Can anyone really predict a trend? We can spot them, but predicting them is a bit like catching a snowflake – the moment it lands, it melts away, or lands on an existing pile of snow to which anyone can then safely say, “It’s definitely trending towards snow.” We don’t like to make pronouncements of absolute certainty, but we do pride ourselves on being astute observers of design.

Here’s what we’re talking about:

- Material Maturation and Morphing – Avatar comes to A + D
- After Stainless Steel – A resurgence comes to life
- Slim down and get healthy – Flooring products, that is
- Luxury and Green – and really mean it this time
- New Buzz words to impress your friends with
- Intelligent Design – Not that kind… the useful stuff like Smart Products for your home
- Lighting – not a burn out; just a new efficient way to guide our way
- Color de jour for 2010 – check please
- Something Old is something Good; even hipper meaning to “recycling”
- Look afar but look close to home too – Made in USA is making a comeback and designers love it

Want to read the whole scoop? Check out our newest Research + Trends article posted on our site: DRS and Associates.com

The types of Online media outlets have grown tremendously over the past few years. From e-newsletters and blogs to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, as media outlets grow so does client Online coverage. Any type of Online coverage has always been a big piece of the pie, so to speak, in terms of overall client coverage. Blog coverage on average has grown by over 50 percent. Online coverage grows at a steadier pace, but grows nonetheless. Online coverage on trade related sites is up by an average of 7 percent compared to non-trade related sites. These statistics support the growth of Online reporting and how we are constantly trying to win our clients coverage using new mediums.

Personal privacy and the Internet has become a hot topic around the office lately. Our Creative Director, Natalie Schlocker, found out that a company is using her personal information to try and make a profit. They are doing this by displaying her personal information on their website, with a link that is trying to sell a background check on her for a nominal fee. Her information, which is contained on this website includes name, DOB, known addresses and more, all available for anyone to see! She tried calling the company to take her information off the site, but they said they would not take it down because it was public information. There are a number of websites that use your personal information in this manner, as they try to sell visitors some type of product or service.

We had another one of these incidents this week when someone called our office saying that someone in our office was surfing their website, and wanted to know if we were interested in their products or services. Even though none of us could remember going to the site, someone in our office must have gone there at one point. The site owner then took our static IP address (computer network address), tracked us down and called us directly. This is not difficult to do, but we were shocked that someone would actually do this, and it raised the privacy issue once again.

Both of the above examples reflect why we believe personal information should never be misused. The problem is that websites and the online industry in general is self-regulated for the most part, with the exception of a few laws such as the Can Spam Act of 2003, which provides guidelines that must be followed for spamming legally. Besides the can-spam law, it is still pretty much the wild wild west when it comes to Internet Marketing and what you can do with people’s personal information.

Google’s Privacy Issues

Google was in the news again over privacy issues because people have concerns about how they will be using the data they collect from their Google Books platform.

“They know which books you search for,” says Cindy Cohn, Legal Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is a group pushing for Google Books to offer greater privacy guarantees. “They know which books you browse through; they know how long you spend on each page.”*

The above data in itself is not bad to collect, but Google has the power to pinpoint this information back to an exact individual, and then sell, market to or otherwise compromise this personal information. To rely on Google to protect our privacy is not the answer either, as Google now owns one of the largest, most invasive and heavily criticized ad serving companies in the world, DoubleClick.

Where We Stand on Privacy Issues

As a marketing firm we do collect data and email addresses, but we never misuse this information. We have websites that have newsletters where you can sign up with your email address to receive the newsletter, but we would never sell your email address or send unsolicited emails. When we collect email addresses we are doing so as a service to our website visitors, as well as a service for our clients and their website visitors. If someone is interested in our company, clients or services then they should sign up for our newsletter so they can get important updates and information, and the same is true of all of our clients that also have newsletters. Newsletters are a great way to get interesting information in a timely and cost effective (free) way. This is why it is a shame that other companies violate the trust of their newsletter members by selling and spamming their email addresses.

The other way we collect data is through the use of tracking software that Google provides, called Google Analytics. This software is the industry norm when it comes to online tracking, and Google has done very well with providing marketers like ourselves with in-depth, accurate, tracking data, without compromising personal information in any way. When someone visits our website, or one of our clients’ websites, the tracking software will be able to tell us where that visitor came from. This is one of the most important things for us to track because we need to know if our campaigns for our clients’ luxury brands, and our marketing campaigns for our own website are working and worth the time, energy and money.

Through the use of Google Analytics we are also able to collect important information about what visitors are doing on our site: what pages they visit, how long they stay, whether or not they submitted a contact form or used any of the website’s tools, etc. This information is also very valuable for online marketers and does not violate personal privacy. All of the statistics we collect are just numbers on a page, and through the use of this software we cannot track anything back to an individual, physical address or IP address.

This data is very important for our business because we provide the utmost value for our clients who engage in online marketing campaigns. Part of providing this value invloves tracking, and being able to tell the client exactly what happens with their website: i.e. that hundreds of visitors were on a luxury interior design blog where they were reading an article based on a press release we sent to the blog’s editor, when they clicked on the link to the client’s website where 15 people filled out a contact form. Another instance of where tracking is extremely valuable can be seen when we are doing Search Engine Optimization for a client for a keyword like “steam shower.” With effective tracking and reporting we are able to see that the result of our optimization efforts has increased the search engine position and resulted in 50 more completed goals for the client. These are examples of what makes this data so powerful and valuable, but it must be used in the right manner and by people who have ethical standards so that private information is not abused.

*Source: NPR News

The simplest form of tracking is visitor tracking which will tell you how many visitors came to your site, where they came from, what pages they visited, how long they were on your site and each page, what browser and operating system they are using, and if they clicked on a link to leave. This is all the most basic information that a tracking system will tell you, but not necessarily the most important. The most important information that a tracking system can log is if these visitors completed one of your online goals.

This means that the first step in any Internet Marketing strategies should definitely be to define what the goals of your website are. The answer “to get X amount of visitors to it” is a common answer, but is not a goal. What are the visitors supposed to do once they get to your site? Why do you care if they’re on your site in the first place? Some real, measurable goals include:

• Filling out a form or survey
• Sending an email or inquiry form
• Purchasing something on the site
• Clicking through to another website
• Signing up for a newsletter
• Signing up for a membership
• Using your online tool
• Sharing your content or sending an email to a friend through your website

These are all things that could be considered your website’s goals, and each goal can be tracked with a properly configured website and tracking system. When these goals are being tracked as conversions, then you are able to tell which sources of traffic, search engines, blogs, social networks, etc. are sending the most amounts of qualified visitors that are converting and accomplishing your website’s goals. Being aware of the goals of your website, and tracking & reporting the conversions of these goals and realizing the progress will determine the success of your website.

If your company is spending a lot of money on Internet Marketing then “offline”, or “lead tracking” and reporting is also very important to your business. With lead tracking you pass the online visitor data from (say they search for “kitchen & bath manufacturers” on Google and found your paid listing), into your CRM software so that as the lead is automatically entered into your offline software and you can tell what campaign the lead came from. This is very important information because even though you might get a ton of leads from a specific paid traffic source (which you would be able to tell from online conversion tracking), these leads might not amount to anything and be completely untargeted. As you can see, this information would be very valuable as you could cease to purchase this traffic if the leads were not giving you any true return on your investment.

Let’s say your site does have tracking capabilities; do you know how to use them? Tracking software can be very technical and configuring and reading the data is an art unto itself. Most sites are equipped with “Server Statistics” which are provided by your hosting company, but these statistics tell you very little and are not as accurate as other systems. Typically a third party statistics system is used for nearly all tracking and reporting needs. These systems can be free or cost as much as $40,000 a month for just the use of the statistics software alone.

Having someone that can read the data and understand what is going on with your website’s statistics can be worth ten times the cost of some of these expensive tracking software packages. It is great if you have visitor and lead tracking in place, but if you’re not doing anything with the data then what’s the point. Regular, weekly if not daily review of your website’s traffic reports are needed to react quickly to potential opportunities and business opportunities. If all of the sudden you get major press coverage, a largely popular search term result in a search engine etc. you may need to react accordingly by changing your hosting plan, putting a pop-up offer on the popular page or take some other immediate action in order to monetize your good fortune.

During the presidential elections one such event took place that could’ve made one website owner a lot of money had they been tracking, or at least reacted to a monumental change in website visitors. JoeThePlumber.com was receiving a few hundred visitors a month (200-300 total visitors a month), but when the politicians began using the coined term “Joe the Plumber” in ever presidential speech and interview the web traffic for this little website went through the roof. In the month of October alone he received about 160,000 visitors. This traffic, if properly monetized could have made him hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few short months. If this website’s owner didn’t have tracking installed on his website he would’ve had no clue at the huge influx of traffic or the need to monetize this visitor traffic (assuming he was also living in a cave).

This example shows us how by not doing something as simple as tracking our website’s visitors, we can miss the boat and be left wandering aimlessly through the online world. Without tracking you cannot react to online occurrences like the “joe the plumber” occurrence. Without tracking you can’t improve your website, or justify a proposal to improving your website because you will not know what has been working, what will work in the future or what will not work. Do not invest in any paid Internet Marketing without traffic because you will be throwing darts at a dartboard in the pitch black. Without tracking software and an experienced analyst reading the data Return on Investment cannot be determined effectively. For any questions, or to inquire about DRS & Associates Tracking and Reporting Services feel free to contact us here or email us at info@drs-associates.com

One would guess that in this economic downturn the volume of magazines coming in would be low in comparison to last year. But after a quick comparison of our 2008 and 2009 magazine lists, not only is volume of magazines we receive higher, but editorial coverage is up too.

It goes to show that even with cuts in advertising and a more selective audience our clients’ products along with the information we provide remain fresh, interesting, and relevant.