A Little Math .. .

I am a faithful reader of Seth Godin, once you've read his blog I'm sure you'll get hooked as well. Today I read something that made me stop and think about the analytics programs we use and how we are interpreting the information.

In particular, the average number of pages a visitor looks at on each site. The average is the "mean" number if you remember your math and is calculated by the total number of pages viewed divided by the number of visitors on the site. We get excited the more pages we see on average page views and changes in that area are generally part of the goal process.

But - what about the median number? The median is the number of pages visited in the middle of all pages visited. Half of all values are smaller than the median value and half are larger. In other words, people to your site visit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 . . . etc. pages in the site. The median for you may be 10 pages - because you have 20 pages in the site.

Now let's say the average visitor to your site looks at 3.5 pages. They aren't even touching the mean of 10. (You can find the median number for your site under "depth of visit.")

So you have a few visitors who look at 7 pages, some who look at 4 pages and a bunch that hit the front page and go no further. The idea is NOT to look at incremental increases in the average number of page views but to look for an increase in the number of people who are looking at a large number of pages.

What's your mean and median?

Choices

The great thing about living at this time in history is the sheer number of choices we have when it comes to virtually everything. Choices about where to bank, what channels and what types of television, where to get our phone service, what kind of phone and internet service to use - everyday we make thousands of choices.

Surfing the web gives many choices as well. What search engine you personally prefer, what types of news you want, the type of email you want to receive and (you knew this was coming) the websites you visit.

It's all in your hands. If you have a website the ability to capture your visitors attention in 50 milliseconds is critical to the success of your website. Why? Because studies have actually shown that in less than an eye blink (300 to 400 milliseconds) someone will make the decision to stay on your site or move on.

Your eyes are extremely complex sensory organs, capable of sending information to the brain in a minuscule amount of time that helps you formulate a decision about what you are viewing.

And, while this information has been around since the beginning of 2006, it was worth repeating, and worth considering again if you hadn't thought about it lately.

Why do people visit your site? Because they want to know if you have what you are looking for! If they don't see it in that first glance they will, most likely, leave.

This means your most important information, message, product must be represented in the very beginning of the site loading.

How compelling is your site? Does it capture attention at first (50 millisecond) glance?

What makes viral marketing viral?

Everyone would love to have their product, hotel, agency, service talked about by others (in a positive light) and have the referrals that are generated by word of mouth. But what is it that makes this type of viral marketing really work?

Is it the ability of a marketing company to get the information about YOU into the hands of the "right" person? The right person in this case being the "movers and shakers" who can make something famous with one comment.

Or is it inherent to the product or service itself?

In The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell points out that for all the trends there comes a point that the trend crosses a threshold and tips to spread like wildfire. Wouldn't we all want that to happen with our product, service, idea?

Jupiter Media just came out with a report stating that viral marketing campaigns are falling short of the goal. Only 15% of the marketing campaigns initiated by marketing firms were able to get people to talk about a specific product or service.

In a world where so many people are communicating everyday about thousands of things, how can marketing campaigns fall so short of the goal? The key is - they were marketers paid to try to persuade people to talk about something... not quite the same as Gladwell's findings.

The key to this all is very simple: Provide a product, service, idea that is so good people want to talk about it! You can pay people thousands of dollars to initiate a viral campaign to persuade people to talk but in all honesty, it won't work. The passion, the enthusiasm is missing and that is enough to make people ignore the message.

When people are passionate about what you have to offer, they will speak to anyone and everyone who will listen about you without having been paid a cent.

Be careful, the reverse is also true if they don't like you with a passion! An incentive to always do your best.