Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

Looking at features that would add value to a website, a Recommendations Engine like Loomia seems to fit the bill.  In fact I just read about Loomia Partners With Wall Street Journal in TechCrunch.

I've been looking for ways to bolster engagement in sites by offering recommendations (at least when people want to get input from an online recommendations engine like what Amazon does .... when it tries to tell you what you might you might also be interested in..most of the time I ignore, or find those recommendations somewhat annoying..but that's just me).

But let's take it up a notch.  What does the Web Analytics Association and architects like Alan Mascord have in common?   Lots of content - different audience - but there's niche audiences for both .... and  yet ... no real online recommendation engine in either site.

What if there was an easier way to take the technology that Amazon uses ... and plop it into the Web Analytics Association site ... or into Alan Mascord's site ... do you think it might help?  I think in Mascord's case, it would help.  For Web Analysts and vendors, the target audience on the WAA's site, it could help if it  were set up and well tuned.

According to TechCrunch:

"..Loomia, a recommendation engine that is used by ecommerce and content websites to suggest new stuff to users, locked up a marquee business development deal with the Wall Street Journal.

The module, which appears next to stories, suggests other Wall Street Journal content based on what the user has read previously on the site, and compared to what other users have read, too. The module is titled “People Who Read This…” - see image below.

Loomia competes directly with Aggregate Knowledge, a high flying startup that has raised a total of $25 million in venture capital."

Here's what Loomia's Widget would look like on a news site, for example:

I like the idea, which is not new to me (I did read about Loomia last year - but don't think I wrote about it):

"..Ultimately, what Aggregate Knowledge and Loomia are offering are merchandising tools to Internet companies. Sites like Amazon can afford to develop their own solutions in-house, but other sites, battling razor thin margins already, need to outsource this. Companies like Loomia and Aggregate Knowedge are there to fill that need. BazaarVoice is another company in this sector, although they offer a different product - reviews and commenting features."

For someone like Alan Mascord, the question really should be .. does Eplans.com, Coolhouseplans.com or other large houseplans sites use Loomia or one of the other online recommendations engines?  The Answer is .... no for Eplans.com, but they have made plenty of improvements on the site since the last time I looked, in depth, at their site, two years ago.

www.Coolhouseplans.com plan pages are now too busy - they went overboard, trying to make their pages more search friendly, forgetting the real reason to have these pages is not for Search Engines, its' for the people that are on your site; they don't have a house plans recommendation engine either.  With Loomia, that would be fairly easy to set up - but everyone seems to be focused on traffic, like addicts, forgetting it's not about traffic.   I tried telling that to The House Designers - but they would not listen - and their profit margins showed it - just as most of the rest of the house plans sites are a horror house story as far as conversions go.

In fact, I'd rather have 10 happy visitors, 5 who end up buying a house plan, than 1000 grumpy visitors, who I bought traffic or manipulated search engines to send the traffic, of whom one may buy every other time, which is what I had seen in several of the House Plans sites.

For most marketers, they still think "volume" when the answer is not volume - it's micro niche and personalized targeting via anonymous click stream monitoring - to give the visitor what they need when they need in form they need it.

GlobalHousePlans.com seems offer the best visitor experience, in my opinion, of all the top house plans sites - yet it does not have a real recommendations engine either.

Getting back to Alan Mascord's site - if you clicked on The Dearborn, a European House Plan, for example, maybe you'd also like to see.... The Ackland, The Holden, The Franciscan, The Wellington or The Avellana.  That would be easy to accomplish, I think, using Loomia, based totally on Clickstream analysis, but much harder to hard wire, and probably less effective than doing it with an online Recommendations Engine.

Same thing for the Web Analytics Association ... if you click on a Podcast for say..... Bounce Rate Demystified ...maybe you'd be interested in ...... Web Analysis With a Single Report or Measuring a Flash Enabled Product Demo or Hitting the Landing Page Optimization Wall.

Yes, I'd like to get the Web Analytics Association to try out a Recommendations Engine like Loomia, and we'll discuss the idea in the WAA Social Media and Community Committee.

And I noticed that Know More Media does use a Recommendations Engine - when you click on the hyperlink for this post for Loomia Recommendation Engine, at the bottom you get the following Related Recommendations for further reading:

related entries

• Online Measurement Dilemmas bring about the need for a Measurement Summit Jul 11, 2007
• Measuring Social Media and Online Video - Jim Sterne Jun 28, 2007
• Going to Paris - user generated content in the New York Times May 28, 2007
• A lot of Great Stuff going on at the Emetrics Summit next week May 3, 2007
• It's Official - the new Board of Directors of the Web Analytics Association Apr 24, 2007

I have to ask Know More Media what powers this recommendation engine  that is serving up related entries but for a Web Analyst, the goal should be to see how many visitors who view a popular post click on any of the recommended related posts and how much longer, potentially (or deeper) into the blog they go because of it ..and that's the subject for a future post.

But I'd do the same thing for Alan Mascord's site if they put in Loomia, or something like it ...I'd look at how much the Reccomendation Engine contributed to engagement by observing clickstream and trying to tie that back to a shopping cart purchase.

And that's a lot more important than being number 3 or 4 for house plans, home plans and floor plans in Google.