A new approach in 2010

As we head into the New Year, there will be fresh focus on the business outlook than what happened in 2009. A lot of questions need to be addressed first-up, before we get buried in the daily operations - did we achieve the most out of our business analytics efforts in 2009, was the data adequately supportive of our business strategy in 2009, do we have a clear roadmap/plan for 2010, and what relevant metrics and analytics focus in 2010 will help us achieve corporate goals, etc?

Let’s take a moment to know our strategic focus, be it at the corporate level, business unit level, or simply for the team. If we are an analytics shared service team, we need to know the key metrics that will help our business achieve the desired results. If we are a functional team, we need to assess our metrics and sit down with our shared service folks to understand the metrics and outline a process to measure/report/analyze these in the coming months. And if you are a do-it-yourself organization - well, you are over-worked - yet, you need to ensure that your functional success is aligned with analytics goals.

So where should the focus be?

E-Commerce sites may need to look at conversions, CPC rates, click-through rates, etc. Content push sites may need to look at programming efficiencies, click-through rates, repeat visitation, etc. If your goals are a blend of the above, conversions and click-through rates may be more important. Do you have an online video strategy and are the metrics appropriately defined and tracked? What about your social media strategy – are the metrics defined and tracked? Oh, and don’t forget the consumer experience metrics – ease of navigation, bounce rates, engagement depth, etc. will be great success indicators, while A/B testing a great tool to continuously upgrade your site’s experience.

The key will be to understand the business strategy for the year and outline the metrics and analytics approach at the onset – meeting with your leader/executive and setting those benchmarks is very helpful in the beginning of the year and brings focus that helps react to business contingencies. As an example, in 2009, I helped an organization stay on course to beat their OIBDA targets, in spite of the downturn in revenue.

2010 is bound to present much greater opportunities!

Guide to making Web Analytics more accurate!

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.

The first step is to take a step back and outline the core strengths of the business, around which metrics will be defined. This means that if we are a content focused site, we need to ensure the page view depth, SEO traffic growth, etc., are top measurement priorities. Further, monetization strategy of this traffic should be defined, in close coordination with sales and business development. (The exercise needs to be repeated at the page and/or section level). For an ecommerce site, it will be highly desirable that conversion metrics are aligned with the strategy, traffic engagement and monetization.

Web sites have three key ingredients that define its performance.
1 - traffic into the site
2 - navigation behavior within the site
3 - conversion from the site (usually lead/revenue generating click)

The key to a robust site analytics data is to be able to connect the above 3 ingredients in a flow that helps explain the value of the user coming into the site. In my previous experience, we ran into several issues in trying to develop reporting that provided this level of visibility.

Basically, a campaign code assigned to a particular promotion needs to be tracked through the navigation cycle, up to the point where user leaves the site. This helps us understand which campaign drives most traffic, how do users from various campaigns interact with our experience, which campaign drives maximum value towards our internal goals (engagement, lead, revenue, etc.).

Ideally, it is best to work with ONE vendor in implementing the tracking and reporting system, so as to ensure consistency, data integrity and institutional knowledge - identifying a vendor that provides the best possible solution becomes much easier, once the step one above has been defined at the onset. Onsite staff that understands the business and the analytics implementation can then provide insights and recommendations that are sustainable.