Reading Kaushik (Part 9 / End): Digital Careers

Top Ten: Signs You Are A Great Analyst

  1. Used more than one WA tool extensively
  2. You inform yourself everyday about WA
  3. You look at the website first
  4. Your approach is Customer Centric
  5. Understand how data is collected
  6. You are comfortable in the quantitative and qualitative world
  7. You are curious and don’t have problems with challenges
  8. You can adjust your talk to your audience
  9. You don’t neglect the big picture and be able to communicate difficult concepts
  10. You do more than just what are you told to
  11. You have patience with people adopting the “new” mindset

How Should Web Analysts Spend Their Day?

  • 20% Reporting
  • 20% Analyze Acquisition Strategies
  • 20% Understanding On-site Customer Experience
  • 20% Staying Plugged into the Context
  • 10% Explore New Strategic Options
  • 10% Bathroom breaks, oh and lunch!

Hiring? What Works: Fresh blood or old hands? Experience or Novicity?

  • The web moves at a rapid pace, everything new is old quickly. So what counts?
    1. You actually get the web
    2. You are a inherently flexible being
    3. Change will not kill you
    4. You are a critical thinker
  • Hire new person or somebody with experience? Depends on the maturity of your WA program

I Wish I’d Known That. [Digital Analytics Edition.]

  1. An obsession with tools & implementations will kill you
  2. Your analytics skills aren’t the most important
  3. Obsess about Outcomes
  4. Be pragmatic
  5. Be agile, try new stuff
  6. It takes a long time to get great

Reading Kaushik (Part 8): Web Metrics

Web Metrics Demystified

  • Four Attributes of great metrics:
    1. Uncomplex – people have to understand the metric
    2. Relevant – every business is unique
    3. Timely – A fast approximately result is better than a perfect result that takes ages
    4. Instantly useful

Six Web Metrics / Key Performance Indicators To Die For

  1. Conversion Rate: focuses on outcomes, force objectives
  2. Average Order Value: helps you to qualify traffic / campaigns, always see AOV in context
  3. Days & Visits To Purchase: help you measure success correctly, segment
  4. Visitor Loyalty & Recency: engaging experience and marketing campagin effectivness
  5. Task Completion Rate: use VOC
  6. Share of Search: e.g. use Compete, google, hitwise

Brand Measurement: Analytics & Metrics for Branding Campaigns

  • Why are you doing the branding campaign?
  • Measurement Recommendations:
    1. Attract new customers
    2. Share your business value proposition: Visitor Loyalty & Recency
    3. Increase your sales
    4. To drive offline action: measure likelihood to recommend and to make an offline purchase, track phone calls
    5. Introduce your business: measure micro and macro conversions
    6. To snatch up market share of your competitors: Share of search
    7. To position yourself: primary market research, google insights, orbitz

Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value

  • Conversation Rate: #Comments/Replies per Post
  • Amplification Rate: #Retweets/Shares per Tweet/Post
  • Applause Rate: #Favorites/Likes/+1 per Post
  • Economic Value

Reading Kaushik (Part 7): Excellent Analytics Tips

Tip #3: Turbocharge Your SEM/PPC Analysis

  1. Measure your Bounce Rate
  2. Understand how vendors work
  3. Measure cannibalization rate vs. organic
  4. Experiment and Test
  5. Understand the multi goal of your site
  6. Measure the value of long tail keywords

Tip #4: Make Your Analysis/Reports “Connectable”

  • Make dry stuff more approachable
  • e.g. Flirters = Visitors with three pages or less
  • You can always include the definition if people are interested in it
  • You can link it up in a persona way

Tip #7: The Adorable Site Abandonment Rate Metric

  • Site Abandonment Rate = [1 – (total orders placed on the website) / (Total add to cart clicks)]
  • Checkout Abandonment Rate = [1 – (total number of people who complete checkout) / (total number of people who start checkout)]
  • Now you can segment, test and improve your rates

Tip #13: Measure Macro AND Micro Conversions

  • Macro Conversions: Buy something on your site
  • Micro Conversions: Write a review, sign up the email newsletter, etc.
  • Not all visitors want to buy something, therefore measuring micro conversions reveals more truth

Tip #15: Measure Latent Conversions & Visitor Behavior

  • Don’t just focus on immediate results — look a month later on the behavior of the acquired visitors
  • Especially for community-based websites (social networks, boards, etc.) later behavior is more important than just the sign up
  • Measure Loyality, Requency, Frequency

Tip #16: Brand Evangelists Index

  • Survey: Not at all satisfied, not satisfied, satisfied, very satisfied, extremely satisfied
  • Problem: Satisfaction rate is not very informative
  • Solution
    • Aim for delight
    • Penalize for negative rating
    • Index the results for communication
    • => Brand Evangelist Index (BEI): [[(Very Sat + Ext. Sat.) – (Not Sat. + Not At All Sat.)] / #Responses ] * 100

Tip #18: Make Love To Your Direct Traffic

  • Direct traffic is traffic that is driven by people who seek you actively out
  • Problem: Direct traffic can result from improperly tagged links / urls
  • Avoid:
    1. Missing WA tags on landing pages
    2. Untagged campaigns
    3. Improperly tagged campaigns
    4. Improperly coded redirects / vanity urls
    5. Non Async tag
    6. Links encoded in JS can be problematic
    7. https to http and vice versa don’t send referrers
    8. Multi and sub domains problems

Tip #19: Identify Website Goal [Economic] Values

  • What is the economic value of micro conversions?
    1. Assign campaign codes & track offsite converting goals
    2. Track online micro-conversions in offline systems
    3. Get the current “faith based” number from Finance
    4. Estimate relative goal values
    5. If everything else fails, just use $1

Reading Kaushik (Part 6): Competitive Analysis

Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Metrics, Tips & Best Practices

  • What not to do?
    1. Comparing conversion rates is hard: different business strategies
    2. Pages / Content viewed is too individual and doesn’t really matter
  • What to do?
    1. Share of Visits by your industry
    2. Compare “up and downstream” against competition
    3. Share of Search traffic
    4. Share of brand and category key phrases
    5. Discover new search key phrases
    6. Traffic by media mix
    7. Psychographic analysis

The Definitive Guide To (8) Competitive Intelligence Data Sources!

  1. Toolbar data: e.g. Alexa
  2. Panel data: comScore, Nielsen
  3. ISP (Network) data: Hitwise, Compete
  4. Search Engine data: Google AdWords, Keyword Tool, Search-based Keyword Tool, Insights for Search, Microsoft adCenter Labs
  5. Benchmarks from WA vendors: Fireclick, Coremetrics and GA
  6. Self-reported data: Quantcast, Google AdPlanner
  7. Hybrid Data: Google Trends, Compete, DoubleClick AdPlanner
  8. External VOC data: iPerceptions, ACSI