iPad is rapidly gaining share in terms of site visits.  With just a few weeks of availability, the iPad has shown rapid growth and in some cases, has overtaken more established mobile devices in terms of visits.  While iPad visits make up a small proportion of total site visits (typically less than 0.5%), this fast growth shows promise.  Whether this rapid growth rate can be sustained in the longer term remains to be seen.

iPad browsing behavior is more similar to desktop than mobile. Average pageviews per visit, bounce rate, and conversion rate from iPad visits tend to be more like desktop browser averages than mobile.  The table below compares site metrics among the most popular mobile devices to the site average – iPad usage is clearly not like the others.  The most likely explanation is the screen size which makes the user experience more like a desktop than a mobile device.  Based on site usage stats, the iPad web browser would be more appropriately classified as a desktop browser in tools like Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst.  The inability to view Flash content on the iPad is the primary difference, but most savvy online marketers are delivering Flash-free alternatives to the iPad and mobile device visitors.

iPad visits skew toward being email- and search-initiated. We were curious to know what was driving iPad visits to sites and if it differed from desktop usage.  It appears that iPad visits tend to skew more towards being email and search engine driven.  Traffic from email makes sense — the iPad is great for checking email and the ability to click on a promotion to visit a website is obvious.

Search was a little surprising at first although upon closer consideration it makes sense too.  The Safari web browser on the iPad provides an integrated search box.  When launching a new web browser window, text focus goes to the search box instead of the URL field, thereby encouraging individuals to use search as the default method of navigation.  Search results, both natural and paid, will remain an important factor for iPad users. It’s important to note that traffic sources vary greatly from site to site based on factors like industry vertical, marketing programs and brand recognition.

These initial stats seem very promising for the iPad and it will be interesting to see if these patterns hold up beyond the early adopters.  Marketers should examine iPad usage stats for their own websites and work towards making their site iPad-friendly.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

OS4 Will Make the iPad Truly “Magical and Revolutionary”

Chris Paradysz:  OS4 will have multi-tasking capabilities.  Now, I love the iPad.  I can be excited about any great technology, but it should fulfill the hope I had back when I blogged about it earlier in the year that it will create an intimacy bond between content and users.

Music, video, words, pictures should no longer be disconnected from touch and feel.  The iPod and iPhone didn’t transform this connection with people (consumers).  With the portability, size and weight of the iPad well-suited to most people’s hands and laps, it can easily move from one position to another and from one person to another.

From a marketing pov, this creates a new experience sensation and viral ability that prior e-readers have failed to deliver.  Within an app or the internet, an advertiser can deliver a rich brand or offer experience, not just ink on “paper”.   With the iAd and technology infrastructure to support it, I have two questions:  1) how soon will it be before Apple starts up an advertising agency; 2) will a new SNL Apple skit be on this Saturday night?

A Must-Have Device You Didn’t Know You Needed

Suzy Sandberg: Just to get this out of the way, YES, the iPad does look like a giant iPod Touch. (iPad owners, I feel your pain on this relentless comment).  And since I can’t strap the iPad to my arm when I go running, I do still need my iPod Touch. And I still need my laptop since the iPad has limitations (no USB for one). I also have/need a cell phone until/unless Verizon ever actually does get the iPhone.

So with four devices (ok, I actually just lied about that…I have a Blackberry, too), where does this newest one, the iPad, fit in my life?

First is that it gets me online quickly, and the speed is lightning fast. Research has shown that the majority of time spent on the mobile web is done in the home, on the couch. I am one of those. The experience of being online on an iPad can’t compare to that of an iPhone or iPod Touch, particularly if you are consuming media. Just because you CAN download a movie or book on an iPhone, does that mean you should?

If you have an iPad you should do your downloads on that device. Some media is so breathtakingly beautiful and awe inspiring that even though I’ve had the iPad just for one week, I couldn’t go back to the small screen for certain things.

In the app department, the current choice is somewhat limited, but I’m optimistic that here is where the iPad is going to hit a home run. There are many apps to be enamored with for the iPhone, though many were developed as workarounds for a clunky web experience on a tiny screen. Since that is definitely not a factor with the iPad, I predict incredible creativity coming out of the app store to serve entertainment needs and many other things I can’t yet visualize.

The iPad fits in my life, so far, because it’s a highly enjoyable experience and perfectly meets the needs of my digital life. Especially when paired with my other four devices.

You and Your Customers Just Got a Whole Lot Closer

Tim Kilroy:  I am a big Apple fan. I use an iPhone. I am writing this on a MacBook Air.  I have never purchased a PC in my life, and I have bought 7 Macs.  And I wasn’t first in line for an iPad!  So what gives?

For me, it was just a failure of imagination.  I didn’t, frankly, understand why I would want an iPad.  It was an iPhone that I could use without my glasses.  Great.  It is a laptop that I can’t do real work on.  Super…that is exactly what I need.  And then, I used it…the magic hit me.

This is truly personal computing that allows for immersive engagement.  Web, mail, video are all at the tip of a finger.  So why is it magic?  Because the computer disappears.  It is just you and whatever you are doing.

What does this mean for marketers?  It means that your presentation layer just got cooler, and more transparent.  The opportunity to create impact and engagement just increased.  Imagine that your interaction with consumers on a computer is like you yelling across 6^th Avenue at your target audience.  They can hear you, and some will even listen closely.  But few will ignore everything else happening in NY to follow you.  With the iPad, you have the opportunity to walk across 6^th Avenue, and sit down with your customer at a Starbucks. It is still noisy, but you can sit across the table from each other and listen.

And that is magic.

More Touch, More Emotion, More Measurement Challenges

 Anthony Avolio: Based on my experience with the iPad thus far, I have three key impact areas for marketers to consider moving forward.

Touch usability.  Marketers must actively consider touch interfaces when planning their designs. Designs with small click targets, extensive use of hovers/rollovers or requiring browser plug-ins don’t create a positive user experience on the iPad. This applies to all online media, including websites, banners and emails. While the iPad is just one device, it’s likely the start of a new mainstream push for touch interfaces. Marketers must insist that their creations function and resonate with consumers on as many screens as possible.

More emotion.  The iPad’s touch interface and minimal design can create a more immersive experience for consumers.  Upon launching an app, the iPad disappears and becomes that app.  Upon opening an email, the iPad becomes that email message. Keyboard and mouse peripherals that typically separate the consumer from content are absent on the iPad, allowing the experience to be more direct, more one-on-one.  Skilled marketers will use this more direct opportunity to delight, enthrall and connect.

Increased splintering of online browsing will continue to create challenges for measurement. In the old days, consumers’ online activity was typically split between two web browsers — one at home and one at work.  Smart phones and now iPads add to the number of devices that a single consumer actively uses to access the Internet, making measurement more challenging. Consumers can now learn about a new product on their work computers, research further on their phones before purchasing it on their tablets while at home.  With online browsing spread across devices and apps, conversion measurement and campaign attribution become increasingly more complicated.

Suitable for Framing

Glenn Lalich:  My first few days of playing around with the iPad were largely app-focused, as I figured that was where the biggest wow factor would be.  And the few retail apps available did not disappoint.  The Gilt for iPad app is elegant, and I found my fingers naturally tapping up beautiful super-sized product photos.  The Gap 1969 Stream app is even more revolutionary, with the iPad acting as a window on some infinite universe of Gap photos, merchandise, stories, videos and social media links. Pretty amazing stuff.

But from a retail perspective, my favorite iPad surprise didn’t come from a download.  It came when I stopped playing around with my apps for a second to check my email.  That’s when I noticed that the retail emails in my inbox looked gorgeous. The size of the iPad display, the hand-held proximity and the glossy screen made many emails akin to high-quality print ads or catalog pages.  Freed from a traditional computer, they were vibrant and alive in my hand.

Not every email I saw was a winner, mind you.  Product grids with a lot of white space can look like meagerly stocked store shelves.  In portrait mode, top-heavy layouts designed for standard preview windows do not fill the entire iPad screen, allowing below-the-fold disclaimers and legalese to move up and steal a bit of the spotlight.  But these are relatively modest adjustments to make, and relatively inexpensive as well.

The iPad just gave email creative a dazzling shot in the arm.  And it didn’t cost marketers a cent.  As much as I hope to see killer retail apps and touch-centric websites in the near future, it’s exciting that the iPad’s “magical” display and interactivity already offers fresh advantages to retailers as is, right out of the box.

While website owners can’t dictate the specific links to use in their organic listing, Google does provide the ability to disable individual sitelinks from appearing in their organic results.  Rather than disabling questionable or unwanted organic sitelinks blindly, marketers should use web analytics to measure the usage and effectiveness of each link beforehand. Also, Google introduced the option to include sitelinks in paid search listings late last year, which has proven to be very effective for advertisers.  Understanding the performance of organic sitelinks can be helpful in choosing sitelinks to test in your paid search program.

Because sitelinks are organic listings, it’s not possible to add custom tags to these links for direct measurement.  Instead, sitelink activity must be inferred based on the landing page of visits from natural search brand terms.  Entries on your homepage are likely the result of clicks on the main search result link.  Non-homepage entries are most likely the result of clicks on individual sitelinks.

For example, take the screenshot above, which shows how a search for “pm digital” recently appeared on Google.  Clicks on any of these links will be attributed to the natural search term of “pm digital” although the landing page varies depending on the link clicked on.  Measuring the number of visits by landing page is an indication of each sitelink’s popularity.  Also, visitor’s onsite behavior from these various entry points provides a measure of how valuable each of these links are.  Sitelinks with a high bounce rate or low conversion rate could be candidates to be disabled if other, potentially more relevant sitelinks exist.  Keep in mind that some valuable links may naturally have a high bounce rate.  For example, a sitelink for ‘Store Locations’ may provide searchers exactly the information they want in a single pageview.

Because sitelinks often vary by search engine, analyses should be conducted one engine at a time.  Also, search engines adjust sitelinks over time, so it’s best to analyze a recent timeperiod or one where you know which sitelinks were presented to searchers.

Google Analytics makes it very easy to measure sitelink activity using the method outlined above.

1. Start with your Traffic Sources > Search Engines report and drill down into one search engine (e.g., google).
2. Select “non-paid” in the Show list so that data reflects organic search visits only.
3. Drilldown further into your top brand keyword (e.g., “pm digital”).
4. In the resulting Detail report, change the dropdown menu from ‘None’ to ‘Landing Page’ to view data by that dimension (confirm that “non-paid” is still selected in the Show list).

Measuring Organic Sitelinks in Google Analytics (click to enlarge)

The resulting report shows the popularity of each landing page and key traffic metrics associated with those visits.  Ecommerce metrics and goal conversions are also reported for each landing page for assessment and to help determine the potential impact of disabling one of the sitelinks in favor of others.

The same analysis concept outlined above can be applied to other web analytics packages too.  For example, in Coremetrics Analytics, a Key Segment can be created to isolate natural search traffic from a specific engine and keyword.  The Key Segment can then be applied to the Content Categories report to view site entries by landing page.  In Omniture Sitecatalyst, the Data Warehouse tool can be used to create a segment based on natural search traffic for a specific engine and brand keyword(s).  The Data Warehouse report can be constructed to break down visits and other site metrics by Entry Page.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

Several new features for Google Analytics were announced last month designed to make the free web analytics platform more powerful and easy to use.  Below is a highlight of several new features.

Goal tracking improvements.  In addition to increasing the number of configurable goals to 20 per profile, new site engagement goal types have been introduced.  Engagement goals can be set based on the visit duration or the number of pages viewed during a visit.  For example, a goal can be set to occur if time on site surpasses 10 minutes or after 12 pages have been viewed in a visit.  These new goal types allow site owners to measure the proportion of visits that meet a time on site or pageview threshold and are especially valuable for content websites.  AdWords advertisers can use these Google Analytics goals for campaign optimization in cases where ecommerce conversion is not applicable or the target behavior.

Mobile measurement.  As Google continues its expansion into mobile advertising, they’re also providing marketers with tools to measure usage of their mobile investments.  iPhone and Android mobile app developers can now use Google Analytics to measure user engagement within their apps.  New tools were also introduced for measuring traffic on mobile-formatted websites regardless of whether or not the mobile device runs JavaScript.  As consumers and marketers focus more on mobile, Google Analytics is providing a familiar framework for measurement.

Analytics Intelligence.  One of the most interesting new features is analytics intelligence, an algorithm based alert system designed to monitor data and automatically notify analysts to significant changes in data patterns, like a sudden decline in traffic from a referring site or an increase in bounce rate.  The goal is to shift effort from monitoring data to acting on data.  In addition to these automatic alerts, custom user-defined alerts can be set to notify analysts when a pre-defined change in metrics has occurred.

More details on these and other new features can be found on the Google Analytics blog. The new features are the latest in a series of enhancements to strengthen Google Analytics’ position as an enterprise-class web analytics platform.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

Local search ads take mobile leap on iPhone.

Google Sponsored Listings have started to appear within the Maps application installed on every iPhone and iPod touch device. These paid listings appear alongside organic results when users perform relevant searches, helping local customers find appropriate businesses from their mobile phone.  PM Digital is working on getting more details on the specifics of this new program and how it relates to Google’s Local Business Ads program.

Sponsored listings appear both in the map view and list view after a user performs a search. In the Map view, sponsored listings use a custom pushpin icon rather than the traditional red one used for search results. Also, these paid listings are labeled “Sponsored Link” beneath the business name.  In the List view of the search results, paid listings are shaded yellow as they are in Google search results, with the favicon-like graphic used in the pushpin also present. Our testing has found sponsored listings to appear at the top and bottom of search results.

When users click on a sponsored listing to view more details, some brief ad copy is present at the top of the page. Otherwise, the page looks like a traditional organic listing, providing street address, phone number, URL and buttons to get directions to the brick-and-mortar location.

Apple’s Maps application is installed by default on every iPhone and iPod touch device. The application was built by Apple, but uses Google’s mapping and search technology. This marks the first time advertisements have appeared within a pre-installed iPhone app. It appears that sponsored listings in Maps is a feature of iPhone OS 3.1, the most recent version of the mobile operating system released in September 2009.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

Measure bounce rates of your marketing efforts.  Bounce rate, defined as the proportion of site visits consisting of a single page view, provides a great gauge for measuring visitor satisfaction with landing pages and/or the quality of traffic that a marketing program is attracting. High bounce rates are usually undesirable, indicating entry and exit while only viewing one webpage.  This is information every marketer should be looking for.  Reporting bounce rates by campaign tracking code, however, is not part of the out-of-the-box SiteCatalyst reports (see this Omniture blog post for a general overview of bounce rates in SiteCatalyst). Be sure to talk to your implementation consultant about measuring bounce rates of your marketing programs, both by tracking code (e.g., individual paid search keywords) and higher-level classifications (e.g., keyword category and search engine).  This can be accomplished through customization within SiteCatalyst or other Omniture tools, and we recommend that clients discuss whether the solution being developed for their site provides this data.

Consider using multiple variables to evaluate marketing performance.  The default campaign variable provides the foundation for tracking marketing efforts.  However, if you’re interested in analyzing marketing efforts using different attribution logic (e.g. comparing differences in performance between 7 day vs. 30 day look-back windows), then plan to store the tracking code in a second variable too, with different expiration/allocation settings applied within SiteCatalyst.  Consider using different conversion variables to evaluate campaign performance several different ways and help find the attribution model that’s most appropriate for your business.

Discuss the Unified Sources Vista Rule with your Omniture team. The default SiteCatalyst reports do not provide a single view detailing traffic and conversions from both paid programs (e.g., paid search, comparison shopping engines, email) and unpaid sources (e.g., natural search, referrals from other sites, direct load).  The Unified Sources Vista Rule operates on Omniture’s backend servers and is aimed at providing a customized solution for addressing this deficiency.  The end product is the ability to run a single “unified source” report itemizing the performance of each traffic source.  A more detailed explanation can be found in this recent blog post from Omniture.  A different tool designed to accomplish a similar goal is the Channel Manager plug-in, which many clients also find sufficient for their channel tracking needs.

As mentioned previously, Omniture SiteCatalyst is an extremely customizable platform that allows marketers many options for tailoring online measurement to their unique needs.  As with any platform, don’t make assumptions about the default implementation.  We recommend sharing sample reports with your Omniture team that you expect to produce.  Some upfront planning and confirmation work in the early stages can save time and frustration down the line.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

Sitelink editing.  Sitelinks are links to internal pages that appear with some natural search results (these are sometimes referred to as ‘quick links’ by other engines). Google generates these links automatically for results they think will be useful to searchers.  If inappropriate or undesirable links are appearing in Google’s natural search results for your site, you can block them from appearing using Webmaster Tools.  For example, some retailers prefer that pages like ‘Clearance’, ‘Careers’ or ‘Investor Relations’ not appear as a sitelink.

Individual links can be blocked or unblocked on the Site configuration > Sitelinks page of Webmaster Tools.  Sitelinks are listed with a button labeled ‘block’ (or ‘unblock’) next to each one.  Before blocking a link, keep in mind that Google only displays sitelinks when a site has three or more sitelinks available.  Once you’ve blocked a sitelink, it won’t appear in the Google search results for 90 days. The Help section of Webmaster Tools contains other important details about managing sitelinks on Google.

Top search queries.  Webmaster Tools contains valuable information about search queries that have returned pages from your site.  This data can be found in the Your site on the web > Top search queries section. The report lists top Google search queries by both Impression and Traffic with position data is listed for each query.  While top natural search terms driving traffic can be determined from web analytics, the top terms by impression and rank data are unique to Webmaster Tools.  This data can be filtered along 3 dimensions: by type of search (e.g., all of Google, Web Search only, Product Search only, Image search only, etc…), by country and by time period.

This search query data has multiple uses for search marketing, including:

• identifying opportunities to strengthen presence on high impression/low click terms using paid search terms
• monitoring trends in queries and rankings over time to identify shifts in consumer behavior or SEO improvements
• identifying which product or image searches are driving impressions and traffic
• identifying mobile searches driving impressions and traffic
• identifying keyword variations to include in paid search marketing

Inbound links to your site.  Webmaster Tools allows you to see which external sites are linking to your site. This data can be found under Your site on the web > Links to your site.  The report provides an overview of all the pages on your site which Google has found links to, and the number of links it has found to these pages.  Clicking on the number of inbound links shows external webpages that have links to your page.

This data can be used for reputation management by monitoring external sites that are linking to yours and whether or not it was in a positive context.  Inbound link data also provides a source for exploring advertising or partnership opportunities.

If you’re not already using data and features from Google Webmaster Tools to improve your online marketing, hopefully this post will help motivate you to begin. Getting started requires you to verify ownership of your site – you’ll likely need to work with your web team to accomplish this.  Also, while Google’s free tools tend to receive the most love from the industry (and this blog post), Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Center deserves some attention too.  Bing’s tool doesn’t currently provide all of the same features as Google, but is expected to continue to grow over time.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

Outbound links. If your site includes a social bookmark or sharing tool, measuring usage of this tool can help answer…

• Which social sites are my customers using to share my content?
• Which types of content are customers sharing most?  Should frequently shared content be more prominently featured?
• What type of customer is sharing content on social media outlets? Is your business benefiting from this?

Usage data from sharing tools provides insight into which social spaces customers are active in and what content most interests them.  Tracking this activity within your analytics package (Google Analytics, SiteCatalyst, etc.) allows you to view this data alongside other site metrics and use it for segmenting visitors.  Alternatively, many sharing widgets offer free reporting on how visitors are using them.  If your site offers a bookmark/sharing tool, consider tagging the shared URLs with tracking parameters to more reliably measure visitors arriving at your site from these links.

Inbound traffic from social media. Measuring traffic arriving at your site from social media can help answer questions like…

• Which social media sites are visitors and customers using to access my site?
• Which content sections of my site are generating the most social-initiated visits?
• Is traffic originating from social sites trending upward?

Inbound traffic from social media sites provides another view of where conversations are occurring and which content is generating interest.  Keep in mind that traffic from these sources, even click-based traffic, can present tracking challenges due to the many ways that visitors can reach your site.  Traffic from Twitter can be especially susceptible to under-reporting due in part to the many ways people use this service, such as the Twitter website itself or desktop and mobile clients like Tweetie and Twitterific.  (SearchEngineLand recently outlined some factors affecting the under-reporting of Twitter traffic by analytics packages.)  While tracking is still imperfect, analyzing trends in activity from social media can improve understanding of customer behavior and provide insight into the content that is driving traffic.

Brand mention monitoring. Measuring brand mentions within the social media space can help answer questions like…

• Do brand mentions correlate with traffic increases to my website?
• Are the conversations around my brand increasing?  Are they becoming more positive?
• What are consumers discussing about my brand and how can we remain sensitive to feedback?

Measuring and monitoring brand mentions in the social space provides valuable insight into consumers’ experiences with your brand, both good and bad.  Social sites like Twitter offer advanced search functionalityand APIs for searching the conversations taking place.  Dozens of tools have cropped up to help companies monitor and evaluate brand mentions on Twitter alone, and traditional web analytics providers have joined the fray by offering solutions to import this data into their platforms (see Omniture Integrates Data from Twitter).  Expect to see similar tools for other social sites as they provide APIs for accessing data.

Even if your company doesn’t have an official Facebook fan page or Twitter account, chances are high that your brand is already part of the social media world.  For better or worse, social media is changing your customers, which in turn will change your business.  While far from perfect, marketers must tackle the issue of social media measurement head-on or risk being left behind.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.