Hey, remember when a report from comScore caused a dip in Google’s stocks? Well, irony is a cruel maiden. This shouldn’t come as a shock: Google stepping into the web analytics industry is like a fat man flopping into a kiddie pool.

OK, all jokes aside, Google’s recent announcement of Ad Planner is an interesting development for online marketers. Obviously, there’s some business sense for Google, the most popular search engine, to offer up web analytics services.

At this point, some of you may be wondering about the exact nature and purpose of web analytics. It’s an important part of online marketing as it helps you track many types of online behavior, thus enabling you to predict trends and assess ROIs. Common trends that are measured include the number of unique visitors to a site, average duration of a time that a visitor has spent, the average number of pageviews per visitor, and bounce/exit rates.

Obtaining web stats can be a difficult ordeal. Results are never absolutely precise due to various factors, including:

• Misleading IP addresses. The variable “unique visitors” is usually defined by a user agent and an IP address. Unfortunately, an organization or company can set up their network so that all employees share the same IP address. Thus, a company of over a hundred employees may be seen as one unique visitor by mistake.
• Weird metrics. Unique visitors + Repeat visitors = All visitors? NOPE. If a new user visited a website twice in one day, that user may be counted as both a new and repeat visitor. Understanding metrics can be a little tricky for newcomers.
• The analytics firm itself may be the problem, using a methodology or software program with limitations. (Here’s an interesting quick look at several different web analytics firms.)
• Privacy problems and suspicious users. A lot of web tracking is done with cookies. Many users are understandably worried about their privacy on the Internet; in 2005, one study reported that almost 40% of users deleted cookies once a month. Analytics firms like comScore and HitWise install “researchware” on computers to follow user behavior. Critics have derided this method, calling it another form of spyware. Today numerous applications block third-party cookies and tracking software. Needless to say, these apps, on top of cookie deletions, affect the accuracy of analytics results.

If you were wondering whether Google’s Ad Planner can potentially create an invasion of privacy, the answer is a reluctant “yes.” They’re a little bit secretive and vague about how they will retrieve stats, which is feeding speculation that user data will be collected wherever someone downloads Google Toolbar. But as long as Google Toolbar informs the user of tracking software installation, there should be no problem. Right, Google?!

Well, we’ll defer putting on our aluminum foil hats… for now.

Email is still one of the best ways to reach and maintain relationships with customers. As stated before, it’s one of the more traditional online routes you can use in reaching out to the baby boomer set.

Let’s say, though, that after growing a big enough mailing list, you’re noticing a lower open rate. What if your emails were being sent to the spam bin? Egads, are you considered a spammer?!

In some cases, you’re stuck with a lazy person who labels your email as spam, instead of taking the trouble to unsubscribing. You can’t stop that from happening.

However, sometimes the addressee mistakenly marks an email as spam, and there are a few small things you can do to lower the chances of that happening:

1. Let’s start from the beginning: NO PURCHASING OR RENTING OF MAILING LISTS.

Don’t want to be labeled as a spammer? Then don’t be one. Services that sell or lend mailing lists for marketing purposes usually collect addresses that were used for sign-ups or were posted publicly on websites such as forums. They haven’t solicited your marketing campaigns.

Also, consider that online users are more savvy than ever. Some use disposable email addresses. Many users have multiple email addresses, some of which are for public spaces and sign-ups. These addresses are used as collectors of spam, where the user simply logs in from time to time to clean out the inbox without looking at any of the messages. Their primary addresses, on the other hand, are used for personal correspondence and are fiercely protected.

2. Protect those addresses.

Once you’ve earned sign-ups for your mailing list, be careful not to post or distribute them elsewhere.

3. Don’t use generic subject headings.

In the daily blur of constant email messages, a user may accidentally mark your email as spam when they see a generic subject heading. Something like “July Newsletter” or “Get a Discount” are unlikely to encourage opens.

4. Remind the addressee with a postscript.

Web users are used to scrolling to the bottom of a marketing message or newsletter for a postscript. Here, remind the user that they signed up for the mailing list. Also take advantage of this space by advising the user to add you to their address list or safelist.

5. Provide a visible unsubscribe link.

It sounds like a contradiction, but laying out an unsubscribe link in the postscript helps your cause. Without it, you don’t appear to be transparent and trustworthy. You also want to populate your mailing list with customers who are capable of being interested in your promotions. It’s better to filter out disinterested parties, as opposed to allowing your email campaign getting marked as spam.

6. Comply with the Safe Harbor Privacy policies and with U.S. law.

Read through this checklist to make sure that you are abiding by policies set down by the European Commission. This proves to be helpful when you have international addresses on your mailing list. While you’re at it, make sure you know about the U.S. laws regarding spam.

7. Don’t just send one huge HTML image.

Email clients are more likely to block large HTML images. Clients like Gmail and Outlook block images by default, so a number of your recipients will only see a broken up message initially. Take care to include text apart from the image so that readers will get an idea of who you are and what you are conveying.

8. Personalize.

When you ask people to sign up for your mailing list, ask for a first name at least. This way, you can automate your message to include the recipient’s name in the greeting line. “Merry Christmas David!” is a solid way to alert the reader to the fact that he signed up for the email.

9. Perfect the timing and frequency of your emails.

Sending an email too often or too seldom can get you blacklisted. Although a monthly newsletter seems standard, you should attune the timing and frequency of your promotional emails based on the needs of your subscribers and the relevancy of your promotion.

In case you didn’t know yet, telecommunications companies are briskly working on taking over the world. Or at least hijacking every moment of your life at any location. Their latest step? Making sure you choose them for your mobile web usage.

Last month, we let you in on one of Google’s ongoing projects: Android. Last November, Google and the Open Handset Alliance, a coalition of over 30 technology and mobile companies, announced that the release of the first open and free mobile Internet platform would occur some time in the second half of 2008. Not that we’re midway through the year, Google has bad news: Android won’t hit the markets until the fourth quarter… at the earliest.

The delay is due in part by the mobile phone manufacturers. Some of the those in the coalition are behind schedule. Sprint Nextel Corp., for example, would have a device ready only in late 2008, while China Mobile, “the largest wireless carrier with nearly 400 million subscribers,” may not be ready until as late as 2009.

Google itself is also responsible for the holdup. Android itself is still being tweaked, and with every new development and update, Google has to test the software and then adjust it for the mobile devices.

More bad news for Google: Nokia has bought over 50% of Symbian’s shares and announced buying out the rest. Symbian is a mobile operating system whose nonprofit foundation announced that it would be a “royalty free” platform for mobile devices. It has established itself in Europe, but it has yet to make a splash in the United States. With Nokia’s leadership, though, analysts are already predicting a mobile platform war between Google and Nokia.

Finally, in related news, it was revealed this week that the new 3G iPhone costs $173 to make, surprising since it will sell for only $199. Apparently, Apple will make more than this $26 difference due to AT&T, which has exclusive carrier rights. ISuppli estimates that AT&T will “subsidize” each iPhone sold by $300 and then earn its profits by monthly service fees. Some consumers who resent AT&T service were puzzled by Apple’s decision to grant exclusive rights, but it all makes sense now, doesn’t it?

You do a search on web readability and you will come across Jakob Nielsen, the controversial “usability consultant.” Like that of many “Internet Gurus,” Nielsen’s philosophy for attracting and converting web visitors is simple: have worthwhile content and assume that the web reader is lazy and selfish.

But just one look at his site, and you wonder if anyone would bother navigating through his stuff. His content is noteworthy, as he’s one of the best known authorities on the differences between web and print reading.

The point about Nielsen is not that his site is ugly, but how that affects the readability of his site. Like a lot of online marketers who sell how-to seminars and books, he’s a not a “big picture” kind of guy.

Old Hollywood star Cary Grant said it best: “It takes 500 small details to add up to one favorable impression.” Although content is most important, other factors should be taken into consideration for a worthwhile site: design, layout, and branding.

There is one element in which content and design intersect: font choice.

Font choice is a bigger deal for graphic designers, but newbie web writers should have a basic knowledge on how the style, size, and formatting of font can affect a reader. More importantly, you must know how this one aspect may determine whether a visitor will continue reading your content.

Two basic categorizations for fonts are serif and sans serif. Serif fonts are the ones with those cute little curlicues hanging around at the tips of the letters. Think Times New Roman, Courier New, and Georgia. Sans Serif fonts are without the extra bits, such as Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, and Franklin Gothic.

VERY General Rule of Thumb: For body text, in general, sans serif fonts are more readable on computer screens, while serif fonts are generally recommended for print materials.

Also, keep in mind that some fonts were created specifically for screen viewing, like Verdana and Georgia.

One way to improve readability is to use sans serif font for paragraphs and serif fonts for headlines as a contrast.

Font choice is a part of branding, and it is a huge part of developing the character of your site as well as your product or service. You can use it to make your site elegant and journalistic or modern and minimalistic or funky and off-the-wall. And if you become a large organization, you may afford your own custom typeface, like the Economist.

Remember, design and content are supposed to work together. Don’t make the mistake of discounting one in favor of the other.

Recently, more and more people have been exiting online purchases when they go through the payment order process. According to MarketLive, in the first quarter of 2008, consumers were a little more likely to commit shopping cart abandonment than compared to the first quarter in 2007.

Since e-commerce sites in general have improved over time, the recent increase in the abandonment rate may be attributed to trends occurring outside of the web, such as lower spending overall in the U.S. Online merchants, though, should be aware of the reasons why customers quit their orders in order to maximize profits.

Reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment

According to various surveys, consumers abandon shopping carts for these various reasons (in no particular order):

• Comparison shopping or browsing (not serious or committed about the purchase anyway)
• The site mandates registration before a purchase is made
• The site seems unreliable or unstable, or just plain shady
• The checkout process is too long or confusing
• Shipping takes too long
• Shipping cost*

In case you could not tell by the bolded typeface and the asterisk indication of specialness, we consider the shock of shipping costs to be a significant cause of shopping cart abandonment. After all, if the customer navigated your site to the point that they went into the shopping cart, chances are that your site is not a heinous monster to behold.

Online shopping has two major advantages in comparison to stores: 1) it’s convenient, where you make your order instantaneously and have the package arrive at your home, and 2) almost anything can be found on the web, including collectibles, out-of-print books or records, etc. One difficulty of online shopping, though, is that shipping cost can work against a lowered price on the Internet, and it can be enough of a consideration to halt customers from hitting that “Submit Order” button.

Considerations for Optimizing Your Checkout Process

Ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment:

Before Checkout

1. Show stock availability of each item.

This will put pressure on the customer to buy your product.

2. Reveal lowest shipping cost as early as possible.

It is best to have a variety of shipping options and to include the cost that is cheapest accounted into the estimated order.

3. Have a link to the safety and privacy info near the Order button.

In case someone holds reservations about the safety of your site, give the impression of transparency and assuage their fears with handy links to your website’s accreditation.

During Checkout

1. Make the shopping cart editable.

Sometimes a buyer makes a mistake or suddenly feels hesitant about the cost of the order. Make it easy for the customer to adjust the quantity or other options in the shopping cart.

2. Provide a link to the product page.

Before taking the plunge, a customer may want to make sure that it’s the correct product or review other information. The important thing here is to make sure that the customer is not under too much pressure to commit.

3. Keep the pictures of the chosen products viewable for as long as you can.

According to some, having pictures in the shopping cart improves checkout completion rates.

4. Reveal a progress indicator.

A customer may feel wearied by the checkout process and want to back out (yours truly has even walked out of a real store or two simply because the line was too long). Let them know how far along they are to encourage them through to completion.

5. Make it obvious where to click to continue through the checkout process.

A button that says “Next Step” or “Continue with checkout” would suffice. Place the button beneath the checkout form, as the eyepath of Internet users goes down.

6. To allay concerns about your website, use these tips to make yourself appear trustworthy.

Do you want your site to be the equivalent of that guy who sells fake Chanel bags out of the trunk of his car? Invest some money into your site so that it doesn’t look like a complete fly-by-night operation.

7. Provide a variety of shipping options, including free shipping.

Shipping cost is not the only concern for customers. Some want their wares to arrive fast. Accommodate the needs of all of your customers by offering a range of shipping options.

Better yet, allow for free shipping for orders with a minimum value of your choice. It’s a great way to lure bigger orders and it may save you more money than offering a discount!

Social networking has been well documented for the younger sets of online users. But what about those aged 40 or over?

The baby boomer generation has the most discretionary income, which would make them the most attractive demographic for online marketing. The only problem is… we may be getting ahead of ourselves.

Take, for example, social networking and other Social Media Marketing phenomena. As indicated in the chart above, networking isn’t much of a pastime for the middle-aged and up. Truth be told, as major breadwinners, the post-WWII generation probably just don’t have the discretionary time to superpoke each other.

But it seems that when certain formats and technologies become common and popular, and thus accessible and easy to use, the older demos have no problem following the trend. Just take a look at the following chart from eMarketer:

Email, instant messaging, and texting are basically old hat (no pun intended) for all age groups. As social networking grows, it is not unreasonable to assume that there’s potential for baby boomers to join up in the not-too-distant future. But in order for this to happen, networking has to possess obvious incentives like email and chat. And as related before, social media sites have so much overlap with each other and their functions are not always immediately comprehended. Like, tell me again why I need to display all my saved sites on these social bookmarking places?

Perhaps marketers will have to wait until someone dreams up a networking site that will suit the older sets. One would have to put in consideration about the lifestyles, amount of time, and values of web users aged 40 and over. Until then, however, the “old” bastions of Internet Marketing - email marketing, search engine marketing, and direct banner ads - seem to remain the best bets for reaching this demographic.

This is Part 2 of our Primer on Social Media Marketing - How to Get Started.

With the first step in our primer, we have established what Social Media is, and all the forms it may take on the Internet. Now, we’ll take you through some pointers on how social media marketing is implemented. As applications multiply by the day, we can’t list all methods, but here are some essentials.

First, map out your Social Media Marketing plan with some concrete, trackable goals. Do you want to see an increase in traffic to your site? Do you want a higher number of pageviews or sales within a month? List your objectives and their deadlines before signing up for sites and applications.

Second, establish your brand and identity at places like MySpace and Facebook. Yes, you have your official website, but you would also have official spaces under your control at popular networking sites that have unbelievable web traffic. You also have the option of building a blog, which you can customize and update frequently. For distinction and for consistency, it would be in your best interest to attempt a custom look that fits in with your company’s branding.

Third, whatever forms you may choose for Social Media Marketing, allow end-users to give feedback or otherwise contact you. Comments, wall posts, private messages, and more are excellent features for making contact. And do not be afraid to respond!

Fourth, supply worthwhile content for those who view, read, or subscribe to your site, bookmarks, or feeds. Create blog posts or videos, notify interested parties of any new product launches or new and improved formulas. Conduct an online sweepstakes or giveaway, or simply provide industry news of note.

Fifth, submit your content to third-party websites like Digg and Technorati. Just like we recommended with directories, getting your stuff indexed is one of the best ways to be found.

Last, monitor your efforts. See the sources of your web traffic. Look at your sales and compare them to before you launched your efforts. One caveat, though: a big incentive in using SMM is raising brand awareness, which is hard to track in concrete terms. It also takes a long time to build up before it may take effect. For these reasons, SMM may be a low-priority endeavor for Internet Marketing plans, especially when the business has more pressing online presence issues to attend to, such as an inadequate website or lack of visibility in search engine results pages.

Nevertheless, if you’re curious about the potential of social media, here are a few popular sites to become familiar with:

• YouTube
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Friendster
• del.icio.us
• Technorati
• Yahoo! Answers
• Digg

Part 1 of our Two-Part Primer on Social Media Marketing

Facebook. Flickr. YouTube. Wikipedia. MySpace. Last.fm. Yahoo! Groups. Second Life. Twitter. Message boards. Wikis. Forums. Blogs!

So much Internet usage nowadays revolves around these various applications, technologies, and formats. What do they have in common? They’re all a part of the Social Media phenomenon, which grows at a monstrous rate. And it would only be expanding so vigorously if someone was making money off of it.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) involves various social interactions on the Internet, resulting in the production of messages, posts, videos, audio files, etc. Because of the overwhelming popularity of these sites, marketers have been jumping in to promote brand awareness and target specific demographics. Social media is sometimes used synonymously with Social networking, but for the sake of clarity we will refer to social media, which is a larger umbrella term.

Social Media Marketing (SMM), some say, is a necessary part of any online business presence. But there are a few caveats with this very general advice. For one, imagine promoting your product as a funky application on Facebook. Would it make sense? If your company produced light bulbs, would it be logical that there would be fans or enthusiasts for your product? I would hazard a “no” to that question. Products that would make sense for Facebook applications and groups would be “fun” ones such as movies, cosmetics, fashion, soft drinks, magazines, and even fountain pens.

Context is everything for an online marketing campaign. There is no point at all in you partaking in MySpace if you offer, say, a luxury service. But MySpace would be perfect for new musical acts. The whole point of SMM is to support branding and word-of-mouth about your business, to drum up and sustain excitement about your products and services. With the exception of traditional banner advertisements on social networking sites, these are all very indirect ways (”pull,” not push, marketing) to generate interest and revenue.

So what are the advantages of SMM?

1. Easily accessible demographic data.
2. Almost guaranteed admittance into the prized 18-40 year age group
3. Very cheap, and sometimes free, method of advertising
4. Dynamic interactions with customers such as apps, fan clubs, contests, and exclusive promotional deals

Social Media Marketing will continue as long as the sites persist in popularity. Heavy hitter companies know that social media sites mean big bucks. (The high volume of traffic that sites receive is reason enough for advertisers to pay competitive prices for banner space.) AOL bought out Bebo. Google purchased YouTube. Yahoo! acquired Flickr. The Social Media parade marches on.

We recommend that you check out this helpful article on SMM, which categorizes the different types by function, as opposed to technology or format (e.g., message boards and videos).

Update: Now read the second part of our Primer on Social Media Marketing: what to do and where to get started.

Many web applications nowadays are all about truncating activities and taking up less time. Blogs are as common as grass nowadays, but some smart developers created a condensed version of the common medium: microblogging!

Microblogs limit posts to generally 200 characters or less. The text restriction allows the application to be used easily via mobile web. Texting, chat, and email can be used to update microblogs, ensuring easy and quick entries from almost anywhere.

But do we really need microblogs? Aren’t they just more web app junk? This is not necessarily the case, when you take a moment to think about how many users handle Facebook: quick updates on their external or internal lives (”Joe Schmo is eating bbq” or “Jane Smith is contemplating particle physics”), sharing media such as mp3s, commenting on a linked article, or embedding streaming video from YouTube. Microblogging allows all of this in a brand-new format suitable for frequent notices at breakneck speed.

Twitter is currently the most popular microblog site around, but an intriguing competitor is Pownce, which was developed by Digg founder Kevin Rose. Whereas Twitter is limited to text posts only, Pownce allows for event invitations, link posts, and media file entries. Its appeal may be based on the fact that it’s sort of like FriendFeed, which also lets you share online multimedia. Pownce also has a mobile version, and there is a desktop extension that can be downloaded.

It will be interesting to see how popular these microblogging sites will become. No doubt that professional bloggers and other Internet-addled fools (ahem) will be chained to Twitter and Pownce, but what about the average end-user?

As for online marketers, applications like Twitter are great exciting fodder for blog posts. Not that we can judge or anything.

You might be feeling correct whenever you write “email” by its traditional spelling “e-mail.” But did you know that many consider the hyphen to be superfluous and anachronistic? In fact, some resent the hyphen so much that they have a petition against it. Today, the more appropriate spelling of web-based terms tends to avoid hyphens and combine two words together (see “online,” “website,” and “blog”).

Dictionaries like Webster’s still use the hyphen in “email,” but that may change soon. Media and common usage have a tendency to influence dictionaries, and electronically involved language changes quickly. If you still are holding on to that tiny sliver of punctuation, consider this: writing is for the sake of clear communication, not for upholding conventions that have lost their meaning. No confusion will result from the dropping of a hyphen.

Still not convinced? Remember that many are using mobile web devices, which can be somewhat unwieldy. That extra hyphen suddenly becomes a bit of uninvited work in a world of fast-paced communications. According to the Wall Street Journal, there has been a 5% decrease in hyphen usage from 1961 to 1991, well before the sophisticated email systems that we use today. Back in the dark ages, we used to write “to-day” and “now-a-days” and “soft-ware.” And good riddance! So, the Internet is not really to blame for the disappearing hyphens.

As for the next phase in dehyphenation, Google keyword search hits suggest that “e-commerce” and “e-book” will soon be replaced by “ecommerce” and “ebook” as well. For now, however, the hyphenated versions remain more popular. Stay tuned, however, to the trends of web communications. Don’t get caught in archaic usages and styles, unless, of course, you are deliberately asserting personal style.*

*FYI: At Visible Shops, we capitalize “Internet” because we’re geeky and think it’s awesome like that.