Barnes & Noble: The company that reads you.

Barnes & Noble operates a large online bookstore in conjunction with 1350 brick & mortar bookstores, with roughly 10 million customers, selling 300 million books per year (Bruley, 2013). It’s been proven imperative that Barnes & Noble use web analytics in order to gather valuable information in order to continue to gain market share against competitors, especially to dominate the highly competitive eBook market.

Approach, Tools and Techniques

Barnes & Noble aims to thoroughly analyze and control it’s activities in order to develop a personalized approach to customers through more sophisticated segmentation, tailored marketing programs and better coordination of customer experiences (Bruley, 2013).

Barnes & Noble uses third party service providers, such as IBM Coremetrics and Google Analytics, to help the company better understand visitor traffic and customers, especially when determining how customers use their Nook (“Privacy Policy,” 2015). Third party service providers place cookies on customer’s computers to collect information such as how they were referred to the Barnes & Noble website, how they navigate the site and what is purchased and what traffic is driven by various marketing methods (“Privacy Policy,” 2015). This information helps the company better serve the customer, especially by providing them with more personalized information and product offerings.

By collecting IP addresses, browser types, operating systems, referring pages and other similar types of information through the use of cookies, web server logs and pixel tags, Barnes & Noble provides users with advertisements that are customized to particular preferences (“Privacy Policy,” 2015). Data is also collected through applications or devices including information regarding reading, viewing and activity behavior. Activity behavior may include which books or videos were opened, date and time of use, time elapsed, page turns, bookmarks, annotations and customer reviews (“Privacy Policy,” 2015). While in the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with an eBook. Now, retailers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books including how far readers are getting in eBooks, how long they spend reading them and what search terms they use to find those books.

In addition, when a customer signs into a Barnes & Noble website or application using a social network account, such as Facebook, Twitter or Google account, the social networking site may provide Barnes & Noble with information about the user including contacts and other “likes” (“Privacy Policy,” 2015).

If the customer is a student and rents or purchases an e-textbook or textbook from Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, the company may also collect information from the college or university such as mailing and email addresses and class registration information (“Privacy Policy,” 2015).

Data Usage

According to Barnes & Noble’s privacy policy the company uses personal information in order to provide a “superior customer experience and, as necessary, to administer” its business (“Privacy Policy,” 2015). This includes providing product and subject recommendations, measuring and maintaining products and services, administering sweepstakes and promotions, communicating with customers about special offers, events or new products, in addition to customizing and enhancing the website and various advertising initiatives (“Privacy Policy,” 2015).

Jim Hilt, Barnes & Noble’s vice president of e-books, says the company is starting to share insights with publishers to help them create books that better hold people’s attention (Alter, 2012). These insights are invaluable considering the company seeks to gain a greater share of the eBook market. For example, Nook users who buy the first book in a popular series like “Divergent,” tend to tear through all the books in the series, almost as if they were reading a single novel (Alter, 2012).

Barnes & Noble has determined, through analyzing Nook data, that nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts while novels are generally straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier (Alter, 2012). When data showed that Nook readers routinely quit long works of nonfiction, the company began looking for ways to engage readers in nonfiction and long form journalism, therefore, launching “Nook Snaps,” short works on topics ranging from weight loss and religion to the Occupy Wall Street movement (Alter, 2012). Pinpointing when readers get bored has also helped publishers create better digital editions by strategically adding video or other multimedia features.

While many have been frustrated with the industry’s failure to examine its customer base, web analytics provide the potential to not only the determine the exact demographics of specific genres and books, but also analyze the customer’s behavior while searching for the book in addition to while reading it. 

Perspective

While it seems that Barnes & Noble has set a solid foundation to gain insight on its visitor traffic and customer base through web analytics, there are several recommendations to improve its overall web analytic efforts. 

Considering the store offers thousands of products, it’s vital that the website populates genres that the web visitor is immediately attracted to. With an easily accessible search bar, a visually attractive slider and an effective content on the homepage, Barnes & Noble currently offers an engaging customer experience.  

While the website provides ample information to help the consumer make a purchasing decision, including video on the website would allow the company to gain further insight into its customers. Videos might include introductions from specific featured authors or a Barnes & Noble spokesperson promoting the month’s top picks in a specific genre category. By gathering data from these viewers, Barnes & Nobles could gain insight into who the customer is and if video might be an attractive addition to an eBook for a specific genre.  For instance, the company could us Vzaar in order to host the videos on the website and then group the videos by genre. Therefore, if a person visited the nonfiction section of the site, he or she could easily view other videos from the authors of a variety of nonfiction books.

By strategically placing social sharing links closer to the book covers on product pages, Barnes & Noble will be able to analyze who is sharing the information and what might make them share it. Currently, the social sharing buttons are slightly hard to find and may appear out of the viewing window. For instance, readers of a specific genre might be more likely to socially share about a book. After determining that genre, Barnes & Noble could then host a social media sweepstakes targeted toward that segmented group of readers.

Having an author guest blogger series might also drive traffic to the site, therefore, providing an opportunity to gain additional web analytics. For instance, if Danielle Steel wanted to promote a newly released book, she would be asked to guest blog on the site. The brand would work with Danielle Steel to promote the blog through her network, most likely driving the author’s loyal fans to the Barnes & Noble site to read the blog. Barnes & Nobles would then be able to analyze that specific data in order to, not only gather contact information of those fans, but also find who those fans specifically are and what might make them turn into Barnes & Noble customers.

References

Alter, A. (2012, July 19). Your E-Book Is Reading You. Retrieved March 2, 2015, from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304

Bruley, M. (2013, September 9). Some insights on the Big Data Barnes & Noble experience. Retrieved March 2, 2015, from http://www.analyticbridge.com/profiles/blogs/some-insights-on-the-big-data-barnes-noble-experience

Privacy Policy. (2015, January). Retrieved March 2, 2015, from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/help/cds2.asp?pid=25560

Google: The ultimate open relationship

Information is power. It’s no secret that one of the most successful web-based companies collects user data from millions of its accounts every day. It’s only when figuring out how many Google services a person uses on a regular basis that they might realize exactly how much information Google is collecting.

According to Rosenfeld (2014), no longer satisfied with vacuuming, scanning, indexing and selling analytics based on texts, emails, searches, locations and more, Google now has a new target: tapping, mapping and colonizing the networks wiring our lives. Google argues that it has the right to collect most sensitive data, as long as it flows across an open WiFi network (Rosenfeld, 2014). This statement was made after Google announced its acquisition of Nest, which sells WiFi-controlled home heating appliances. Google is not only in homes, but also in cars, offices and any other places that an open WiFi network is available.

There are several ways that Google has been collecting data that might seem a bit uncomfortable for most such as its Google Street View. After being sued by 38 states, Google admitted that it’s cars outfitted with rood cameras facing four direction weren’t just taking pictures; They were also collecting data from computers inside homes and structures, including pass words, emails and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users (Rosenfeld, 2014).

Google has also been attacked by Gmail users who were objected to its practice of analyzing the content of all messages on its network and selling byproducts to advertisers (Rosenfeld, 2014). This issue isn’t a new struggle to Google. In 2009, Google’s lawyers said that its email technology was used for scanning spam, computer viruses and serving ads within Gmail but last fall Google failed to let consumers know that Google create personal profiles and target users with ads (Rosenfeld, 2014). This also included people who are not Gmail users, but write emails to those who have Gmail addresses.

In early 2012, the Wall Street Journal noted that Google’s software was bypassing security settings for Apple devices using the Safari browser. Google’s secret code to bypass the security settings exposed millions of Safari users to tracking for months without knowing (Rosenfeld, 2014). The Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million, its largest civil fine, noting that Google had violated previous privacy agreements (Rosenfeld, 2014).

With Google’s history of sharing information with advertisers and the government, Nest users have fine reason to feel discomfited. Prior to Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition, Nest was already involved in data collection to iterate and improve its products and services (Sharma, 2014). Several privacy questions are raised when combining with the combination of Nest’s data, such as movements around the home, and Google’s communication data. For example, Google could easily combine this data set with other services to gain an even more complete picture of a person’s movements (Sharma, 2014). It would be relatively easy for Google to know that you left home after receiving an email from a coworker.  

According to Castillo (2013), Google openly admits that it collects six types of information from its users including device information, log information, location information, unique application numbers, local storage and cookies. Giving the ability for the powerhouse company to not only know your operating system, what you search for, where you search for it and any other personal information associated leaving little to no room for actual privacy. While some may consider this the price they pay for access to Google’s mostly free tools, others are not comfortable with the open relationship Google has with its users. It’s commonly compared to a person leaving their house and stranger following them, noting where they live, who their friends are and where they shop. That stranger would then turn in that information with individuals who didn’t know the person and in turn those individuals would stop that person in the street and offer them goods and services.

As companies seek to capture data about consumer’s habits, privacy concerns have flared. Consumers are concerned, not just about targeted marketing but what can be inferred about them every time they “like” something on Facebook or post a snarky tweet on Twitter (Martin, 2014).

Just because a company has the ability to collect a variety of personal information, does not mean it should use it. Companies risk hurting its relationship with its consumers where using this data, especially when tailoring messaging and offers.

According to Hui Xiong, an associate professor of management science and information systems at Rutgers Business School, one way that companies can harness data power while heeding privacy worries is to aggregate their data (Martin, 2014). Companies are able to create algorithms that identify patterns but protect individual identities. Therefore, if data shows that 50 people are following a particular shopping pattern, a company can act on that data rather than mining further and potentially exposing individual behavior. It is a company’s responsibility to decide what exact information it will analyze, while also keeping in mind how that data collection will affect its relationship. With the most information comes the most responsibility.

The ethics come into the analysis through scientist and company directives. To help protect personal information, the government should have proper regulations about how and what kind of data should be collected. In addition, it should imperative that the industry should have and abide some standards for the use of big data. In turn, it’s important to assess if that is realistic or not. While companies could be regulated by government or by an industry standard, what will stop them from actually collecting, analyzing and using the data? It is necessary to have a corporate conviction and belief that consumer trust is a priority.

Data gathering is not going away. The privacy issues that arise with new technologies will continue to be debated as those technologies evolve over time. These issues deserve attention and some might say that certain rewards aren’t worth the risk, each depending on the specific type of data being collected.

References

Castillo, M. (2013, August 5). 6 kinds of your information Google openly admits to collecting. Retrieved February 22, 2015, from http://upstart.bizjournals.com/news/technology/2013/08/15/6-data-categories-google-collects.html?page=all

Martin, E. R. (2014, March 27). The Ethics Of Big Data. Retrieved February 22, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/emc/2014/03/27/the-ethics-of-big-data/

Rosenfeld, S. (2014, February 5). 4 ways Google is destroying privacy and collecting your data. Retrieved February 22, 2015, from http://www.salon.com/2014/02/05/4_ways_google_is_destroying_privacy_and_collecting_your_data_partner/

Sharma, R. (2014, January 13). Google's Acquisition Of Nest And Your Privacy. Retrieved February 22, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeshsharma/2014/01/13/googles-acquisition-of-nest-and-your-privacy/

Crazy Egg: The not so rotten egg

Web analytics gives a brand more clarity about the traffic visiting its site as well as the results of an advertising campaign. These analytics also represent the ability for companies to learn about customer behaviors allowing it to take corrective action whenever necessary. By regularly reviewing web analytics, brands have a chance to build an efficient and user-friendly site, therefore, making it easier to communicate a message and increase conversions.

Crazy Egg is an analytics tool that allows users to build heat maps and track visitors’ every click based on where they are specifically clicking within a brand’s website. This platform allows brands to explore what parts of a site that users are finding most interesting and clicking on the most (Walsh, 2013). This is helpful in improving website design and in essence improving the rate of conversion. In theory, by finding out the users click paths, companies can make changes to its site and therefore hopefully be able to create a higher rate of conversions. Metaphorically, Crazy Egg is like a pair of x-ray glasses that lets a person see exactly what people are doing on a specific website.

Once signed into a Crazy Egg account, the first step is to create a snapshot, which is a moment in time for a given page similar to a virtual screenshot (Walsh, 2013). When creating a snapshot, a small code snippet is provided to enable tracking for that given snapshot. It only requires the code to be added to the footer of the site in order for Crazy Egg to begin receiving data.

Crazy Egg is broken into four categories: heat tool map, scroll map tool, overlay tool and a confetti tool.

While Crazy Egg shows which parts of a website’s page visitors click on, Google Analytics will tell a brand manager what links visitors click on. Crazy Egg shows clicks even if the user isn’t on the link. This is displayed as a heat map.  

Crazy Egg shows things that are not clickable. A brand can find that users are clicking on parts of the page that aren’t actually links (Walsh, 2013). This is a good opportunity to reevaluate what should be a link and where those links should be. For example, if a brand discovers that users are clicking on a product photo and nothing currently happens to that photo, he or she might consider making the photo have an action if clicked on. The photo could be magnified or readers could read more information about the product. The heat map tool can also reveal which parts of the page are getting the most attention. This is also very helpful when showing clients data even if they aren’t very experienced in web analytics.

By using confetti, a brand can segment visitors on the basis of keywords, location and referral source. Once a company knows where the most valuable click traffic is coming from, it has uncovered the exact traffic sources that bring high revenue with the least amount of effort.

When analyzing how far visitors scroll down on pages, Crazy Egg provides an easy-to-interpret heat map. It also shows which parts of the page get the most attention based on average viewing time. This tool helps identify which parts of the pages are most important to the visitors and at what point users abandon the page. This tool helps determine exactly where to add elements in order to hold a visitor’s interest longer.

Crazy Egg also differentiates between links to the same page, so a brand will know exactly which parts of a web page work and which don’t, helping analyze which links might be positioned well. This information is available in overlay.

Google Analytics, a product of Google, is a website statics service that generates traffic, conversion and advertising related data (Sharma, 2013). Webmasters commonly use Google Analytics in order to track visitors from different sources including search engines, social media platforms and referral sites.

Although Google Analytics is free to use until a site reaches over 10 million page views per month, Crazy Egg is a paid service with plans starting at $10/month (Walsh, 2013). Small business may very well decide just to use Google Analytics, solely to save on costs, although the use of Crazy Egg simultaneously may provide behavioral information valuable in enhancing a website’s usability.

While Google Analytics provides complete information about all quantitative metrics and dimensions, it does not assist in analyzing the performance of each element a brand’s website has unless a very experienced web analytics team is available. Generally, Google Analytics lacks in visual presentation when it comes to website analytics. Google Analytics also works by placing a JavaScript tag into the code of pages on a website. For websites with many pages, it may be difficult to successfully track every page. Some webmasters are worried that using Google Analytics might also effect page load speed, making its code location undesirable at times (Denyer, 2013).  Google Analytics is also known to update data in a 24-hour cycle, while Crazy Egg boasts of its real time data (Hunsucker, 2009). On the other hand, Google Analytics seems to have more sophisticated segmentation and reports than Crazy Egg.

However, Crazy Egg is much more effective for analyzing user behavior and click patterns. All of the observations and data collected from the tools helps in taking an informed decision about which parts of the website need improvement and which parts are actually bottlenecks in the conversion path. By having a completely different perspective on visitor interactions, Crazy Egg could work well in tandem with Google Analytics but might not be sufficient to replace Google Analytics in totality.

References

Denyer, T. (2013, January 05). Why I removed Google Analytics from my website. Retrieved February 15, 2015, from http://tristandenyer.com/why-i-removed-google-analytics-from-my-website/

Hunsucker, M. (2009, February 20).   Some like it hot Get real-time visual analytics for your site with Crazy Egg. Retrieved February 15, 2015, from http://feedgrowth.com/idea-categories/insights/get-real-time-visual-analytics-for-your-site-with-crazy-egg/

Sharma, A. (2013, December 04). Sorry Google Analytics but CrazyEgg and ClickTale are better! Retrieved February 15, 2015, from http://www.fatbit.com/fab/sorry-google-analytics-crazyegg-clicktale-better/

Walsh, D. (2013, April 22). Incredible Analytics with Crazy Egg. Retrieved February 15, 2015, from http://davidwalsh.name/crazyegg

In it to win it: Choosing the platform that is right for you

It isn’t always the best strategy to sprinkle a little bit of your brand into every single social media platform available immediately. Instead, a company should only adopt one platform as its main/primary channel and then consider which other platforms, if any, would be acceptable for that brand. After setting a foundation, strategies need to incorporate a mix of social media touch points for maximum impact. This is especially true for smaller companies who may not have a well-established and fully dedicated social media team.  Instead of having sub-par representation in a lot of places; brands should focus on doing well on a few of them.

By effective social media marketing, a brand is able to build its popularity by increasing its website presence and growing the number of its followers using social media (Bowden, 2014).  However, the tools and functionality a brand will require will depend upon the brand’s line of business, its objectives and its strategy.

Facebook has billions of users each day, making it a viable channels to promote a brand (Bowden, 2014). It also has advertising service that allow advertisers to distinguish its exact target audience instead of possibly wasting advertising dollars on an audience other than its demographic. These include Facebook Ads and Sponsored Posts. Facebook requires a long-term commitment and consistent relationship building from brands, although there is some immediacy as you can reply directly to people’s comments of questions (Levy, 2013). Many brands choose to use Facebook thanks to its size alone, thanks to its broad network and opportunity to build a community presence (Levy, 2013).

Twitter offers a platform that brands are able to interact with humans through commenting and promoting trending topics (Bowden, 2014). Companies leverage Twitter in responding to customers in a timely manner while featuring the latest news and headlines about an upcoming event and product releases that keeps followers engaged with the brands (Bowden, 2014). Twitter is most useful for the business that has something to say frequently and prefers to reach people directly (Levy, 2013).

Pinterest is billed as a content-sharing service that allows members to pin or post photos, videos and other images to their boards (Levy, 2013). The site has a predominantly female audience and is ideal for businesses which visual imagery is a main feature or selling point (Levy, 2013).

LinkedIn, generally used for B2B marketing, helps professionals connect socially. When reaching out to generate conversation with other professionals, posting links to a brand’s articles or blogs help people learn exactly what that brand is and how that brand can help them.

The visually driven platform, YouTube, has become synonymous with homemade or company-made videos. By featuring products or services with visual selling points, brands can generate conversation with their audience. Videos might include teaching consumers how to do something, demonstrate a product or service or introduce a new or unusual product to the market (Levy, 2013).

Like YouTube and Pinterest, Instagram is for the brand that needs to include a visual aspect into its communication mix. Instagram has proved to have a specific appeal to certain ethnic segments and popularity among urbanites, making it a good choice for certain markets (Manafy, 2014).

As search is a very important piece of marketing, Google AdWords stands as one of the most powerful tools for marketers. By using its sophisticated, highly refined ecosystem, Google AdWords helps to make sure that ads are relevant to users directly impacting click-through rates and therefore providing a successful strategy option to advertisers.

By eventually incorporating a mix of social media touch points, a brand can create specific content creation for each platform in order to communicate with each audience best.  It is about quality, not quantity. Doing two or three channels well with consistent, highly engaging content that is reaching and interacting with your target audience is what will lead to conversion and customers (Clark, n.d.).

When attempting to decide which platforms to choose, it is important to decide where your target buyer is, where is your competition, if there is an untapped opportunity, how many channels can your brand handle well and consistently, and are there any geographic differences that a brand needs to take into consideration (Clark, n.d.). For instance, if a brand is competing against a much bigger company, that brand should pick the channels where it can have the most impact and engagement and invest to win (Clark, n.d.). Understanding how customers discover content, consume content and what motivates them to take action in a social media context can help marketers plan for effective social media marketing efforts (Odden, 2014).  By taking these insights and leveraging them into social media content planning, a brand can choose platforms and then provide information that is more relevant and useful to buyers as well as content that influencers can use to advance their own objectives (Odden, 2014).

It’s imperative that a brand consider content versus conversation. Content simply puts human interaction at the forefront noting that content is something to talk about (Novak, 2010). Content without conversation is just broadcasting or advertising. In order for content to be effective in social media, there has to be a conversation starter in the message (Novak, 2010).

Social media marketing is continuous and is an investment of time, and when appropriate, should include monetary resources as marketing budgets allow. Brands should be realistic about what it is willing to invest in terms of interaction. Social media is a two-way channel therefore consistent participation in conversations that make sense for your consumers and business is necessary. Social media also needs to be consistently monitored in order to analyze how social media users respond to a specific brand marketing strategy and obtain feedback to improve the campaign. The actual analysis of social media channels remains the most important piece, as it can help a brand determine where to invest more or less time in order to reach its specific social media goals.

By establishing a market, planning content, being consistent and keeping an eye on the competition, a brand is able to choose the most effective social media platforms. Choosing a few social media channels that align with the audience will help accelerate a brand into a social media success story.

References

Bowden, J. (2014, September 7). How the top brands use social media for marketing. Retrieved January 21, 2015, from http://www.business2community.com/social-media/top-brands-use-social-media-marketing-0995357

Clark, J. (n.d.). Convince and convert: Social media strategy and content marketing strategy. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research/how-to-choose-the-right-social-channels-to-reach-your-customers/

Levy, S. (2013, December 2). How to choose the best social media platform for your business. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230020

Manafy, M. (2014, July 9). How to choose the best social media site for your business. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.inc.com/michelle-manafy/how-to-choose-the-best-social-media-sites-to-market-your-business.html

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. Retrieved January 21, 2015, from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/why-conversation-not-content-king

Odden, L. (2014, October 21). Three ways to optimize your brand’s social media marketing success. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.toprankblog.com/2014/10/optimize-social-media-marketing/