Sentinel pages, part deux

by Jim Cain

April 6, 2010 -

So let’s think about ways to apply the concept of the ‘Sentinel page’ to your business. First, think about the biggest group of mostly irrelevant traffic you have. By this I mean a segment of visitors that either cannot or most likely will not convert, either because it is not possible or because your site […]

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Use ‘Sentinel’ pages to separate wheat from chaff

by Jim Cain

April 1, 2010 -

I have never had a client call where I didn’t learn something new and interesting. As the digital analyst, we end up in an interesting intersection in a client’s staff and vendor ecosystem where we get to see and talk about everything that happens online. We are monitoring the effects of detailed traffic generation initiatives, […]

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Segmentation and Conversion: Closer to the Heart

by Jim Cain

July 30, 2009 -

In a previous post I referenced the importance of considering only ‘convertable’ traffic when looking at a goal conversion rate, i.e. only look at US visitor data if you don’t ship or service outside the US. The reason that you always look at conversion when analyzing web data is because it allows you to always […]

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The best things in life are free … kinda.

by Jim Cain

June 4, 2009 -

One of the most interesting things about working at Napkyn is that every discussion with a prospect or new customer is a fascinating one. The reason is that every serious owner of a web presence, whether is it a store, lead gen site, non-profit, or even blog is running analytics. Because these analytics tools are […]

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Why bounce rates are important … and not important.

by Jim Cain

May 21, 2009 -

There’s nothing like a solidly contrary title to start off a web marketing blog. One of the most fascinating and frustrating things about web analysis is that every metric is relevant in certain contexts, and irrelevant in others. Depending on your business and the segment of traffic we are examining, metrics like time on site, […]

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