Snapette, The App That Leads Women To Pretty Shoes In Nearby Stores, Just Raised $1.3 Million

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Snapette, a fashion-focused product search tool, has raised a $1.3 million seed round of financing.

Brian Lee, cofounder of ShoeDazzle, is an investor.

A few weeks ago, we wrote that Snappette was one of the best new companies in the recent cycle of 500 Startups.

It brings pictures to local search.  Instead of searching for businesses that might have what a shopper is looking for, users can search for products and Snapette's results will tell them where the product can be found.

Snapette is like Food Spotting but it focuses on fashion, in particular women's bags and shoes. If a woman is in New York for an interview and needs a pair of shoes, she can scroll through trending products nearby, decide which store she'd like to visit, and walk in knowing exactly what she wants.

Former Harvard students Jinhee Ahn Kim and Sarah Paiji (pictured above) cofounded Snapette. The money will be used to grow the management team and launch mobile apps on the iPad, Android and Windows Phones.

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"A BRIDGE TOO FAR": AOL Requires Patch Editors To Drum Up Ad Sales Leads (AOL)

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Yesterday, we reported that, as the year ends, AOL plans to use some clever accounting to make it look like 10 or so Patches are finally profitable.

But that's not all AOL is doing to juice Patch revenue numbers!

One self-described "riled" Patch editor from the East Coast tells us that in addition to his or her normal job responsibilities, this editor has also been asked to start drumming up ad sales leads.

"This is a bridge too far, I think by any measure," says this editor.

"Requiring journalists—already run ragged by their normal duties—to do this is so far beyond the pale it actually makes my stomach hurt."

"This was definitely not discussed in the many job interviews that I went through to get this position, and was not discussed during my training. We were told in general terms that we would be the face of Patch in our areas, but there was no mention of having to do actual marketing work and generate sales leads."

He says that in addition to these regular duties…

"Post seven pieces of content a day, with a minimum of four; Edit all copy and photographs; Shoot and edit video for stories and as stand-alone content; Main reporter and writer (with no editor or copyeditor); Main photographer; Contract freelancers and assign stories; Maintain budget (couple grand, more or less) per month; Pay freelancers twice a week; Recruit and edit stable of bloggers; Track all users and comments on site; Acquire guest editor for vacation days (and pay them from my own budget at $100 a day); Post to Facebook and Twitter four to six times a day (twice a day on weekends)"

…(s)he has now also been tasked with drumming up sales leads by attending local events.

This editor writes:

Lead editors are responsible for all marketing events: not just suggesting them, but executing them. That includes (most of these are requirements; some are just strongly suggested):Writing up a proposal and running it up the food chain for approvalFilling out an onerous form that is practically impossible for someone not trained in marketing (attached)Setting up the table / boothPaying for the presence at the event (if necessary, which it usually is; we are then re-imbursed. That is, it doesn't come from our monthly budgets)Estimating a number of newsletter subscriptions to be gained from eventSigning up people for newsletter subscriptions while at the event (some REs give a quota of say, 5 or 10 subscriptions)Tweeting before, during and after event, about the eventRunning content on the web site before, during and after the eventGenerating story ideas (Not sure if this is Patch-required, but I've been told of one RE in Pa. who is requiring that at least five, and possibly 10, story ideas be submitted within three days of the event, which seems to really be rubbing salt in the wound—I have not confirmed this particular cruel insult)Estimating cost & number of promotional materials (swag)Formally requesting Patch promotional materials, and promptly returning any unused materialsBringing along the large Patch banner and other items, such as chairs, barrels for bottled water giveaways, iced tea in hot weather, or coffee urns in cold weather; I've heard some places have "prize wheels," or that we're all getting themFacilitating contests (optional; subject to approvals—there are legal implications, etc., that we must also become familiar with)Bringing a large trash can and trash bag, disposing of trash afterwardEstimating the number of sales leads to be had from the eventActually gathering the sales leads for the LE's sales person (again, depending on the region, there may be quotas to hit—and, incredibly, the sales person does not have to attend the event [note: not all LEs actually have a designated sales person]).Taken together, a team of five or six marketing professionals would be able to pull off the above nicely. But one journalist, with no or very little marketing experience? I understand it's a start-up, still, and I'm all for being entrepreneurial, but Good God. They have got to be fucking kidding.

We'd like to know more. Reach us at nicholas@businessinsider.com or 646 376 6014.

Read: WORKING AT AOL: "Incredible People, But Upper Management Is Insane"

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Edit This » AOL Summary AOL is an American global Internet services and media company. The Web company was started in 1985 as Quantum Computer Services (from the formerly defunct startup Control Video Corporation), offering an online service called... More » Recent Posts About AOL WORKING AT AOL: "Incredible People, But Upper Management Is Insane" Here Are The "Smoke And Mirrors" AOL Is Using To Make 10 Patches Look Profitable By Year's End AOL Patch Ad Sales Leaders Are Suddenly Gone Nicholas Carlson Contact: e-mail: AIM: AlleyInsider Work Phone: 646-376-6014 Subscribe to his RSS feed | twitter feed Ask Nicholas a QuestionRecent PostsMark Zuckerberg Seems To Ha...Big Clear Screenshots Of Wh...Here Are The "Smoke And Mir... The Water Cooler
Receive email updates on new comments!cvszEmail2 Comments 0 0 Flag as Offensive Eliot Spitzer on Sep 23, 1:54 PM said: I call bullsh*t.

Either way, second. Reply 0 0 Flag as Offensive MedillMary on Sep 23, 2:47 PM said: I read this blog a lot and I also know Patch, since many of my former classmates work there. What is the Business Insider's obsession with trying to cause problems for the people that are trying to make it work? I might be missing something but as far as I can tell they are only trying to do good things. They're hiring journalists when no one else is. They're trying to do something good for the places that they have sites. Where is the mal intent? What warrants this drumming up of disgruntled employees (who you can find anywhere, including Business Insider) to try to convince all the other employees that Patch is somehow doing something evil? Has this blog ever written anything about the good things that they do or posted something from the people who love working there, my classmates included? There must be more to this story. Nicolas, can you tell us what it is in your background that makes you so negative on this company? Have you ever worked for Aol? Or why, in your opinion, this company needs to be "exposed"? Because I don't see any signs of malice or any negative outcomes from what they're trying to do. Reply Join the discussion with Business Insider
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How to track on page leads in Google Analytics

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Posted 17 August 2011 12:13pm by Anna Lewis with 8 comments

Everyone involved in a business with an online presence wants to know how much return they are getting from their efforts, however large or small. Unfortunately, not everybody has methods in place to accurately track and attribute their return.

This is the first in a series of posts that will take you through the best ways to track a variety of leads that you may be targeting.

In this post I'll show you how to track on-page leads. The other part(s) will cover leads that involve off page activity, including social interactions and phone call leads, all within Google Analytics.

Through my work at a digital marketing agency I have come across numerous clients who rely on estimations or a gut feeling based on how many times the phone rings each day to judge the success of marketing.

This may have been the common method in the days of traditional advertising where marketing was less measurable, but in the online world it is much easier to track everything - including offline campaigns, which is why I wanted to write this post. 

Setting up lead tracking is something that can be done in a number of ways depending on your business, site and lead type, so there should be something for everyone here.

The only area I'm skipping over is e-commerce tracking, as this is generally not a lead but a direct conversion and would take us off on a whole new tangent of analysis not for this post.

Before we can track anything, we need to know what will be valuable to track. What constitutes a lead for your company? There are many different actions that could lead to a sale.

Here are the examples I'm going to cover, which include low value to high value, small interaction to involved processes. I've noted which part of this series you'll find the information in:

Part one (this post):

Contact forms EmailsCall back requestsAppointment bookingNewsletter sign upsSubscriptionsDownloadsUser registrationViews of specific pagesLive chat

Future posts:

As you can see, there are quite a lot of things you could be tracking. Within a company you will know how much resource or budget you give to marketing each type of lead, so now you'll want to find out how much you get out of each one, whether they give you a positive return and which might be more or less profitable than you think they are.

I'm going to break these conversions in to several sections as a number of them can be tracked in the same way. So here's how to do it, starting from the most simple and working up to the complex leads.

This method can work for the following:

Contact formsCall back requestsAppointment bookingNewsletter sign upsSubscriptionsDownloadsUser registrationViews of specific pagesLive chat 

Anything on your website that has a dedicated URL can be tracked very easily. All you need to do is set up a goal in Analytics with the confirmation page as the URL Destination.

These goals should be set up for all pages that count as leads and given a value depending on what the average return per lead is (this can be adjusted once you have collected more data).

For those mentioned above, and several other lead types, if you do not have a dedicated page you can still track these with relative ease.

If you don't have a page to track for these actions you can either use Event Tracking or Virtual Pageviews. Simply set these up as Goals with values to see the statistics behind the interactions. 

I would recommend using Event tracking for anything that you don't want to be included in your content report, as Pageviews create a URL for your content report without that URL being a live page.

Event Tracking can work for the following:

Call back requestsNewsletter sign upsSubscriptionsDownloadsUser registrationEmails

To set up Event Tracking to trigger on a click you need one line of code within the code of the final click:

onClick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Action', 'Label', 'Value']);"

So a click on a link to submit a form would look something like:

Submit

And a click to open a mailto link so a user can email you might look like:

Email Anna

Virtual Pageviews work well with:

Contact formsAppointment bookingLive chat Downloads

If your live chat links to another website, or your booking system doesn't go through a series of URLs, you can create a virtual URL and set this to generate a pageview every time the action is completed.

This can then be set as a goal and a value given to measure the return of these leads.

The code for a pageview is:

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/your/url']);

To generate this virtually when a user clicks, the code should be adapted and inserted in to the button like so:

Chat Now

To view the data from these conversions you need to have set up goals in Analytics for them. Once you've done this, you can think about what you want to find out.

Do you want to know which traffic sources led to which goals? Or how much value you've gained from brand keywords compared to non-brand? 

To analyse your performance I would recommend starting off with the Traffic Sources area of Analytics. Here you can view 'All Traffic Sources' and then show Source or Medium to compare different channels.

By clicking through the tabs above the data you can see what percentage of visitors completed each goal:

Conversions measured through Event tracking can also be set as goals and analysed as above, but only using the new version of Analytics (v5).

If you are still using the old interface you can see this information under Content, Event Tracking. Here you can break down the data based on the labels you've set and any dimension you might want to see the data against:

The trouble with this data is that it doesn't show you anything unless you have something to compare it to or a value to associate with it.

I would recommend using Advanced Segments to explore the results between different segments; for example, comparing PPC to organic traffic, or mobiles to desktops.

Once you get started with Advanced Segments there's no limit to the amount of insightful statistics you can pull together, but that's for another post.

Once you have mastered the implementation of Event Tracking, Virtual Pageviews and setting up goals, you open up a whole scope of tracking capabilities.

These customisations are something I recommend everyone familiarise themselves with if they are interested in conversions on a website. Even if you can't remember the code off the top of your head just knowing what to use for which situations will enable you to track actions like these effectively. 

The next step will be to start tracking leads that involve off page actions. This is the topic of my next post and will include tracking social interactions and phone calls.

Anna Lewis is a Digital Marketing Executive at Koozai and a guest blogger on Econsultancy. Follow Anna on Twitter or connect via LinkedIn.

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