Aggregation of marginal gains

@avinashkaushik: Why do otherwise intelligent people ignore the low hanging fruit and want to eat the whole tree first? - (via twitter of course)

I have no qualms at all about this shameless retweet/re post. The subject matter is something Moneyspyder is a great fan of - the aggregation of marginal gains. In a nutshell:

John Carlzon - "you cannot improve one thing by 1000% but you can improve 1000 little things by 1%"

Feel free to view the webinar below at your leisure. Whilst watching it bear in mind that whilst John Carlzon's quote is very profound and highly relevant, consider these questions:

• How do you identify 1000 clearly improvable features on your site?
• Having identified these 1000 candidates, what changes should you make?


• Having decided what changes to make - how do you accurately and precisely measure the effects of the changes?


• How do you translate the effects of the changes into a bottom line ROI?

Think on, watch, call Moneyspyder

Keywords in snippets Google SEO research

Moneyspyder enjoys a high rate of success regarding Search Engine Optimisation of our client's sites. However, we are aware that success is never final. With the SEO arms race constantly moving forwards, we are always on the lookout for new research, techniques and methodologies to enable us to make sure our client's ecommerce businesses ranked as highly as possible in Google organic search results.

We read an interesting blog post recently regarding the impact of keywords in snippets with respect to clickthroughs in Google organic search results.

Have a read of Dr. Mike Baxter's 'Reflections from the River Bank' blog .

Google Analytics - Can Moneyspyder coin a new term?

Haruspicy is prediction of the future by cutting open a goat...nice. Tephromancy is the art of divination by inspecting ashes. Cyclomancy is a divination technique using rotating objects.

At Moneyspyder, we prefer to use the science of Google Analytics as a business planning tool. When setup properly, your Google Analytics data will have sufficient precision and accuracy that reliance on entrails, ashes, or badly setup Google Analytics will seem like medieval practices.

Can we coin the phrase "Google-omancy"? Attempting to predict the future of your business using sub-optimal Google Analytics is difficult at best and more-than-likely dangerous in most cases.

Moneyspyder and Engineyard make sweet music

At Moneyspyder, we started developing our Ruby on Rails Ecommerce system nearly three years ago. As we progressed through the prototyping stage we recognised that we needed a serious hosting partner who had good Rails experience.

We know we are great when it comes to Ecommerce strategy and Ecommerce technology - our clients tell us! We didn't want to divert our attention away from our core business so we needed a fully outsourced infrastructure team. Someone who could support us. Someone who we could work with to grow our product and share in our success.

There was a clear winner in the market place: Engine Yard.

Read more about our partnership and how we grew as a company on the Engineyard Q & A section.

Google Analytics Consultants - why work with them?

Moneyspyder has been a Google Analytics Authorised Consultant (GAAC) for a while now. We have worked with a number of clients on Google Analytics, Google Adwords and Google Website Optimiser. We have met a few prospective clients who ask, quite rightly, 'Why do I need to bring Google Consultants in to improve my site?'. Here are a few points as to why you should think about Google Analytics Authorised Consultants as a value proposition rather than a cost...

Bill Hunt, CEO of Global Strategies International has been quoted as saying 'Eight out of 10 implementations of web analytics solutions are incorrectly set up.'

Google Analytics Consultants will know what a best practice Google Analytics implementation looks like. Being a Google Analytics Authorised Consultant requires up-to-date knowledge of what is best practice.

So, the first step is to get your Google Analytics implementation properly audited by Google Aanalytics Consultants. You can only rely on your Google Analytics data to make decisions if it is accurate and precise. Your data can only be as accurate and precise as the quality of your implementation.

I've blogged previously on the subject of keeping focused when using Google Analytics. This is true in terms of both setup and usage. You remain focused on your core business - play to your strengths. Let the Google Consultants play to their's in order to maximise your returns.

Consider the best practice Google Analytics implementation; you should not divert your focus away from your business, your site and your customer's experience in order to be a Google Analytics Expert. Let someone else develop the latest techniques for gathering and analysing Google Analytics data.

Similarly, you know your business better than the Google Consultant - you tell them what your primary goals are so that they can develop your business KPIs with you and then advise how to track them using Google Analytics.

Google Conultants are the right people to advise on the best custom reporting and segmentation techniques. Use them as guides in the vast arena of Google Analytics Reporting capabilities. Less really can be more when considering KPI reporting. The less time you spend searching for the answers to your key questions, the more time you have to reflect and act on those answers - think about the aggregation of marginal gains and how you might approach them one your own and with a Google Consultant.