BUS572-5

Reflection on Google Analytics Assignment

I am glad that I finally finish this week assignment, which is about Google Analytics videos and the final assessments.  I have to say that it is a time consuming task that it costs me so much time to finish all of them.  Fortunately, I made it.

The first course called Digital Analytics Fundamentals which provides a foundation for marketers and analysts seeking to understand the core principles of digital analytics and to improve business performance through better digital measurement.

The second course called Google Analytics Academy which helps me to learn what the different components of the platform are, how they all work together and how to collect the data you need that helps to make informed decisions about.

The information is detailed and useful for our GOMC. And it does help me a lot.

BUS572-4

The first concept this week for me is an empirical analysis of search engine advertising from Ghose and Yang's article that our team presentation is based on it. The phenomenon of sponsored search advertising—where advertisers pay a fee to Internet search engines to be displayed alongside organic (nonsponsored) Web search results—is gaining ground as the largest source of revenues for search engines. For example, using a unique six-month panel data set of several hundred keywords collected from a large nationwide retailer that advertises on Google, we empirically model the relationship between different sponsored search metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, cost per click, and ranking of advertisements. I have found this very useful because it makes me to think about choosing to use brand specific keywords or retailer specific keywords. But as the writers said in this article, it still has some limitations, such as lack of data. So are the results that they get persuasive?

The second most important concept I learned is the Google Display Network from the case article of Jordan Brand. The Google Display Network offers text, image, rich media, and video advertising on Google properties, YouTube, and millions of web, domain, video, gaming, and mobile partner sites. From mass media to niche sites, advertisers can find the most engaged audiences, place ads on the most relevant pages, and achieve performance at scale through our innovative targeting technology. Using our tools, advertisers can build ads, measure results, optimize campaigns, and expand their advertising reach to specific audiences all over the web. I thought this example is useful because it shows the positive impact of Google's Display Network on businesses and our team can learn from it. So are there any more good examples for us to follow or understand?

http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/

The most important skill is the Google Analytics that is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website's traffic and traffic sources and measures conversions and sales. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service. It's useful because it can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines and social networks, direct visits and referring sites. It also displays advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents. Will any groups that wined the campaign in the past want to share their experience about observe the data?  

This week's article is more difficult for me to understand, especially the equations and calculations in Ghose and Yang's article. But the good thing is the quiz associated with this article I did was satisfactory. In team works, I think I really pay less than my team members who did a lot of favors for me. With their helps, I can easily finish our work before the due time. Thank you for their works. Besides, I think I need to pay more attention on Google analytic because I was confused about it at first, so I believe we could get a positive outlook in the near future.

BUS572-3

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of optimising a web site so as to achieve preferred ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Someone who practices SEO professionally is also known as an SEO (search engine optimiser).In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines. I think the SEO is very essential that every user could find relevant and useful information. SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective like paid advertising through PPC campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals. A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate. But is that converient for normal people to use search engine optimisation and get a good result?

When it comes to SEO, one thing is called emerging trends is also important. Here are the three strong emerging trends:

1. Localization 
2. Personalized search
3. Usage data

By localising, the search engines are presenting information in the language and geographic context of the user. In personalising search, the search engines are trying to align with what they have determined would be more appropriate for that specific user. Personalised search targets users preferences on two bases: explicitly and implicity. Surveys suggest that users are generally in favour of personalisation and are willing to trade personal information to benefit from better quality results from the search engines. Usage data is the most effective way of judging the true relevancy and value of a web site. For example, if users arrive on a web site and go back immediately, chances are it wasn’t relevant to their query in the first place. However, if a user repeatedly visits a web site and spends a long time on the site, chances are it is extremely relevant. When it comes to search engines, relevant valuable sites get promoted, irrelevant sites get demoted. (Stokes) But my question is the emerging trends can collect data about users preferences, is that mean a invasion of privacy?

http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/online-marketing-essentials/s09-search-engine-optimization.html

The skillset I learnt is tools of the trade. There are a number of tools available to assist with SEO. Some are made available by search engines, and some are developed by agencies and individuals who specialise in SEO, such as Google Webmaster Tools and Keyword discovery tools. These tools are helpful for me to better know SEO, how it works and what the problem it reflects. My problem is how to proficiently use these tools, and is there any speaker would teach us about these?

This week, I take charge of revising our former paper. What I learnt is to optimize our paper work to a perfect version so that every team member would be happy about that. Look forward to knowing more about A/B testing and the new content of class.

BUS572-2

Concept 1: The Conversion Funnel

When I read the chapter 15, the first concept I noticed is the conversion funnel which is a technical term used in e-commerce operations to describe the track a consumer takes through an Internet advertising or search system, navigating an e-commerce website and finally converting to a sale.Here is an example:

Someone wants to choose a cruise line to travel during spring break on Expedia. Expedia's ultimate goal is that visitors to the site make a booking on the web site with a credit card.

Event 1: perform a search for available dates or routes for cruises in the desired port

Event 2: check prices and activities for available cruise lines

Event 3: select a cruise and go to checkout

Event 4: enter personal and payment details and confirm booking (conversion)

This conversion funnel is a process to select final customers.  This can be a very useful tool to website owners because it could easily select their targeted customers who are interested in the website. Moreover, it can analyse why they lose their customers' interests. Based on this, they could optimize the website and attract more customers to be their final customers. Basically, this model is a tool for website owner to use, but if they want to increase the number of customers flowing through each event which means increasing the sales, what should they do to attract more customers to go to the final event?

Concept 2: The Click Path

Another concept I found interesting was click path is the sequence of hyperlinks one or more website visitors follows on a given site. A visitor's click path may start within the website or at a 3rd party website and it continues as a sequence of successive webpages visited by the visitor. Here is an example, 5 Steps: Click-Path Analysis Leads to Shopping-Cart Fix that Lifts Conversions 43%, which can clearly reflect the practicability of Click-Path analysis. It is worth mentioning that Click path is considered an important aspect of website analytics as it provides detail of visitor behavior and helps website marketers to better organize website content and layout. But how is the click path of a first time visitor different to a returning visitor? Can the click path tell them apart?

One of the skills that I learnt in this week is to participate in our team talking about Google’s key word selecting. As a result of the fact that English isn't my first language, I couldn't think out so many relative key words at the same time. But a fun thing is I could remind my teammates of  some relevant words. For instance, my teammates were talking about one key word "vacation", and I asked " does the word vacation means holiday?" Obviously, "vacation" and "holiday" both became our key words. Also, one of the important things about finding the words for the Ad-Groups is being able to think like your customers think, so I tried regarding myself as a customer to search the website. And it works as well. 

Finally, team work is like an invisible hand that can effectively push work efficiency. We brainstormed key words in our team meeting that brought me a lot of fun in cooperation. I really enjoy my life in my team. And I can't wait to join the AdWords campaign.

BUS572-1

Global Marketing is my first class about online marketing in my life. I feel so curious what contents of our class would be attractive to me in the very beginning. So the first concept I find interesting is the Search Engine. A search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a specialist in web pages, images, information and other types of files. For instance, if you want to look for a wonderful restaurant for dinner around town, it is convenient to open a search engine and input some key words, like “delicious food in Pittsburgh”. The result page would show you all best restaurants in magazines or on the list near or in Pittsburgh. It is useful for me because I can search anything I want or any information I look for, and there is a saying that there is no need to store knowledge as long as you know how to use search engine in current century. A search engine operates in three ways, such as web crawling, indexing and searching. It is important to get to know how a search engine works because it helps marketers to understand some sensitive keywords that are helpful in making a decision of designing websites and relevance. Although the search engines so powerful that could solve most problems or query people look for, how would it deal with the searching results about violence or unhealthy information which could badly influence people including children under 18.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine

Another concept I am interested is the Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is an advertising system where the advertiser only pays for each click on their advert. While it is most often used as an advertising system offered by search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and Baidu, it can also be used for banner advertising (where the advertiser pays for clicks on the advert as opposed to impressions). PPC is also the system on which many shopping engines and directories, such as NexTag and Shopping.com, are based. Sometimes PPC advertising on search engines is referred to as paid search. For example, if I search wonderful restaurants, some relevant information about restaurants in Pittsburgh would show up on the right side of the searching page. The advertisers placing advertisements about wonderful restaurants information has to pay to the search engine company through people click into the advertisements. So PPC allows advertisers to pay for the clicks they receive on online market. My problem is that the advertisement for me is useless at most time because it is easy for me to ignore these information, so is it worth for advertisers to pay in order to get profit after that?

The most important skill I learnt in this week is how to fully take advantage of Google application, like setting up a Blogger. For example, I don’t know how to use or launch a blog on the Internet at the beginning until I figure it out. It is great and useful for me that I can share what I learnt in this week about some concepts or skills to the public. In the meanwhile, it contributes me to better understand how the online marketing works. The only problem I get is I am not sure how to set the link to Dr. Chung’s blog collecting systems so that she can see my blog right away.

My current journey reflection throughout this session is that I briefly understand how the online marketing works and carefully know the concepts, such as search engines, Adwords and CPC or PPC advertising. I really look forward the next class about the introduction to search advertising and Adwords.