Guide to making Web Analytics more accurate! - rewind

I felt the need to bring this up again as organizations are pushing for better returns from their online strategies and web analytics.

Understanding business imperatives, setting clear goals, defining success metrics, continuous testing and robust/agile implementation is what it all boils down to ... when it comes to effective utilization of web analytics for business improvement.

Below is an excerpt:

A recent eMarketer study identified top issues with the accuracy of analytics. Most prominently, users said they can't drill into the data (42%), and called out the issues with marketing attribution (32%), campaign tracking code (25%) and cross site analysis (20%). These factors become prominent as the business evolves over time and market driven changes are incorporated across the site. However, with some planning and framework, we can define and implement a robust analytics strategy that is flexible and adapts to the evolving business needs and site-wide changes.


Here's the link to the original post: http://www.analyticsheaven.com/2009/11/guide-to-making-web-analytics-more.html

The data is in abundance - looking at what matters and applying for business success is what matters ... happy hunting!

Key to driving leads - beyond social media

I recently spoke about how social media can be utilized to drive positive ROI for your business.

Here is one of the more direct ways to driving leads, while you define the over-arching social media strategy for your business – INVEST (if you haven't already) in creating a company blog.

According to eMarketer study, company blog drove the highest number of leads in both B2C and B2B firms, although Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were close second, third & fourth, respectively. Why this makes so much more sense is because there is a limit to how much can be said about your products, updates, tips, values, news, etc., on Twitter, Facebook and similar social sites, not to mention the timeliness of posts. We need to provide a more robust & permanent landing page experience (read company blog), with appropriate detail, to expand upon the 140 characters long nugget of information that you just updated on social sites.

The company blog should let your customers know more about your products/services, while encouraging participation (call-to-action). This can be through sharing knowledge about key features, competitive differentiators, upcoming changes and upgrades, issues and related solutions, user feedback, etc. Also, don’t forget to include employee comments about products, services, culture, etc., that can be valuable in promoting the company itself as having an open and transparent organization.

Interested readers (brand followers) on Twitter, Facebook, etc., can redirect themselves to the blog to read more. This approach serves 3 purposes that are critical for differentiating yourself in an over-crowded social media space. One – provides a common, yet an open platform for your customers (new and existing) to come to and learn more about your products/services. Two – provides a sense of attachment to the brand (comes from knowing and engaging more). Three - provides a forum to connect customers and employees for greater participation and transparency. Finally, maintain and nurture the company blog and its readers, and encourage participation through polls, promotions, events, tips, values, news, etc.

Measuring social media - user vs., product data

Measuring social media engagement and return on investment is an evolving science, with a lot of ideas on what is more important to track and record. I proposed an approach on “user and product metrics” in this blog a few weeks back (here’s the link: http://www.analyticsheaven.com/2010/02/social-media-can-drive-roi-now.html). While some of it may seem like a part of a marketing plan, it is still useful data for continuous monitoring and improvement.

Let’s expand on these success metrics. What metrics help us understand the user behavior and engagement on our site? Some of the obvious ones include, number of visits from social sites, followers/fans, page views (content sites) and leads, referring sites, demographic data on users commenting on your product, user segment more “prone” to conversion, loyalty based user segmentation, etc. Based on this data, we can decide how to engage our social media users; add more product information, product updates or new product ideas, engage new user bases, pamper most engaged user segments and our “net promoters,” etc.

To learn more about our products we need to monitor the features that people are tweeting about, be it our’s or our competitors’. Offline products may be impacted by, seasonality of product usage, recalls, new feature and/or product launches, etc. In case of an online product, social promotions can yield instantaneous glimpses into how we did on page design, site, navigation, layout, etc. Think of monitoring Bounce Rates, time spent on the site, pages consumed post landing, brand/product mentions and shares on social sites, etc. These will be good indicators of how well is the site performing relative to your expectations and competition. However, prior to starting a formal monitoring process, we need to set the benchmarks, so we can assess and define the deviations in tweeting behavior.

While following the social usage and consumption, don’t forget the company blog. This is where users will feel most connected and empowered to share their views and ideas about your product. Make sure it is conveniently linked from the social sites in order for the interested consumers to take that extra step.

Internet & TV - the inevitable synergies

As we see more and more user adoption of online videos and increasing TV viewership, I wanted to share some thoughts on possible synergies and trends in online and TV convergence. First let’s consider some facts:

1. Time-shifted TV viewing and online video viewing continued to grow in 2009 (according to Nielsen)
2. TV will become more social
3. Internet enabled devices, including Internet Enable Television sets (IETVs), will double by 2013 (according to Morgan Stanley), implying a more anytime/anywhere content consumption
4. Paid video content will make up 75% of US online video market (rest 25% will be ad supported)
5. Social ad spending approaches 50% of total online ad spend

What does this all mean for TV programming and online content? While internet continues to evolve in technology, engagement, user preferences, etc., TV has almost been stagnant in terms of content delivery and viewership. This is where I predict that online changes will have the greatest impact on TV viewing – something that the cable companies should take note of.

TV programs, while being available online, still are best viewed on TV from user experience perspective. As a result, paid content will be more viable and will see a larger adoption. Users will also start to “demand” more from their Video on Demand (VOD) programming. Because users like to view movies and favorite TV shows on TV for the most part, and not on an internet enabled device. VOD will need to evolve its offerings, interface and user experience to mirror more of what users are now getting used to online. The measurement of success will then closely mirror the success metrics in an online experience. On the other hand, ad supported programming, although a significant market in terms of dollar value, will be steady, and highly dependent on such metrics as, user demographic, click-through rates, completion rates, etc.

In either of the revenue models, common online success metrics such as, site navigation, content programming, time spent on a page, bounce rate, click-through rate on a title/promo, return frequency, etc., will/can be applied in some form to determine the success of a set-top experience.

The functionality offered by TIVO and its integration of streaming content from Amazon, Youtube and Netflix is already pointing to the online and TV synergies. As an example, UK market, with greater adoption of such preferences and willingness of users to pay for content, only helps to corroborate this trend. Cable companies can hence, gain a significant competitive advantage by preparing for the upcoming technological upgrades and investing in portability of online experience to set-top.

One metric to define website performance - Continued!

Some interesting questions were raised based on my last post on one metric to define website performance (http://www.analyticsheaven.com/2010/03/one-metric-to-define-website.html), so I felt like I should expand on the thought a bit more.

This theory of one metric often confuses the readers. It is not meant to replace the other more prominently monitored metrics, such as, bottom-line (which will be revenue). Return frequency is simply an indicative of consumer satisfaction with our product. Don't we all visit the same store, if we like what we see and get what we like? This philosophy extended to a web experience is what I am referring to as a metric that defines your web performance.

A higher return frequency means that our visitors are coming back to consume our content, buy our wares, conduct research, or whatever else we are programming. Looking at it from a mathematical model perspective, the metric is going to drive more revenue through our own unique revenue models (display, CPC, leads, etc.). I view revenue performance as a variable that is dependent on some of the more "upstream" variables (like, visits, return frequency, conversions, etc.) that can more directly be tied to consumer satisfaction which typically leads to higher bottomline.

An example of a parallel will be in call center industry, where Member Satisfaction Index (MSI) is often used as a metric to measure service quality. Similarly, Harvard Business review had published a study on "net promoter" being that "one" metric that everyone should monitor.

Monitoring one metric as an overall indicator of the health of your business does not mean that we ignore; defining corporate/business unit goals, identifying the KPIs and metrics that define success and acting on recommendations to improve upon each collectively - as may have been misunderstood from this post.

One metric to define website performance!

In the recently conducted poll on this blog "what one metric best defines your website's performance" a clear favorite emerged in the RETURN FREQUENCY (42% of votes). In second place was the Bounce Rate (28%), while Page Views and Conversion were not considered primary indicators of performance, although conversion did have some takers.

I would agree with the pattern, although, I also consider Bounce Rate to be a good indicator and more importantly, easily measurable metric to monitor.

Return frequency is interesting, since it indicates that users liked what they saw and are coming back. The greatest challenge I faced when measuring this metric was the accuracy and granularity of tagging to understand what was bringing the users back. The data usually is at site level and does little to offer insights into what did or did not work! (read my earlier post on this .. http://www.analyticsheaven.com/2009/11/are-you-looking-at-your-return_09.html)

Take for example, a content site where users may be coming back to read about a developing story and may stop once there are no new updates (or, the story fades from public memory). For an ecommerce site, certain deals and promotions may prompt repeat visitation, but don't necessarily mean loyalty.

I believe repeat visitation or loyalty is achieved through a combination of factors - navigation, user interface, relevance & timeliness of offering and source of the visit. Hence we need to build a framework, on site usage data and insights, that can be applied across the following 4 criteria.

A - (Product) where are users falling off or bailing from the site - improve our navigation to help users find what they came in looking for quickly (higher number of Page Views may not be a sustainable strategy, given the short attention span of users)
B - (User Interface) are there redundant widgets on the page that are distracting from the main story/promotion (one size fits all not a good strategy)
C - (Relevance/Timeliness) use the keywords trends and industry seasonality to ensure content is in tune with the user needs and interests
D - (Source of the Visit) differentiate the experience for browsing versus targeting. Browsers, ex., SEO visits, tend to consumer more pages, while more targeted referral traffic tends to be focused on the topic and leaves after the first page.

To summarize, if you decide that Return Frequency will a key indicator of the health of your business, ensure that your audience segments are clearly defined and measured; AND product navigation, UI, content and traffic source are designed to fulfill the needs of these segments.

Did I miss a metric(s) that you found to be a better indicator of success - I would love to learn about it, so please drop me a note!