The Latest Advice From Google Experts on Attribution and Mobile Strategy

At this Wednesday's webinar we heard from Jimmy Morrow and Erin Sagin at Google. Jimmy gave us the lowdown on attribution models (explained below) and Erin focused on the importance of websites to working well on smartphones.

You can watch a full recording of the LiveStream on YouTube at the following link: https://youtu.be/CTu7jtVbhYE

What Is An Attribution Model?

Attribution is simply the method used to identify which parts of your digital marketing platform influenced the final sale and how much. If you understand this, then you know what your ROI is on each, and where to make adjustments.

Click here for an overview of attribution models

Its a simple concept but can be challenging to apply in real-life, especially when the consumer decision journey involves them hopping between a smartphone and desktop computer. With such a fragmented path to conversion, its been very difficult to identify all the stops and connect them with the final 'conversion' so you can accurately attribute value.

This has led to ISPs and ad firms making some borderline-sketchy moves to solve the problem including the deployment of 'super-cookies' and other measures that violated some consumer privacy laws, culminating in a $1.3M fine to Verizon last year.

That said, Google's increasingly pervasive reach is making it possible for them to stitch together your online activity no matter where it is. If you're using an Android device, its connected to your personal Google account and they can track you. Using Chrome? They've got you. Using Google search? (which is also the default search engine on iPhone) They've got you. That search you did on mobile while riding the train to work, which took you to their website? Don't be surprised to see a display ad when you visit LinkedIn at work. Clicked it? Yep - that's Google's Display Network and that goes into the history as well.

With Google increasingly able to track and connect all your activity, we are more able to put all the pieces together and account for all the pieces that influenced a consumer to finally convert by calling, filling out a quote request, or buying a product on your website. The Holy Grail is the "Data Driven" method for attributing value to each step along the way. However, you need some robust activity in order to use it; usually 15,000 ad clicks and 600 conversions within a month. To put that into perspective, if your average 'cost per click' is $3.50, you're looking at over $52K in ad-spend so this is for bigger programs for sure.

In the absence of that kind of volume, you can still use one of the other models to estimate the value of each stop that gets them into the funnel, nurtures them along the way, and finally triggers the close. There's still subjectivity involved but using a model can give you handle on it.

What Is A Mobile Responsive Website?

A responsive website automatically changes to fit the device you're reading it on: whether a widescreen desktop monitor, laptop screen, a tablet or a smartphone.

Smartphones are now the primary way people interact with the web, and your digital platform needs to reflect that reality. Something like 70% of all web interactions are now on mobile, so mobile-experience matters, a lot.

A brief digression: Yes the whole 'goldfish have a 6-second memory' trope was used again in the presentation. Its a meme which is popular among digital marketers, has been disproved, and is offensive to goldfish, who are very good at remembering things for over 5 months - especially demeaning remarks about their cognitive abilities.

My goldfish Kevin is not amused by the mis-representation of his mental faculties. Dwight and Stanley aren't pictured but Kevin tells me they feel the same way.

That said, a fast mobile experience matters. While I haven't screamed or thrown my phone when frustrated by a lousy web experience, I have hit the back button and gone somewhere else - as most people will do - and you really do have about 5 seconds before your website visitor starts to wonder if something is broken. 

This is also compounded by the fact that wireless providers are using 3G spectrum as a failover for 4G LTE, which is increasingly maxxed out due to exploding video usage. This means that today's 3G connection is actually worse than it was 3 years ago, and your website needs to be very non-demanding to ensure a good experience for folks on-the-go.

How's your website? Plug your web address into the site at the following link to see how it fares: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Hopefully you'll do better than Walmart, which has a 'Poor' mobile experience. Amazon too if you can believe it. However, don't feel too bad if it says your site 'Needs Work' because even Google.com gets a 79/100 rating. 

For most sites, a score above 60/100 on mobile is reasonable - and means you're outperforming the world's biggest retailers online. Remember, you don't have to be perfect, just better than your competitors.

In addition to speed, you can also plug your website into Google's 'Mobile Friendly" test at https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

Below are a couple examples I just ran for you to get a look at. Can you guess which one is our client?

Way to go Displays Fine Art Services for being mobile-friendly!!!  Meanwhile Texas Department of Public Safety feels like you've time-traveled to 2004. Ugh.

What is AMP?

AMP is Google's "Accelerated Mobile Pages" movement which aims to make mobile experience faster through AMP-compliant pages built with streamlined code. Find out more about AMP at: https://www.ampproject.org/ 

AMP is an interesting idea and widely used in publishing, but it presents some wrinkles. All the websites we build are mobile-responsive, meaning their layouts re-flow to fit your browser window. AMP pages are essentially re-built and separately stored versions of your corresponding website pages, which ads complexity and cost to your platform. The industry has largely gotten away from building separate, mobile versions of desktop sites, and AMP kind of feels like a step backwards in terms of process.

While an interesting technology, I'm not sure pursuing AMP is an investment that should be prioritized for most businesses (which are smaller and have more limited funds to invest in such things). I predict that bandwidth and mobile-device horsepower will continue to increase exponentially, just as it has for the last 20 years, diminishing the need for AMP pages.

And don't forget about UX (User Experience). While there's only so fast you can make your web-page, you can design it so the user can immediately find and do what they want. Landing pages should be built so the user can immediately see what they are need and take the next step. This implies that whatever they clicked to get there (e.g., organic search result, AdWords ad, Facebook Display ad) is a dead-match for where they landed. 

Remember, speed isn't necessarily the most important thing. Ensuring the content and structure of your website makes sense from the visitor's perspective is. A well-structured but slower site will outperform a faster but poorly-designed one.

Source "University Website" XKCD

If an click just takes them to the home page, and then they have to play the "pinch and zoom game" or burrow their way through a forest of menus, they'll likely bounce - and you've lost them.

That's it! Thanks for coming. If you or someone you know are ready for help with your digital marketing platform, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, if I don't connect with you before then, have a great Turkey Day!

Qualbe Marketing Group was established in 1997 and is on a mission 'to do good' by building people and businesses, through leveraging its experience with digital marketing channels to connect their companies with their customers. More at qualbe.com

Nick Krueger is a Digital Marketing Strategist and self-proclaimed 'Purple Squirrel' with a background in graphic design and premedia, retail marcom, and degrees in operations and finance. His favorite activities are crafting growth-generating digital strategies and Weber-grill-based culinary arts. Nick is also apparently into goldfish and very self-conscious about referring to himself in the third-person.

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