As no doubt many of you are aware, there have been some big changes in Google Analytics lately, especially with the ways you can track how people interact with your site as well as the way you can structure your goal sets without having to create ridiculous numbers of profiles for you to track your 200+ goals! And yes, all of us here at Bloom are HOOGELY excited about it!

Google Analytics now lets you track up to 20 goals, all in the same profile! Each Profile is allocated 4 goal sets, each of these goal sets contain a set of five goals which make it really easy for you to now group similar goal types into one goal set:

Example:

Goal Set 1 – Registrations

Goal 1 – Party Registration

Goal 2 – Meeting Registration

Goal 3 – Conference Registration

Goal 4 – Charity Registration

Goal 5 – Seminar Registration

Goal Set 2 – Downloads

Goal 1 – Yearly Summary PDF Download

Goal 2 – Chairmans Statement PDF Download

Goal 3 – Widget Download

Goal 4 – Flash content Download

Goal 5 – Press Release Download

..and so it goes on.

Of course, you are not limited to the different types of goals that you can track; you can track just about anything! From completed ecommerce transactions to how many clicks you’ve had on your site “Follow us on Twitter” button, time on site, pages per visit, bounce rates, the possibilities are endless!

Engagement Goals

This is the thing which we Bloomers are especially excited about! Google Analytics has listened to the community and responded with a new type of goal called “Engagement Goals” which allows you to track how people are interacting with your website, and is an absolute must have if you are planning a new site launch and wanting to test the overall “stickiness” of the website, or even tweaking the website to improve its usability. This type of goal allows you to set thresholds for Time on Site or Pages per Visit.

Time on Site Goal

Google Analytics now allows you to set a greater than or less than value of time spent on the site for one of your goals.

For example, you can set a specific goal to track how many people spent less than 10 seconds on your site, then another goal to track how many people have spent 10 to 20 seconds, then another for 20 to 30 seconds, and so it goes on. This is particularly useful for when you are launching a new website, wanting to test some linkbait or how well people engage with a form or other facility that you’ve provided.

Pages Per Visit Goal

Google Analytics lets you create a goal that you can set to greater, equal to or less than value to a pages per visit.

For example you can set a specific goal to track how many people made less than 5, 10, 15 (the list goes on!) page views per session. As before, this is particularly useful when you are launching a new site, and you can gauge the success of it by seeing if the number of page views has improved, or God forbid, gone down!

And in case you’re wondering how you’re going to save all that historical data from your old goals, Kaushik tells you how to keep your old goal history in your new goal!

Advanced Table Filtering

A new addition to the reporting power of Google Analytics is the ability to filter the elements on a table based on the different metric conditions.

Example

If you only want to see your top pages that have an average session time of over one minute and received less than 100 pageviews, you can do that by performing the following action:

• Click Advanced Filter at the bottom of the report window:

• Click on “Add new condition” and select the metrics you want to set:

• Set the values you want to monitor:

• Create a new filter using the same process for the number of PageViews
• et Voila! Your Custom Report:

A very useful and powerful addition to the way you can report on your campaigns, I’m sure you’ll agree!

Google Analytics Intelligence Reports

This really is THE most useful new addition to the way Google Analytics reports your data. Google Analytics now tells YOU what’s happening on your website, your campaigns and much more!

Analytics Intelligence provides you with automatic alerts of significant changes that are happening to your website in terms of traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, and a whole lot more!

Example:

Google Analytics will alert you if you’ve seen a big spike in traffic on a particular day from a referring website or search engine, like your blog, Google, or just about anything. It would also alert you if you saw a drop in Time on Site with visitors from London for instance. So instead of you having to monitor reports constantly, Google Analytics now does it all for you!

You can also set up Custom Alerts which makes it possible for you to tell Google Analytics what trends to look out for. You can set daily, weekly or monthly triggers on different dimensions and metrics and be notified by email or on the interface when the changes actually occur. An extremely powerful addition to Google Analytics indeed!

Fin

And there you have it! It’s easy to see why Google Analytics is one of the top Analytics packages available! Keep the new features rolling!

On the 1st December 2009 new changes to the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising come into effect.   This is potentially big news for our industry as the new guides address the fact that advertisers are increasingly harnessing Web 2:0 technologies and social networks for word-of-mouth marketing.

A legal perspective on the FTC guides was posted by a leading city law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse last week and includes some interesting comments.

The new guides recognise the common practice of payment for reviews on Blog sites as a form of advertising and seek to regulate this practice in much the same way as other similar activities or advertising. The FTC have given specific examples quoted in the Field Fisher Waterhouse commentary but include;

“Paying a blogger to post a review clearly requires disclosure as does a word-of-mouth marketing program that periodically sends consumers products for review. Sending a free sample to a blogger with a request to post a review may qualify as a “material connection” depending on the value of the product and the frequency that this occurs.” (for more visit the Field Fisher Waterhouse site).

Also made clear from the guide is that the responsibility for disclosure is placed upon the Blogger not the advertiser.

As I see it this will impact the SEO/Social media communities in the following ways, but mainly this rasies a lot of questions:

1.    Bloggers that receive payment for posting reviews/other content are obliged to disclose this fact.. but will they? and how will this be enforced?
2.    If posts with the appropriate disclosure are identified by Google, will Google react negatively? Will these be seen as paid for link sources and penalised?
3.    Given the method of disclosure is not specified then actually wont it be pretty easy to disguise the disclosure from Google in any case? (i.e. the disclosure could be placed in an image)
4.    Following on from above will this unleash a spate of people reporting blogs they suspect of receiving payment without disclosing to the relevant authorities/Google?
5.    What are the FTC expecting bloggers to do about all of the historical content/reviews that were paid for before these guides came into play?
6.    Does anyone else think that potentially this bites off more than it can chew given the sheer volume of content?

I’d be interested to hear comments from others to see if this can be clarified any further…

You may have seen the recent furore (actually began in January) online regarding the Palm Pre and iTunes. For those that haven’t, the gist of the problem is this;

Palm are releasing a sexy looking new phone, the Pre, which not only looks like the only realistic contender to the iPhone but has a completely bespoke webOS (based on Linux). There’s a comprehensive review on Engadget with some videos.

Palm would like to be able to sync this phone with iTunes, so they made it appear like an iPhone/iPod when connected to do so. Apple took incredible umbradge at this and have released several updates to stop it working. As there are several zealous Macolytes in our agency a debate has been raging via email which I present to you here. The two opposing sides can be summarised as:

Side (a): Consumers should have freedom of choice and Apple should let them use iTunes with the Pre, the decision not to damages their reputation

Side (b): Apple are protecting their business interests and don’t think this decision will damage their reputation

Can't we just use these?

(a) Says:
““Palm is currently locked in a long-running battle with Apple over the Pre’s ability to synchronise with a user’s iTunes library. When the Pre first launched, it could copy across songs from a user’s iTunes library by tricking the software in to thinking that it was communicating with an iPod. But Apple quickly issued an iTunes software update that disabled this capability, only for Palm to issue its own software update for the Pre to reinstate iTunes synchronisation.”

Last week’s launch of iTunes 9 has again disabled the Pre’s iTunes syncing feature, and users are waiting anxiously to see what Palm’s next move will be.

“As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players,” warned Apple in a statement.

“Apple’s decision to disable Palm media sync again is yet another direct blow to its own iTunes customers who will be deprived of a seamless and familiar synchronisation experience,” retaliated Palm in a statement.”
Why? Because Apple want you to roll over and receive your iPhone/iPod as a suppository every 12 months.”

(b) Says:
When the Pre first launched, it could copy across songs from a user’s iTunes library by tricking the software in to thinking that it was communicating with an iPod. But Apple quickly issued an iTunes software update that disabled this capability

LOL! Why does Palm have to keep trying to hack iTunes to get it to work? Maybe its because there is no other song purchase program out there that is as good?! Of course with Spotify released as an app that could change! Laughable how Palm have to look for ways to hack iTunes!

(a) Says:
I know this is one for the blog (SPT – Yes it is!) – but please take your Apple tinted glasses off for a moment! Apple has just denied another reasonable source of income by locking out the Pre.

Maybe they (Apple) should look at the opportunities to open up iTMS to other devices and therefore increase their opportunities of even further revenue generation!

Besides which, you could use Double Twist (http://www.doubletwist.com/dt/Home/Index.dt) and sync anyway!

(b) Says:
Perhaps Apple are trying to protect itself from other vendor’s carbon copying them…

4) Poach a senior iPhone architect – check
5) Infringe Apple’s Multitouch and Gestures Patents – check
6) Hack iTunes ‘integration’ by violating USB regulations and get ass slapped – check

And yet Apple is in the wrong for protecting their own platform? I don’t think Apple needs the dribbles of revenue that the Pre will generate.

(a) Says:
I don’t see how they’re protecting their platform, people who want an iPhone will still get one and allowing their main competitor in the phone sector access to their own music sales channel is surely the best way to capture lost revenue from people who buy a Pre instead?

In regards to these points:

1) Poach a senior iPhone architect – check – unlucky, he obviously felt he could do better elsewhere
2) Infringe Apple’s Multitouch and Gestures Patents – check – the ascension of touchscreens means there will be a lot more of this in future
3) Hack iTunes ‘integration’ by violating USB regulations and get ass slapped – check – again they haven’t hacked iTunes, they make their phone appear like an iPhone as this is the only way to use it with iTunes if you’re not going to be forced into getting a contract from O2 for an iPhone

What’s the beef with getting more people access to iTunes? Maybe you want the software but not an iPhone (this is going to be an issue outside of just the Pre) but all Apple are saying is ‘No, buy an iPhone’. It’s just not (to my mind) a sensible way to get the most out of iTunes…

(a) and (b) Say:
Woah there!

(a)
There are other options to sync, it just strikes me as very odd that Apple have gone down this road that’s al. Fair enough if they don’t make any money from iTunes but they would still maintain a larger presence (from a branding point of view) but letting more people use iTunes. And if they only break even surely that’s an even bigger reason to grow the iTunes user base, rather than limit it?

(b)
I don’t see it as odd in any way. They make much more profit selling iPhones and iPod’s, not content on iTunes. In order to use iTunes, the music biggest retailer in the US, and largest online retailer in the world, you need an iPhone or an iPod. Allowing other vendors to use iTunes would likely mean less hardware sold, but (I agree) increased iTunes revenue. However, the difference between the two would result in negative profit growth.

(a)
I’m hearing a lot of Apple do no wrong talk is all I’m saying. You can’t groundlessly assume that the Pre is an inferior platform prior to a UK release or UK road test – if Apple are that worried that it will rob iPhone marketshare maybe they should just roll out another cash in update? Make it a little bit faster again maybe?

(b)
All I hear is that Apple always do wrong, and have inferior products and software. IMO the Pre is inferior; it doesn’t support native apps, there is no music subscription service, it has poor battery life, apparently feels cheap and the lack of software keyboard is a major disadvantage. (ed. the Pre actually does feature a software keyboard, other facts are uncited as yet)

The Judgement!

Conclusion?
Well as you can see we have not reached any kind of conclusion here, the Macboys love Apple, the others love other stuff.

For my part I think the Pre will be an excellent alternative to the iPhone, the review (above) is positive and considering the iPhone has a 3 year headstart in terms of App developement and software fixes it would be foolish to rule the Pre out yet.

But at the end of the day, Apple, Palm, can’t we all just learn to get along?