Google and eCommerce(?)

Another late night out, so of course, I can't sleep - which means I surf and - at times like these - blog.

Anyhow, I ran across this article in eWeek with the above title. The lead-in was:

"The better question might be, what doesn't Google know about us, according to Gartner analysts."

A couple of things, they highlighted:-

- Google knows a lot of what people do online and their surfing habits as they have access to exabytes of unencrypted data and enough computing power to process them. "Clearly, Google knows the behavior patterns of its users. Do a search and the company will tailor ads based on your searches. Do some more searches, open your Gmail account and you will find about four paid links related to those searches. The company also knows a lot about the computers where its Google Apps are installed."

- BUT there is one major area that they have "scarcely touched" and that is eCommerce transaction - which is HTTPS encrypted.

- They have Google Checkout which handles about 1% of "what is sold on the internet" but they are missing out on the other 99%

- Gartner then puts forth: "think about what e-commerce giant Google might be inclined to target to fill out its information and online ad holes. Will it be Expedia? Amazon? eBay?"

OK so while I agree that this would be a scary premise, I don't necessary think that this will happen. At this point in time, being an eCommerce storefront is not what Google wants to be.

I mean - they are doing fine - actually pretty damn good - at selling advertising. That's USD 12billion per year good. They bought DoubleClick to help get into the brand advertising since they already more or less own search advertising. So strategically, they want to increase their share of the total USD 44 billion (2008) of online advertising spend (this number is according to ZenithOptimedia. )

So from Google's perspective, they are currently only getting a quarter of the pie, and there is much room to grow in the "traditional" online advertising on major ad portals (and minor ones too.) And since this space is still fragmented, Google can dive in with all of their computing power and clever gen-y scientists to optimize the efficiency AND measurability of these ad networks.

And of course, if they tie that into their search marketing platform, Google can then give advertisers an almost full, 360 degree picture of their online advertising campaigns.

Now THAT, my friends, is what you should be wary of.

They may eventually start to want to own eTailers to satisfy the Wall Street shareholders to keep on increasing their revenue (by acquisition), but that is not yet the case (I don't think.). To do so now would invite cries from all segments of the economy - consumers, business, and governments. But never say "Never".

Millennium Hotel’s eCommerce Strategic Action Plan for 2007

It's 29th November 2007, and I am on my holiday in beautiful Phuket, Thailand. This is a very nice downtime and gives me a bit of time to reflect on the past year thus far. I looked back at the Strategic Action Plan for Millennium Hotels’ eCommerce that I put together last December-January, which is as follows:

There were 4 main areas that I wanted to focus on this year based on where we were as we entered into 2007: Search Engine Marketing, Reporting & Analytics, Website Re-engineering & Development and Email Marketing.

1) Search Engine Marketing:

PPC Goals & Plans –
- Increase average worldwide Return-on-adspend to 15-to-1
- Increase generic, non-branded keyword spread
- Engage SEM Specialist to manage my PPC campaign

SEO Goals & Plans –
- Review existing search engine optimization that was being carried out by Profero under the existing contract
- Plan for SEO for the new website due out later in the year
- Plan and implement other strategic SEO projects outside of the current site
- Change SEO agencies or augment the work by existing agency with other agencies


2) Reporting & Analytics

M & C implemented Omniture into our websites in early 2006 before I joined. We were getting basic web analytics like pageviews, visits, and referrer domains as well as revenue and conversion. However, the eCommerce data did not tie up directly with our Synxis data, which was supposed to be the source of the eCommerce data. Anyhow, the plan for 2007 was to clean up the analytics and set up the following reports:

- Top Level Reporting for global and corporate users like myself. The data set is more general and aggregated up so that users get the “bigger picture” to make business decisions at that level.

- Regional Level Reporting for our regions: EMEA, US, Asia, and New Zealand. The data set would aggregated up to each regions’ level so that they can view how the region is doing, but also allow them to see top level reports for each hotel to see how they perform. These reports have not yet been developed so we may need a lot of work to implement the taggings needs. The plan is to develop the initial reports by mid 2007 and take it from there.

- Hotel Level Reporting for each of the hotels so that they can see how they perform online and how their individual websites perform as well. Again, these reports were not yet set up so the tagging needed to be looked at and the first reports to be set up. The individual reports will then needed to be set up by the regions themselves.


3) Email Marketing

Our email marketing was very disparate and is managed independently by the regions and also by the hotels themselves. To cut cost, get brand consistency, instill best practices and seriously manage our CRM, we should get everyone on the same platform. Since everyone owned their own list and wanted to protect it, it does not seem practical to ask them to just simply migrate over. The plan is to develop a best practices platform for one region and then show the other regions and the hotels the benefits of the platform – one which would still allow them to control their lists.


4) Website Re-Engineering & Development

The existing website was put together in late 2005 on a limited budget and was using Lotus Domino as a webserver. It has a content management system, but this was custom built and not very flexible or user-friendly. There was already a plan to upgrade the website to IBM WebSphere running on DB2. So we needed to relook at the whole implementation from tagging to site structure to search engine friendliness and even to a new content management system that could be scalable to future development plans.

So the plan was to redevelop the new site under a new system. At the same time, update the design and build country focused sites for our major markets - .com for the US, .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .com.sg for Singapore and co.nz for New Zealand. Future plans included meetings sites for the hotels with major conferencing facilities, destination guides for each hotel, and niche sites like weddings to target those markets as well as non-English versions of hotel sites to target source markets of each hotel.

This undertaking would be the largest and most ambitious activity of the 4 listed here encompassing Search Engine Optimization and Reporting & Analytics as well as Design, Development, and Technical Systems.


*****************

Here is a quick summary and rationality of the above 4 areas of focus:



...... Well, that’s it for now. Back to my holiday. (close the laptop and refocus my eyes on the palm trees, beach and sailboats!)

“Sawasdee Kap” from Joe @ By The Sea Residences, Cape Panwa, Phuket, Thailand.

10 Mega-Trends from Google

Google held a "Google Singapore Marketing Brief" a couple of days ago (13th Nov) at my M Hotel (plug and disclosure). The agenda was:

14:30 - 15:15 Southeast Asia Internet Snapshot
by an APAC Senior Analyst from Hitwise.

15:15 - 16:00 A New Approach to Media
By Google's Vice President, Asia Pacific & Latin America

16:00 - 17:30 Panel Discussion with:
- Sukhinder Singh-Cassidy, Google's Presenter above.
- Jeffrey Seah, CEO Mindshare & Maxus Singapore
- Miguel Bernas, Multimedia Marketing Manager, Asia Pacific, Nokia.
- And yours truly, Director - Global eCommerce, Millennium & Copthorne Hotels

The Hitwise presentation had some good data, but the delivery was a bit uninspiring... Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I had just finished a buffet lunch and my blood is working around my belly rather than my head.

Sukhinder's presentation was around "10 Mega-Trends". I will list them here, but most of the examples she used were Google pitches. Fair enough.

1) User Revolution - This is about "consumer generated media", "user generated content", "user driven content", etc. etc. etc. This is a no-brainer trend, but it certainly is MEGA. Note that we do not say "Web 2.0" anymore. That is so passe' or "Expired" per Wired Mag's categorization of "Wired, Tired, or Expired".

2) Consumers are "Always on". So what else is new? They are, or will be, on via PDAs, cellphones, Blackberries, watches, and iPhones (its not a PDA or cell; its in a class of its own.); at home, at work, in the car, on the bus, at the kids' baseball game, while watching TV... and studies have shown that people are airtyping in their sleep. (just kidding).

3) Offline drives online. Straight-forward, but I would say it is a symbiotic relationship that will one day become a single indivisible organism. With augmented-reality displays and googles, you will one day feel naked without it. From a hotel perspective, this industry is going to save so much money on renovation: all we got to do is renovate our augmented universe to a 7-star hotel and the guests won't know that they are sitting on a 20-year old sofa.

4) Local search is growing. May be this is not so apparent to most of the people in the audience, but they better pay attention. Our best PPC "campaign" segment is Google Maps UK where we get return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) between $27 and $30 for every dollar spent. Users are not just looking for "New York hotels" anymore; they are searching for "broadway hotels", "hotels near times square NY", and "bangkok hotels near soi cowboy" (inside joke and SEO inbound link for my new hotel).

5) Video is big - and getting bigger. Youtube, Joost, Veoh. Startup like TVtrip. While Sukhinder meant "getting bigger" as in more popular, I think that "getting bigger" also literally applies to size - full screen and HD in all its glory.

6) Brand connections occur across the web. Consumer are not coming across your brand only on your website. They see it on retailer sites, on social networks, on portals, on search engines... So how do you keep track of that and manage the brand or the reputation?

7) Niche sites have tremendous value. There was a chart that showed that 80% of the ad revenue is going to the Big Four sites (Google, Yahoo, MSN, and whatever), but these sites only get less than 50% of the traffic. There is much potential for reaching a targeted audience by searching out these niche secondary/tertiary sites.

8) Mass personalization. Another a no-brainer. Sukhinder used iGoogle as an example. It's a great example of a personalized DIY portal with your own widgets, gadgets, and feeds. This is from a user's perspective, but from a business perspective, I think the prime example is amazon.com. "You recently searched for....", "People who selected this also bought...". This is pushed personalization based on your behavior. Scary huh? (ooooo.. "pushed personalization" has a nice ring to it. Just Googled it. This phrase has not been used before in this way. I coined it first - right here, OK? So when Tim O'Reilly starts using at his next conference, you know he has read this blog.")

9) Creativity on massive scale. Sounds like crowdsourcing to me. She used the example of Threadless T-Shirt. I blogged about Embassy Suites in September. Sounds great to me: Cheap labor, cheap market research, and cheap customers. WARNING: design is very subjective, especially in a multi-cultural global market. You might want to segment those massive crowdsourcing creatives by region or countries or even cities. Shall we call it "creativity on a massive personalization scale"?

10) Digital is at the center of the world. With 1 billion people online (actually 791 million according to Comscore's September 07 figures), this is becoming the nexus of business, social, and familiar interactions. And the trend will only go up. Another 4 billion to go. But hey do those 4 Billion really count? I mean - we already got most of the G8 wired. G20 is moving along fine. Do we really need to worry about the G21 to G194? Just get China and India up to 50% each and we are already in the 2billion mark.

As I was listening to Sukhinder, I can't help but think, "Where is Analytics as a trend?". I wrote about the Competing on Analytics book and I am totally certain that this is where the world will be heading. I mentioned this when I was on the panel, but now that I have been giving it more thought, I have a different conclusion:

Analytics is a meta-megatrend. (Hahahahaahah....... Googled it.. another term coined by me. Take that all you highly-paid, suited Accenture/IBM/E&Y/McKinsey/BearPoint/CapGem management consultants. Better yet, pay me royalty for the usage.)

Seriously, analytics is a trend of trends. The whole online marketplace, from the perspective of businesses, will be driven by information. None of the above trends will matter unless every single detail can be tracked, categorized, filtered, consolidated and push on some digital dashboards somewhere so that someone can make business decisions. The above trends exists because there is the business world that can support it, or at least some of these start-ups think that they have the right ... what do you call it.... BUSINESS model. And business in the the future is driven by analytics. Capishe?

Analytics: The End of Intuition?

I read an article above from Newsweek's September issue called "Era of the Super Cruncher". Very interesting read so it is worth a read (after reading this post of course). This is based on the book "Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart" by Ian Ayres. It sounds like the "Competing on Analytics" booked I reviewed here.

Newsweek:- "... a powerful trend that will shape the economy for years to come: the replacement of expertise and intuition by objective, data-based decision making, made possible by a virtually inexhaustible supply of inexpensive information."

So we go from Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" (Jan 2005) to intuition & expertise is being replaced in 2.5 years. I have not read Super Cruncher but I would support the view that they need to both co-exist. Expertise and experience is always necessary, but having the latest and relevant information is definitely better than not having it. And even the more informed novice still would not know which is the best solution in the medium to long term, after all information is about what HAS happened and not what WILL happen.

NW:- "Those who control and manipulate this data will be the masters of the new economic universe."



He-Man and She-Ra - that's what those of us uber-geeks will become.


NW:- "Super-crunchable data can be broadly statistical or profoundly personal. Illustrating the former, Ayres chose the title of his book by running two Google ads that appeared in random order when someone searched for phrases like 'data mining.' The decision was made by the plurality who clicked on the ad for 'Super Crunchers' rather than the competing title, 'The End of Intuition.' "

KEWL!! Though I prefer "The End of Intuition"

NW:- "Increasingly, jobs that used to call for independent judgment, especially about other people, are being routinized and dumbed down. Banks no longer care about a loan officer's assessment of whether a borrower is a good risk; everything they need to know is in the numbers."

Right.. so those loan officers' assessments were good to begin with? If they were good, then they wouldn't have been replaced right? But then, some one.. some person has to come up with the algorithms and program these computers right?

He has a point though in this case though. I am getting pre-approved offers for unsecured loans and credit cards - which must have been initiated after an automated credit check. There is no need for a loan officer now.

I am still not convinced that this is the death of intuition, but then I guess I should read the book... Will check back later after I read this.

Google Analytics For Dummies

So I have been steadily blogging away. In the last month (October), I have been publishing an average of 2 posts per week. Traffic to this site was not steady, but it comes in. I can almost track it to the day that I publish a post as the blog spiders and readers pick it up.

Anyhoo... I noticed a week ago that my traffic dove to ZERO around the last week of October. I track this on Google Analytics which is a very easy to use tool. I did not think much of it. I was too busy and who knows what's going on with the interweb. See the graph of October traffic below:



About thirty minutes ago, I checked in again and see the above. Now I am getting a little worried. I have been pushing things out and nothing? ZERO? My ego was getting hurt, you know. Since launching this blog in mid August, I have had visits from people in 204 cities from 49 countries, who speak 18 languages. 75 % of my visitors were new visits, so I get a 25% returning visitor traffic. Each of these visits resulted in 1.55 pages viewed per visit. 25.9% were on DSL broadband, 21.3% were on cable broadband, 7.1% were on T1 (i.e. office connections), and 4.5% were on dial-up. (the rest 40% were "unknown"). Then suddenly.. NOTHING... NADA... ZILCH...

Then WHAM! SH...ZAMM, it hit me. I changed the template on my blog a few weeks ago to this brownish thing. I went to my blogspot dashboard and just selected a new template. I reviewed it and made sure it looked ok before I published it. All looked OK so "Save my template". But DUH!!!! When I change template, the Google Analytics script that I had put in the last template go wiped. So I have not had any tracking scripts on any of my pages. No wonder. Yikes!!!!!

Well, it is up now. But this is why I leave the tech to techies. Google Analytics is great for amateurs, but if you are using it for your ecommerce website, leave the monkey business to those who know what to do... sigh...

302 & 301 Redirect Fun

Many of us who have engaged SEO consultants have often gotten the feedback or report that our site is not search engine friendly because we are using "302 redirects instead of 301 redirects". Any clarification by the consultants is however not very clear. Our IT administrators proceed to change the 302s to 301s, but either can not explain or don't understand how this is supposed to affect our search engine friendliness. Or if there are any other reasons why 302s are bad.

Before I get into this, let me give you some background. Firstly, my old website (I can whine about it now in public since it has been replaced last week!) was running on Lotus Domino. This fine product from IBM served as the webserver, content management system and database (non-relational of course). Secondly, our web analytics tool is Omniture, which is a great javascript based data collection system; their business model is ASP-based (Application service provider) so there are no hardware/software overheads.

Next let's get the w3.org official definition of the 302 and 301 redirects:

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10.3.2 301 Moved Permanently

The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URL and any future references to this resource SHOULD use one of the returned URLs. Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link references to the Request-URL to one or more of the new references returned by the server, where possible. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

The new permanent URL SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URL(s).

If the 301 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.

10.3.3 302 Found

The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URL. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URL for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field.

The temporary URL SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).

If the 302 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.

====

(302 has also been more clearly defined as "Moved temporarily")

Now we kinda understand the difference, why is 302 bad?

As it turns out, when the search engines hits a 302, they must index both sites. But it is being told that the content is temporary. So..

1) Should a search engine give a high rank to temporary information vs permanent information?
2) In the case of Google, how does it assign PageRank? To the first link which was redirecting to the second link and has no content? Or to the second link which is temporary?
3) Actually, since a 302 redirect does not pass "referrer" information to the second link, it can not credit the second link with pagerank of the first link.

Yes this get a little confusing for us as well as the search engines. So they don't like it.

In the case of my old website, Lotus Domino only does 302 redirects. This is a nightmare from the above perspective. It was also bad for our Omniture web analytics. Omniture operates as an application service provider (ASP); they host all the servers and reports and we implement some Javascript tracking codes on our pages. Not unlike Google Analytics. But because referrer information is not passed in a 302 redirect, our reports had a lot of "Typed/Bookmarked" traffic instead of actual Referrers.

As for 301, it just tells the search engines that this change is permanent, ignore the first link, and only look at the second link. Any PageRanks or scores should be directly attributed to the second link. Easy enough... As for Omniture, it passes through Referrer information so it's fine there as well.

Then again... ideally, we shouldn't use redirects at all.....

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"Competing on Analytics" - a Must Read

I was at Singapore Changi airport on the way to Vietnam in early June for a holiday with the family when I decided that I needed to get some reading material. One of the new books that just came out that caught my attention was "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning". This was published by Harvard Business School Press. The writers are Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris; both write articles for Harvard Business Review while being professor or research fellow or director of some institute or other.


Anyhow, I bought it as I was getting more and more involved in the web analytics implementation for my new site using Omniture. It turned out to be a very, very interesting read and I have been recommending it. Here's why:

1) Analytics Defined: "the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models and fact based management to drive decision and actions".

This may seem straightforward (and "duh") to some of you as it was to me, but this clear and concise definition is what is need to make others understand what it is and how it should be used. Trust me, there are those out there with other "definitions".

2) "The five stages of analytical competition":

• Stage 1: analytically impaired ("flying blind")


• Stage 2: Localized analytics (isolated, fragmented, disconnected, inconsistent, etc.)
• Stage 3: Analytical aspirations (sees need, begins to explore options)
• Stage 4: Analytical companies (enterprise-wide perspective, eager to innovate and differentiate)
• Stage 5: Analytical competitors (analytics are the primary driver of performance and value)

"Flying blind" cracked me up in an ironic, cynical kind of way. Stage 2 just smacked me in the face as that is exactly where Millennium & Copthorne is (more on that later). I salivate by the time I get to reading about Stage 5 companies.

3) Emphasis on company-wide understanding and adoption of Analytics. (Another "Duh!!!") Great case studies/examples with NetFlix , Amazon Google as well as Capital One, Boston Red Sox, Walmart and P & G.

4) There are a lot of strategic advice but there many tactical ones too, like:
========
Effective management of data requires correct answers to:

1. Which data are needed to compete on analytics?
2. Where can these data be obtained?
3. How much are needed?
4. How can the data be made more accurate and valuable for analysis?
5. What rules and processes are needed to manage data from their creation through their retirement?

========

However, with all these management books, it does tend to get dry half-way through. To be quite honest, I have only gotten halfway through, and had not opened the book for a month (prior to writing this post that is.). I don't know if I will ever read the book in full, but more likely I will skim the balance. The first half of the book is well worth it in any case. I have half a dozen pages dog-eared for future reference - pages 8, 23, 40, 52, 62, 72. ;-)

Amazon's got a good deal on the hardcover. Probably since the paperback is gonna come out soon...
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