Our network service provider had a major network glitch this morning, rendering our servers inaccessible for about 5-10 minutes. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience, and are in talk with them to see how we can be better prepared for failures like this in the future. Note that since the monitus code is loaded asynchronously on your store, your pages still would have loaded normally, although in some browsers, the "loading wheel" indicator might have kept spinning. But the page's content would have loaded fine, and other scripts would have run. The impact will be in your data (Google Analytics, Transaction Assist report, etc...) where you will be missing those 5-10 minutes' worth of data.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

The Monitus Reporter - Edition 3.0

Monitus Inspector acquires two new tools

STORE EDITOR -- A press release from the desk of the Inspector today announced it has just acquired two new tools in it's fight against poor store performance: the Product Affinity report, and the Anchor Money report. The Product Affinity report will allow the Inspector to report on a page's top-10 selling products. "For section pages, this can be particularly interesting, as it can hint at the order your products should appear in on the page" says the Inspector, reached at his office in your store editor. Common wisdom dictates that content "above the fold" (the region at the top of a web page before a user has to scroll down) is prime real-estate. In their busy lives, customers just don't have the time to scroll anymore. "By knowing which products sell best for a particular landing page, you can re-order your section items so that your best sellers come first in the list, hence above the fold, and sell even more!" The second tool the Inspector was proud to show us, is called "Anchor Money". "The goal of this report is to show you, for any given page on your store, which keyword brought the most revenue to the page it points to. So for instance, if on your home page you have a link to your fruit-flavored Dustbusters, you could know, using the Anchor Money report, that your best keyword that bring people on your homepage, and then eventually make it to the fruit-flavored Dustbusters page is "banana dust bunnies" - so make sure your fruit-flavored page contains that key phrase, and try to improve this page's ranking for this particular key phrase so that users, in the future, go directly to it, instead of landing on your homepage and having to look for what they want." The Inspector also noted that you could use this knowledge to set-up AdWords campaigns, or use Monitus.net's PersonaQuest tool to maybe offer a help pop-up to these users, short of directing them to the page directly - maybe even with a rebate offer. "These two new reports make me one of the most insightful Yahoo! Store Inspector out there - and I do it all for your readers, the Yahoo! Store Merchants. It's all about helping out as much as I can."

Coupon? What Coupon?

YOUR DATA -- Monitus.net's offering just got a little sweeter once again, with two simple features aiming to make coupon handling easier for merchants. In their Cart Recovery product, merchants can now see if a customer got a discount (used a coupon) when they converted. Another thing the folks at Monitus.net felt was missing, was in the checkout error message data sent to Google Analytics, (GA) when a customer uses an invalid coupon code. Previously, the event would only send the message the customer saw, to the effect that the entered coupon code was invalid. But the merchant would not know what code was in play. Now the GA event will also include the coupon code the customer used, so that they can hopefully spot people trying to use old codes and maybe bring back an obviously popular rebate they offered in the past.

PersonaQuest capitalizes on Google Analytics' new non-interacting events

GOOGLE ANALYTICS -- In previous versions of PersonaQuest, variations could be tracked through custom variables in Google Analytics. (GA) The major downside of variables is that you can only have 5, so they quickly come into conflict with one another. On the other hand, GA vents were not an option because sending an event on a landing page produces a second page view for the [age, drastically reducing your site's bounce rate. Google heard it's users pleas and added non-interacting events: events that, when triggered, do not count as a page view and, hence, do not count in your bounce rate calculations. The fine Monitus/net folks jumped on the bandwagon and changed the old PersonaQuest variables usage into non-interacting events, so they have the best of both worlds: no bounce-rate impact, and unlimited calls. GA reports all issued a sigh of relief and demonstrated an improved sense of self-worth.

"All States" defaces program's user interface!

MONITUS -- Data produced in response to an Access to Information request filed by the Monitus Reporter suggest the PersonaQuest user interface was defaced every time a user selected all states as the target of a Geographical rule. The rules list would overrun the browser's screen, and spill-over on an unsightly second line. A source who wishes to remain anonymous, said it was shoddy work by the programmer. The Reporter requested an interview with Monitus.net's programmer, but was told the programmer was crying of shame in his basement for a week or two. The ugly bug apparently had been fixed at the time of going to press.

I believe that every business needs great data, but they key is to actually use the data for conversion optimization.

We've spoken with lots of Yahoo! Store retailers and one theme comes up consistently. These retailers fully understand the value of data but might need some help finding the "right" data. They also understand the bottom-line impact of A/B testing but don't have the time or expertise to handle testing in-house.

We recently started a pilot program with a few our customers. Using their actual web analytics data, we produce a comprehensive report that includes a targeted shortlist of low-hanging, high-impact conversion opportunities. This report costs $499 and comes with a one hour phone consultation where we discuss every aspect of our analysis. Retailers can then either use our recommendations themselves or continue working with us and let us handle the whole test planning and implementation.

If you'd like to get more info about this limited program, please let me know!

Michael

It appears Google has introduced a bug in their latest javascript code... Because of our code, you and your customers will not see a javascript error. However, the code is not working in the background, which means your Google Analytics data is not being collected correctly at the moment.

We are monitoring the situation, but can't do much to fix this, unfortunately. We will keep you updated as this unfolds...

Update: Google has acknowledged the issue and are working on a fix.

Update: Although Google has not acknowledged a fix yet, the issue seems to be fixed, once the new file is downloaded in the browser's cache. We will let you know when Google officialy marks this issue as fixed.

Update: Google has officially marked this as fixed:We have confirmed that sites which use a third party javascript library, prototype.js, are affected. By our estimates, it appears to be less than 10% of Google Analytics users. Affected accounts will see a drop in traffic starting at 7am PST this morning (Thursday August 4th) with impact peaking at 9:30am PST. A fix has been deployed and collection will return to normal in approximately 2 hours.

This morning we identified a problem in our system that affected all our merchants: it appears conversions in our system were not tracked properly, so any report relying on conversion data (Transaction Assist, Keyword of the day, etc.) would show very little or no data. The bug was introduced with this week's upgrade of our tools, which happened on Tuesday, July 5th. Google Analytics data, is fine, however.

We have now fixed the issue, so that tomorrows reports should be (almost) complete (missing the few conversions before the fix was issued this morning) and then Sunday's reports should be completely back to normal. Unfortunately, the data of the past few days can not be retrieved.

We are extremely sorry for the trouble, and remain committed to give you useful tools and exceptional customer support.

Thank you.

Jean Le Clerc, lead developer for Monitus.

More personas to your party...

PersonaQuest - Part 2

As promised, we have aded a few more persona types to our Persona Quest tool

• Based on visit's page depth: Target visitors based on how many pages they have seen in a single visit.
• Periodic visits: Target all visitors to your store, based on when they visit.
• Based on current cart total: Target visitors based on the total amount in the cart.

As we hear back from you, or find new and interesting ways to segment your customers, we will be adding more persona types.

Easy, sexy image-badging function

For those of you using our Monitus javascript libraries, we have just created a new function to easily badge images on a page. This is great to add a small "New" icon to product images on category pages... But the sky is the limit - start badging them images my friend!

Easy-peasy javascript injection

A very powerful feature: start easily adding javascript snippets to your store, on any page, without re-publishing your store or checkout! This is explosive stuff, so for now only certified explosive specialits can do this, on demand, for your own protection... But, we just might open-up this to you guys down the road, if you are nice...

Grab your customers by the Personas...

PersonaQuest - Extreme Customer Targeting

Some of you might have used our PersonaQuest tool in the past... But this new version (PQ2) is just so much better - if for nothing else that it is much easier to use and understand. (The big Monitus Gorilla looks at you menacingly and says: "Got that, chum? It *is* easier to understand") It does not yet support all the features of v1, but we were so excited about the facelift we just had to push it out there.

"Questing"? Really?

Yep! PersonaQuest is a tool that allows you to specifically target segments visitors/customers. Offer them a rebate if they come back often. Or maybe highlight how shipping is free in their region. Or maybe you want special feedback from a particular segment of your visitor... This is pretty powerful stuff... Of course, we just stop short of actually telling you what to show to each persona, but then if we did that, we'd need to get a cut of your sales...

Casting...

The new interface to PersonaQuest uses the Wizard idea, guiding you through all the necessary steps to successfully set-up a new persona on your store:

1. First, pick out a persona type; in version 2.0, there are 4 types you can choose from:
   • Returning Visitor / Customer: Target visitors based on the number of visits or purchases they made on your store.
   • Based on referrer: Target visitors based on the referrer that brought them to your store for a visit.
   • Based on Cart Recovery: Target returning visitors that have dropped a cart on your store.
   • Based on geographical location: Target visitors based on the geographical location they are visiting from.
   More types to come in a future upgrade...
2. Then, you select the actual criteria that define the persona; this step is specific to the type of persona you have picked in step #1
3. In the next step, you pick a name for this persona. The name is for internal purposes only, so don't be afraid to be thorough and descriptive here. You also target a specific element on your store page(s). That element (typically a div or span tag) will be the container for the custom content shown to the customer. This step is also where you compose the actual content to be shown to the visitors that match this persona. You can use html, javascript, ... And we also supply custom tags to add dynamically generated data like a coupon code. If you want to use coupons, this is finally where you would specify which coupon pool to use.
4. Next-up is Google Analytics tracking: should you want to, you can track what PQ content is shown to who, using GA's custom variables. This is totally optional, but if you have any custom variable slots left, it is recommended.
5. Finally, you specify how often to show the dynamic content - kind of a poor man's A/B testing mechanism, built-in. You also control whether this persona should go live right now, or you can schedule it for later.

WARNING: Techno-babble ahead... Proceed only after three cups of coffee with a lot of sugar. Technically, we've thrown a lot of nifty tricks at this to make sure it works well, it is served fast, and, as much as possible, all done in a way your customers won't notice. Our code is now served off of a content delivery network (CDN) to speed things-up as much as possible, the targeted zones on your pages are hidden as soon as the page loads, and then shown once we've switched the content so that users don't see any content flashing form the default content to the new, dynamic content. On top of that, to make sure that, should anything run a bit slow, the hidden zone will automatically re-appear after a fixed amount or time... So if worst comes to worst, your customers always see the default content. So truly, have no fear and try it out -we got you covered.

PersonaQuest v1 was built on a great idea - but our interface and the basic concepts were a little complex and hard to grasp. This new version aims to be much more user-friendly, so that you can easily set-up targeted content on your store. We hope you will have fun questing for the different personas that visit your store - and please give us your feedback - nothing's set in stone!

It's spring time, it's clean time!

We had a good long look at our setting screen atMonitus.net the other day, trying to see it with the sweet, unpolluted and innocent eyes of a new merchant coming to our tools for the first time... That hurt! It appears we've been so busy building powerful, flexible tools that we forgot about making them accessible to everyone... Sorry. Truly. We have been whipping ourselves daily for a week after that. Once our backs healed a bit, and our brains stopped pouting form the abuse, we got to work, and came up with this new version for you guys - tadaaa! Come on, don't be shy, have a look at the new setting screen...You'll see it's a little less intimidating.

Basically, we identified four areas or axes. We grouped our tools into these four areas, so it's easier for you to focus your efforts into one of them at a time. Or even delegate (hmmm - delegation... We love delegation!) each area to different people on your team. The four axes are:

• Analyze: All things numbers: how well is your store doing, based on a bunch of metrics and reports.
• Test: Unless you are a marketing savant, testing is the best way to find what really works or not on your store, to improve conversion rate - use these tools to help you out.
• Process: Michael says it: it's all about the process. Best way to keep sane in this biz, is to establish processes. These tools will help you focus your efforts where it counts.
• Engage: This set of tool allows you to further engage visitors - try to get them to come back, to convert, etc... It's like having a visitor's little angel in your pocket.