This morning (July 23rd) we were notified that product categories were not sent to Google Analytics (GA) yesterday, July 22nd. We apologize for the trouble, and are actively working at fixing the issue. We will post back here as soon as we are satisfied the issue has been resolved. Note that because of the normal delays in GA, the problem might be fied before we report back, but we will only post an update once we are convinced it is truly gone. We are very, very sorry about this. Monday, July 25th 2011 – 6:15 AM (PDT): We confirm that this issue is now resolved, and has been since roughly 7AM (PDT) on Saturday July 23rd. Again, our sincere apologies for this.

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.