Content is King
We've all talked about how content is king, right? You know it because everyone is saying it. And in the end, you likely believe it because it's proven to be true.
Even if you're not a content creator, you've definitely experienced the effects when others write fantastic content. It draws you in. Pull you close. Begs for a click (or some other action).
So let's just agree that content is king. It's more important than almost anything—especially when it comes to your outbound marketing, your blogging, your website traffic, and more.
All the Content in the World…
I've been writing daily for over 14 months and actively writing for 18 months. That's a lot of content. And it's had a great consequence on my site, but while I know some things (like the most popular posts), there's a lot of other things I don't know.
Right away, I know, you're thinking, just get Google Analytics in place. And that's good.
But let me ask you a question—how often have you logged into Google Analytics and thought, hmmm I don't know what to look for? If you're like me, it's easy to get overwhelmed by data. And here's the thing – most of the data isn't actually answering what I want.
Site Analytics only go so far
When you install Google Analytics, you work with the core assumption that your site can tell you everything you need to know. And that's mostly right. But here's the thing—it rarely comes in the shape of pages, countries, and browsers.
What I want to know about is paths, time spent, and actions taken.
What I care about is behavioral analytics, not site analytics. My site, nd its pages are not the most important aspect of my traffic. My users are. And their actions are.
Behavioral Analytics to the rescue
Don't get me wrong—it's possible to do this with Google Analytics. But it takes work. And it's not easy. And if you're not an analytics and coding superhero, it can feel frustrating.
Added to that challenge is the fact that you may use one service this month (like Woopra) and then decide to use another (like Kissmetrics) later. And then there's trak.io (in beta). If you start moving between all these great services, do you lose your data? And how do you track people's behavior over time (when you've changed services)?
Segment.io is my answer!
So I went looking for a solution to this challenge. What I wanted was simple, right?
I like staying simple when I'm on the client-side (and hate it when I hear it from my own customers).
I wanted a single solution on my site that would collect all the activity and behavior on my site (Segment.io does this). Then I wanted it to move the data to other services I might use (like Kissmetrics and trak.io). More importantly, I wanted a service that would collect this data so that if I moved to another service, I wouldn't have to lose all that data.
And that's when I found segment.io.
Wait…it gets better!
Every now and then (about once a week), I head over to Easy Digital Downloads and WooThemes. I do it because there are always new things going on in the e-commerce space—and when it comes to analytics, understanding what people are doing on your site is critical.
Tonight I found some new stuff—about points, credits, and coupons—which will be another post later. But then, by total chance, I noticed that WooThemes had a WooCommerce extension for segment.io and I had to dig in and see what was being offered.
Here's the list of actions monitored (by default):
- Registration form seen
- New user registered
- Logged in
- Logged out
- Viewed account
- Password changed
- Address updated
- Track post
- Track page
- Track archive
- Track searche
- Viewed product
- Added to cart
- Removed from cart
- Viewed cart
- Coupon applied
- Checkout started
- Calculated shipping
- Payment started
- Completed purchase
- Viewed order
- Tracked order
- File downloaded
- Re-ordered
- Order cancelled
- Commented
- Reviewed product
At that point, I may have said (out loud), “are you kidding me?” and bought it.
Yes content is king, but…
It's true that content is king, but personally, I don't know why you would invest all that energy, time, and effort on creating amazing content, only to be left wondering how people are interacting with it. That's why I'm a big fan of segment.io and all the potential integrations that come with it (as well as WooCommerce's extension). It may even be enough to change ecommerce platforms until others catch up with segment.io integration.