equivalent of the “like” button – the “+1” notation that shows up on Google’s search engine results pages – goes further than simply communicating the news to those in someone’s own Google+ network. Google is also mapping that information through to its Gmail account base.

Google’s Gmail service has hundreds of millions of users, and those who use the site regularly have accumulated dozens or hundreds of contacts. So when a user clicks +1, Google can show that result not just to the user’s social friends on Google+, but also to his or her contacts in Gmail.

[For those who cry “foul” on privacy grounds, Google maintains that clicking the “+1” button is a public action and therefore not subject to privacy considerations.]

The jury’s still out on what the social map will look like in a couple years. There’s little doubt Facebook will still be the biggest guy on the block. The question is, to what extent will Google have taken the 600 pound gorilla down a notch? Stay tuned …

The Rise of Siri: Getting Set to Revolutionize Web Search?

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Siri digital personal assistant on the Apple iPhone 4SSiri, the digital personal assistant that’s been integrated into the new iPhone 4S from Apple, is generating substantial buzz. That’s because it’s so much more accurate than earlier iterations of voice command platforms. (Google’s digital personal assistant on the Android operating system has generated far less accolades by comparison.)

The question is, what will Siri do to change the traditional ways people interact with the Web? Because Siri is far more than just voice recognition. It’s what it does with the voice it recognizes that’s so interesting.

Siri can update your calendar, set reminders, play music, write e-mails and text – indeed, it’s a personal assistant in every sense of the word.

Users of the iPhone 4S are using Siri to send texts and e-mails. They’re tending to open fewer apps, since Siri is very effective in deciding which app, service or site will best handle the needed tasks.

In search, this means that Siri may supplant what users might have done previously: namely, open a browser window and search using Google or Bing. If a user is asking Siri to find the closest good-quality dry cleaning establishment, for example, the result may be based on more than the top spot on Google Places … it may also be based on customer ratings on Yelp or “likes” on Facebook.

That’s because Siri navigates a variety of application program interfaces, pulling not only your information, but also information provided by others.

The rise of social media platforms has already alerted us to the fact that simply having a highly relevant, well-optimized website is no longer enough. The “endorsement” of sites, the incidence of positive customer reviews and the degree of “engagement” with visitors are playing a bigger role now, thanks to Facebook, Google+1 and various rating sites.

But now, with Siri and digital personal assistants entering the scene in a major way, we may well see people migrating away from accessing search pages and simply using the friendly voice in their mobile device to send them where they want to go.

… It’s yet another example of the constant state of change that’s a fact of life in the world of digital marketing.