KAIZEN Analytics

The Uptimizers – your new Belgian expert in Web Analytics & Optimization!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:03:00 +0000

Beginning of last year, I decided it was time for a career change. I moved from the automotive industry to the banking sector, switching from IT to marketing. I learned to use new tools such as WebTrekk. But most important, I had the opportunity to develop my Web analytics skills and experience in a multichannel environment, working with great people.

In a year, I helped Deutsche Bank Belgium to successfully build solid foundations of its Web analytics framework and culture with the strong support from management. It has been fantastic time and – based on the feedback I received - I believe I did more than a decent job :-). There is still a lot to do and develop but I will hand over this challenge to someone else.

I decided to take another route, to seize the opportunity to concretize a project that has been growing over the years. I’m now moving from the employee side to the “entrepreneur” side. Together with another partner, we will develop our own company called the Uptimizers.

Web Analytics consulting – the practitioner way!
Since April, I became Web analytics Lead consultant and managing partner, together with Peter Coopmans, one of the best Belgian experts in conversion optimization and founder of the Uptimizers. Our aim is to help organizations get the maximum value from the digital data & channels -for real!

How? By offering a complete range of professional services that combines the power of Web analytics and conversion optimization (usability & design optimization, A/B & MVT testing...) practices.

There are multiple reasons behind this move:

First, there is my passion for web analytics. I want to continue doing what I love to do: solving problems (that's what Web analytics is supposed to do :-)). I want to leverage the experience gained so far and to keep on developing it, pushing it further.

Then there is the desire of providing Web analytics expertise and services the way I believe it should be done. I have worked for years as a practitioner and I have always found something was missing on the consultancy side: the “inside” perspective. In short, I want to do Web analytics consultancy the practitioner way. I want to bring real added-value. Not just data and reports. Easier said than done, I know but that’s what I would like to accomplish.

Finally, I want to be part of something new. Building a company is a totally different experience. It is a life project, it’s an adventure... but also a though and difficult challenge. Not everyone is capable of that but if you don’t try, you will never know. Enough hesitations - life is too short to have regrets – so let’s do it!

What’s the Uptimizers all about?
The Uptimizers is an independent agency 100% specialized in digital analytics & conversion optimization. We focus on our area of expertise and leave web design, online strategy, SEA, SEO, advertising to the other specialists. We only do that analytics and optimization but we do it well!

By independent we mean that we are not only tool/vendor independent but also we don’t belong to any media / advertising / web agency. I think this is crucial if you want to put your customer interests first, to remain impartial (no “judge & party” situation) and objective when you provide recommendations and advices.

In regards to Web analytics, our goal is to support organizations along their Web analytics journey, wherever they are, from preparation to the development of their analytics maturity and expertise. We are offering a wide range of services that not only covers the technical aspects of Web analytics but also critical aspects such as strategy, management, analysis, optimization and training. In all cases, our focus is on delivering concrete results, adding business value using a pragmatic and practical approach.

So if you want to be serious about Web analytics and optimization, if you are looking for real experts - in Belgium or in Europe - do not hesitate to contact me. You know where to find me :-)

More about the Uptimizers: www.the-uptimizers.be/index-en.cfm

What about this blog?
To be honest, I have felt very bad lately about my blog and above all about you – dear readers. It has been very quiet since end of last year as I have been (and still am) busy with this new project. I will resume blogging and I will keep running this blog as my personal blog. I will continue to share knowledge, personal experience and tips as I did before. Promised.

Related posts
As a related story, I would like to mention Lars Johansson's post reflecting on his own adventure. It has been a very inspirational post for me:

"Connecting my dots" by Lars Johansson (Oct 2011)

Coming speaking engagements: WA Camp Lille and X Change Europe

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:52:00 +0000

I know my blog has been quite for a while – probably too long some may say – and that many readers certainly expect to see me posting on some more ‘interesting’ topics than “speaking engagement”. Be reassured – I will be posting back very soon, resuming the “Web analytics in practice” series.

The main intent behind this post is to talk about two great coming Web analytics events – two European ones (and a bit of self-promotion too, I admit :-)). So if like me, you have not the chance to fly to the States to attend San-Franscisco’s eMetrics summit (that starts today), you may be interested in the following ones.

Web Analytics Camp 2012, Lille (France)

The first one will be the Web Analytics Camp in Lille, France. The 3rd edition of this event will take place in the Eurometropole on the 21st of March. Not only it is 100% free but most important – its content and format are absolutely great! The idea is to promote discussion and knowledge or experience sharing: short presentation (10 min per speaker) on a specific topic and then 15 min of discussion with the audience. Speakers are practitioners or consultants, no sales “blabla” allowed – only practical content.

Confirming it is growing success and popularity, this year event will include presentations in French but also in English for Flemish, Dutch, English neighbours. I will be speaking in the English track – sharing practical examples about how web analytics skills can be used to make people think different!

Last year event had a great panel about innovations in Web analytics and the Web analytics profession and it brought more than 120 attendees. I am sure it will do even better this year with such set-up! The Web Analytics camp is a great opportunity to learn but also to network with nice and dynamic people. Worth checking out! You can find the full program on the official site and register here.

X Change Europe 2012, Berlin (Germany)

The other event is a European “première”: for the first time the X Change conference will come to Europe, in Berlin, from May 29th to May 31st. Ok, I will be honest – I never had the chance to attend X Change but from what I have read and heard about it – it is not just very great and but also very insightful.

Its concept looks also quite different from the traditional “you-sit-you-listen” conferences. It is based on a “all conversional” small group format where “huddle leaders” moderate discussions around specific and practical topics – enabling spontaneous discussion, true knowledge sharing & learning. Talented and experienced professionals from both US and Europe are composing the agenda. No need to say, I have been very honoured to be proposed to attend as a “huddle leader” – leading discussions about process aspects in Web Analytics (such as PDCA process applied to Web analytics for example) and how to leverage Web analytics together with CRM data (I will talk about this in a coming post).

I am really excited about this event and looking forward for meeting new peers from all around Europe as well as seeing back others like Aurélie Pols and Jacques Warren.

While the event is not free, I am sure it worth a thousand trainings (that cost as much or even more) and I am sure it will be a success. Worth flying to Berlin – and it such as nice city! All information about X Change Europe can be found on Semphonic site and you can register over here. Go and have a look!

Web Analytics Congres, Utrecht (Netherlands)

While talking about European Web Analytics events, I would like to mention also the coming Web Analytics Congres in Utrecht, Netherlands on the 14th and 15th of March. This year event will feature Web analytics rockstar Avinash Kaushik on the 15th. If you have never seen Avinash in action – it is a must! It will change your (Web analytics) life, true! For more information on the Web analytics congres – check here.

I hope to see you in Lille or in Berlin.
Cheers!

Michael

Related links & posts

Web Analytics Camp 2012 - official website
X Change 2012 Europe - official website
Web Analytics Congres 2012 - official website
"X Change 2011: A Super Edition" by Jacques Warren from WAO Marketing (Sept 2011)
"Web Analytics - Plan, Do, Check and... ACT!" (July 2011)
"Web analyst - the poor lonesome cowboy?" (April 2011)

Web Analytics in practice: your online analytics strategy – how to get started?

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:42:00 +0000

[This post is the third post of the Web analytics in practice series - practical posts on various topics based on my own daily experience – as a practitioner. It aims at providing tips, advices and examples that – I hope – may inspire and help you – whether you are a beginner or more experienced Web analyst]

In my view, the role of a Web analytics expert goes beyond than just implementing tags, reporting and analysing data. It is also his/her responsibility to develop the online analytics culture. In order to succeed in this perilous quest, he/she needs to have a strategy!

Ok it’s easier said than done. Everybody would agree that “all we need is a strategy” but practically, how do I define such strategy? Well, I don’t have the pretention to teach in a post how to create your strategy but at least, I would like to share with you some hints on how you can get started. Ready? So, let’s start first with the key aspects you should consider.

The critical factors for success
In Web analytics, the focus is too often on the technology, the tools and the data. “What?! There is something else?” you might think. Of course there is! If you want to make Web analytics a successful practices (you know delivering insights, driving actions, adding business value and all), you must address the following factors:

Management & governance: Who does really care about Web analytics? Who’s managing it? Just the analyst? A project manager? Top management level? Does anyone know where it is going? Governance is essential as it will unlock access to budget and resources, it will make changes in the organization (i.e. breaking silos) possible.

Objectives: what’s the main goal of Web analytics? Optimizing specific tasks or the overall customer experience? Optimizing online marketing? Or does it serve to improve business efficiency including offline processes – within marketing and other departments? Too often organizations expect a lot from Web analytics but have no clue to what they really want to do with it.

Scope: What are the boundaries of your web analytics “playground”? Are you looking at limited, specific areas of your site (e.g. check out process, campaigns...)? The whole site? All your “e-cosystem” (e.g. social media, intranet, mobile...)? Other factors will depend on the complexity of your scope.

Resources: Who’s working on web analytics? Do you have dedicated resources? Are they working part-time or full-time? Do they have the required skills (business, technical and analytics)? You can have ambitious goals but you need to have the manpower and skills to make it happen. What’s the point of spending lot of money in a super- tool if there is no one to exploit it?

Process & methodology: How do you translate business needs into KPI’s and measurements? Everyone having his method or is there a department/company methodology? How do you ensure that insights drive actions? Do you have any process for checking data quality? Too often efforts are put in implementing measurements and delivering reports but then we move to the next projects – providing little insights and rarely driving actions.

Then comes the factors we love so much to talk about:

Tools & data: What tools do you have and what tools do you need? What are you doing with them? Basic reporting or advanced KPI dashboards? Are you equipped to cover different areas of web analytics (multiplicity rules!)? Are you integrating online data with other sources (CRM, BI data, market research, competitive data...)?

If you know Stéphane Hamel’s Online analytics Maturity Model (OAMM), these factors will sound very familiar to you. Indeed, I took these from Stéphane’s model as I think it is very complete, relevant and most of all very practical.

Getting started: current situation vs. Ideal situation

Now that you know what you should consider in your strategy, you need to assess where you are and where you need to go.

You need to evaluate your current situation using objective and well defined criteria for each area. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I really advise using Stéphane’s OAMM methodology (I do use it). You can do this by yourself – make sure to be really honest and objective as much as possible. Another possibility is of course to call for external help (but then it requires budget that is not always easy to justify). And because Stéphane is a really nice guy, he even has developed a FREE assessment online tool. Go and give it a try!

Evaluating your current situation will require you to gather all necessary information regarding the above points. Do not under estimate the work. Go around your organization, meet marketing managers but also other department managers (IT, sales, product research...). The extra benefit from this is that you will meet important people and it will get you some visibility. Never a bad thing!

Once you know where you are (a good starting point), the next step is then to set your destination where your company needs to get, based on the knowledge you have gathered. It will be your ultimate target, your ideal situation. Note that not all organizations need to reach highest level for every factor. As usual, it all depends - a good understanding of your business and organization will be crucial. Make sure to review your work with your management.

One element I like a lot with the OAMM is that it is a very good communication tool. You can easily visualise both situations – current and ideal – using a radar chart (see examples below). Why doing this? To show gaps between where you are and where you want to be. It will help you highlight your biggest weaknesses.

From there you can define a high-level roadmap with main goal being to get to a balanced situation i.e. reach a similar level for each criteria. Split your roadmap in phases where the goal should be to move one factor to the next level - one step at a time (Kaizen approach). Do not try to jump several levels in one go – it will not work.

Practical examples
Let’s illustrate the principle with two different examples (note: these examples are fictitious examples of course – any resemblance with real cases would be pure coincidence. Or maybe not ;-))

Example A:

Company A has very ambitious objectives (optimize all e-business) and scope (everything online, from web to social media). It has an analytics champion working full time on analytics who has defined some methodology and process within his department but not especially applied within all the organization. The company uses dashboards and KPI’s but mostly relies on one single WA tools –integration with external data is almost inexistent. Basic segmentation, no testing. The big problem is the lack of governance. Apart from project manager level – no one at senior management level is really taking ownership and having Web analytics in his/her top priorities. The current situation is depicted in the left diagram below.

The second diagram (on the right) shows where company A should ideally be (=long-term target) to leverage the added-value of web analytics (i.e. moving beyond reporting).

What’s next (mid-term target)? The company needs first to get strong governance otherwise no way it can get the support to get extra resources to cope with the ambitious objectives and make process known within all departments. It also needs to do more than web reporting and must consider A/B testing, segmentation and valuable analysis techniques as well as integrating data from outside the web (CRM, sales...). Again without strong management support, it will be difficult to upgrade technology, break silos and change mindsets.

Example B:
The situation is quite different for company B, management is taking the lead and ownership – there is a strong support from higher level (director level) and the objectives are currently limited to e-marketing optimization. Focus is on the main websites. Because of strong management support, company B just hired a dedicated full-time analyst. However there is no process in place and while there is a tool implemented, it has been used so far for standard reporting.

The aim of management is to extend analytics to other business areas and go beyond just online processes and integrated online data with other sources (CRM, offline channels...).

What’s next? Here priority should be on establishing appropriate methodology and process in order to define adequate measurements & KPI’s – first at department level before extending it to other areas. This will help leverage the use of available technology before adding other tools and integrating online data with customer & offline channel data. Achieving data integration will allow expanding objectives outside the online scope only to other business area.

Moving further – some more tips
This is just the beginning but at least you should have identified key areas to develop. There is of course a lot of work to do from there - you will have to break down each target into practical projects or initiatives before getting management approval. But it’s a start. To conclude this post, here are some more practical tips:

Set achievable targets: think about SMART objectives and take into consideration politics, organisation capacity, internal culture, available budget... Having a strong knowledge of your company and business is essential.

Set the right priorities: address first most important levers such as management and resources. You will see that technology & data will often come after (except if you really suck in this area)

Convince your direct management first i.e. the person right above your (i.e. your direct boss). Once you have got his/her support – it will be easier to get to the level above.

Track your progress and review your strategy on a regular basis – every quarter or 6 months for example and align your plans based on your progress and changes of your business environment

Think big - start small: be ambitious but remain with your feet on the ground. Start with small practical pilots to demonstrate your case – it will help you move forward.

Prove your claims: to get support and convince management, you will have to back-up your plans with tangible evidences (i.e. ROI, added economic value...). If you can not answer why it worth investing money and time, you are doomed.

Defining your strategy takes a lot of time, effort and experience but it is a must have if you want increase your company maturity – past the initial level. Trust me.

I hope you have found this post interesting and practical. Such a difficult subject I must confess. May it inspire and help you moving Web analytics maturity further in your organization. Good luck

What do you think? Do you use the OAMM? Or any other model? How do you practically define your strategy and roadmap? Any experience you are will to share with us? If so, please do.

Related posts:

Web Analytics in practice: Campaign tracking & offline advertising (Sept 2011)
Web Analytics in practice: Using segmentation to drive insights and actions! (Oct 2011)
Web Analytics – plan, do, check and... ACT! (July 2011)
A journey into Web Analytics (Part III): Critical factors for success (Aug 2010)
A journey into Web analytics (Part IV): Web analytics, a new profession? (Sept 2010)
Defining actionable & business-driven KPI’s – a practical methodology (Nov 2008)

Related resources:

The Online Analytics Maturity Model white paper by Stephane Hamel
The Online Analytics Maturity Model Assessment tool
"Rethink Web Analytics: Introducing Web Analytics 2.0" by Avinash Kaushik

Web Analytics in practice: Using segmentation to drive insights and actions!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:03:00 +0000

[This post is the second post of the Web analytics in practice series - practical posts on various topics based on my own daily experience – as a practitioner. It aims at providing tips, advices and examples that – I hope – may inspire and help you – whether you are a beginner or more experienced Web analyst]

If you really want to do true analytics then segmentation is essential. I like to think that if you are just looking at aggregated data, you are only doing reporting. If you want to do analysis, segmentation is the way to do as it leads to valuable insights that, in turn, will drive business actions.

While there are several “common” ways in segmenting online data – true segmentation requires putting in the effort to have a good understanding of your business (what does matter, key goals...) and to find your own meaningful segments. Such exercise will help you sharpen your business expertise - always a good thing.

In this post, I propose a step-by-step simple example (based on my own experience) to illustrate how to apply “standard” and context-related segments, to drive insights and the resulting actions.

The case: analysing the performance of a key landing page
(Disclaimer: for confidentiality purpose, actual figures and results have been modified but I have kept the general order of magnitude and the resulting learnings are true ones)

The context
The mission is to analyse the performances of a landing page that is the entry point for new customer acquisition. The page depicts the product offering and key benefits. The main goal (or outcome if you prefer) of the page is to drive traffic to the acquisition process. (Note: for this illustrative example and to keep it simple, I will limit the scope to this simple “micro” goal).

The metrics used: traffic volume to the page, number of conversions (outcomes) and of course the conversion rate.

Start: no segmentation – aggregated level
A quick query in the Web analytics tools returns raw numbers that look like this:

These are just...er, numbers. What do they tell? Nada, nothing, niets, rien! The number may be nice for some or ridiculous for others. Who knows? (Even me, I couldn’t tell if these were good or bad as it was the first time I got my hand on this area).

1st level segmentation – by traffic source type
If you are a regular reader of Avinash Kaushik’s blog (or you have read his book – “Web Analytics 2.0"), you may have heard about what he calls the “best Web analytics report” (page 85 in the book :-)). A good way to start is by segmenting by traffic source. It is quite an “universal” way to segment.

I start first with key traffic source types: “direct” (in this case coming from site), search (all) and paid channels (banners, affiliates, emailing but not SEA). This already gives a different picture:

At this stage, there should be some alarms ringing in your head. Look at the paid channels! It performs 8 times less than the other ones while it brought almost 90% of the traffic but account for less than 50% of conversions. Ok, we know that typically such channels so not perform so well but still! Like the detective we are, we got a first clue so let’s further investigate!

2nd level segmentation – by paid channel
Focusing on the paid channels, we can segment it one level deeper – by paid channel and I trend the result over time to add more context to the analysis. (Again, in order to keep the example simple, I have limited it to 3 paid channels). Now we are seeing something very interesting:

Affiliates traffic suddenly went through the roof – causing at the same time a massive drop of the conversion rate. Almost time to talk to the digital campaign manager but before let's gather some more insights and let's segment a level deeper: by actual sources.

3rd level segmentation – by referring source
I look specifically at the affiliate channel and split it by referring site to end with a report very similar to the Avinash’s “best report in the world”:

The results clearly highlight big discrepancies between referring sites – those related to saving & financial topics are performing rather well while the rest is doing very poorly in spite of bring huge amount of traffic (typical of affiliates).

Now I have enough and I can go to talk with the digital campaign manager (and not just sending an email with figures) in order to share the insights. If cost is related to traffic then urgent action is needed (= wasted money). If not related to volume but per conversion then the question is: is it really useful? What is the lead quality? Is it positive for the brand (for visibility and awareness)?

At this point it is up to the manager to decide. My role is not to tell her how she should do her job - I would not dare to - but to provide her with insights so she can take data-informed decisions.

Using contextual segment – customers vs. Prospect
Similar segmentation can be applied to search channel – organic vs. paid then at keyword level but I guess you get the picture. Now let’s apply a different segmentation – what I call contextual segmentation i.e. that relates to your own business context.

Working in the bank industry, there are two main types of visitors to the website: customers and prospects. I can easily identify the former group using a visitor-based segment: visitors who have logged in the online banking area in current or former visits.

Why such segment? Because there is no way customers can be "converted" so by aggregating these visitors in my results, I don’t get a true representation of the actual performance of the content and process for the intended audience i.e. prospects.

The analysis shows that customers represent a significant share of visitors coming from search – these land on the page and they use the site navigation to log in or to browse the content. Now calculating the conversion rate for the prospects gives a much different results as illustrated below:

See the difference between the “average” performance and this segment? Amazing, isn't it? The insight here is that prospects coming via search are highly qualified. What can I do? Get more of these segment to the site. How? By reviewing SEO aspects of the page (meta tags, copytext...) and optimize it (and there was work to be done in that area :-)) and considering putting some more money on SEA.

The analysis also demonstrates that the page is maybe not doing so bad after all. Just looking at aggregates could have lead to a typical (bad) reaction: “let’s redesign the page – it sucks!”.

Segmentation - a powerful analysis tool
Segmentation can be applied on many criteria: sources, behaviour and others. Be inventive! Segmentation is a way to translate a business question into an analysis that will help bring the answer. Typically, segmentation will lead to new questions that in turn, will be translated in more detailed segmentation.

I hope that I have illustrated how segmentation moves you from reporting to analysis. I must confess that I fell in love of segmentation. Once you start, you can’t stop. This stresses the importance of having tools that give you such ability, tools that make it possible to do in a flexible and dynamic way. Segmentation on the fly is not an option. It’s a must!

Taking segmentation to the next level
This post was a just an illustrative example and there is much more behind segmentation. If you have the possibility of linking your online data with CRM or customer data then you can do even more advanced segmentation: by customer segment, by product, by demographic, by persona... It will pave the way to more valuable insights and customer intelligence. Segmentation climax will not be far away! More on that in a future post...

So, was the example a good illustration of segmentation? What are your favourite segmentation criteria? What “own” segments are you using? Do not hesitate to share your feedback and own experience on that topic. I am very curious to know.

Related resources & posts:

“Web Analytics in practice (#1): Campaign tracking & offline advertising” (Sept 2011)
"Web Analytics in practice (#3): your online analytics strategy – how to get started?" (Nov 2011)
“Web Analytics Segmentation: Do Or Die, There Is No Try!” by Avinash Kaushik (May 2010)

Web Analytics in practice: Campaign tracking & offline advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:21:00 +0000

[This post is the first post of a new series about Web analytics in practice. The idea is to write very practical posts on various topics based on my own daily experience – as a practitioner. It aims at providing simple tips, advices and examples that – I hope – may inspire and help you – whether you are a beginner or more experienced Web analyst]

We all know how to track online campaigns (banner, SEA, affiliates, social media...) – it has become quite a common practice (if not, you should better get started now!). It is really basic stuff.

However campaign tracking should not be limited to the online world. What about the offline activities that may drive traffic to the online channels? In this post I would like to cover two common offline sources that typically (should) bring traffic to your online properties: friendly URL’s and Quick Response (QR) codes commonly used in offline ads.

Print ad's & short URL’s
It is very common to use short or dedicated URL’s in print ads (magazine, billboard, brochures...) that are (supposed to be) easy to type such as www.toyota.de/yaris or www.deutschebank.be/effecten (the latest was used in print ads in newspapers and displays). These short URL’s redirect you to specific online content (that often has a much “longer” not-so-friendly URLs).

But how effective are these URL’s? Are they worth the space they use on the advertising space? Are people really typing these? Everyone can start arguing – giving his own opinion but the only way to answer the question is of course to MEASURE IT.

It just works the same way as tagging any campaign URL – instead of using the plain URL as destination, configure your redirection using an appended URL with campaign parameters.

For example:
Let’s say I want to use a short URL such as www.mysite.com/newABC that goes to a new product page www.mysite.com/products/news/productABC.html. Using Google Analytics (but it works just the same way with any other Web analytics tool), I would use the following URL as destination of my short URL:

http://www.mysite.com/products/news/productABC.html?utm_source=offline&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=ProductABC_launch

The advantage of using such common method instead of relying on server stats (that are not always that easy to get) is quite obvious:

Availability & centralization: Everything is in one place with all your other online data.Iit gets in your Web analytics tool directly – not need to ask an external provider or IT to get redirect figures.
Consistency: it gets measured on same platform and same way as any other traffic sources - you are sure to compare apples with apples.
Segmentation: You can leverage the power of segmentation and isolate online behaviour, conversions for visitors coming via this source (and benchmark vs. other segments).

Quite simple and straightforward, isn’t it?

Quick Response codes

In this age of mobile – quick response codes (aka QR codes) are getting everywhere and replacing short URL’s in ads. After all it is much easier to scan a QR code(well, in theory :-)) than typing an URL no matter how short or friendly it is – as long as you have mobile device that can scan such code of course.

In most cases, the QR code is simply added somewhere on the ad or in the brochure for example. Sometimes, some brands are using these in a more creative ways. For example, Victoria Secret in the US leveraged its product “sex-appeal” (or should I the persons wearing the product :-)) and made an intelligent use of QR codes to “encourage” people (well, mostly men actually) to scan them.

Anyway – back to topic - whatever way you are using QR codes in your print material, in the end the important question is: are they driving traffic? Do people really take the time to scan the damned pixel thing or are they just skipping it?

Again the only way to find out is to measure. And it just works the same as short links. The URL that you use to generate the QR code should be a properly tagged URL.

Example:
If I want to generate a QR code that will redirect to my blog post on PDCA approach, I will use the following link:

http://www.kaizen-analytics.com/2011/07/web-analytics-plan-do-check-andact.html?utm_source=offline&utm_medium=QR_code&utm_campaign=PDCA_post

The problem with tagged URL’s is that these can get pretty long and this has a drawback when used to generate QR code: it gets quite dense and may be therefore hard to scan. But there is way to solve this issue: once you have defined your tagged URL, use an URL shortener (such as bitly.com) to get a much shorter URL and then use this one in your QR code generator. You will get a much cleaner QR code – easier to scan (kudos to Luna Metrics for providing such clever and simple tip!).

Again using such common method for QR codes presents the same advantages as cited previously: centralisation, consistency and segmentation.

Do the right people know about it?
To be honest, tracking such offsite sources is not rocket science and it is quite common sense for whoever has been doing Web analytics. I am certainly not the first one to write about it. But still – it is not something that is systematically done. Why? Because the main hurdle is not at all technical – it is somewhere else.

Most of the time the problem is more a lack of awareness and communication. In many organizations, offline marketing is often managed by different persons than the ones who manage online marketing. Most of the time offline marketing is not aware about the tracking possibilities (and how simple it is) while the Internet marketing is not always involved in the creation of offline content (until the moment they see it – but then it’s too late). So how can it be tracked if the right people don’t know about it?

So it is your role, as a super Web analytics evangelist to inform your marketing organization. Seek out the offline marketing team, explain them what can be done and – most important – the added-value it will bring. But don’t stop there – on the first times, guide them through the process (generate the links or QR codes), show them the results and bring insights until it becomes part of their normal content creation process.

It is not a matter of technology here – but more of process and communications. It’s all about teamwork!

To conclude regarding the use of friendly URL’s or QR code, based on my own experience, I would say that the results were not really impressive (to say the less) – at least as online traffic driver. Maybe you will get better results but then it is up to you to test different approaches, creatives, etc. Especially that as you can measure it – you have no excuse for not testing!

Now it’s your turn now: what is your experience with such offline techniques? What other offline techniques or channels are you also tracking online?

About the post, did you like this first post of the series? Was it useful? Practical or not at all? Please share you feedback. I will definitely take it into account for the next posts.

Related resources & posts:

"Web Analytics in practice: your online analytics strategy – how to get started?" (Nov 2011)
"Web Analytics in practice: Using segmentation to drive insights and actions!" (Oct 2011)
"Victoria’s Secret Entices You To Scan Their QR Codes" by 708media (Aug 2011)
"Tracking QR Codes in Google Analytics — Easy as Pie" by Luna Metrics (Aug 2011)
"Tracking offline world using online tools" by Capstrat blog (Sept 2010)
"Measuring the impact of offline events with Google Insights for Search" (Feb 2010)
Example of online QR code generator

A Web Analytics & PDCA case: improving marketing websites in a pan-EU context

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:11:00 +0000

In the last post, I presented the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) approach and how it can be applied to Web Analytics in order to create a Web analytics culture – not just a Web measurement culture. In this post I would like to illustrate this approach with a practical example from my personal experience.

As I learned PDCA when I was working at Toyota Motor Europe (“hi ex-colleagues! “ – in case your social media monitoring picked this post :-)), I will start with a example from my previous job, where PDCA was applied in rather large web analytics-related project, involving many stakeholders and long iteration cycle.

Improving overall online marketing performances in a pan-EU context
First, a bit of background and context. As many global organizations, Toyota European’s sites are run a on central platform, using common tools and content architecture provided by the European headquarters but the sites and marketing activities are managed on a local level, by the respective national companies & the local Internet marketing managers. Regarding Web analytics, the headquarter offers not only the tool and measurements but also global reporting, analysis and support. That was part of my previous job.

The project: the European internet marketing team wanted to improve the overall efficiency and the quality of online marketing sites, by increasing the use and adoption of online data (i.e. instilling a Web analytics culture :-)). Couldn’t be more challenging!

PLAN step
The plan phase started with the definition of a set of online key performance indicators (KPI's) directly based on common and well-known (online) objectives of the marketing sites: support customers during the different steps of the purchase process. So for each stage of the funnel, we identified a set of corresponding online metrics. We defined how these would be measured and the corresponding data sources.

The proposed KPI’s were presented to the stakeholders (i.e. marketing managers of more than 25 markets) and discussed until a consensus was reached. This took a few months as you can imagine but having stakeholders buy-in was crucial – otherwise no way they would support and use the provided indicators.

We agreed also on a communication process and format: monthly dashboard to track progress and check points (the analysis part) every six months. Markets were regrouped in different in groups based on similar characteristics (market size & share, internet penetration...) in order to be able to benchmark them against each other.

DO step
In the initial iteration, the required tracking was implemented, data was collected and gorgeous dashboards were create and delivered on the agreed frequency.

On following iterations, the “DO” phase also included the implementation of identified key actions (see further).

CHECK step

That’s where things got serious. That’s where reporting turned into analysis. Every 6 months, results for the whole period were analyzed and presented to the stakeholders – by group.

The KPI’s helped identify areas that needed improvements for each market but also the “best of class” within the group. Next step was to understand why these good “pupils” were doing so well and see if there was anything the group could learn from them. This usually lead to opportunities that could be replicated and bring benefits to others (it's called “Yokoten” in Japanese :-)).

Reviewing the results sometimes also pinpointed actions that did not worked and brought poor results – helping others avoid doing the same mistakes.

ACT step
In the end, we came out with key areas to be improved and a list of recommendations such as marketing activities that could be done, content and tools to be added to the site and more.

A consensus was reached with each market on the areas to improve, the priorities – usually focusing only on 1 or 2 area per cycle. Targets to be reached were also defined (very important!).

At this point, it was up to the market to create its own action plan and to communicate it back so progress could be monitored.

In order to share best practices, findings were communicated and presented on a regular basis to all markets - even non-participating ones. From there, a new PDCA cycle started - each market having a 6 month-period to implement as much actions as possible until the next check point.

Did it work?
This process brought very positive results in the sense that it indeed increased adoption and usage of online data. The first cycle started with a limited number of markets but as outcomes were presented to general meeting, more and more markets joined the process over the years to have in the end the majority of them.

But it also contributed in increasing the general efficiency of the marketing sites across Europe as progress was measured in many cases – even if not always reaching the targets. It also incited many markets to add valuable online services and content, increasing the overall quality of their online channel.

An important learning point was also that - even once you have reached a good level of adoption - you have to continue investing time to maintain the process, to be behind people, motivating them (sometimes harassing them). Otherwise, the results of your efforts may quickly fade away.

I hope you have found this example interesting and that I managed to illustrate how PDCA can be applied for Web analytics in a large-scale context. And how it can drive measurements, reporting and more important action-driven analytics and results!

In a future post, I will cover another example within a much smaller context with short iteration cycles. Feel free to share your comments, doubts (if any) or if you have any question. I will be delighted to answer you.

Related posts & resources:

"Web Analytics - Plan, do, check... and ACT!" (July 2011)
"Automotive industry & Internet: trends & challenges" (Oct 2008)

Web Analytics – plan, do, check and... ACT!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:13:00 +0000

One of the critical success factors for building a successful online analytics culture is having processes in place. But why is it so critical? Are all processes made equal? In this post I would to share some of my experience on processes and to talk about the approach I use. Maybe it will inspire some of you.

Building an online measurement culture is easy...
It usually starts with nothing in place until someone on the business side starts requesting data. This usually happens after the project has be launched (otherwise where would be the "fun"). Unfortunately, it is likely that nothing or very little is implemented.

At this point, a sound reaction should be to put in place some process to make sure measurements are correctly implemented. Because implementation is more a technical aspect, you may be lucky to have someone in IT helping you define such process. After all IT is very familiar with processes - they love processes (note: I started doing Web Analytics in IT :-)).

The process should ensure that whenever there is a new project, someone gets in charge of defining business objectives, translating these into measurement requirements and coordinating the implementation.The process would make sure that measurements are tested, rolled out and reports are set-up before being delivered to the business. No more projects are rolled out with proper measurements in place. Mission accomplished! Hurray!

Getting there may take you from few weeks to a year. I guess that most of us can live with that. So what’s the big deal about it?

...but building an analytics culture is another story.
The problem is that at this stage, you just have an online measurement process in place. What about the analysis and – most important – the action part? Aren’t these the steps for which we, web analysts, strive for?

The challenge is to make analysis and decision-making systematic – not something you do just once here and there (as it is too often the case). You need a process that includes these activities as well. Before you start inventing your own process from scratch, it worth having a look at some existing successful approaches used in other areas.

Some Web analytics experts refer to process excellence and Six Sigma for creating a data-driven culture. In my case, I looked into another approach that is part of the culture of my previous employer: the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) management process.

PLAN-DO-CHECK-ACT (PDCA)
Originally created by DR. W. Edwards Demming, PDCA is “a framework that provides a methodical approach to problem solving and continuous improvement”. It is an iterative cycle composed of four main phases:

1.PLAN: It is the preparation phase where you:

Grasp the situation i.e. identify your objectives (your ideal situation) & stakeholders, understand your current environment and conditions
Set your targets based on your objectives – ideally in a SMART ones
Define your “implementation” plan (tasks, timing, costs, roles...)
Communicate and share your plan with all involved parties and stakeholders

2. DO: It is the implementation phase where you

Implement the plan
Monitor progress and adjust the plan if needed (environment or requirement change, issues...)
Communicate status and adjustments with all involved stakeholders

3. CHECK: It is the review phase where you

Evaluate the results against the initial objectives
Evaluate the process i.e. identify what went well and what needs to be improved
Communicate the results and share success but also failure factors to avoid making same mistakes
Get agreement on the next steps to be taken in the Act phase

4. ACT: It is the action phase where you

Address identified issues by determining their causes and by applying countermeasures. This will be the start of a plan phase of a new cycle.
Standardize what is working well and that can be repeated
Look if you can improve existing process and standards
Communicate decisions, new standards and improvements to be made

PDCA is shared by many manufacturing companies and especially by Toyota where it is one of the pillars of the “Toyota Way”. PDCA is how Toyota applies Kaizen principle within its organization in all areas – from manufacturing plants to dealerships.

This process can be applied to any type of initiative – from small to large - and by any type of business function. So why not Web analytics?

PDCA and Web Analytics
Web analytics is supposed to be a continuous activity aiming at constantly bringing improvements to your online initiatives and business. Improvements do not have to be “big” ones that occur once in a Web analyst lifetime. Instead it is better to look for small enhancements that - put together - will increase the global results on the long run. That's the principle behind Kaizen applied to Web Analytics.

The challenge is to implement such principle in practice, to make it something systematic and that can be repeated. I try to achieve this by adapting and applying PDCA in a Web analytics context. This approach has been mentioned in John Lowett’s recent white paper “Building a culture of measurements” (John has very good sources ;-)) but let me give you a bit more information on the approach I am personally using:

PLAN: too often we tend to measure too many metrics (the more the better) but not the right ones - mainly because of a lack of preparation. Therefore the plan phase is crucial and it involves the following activities:

Understand the business objectives of the online initiative and from there, define the corresponding KPI’s and metrics. For such work, you can use a methodology like the Nokia methodology or Avinash’s Web measurement framework (works very well!)
Identify the required data sources & tools (“multiplicity" rules) and ideally set/review targets for each KPI’s
Plan not only the measurement implementation but also the checkpoints – already set dates where results will be reviewed and analysed (very important!). Once you get consensus with all stakeholders, communicate your plan, KPI's and plan!

DO: In this phase, measurement requirements are analysed and implemented, data is collected, reports are set-up and delivered to the stakeholders. Other key activities in this phase are:

Supervise the progress according to the plan, coordinate the different activities between involved parties (business, IT, agencies, vendors...) and adjust plan if needed
Keep stakeholders updated on a regular basis.

CHECK: It’s here that all your efforts will make you move from doing “reporting” to doing “analysis”. You will transform your fancy Excel dashboards (built in the DO phase) into business insights and you will also look at the project execution. So, you will

Analyse the results against the objectives & targets and then identify area of improvements and successes.
Evaluate the process – identify process issues and recommendations for improvements (i.e. if you have to do it again, what will you change?)
Communicate the results - all the results, good and bad ones!

ACT: All the previous work makes no sense if it does not lead to actions. You know what needs to be improved so let’s do it.

Identify potential root causes and countermeasures (i.e. the actions!!!!)
Define an action plan – agree on the issues you will address in the next cycle. You may not address all in one go so focus on issues with biggest impacts and on quick wins...
Improve your process where it can be improved, document success stories, lessons learned and share them within the organization
Communicate your action plan to the involved parties.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the end of the act phase, you have all the input to start a new cycle - i.e. plan you actions, implement them, check them and again, take action...

The Power of PDCA
In my opinion the PDCA approach have several key strengths and there is no reason why Web Analytics could not benefit from them.

It is very simple - It is very basic in its principle and it can be adapted to any kind of business and organization, whatever their size.Here's an example in the context of Paid Search.
It is a very powerful approach that has made its proofs – just look at what Toyota achieved.
It is continuous – it doesn’t stop at the end of the last phase but it is an on-going process
It is iterative – you can start with a very basic process, with a simple scope and enrich it at your own pace, according to your maturity, resources... By beginning simply, it will make it more likely to be adopted – less reluctance to change.
It is flexible - it can be applied to small, short projects or big complex ones. A cycle can last a week or be spread over a year. Depending on the complexity, a full cycle may be split in smaller cycles.

Be on your guard!

So that's the approach I am using to instill an online analytics culture - maybe it can work for you. Anyway, a good way to get started with your Web analytics process is to see if there is already a well-accepted process in place in your company. If yes, try to adapt it for Web analytics. Reusing an existing process will give you more chances to have it adopted as people will be familiar with the main concepts behind it.

If there is nothing you can possibly reuse then look for inspiration in proven process, be it PDCA, Six-Sigma or others. But whatever you decide, don't forget that having a process is not a nice-to-have, it's a must.

Finally, it takes time to have a new process adopted, to change people habits but it can go away very quickly. Bad habits are hard to kill. You will have to be the process guardian, pushing it until it becomes not a process anymore but a way of thinking. If you reach that point then you will have made a huge step towards creating a data-driven decision making culture.

Sounds very theoretical? Well, in a next post I will illustrate the PDCA approach with some practical examples. In the meantime, I would be really curious to have your feedback on this approach or share your own. What do you think? What process / approach do you use? What are according to you the biggest hurdles in implementing an analytical process? Feel free to leave your comments.

Related posts & resources

"A journey into Web Analytics (Part III): Critical factors for success" (Aug 2010)
"Defining actionable & business-driven KPI's - a practical methodology" (Nov 2008)
"KAIZEN: a successful approach applied to Web Analytics" (Aug 2008)
"Building a Culture of measurement" WebTrends white paper by John Lowett (2010)
"Keys To Web Analytics Maturity: Structure, Process, Hyperfocus" by Avinash Kaushik (Nov 2010)
"Making Paid Search Profitable Using PDCA Process and Standardization" - SEM Science (Nov 2008)
"Seven steps to create a data-driven decision making culture" by Avinash Kaushik (Oct 2006)
PDCA Wikipedia article

WebTrekk Q3 – Web Analytics made in Germany

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Tue, 31 May 2011 20:46:00 +0000

Beginning of this year, I decided to change job and to take on new challenges, switching from automotive industry to banking industry, quite a radical change if you asked me. For years, I have been working with WebTrends Analytics. If you have been a regular reader, you know that I was globally quite enthusiastic about that tool – especially since the launch of Web Analytics 9.

But the new job meant for me discovering and learning to use a new Web analytics tools, a German one that I hardly heard about before, called WebTrekk Q3.

After few weeks working with the tool and after attending a dedicated training at WebTrekk offices in Berlin (hosted by very nice people), I would like to take the opportunity to share with you my quick "review" about a tool that certainly deserves to be known.

A Web Analytics tool like all the others?
At first sight, WebTrekk Q3 looks like most other Web analytics tools that are available on the market.

Data collection is based on a Javascript-based tag that is very similar to most common solutions. The tag can be customized based on your needs and it is possible to create your own custom parameters – nothing new there.

On the reporting side, WebTrekk Q3 provides most usual features that any Web analyst expects to find nowadays in a Web analytics tools. These including the usual reports (visitors, visits, pages, sources....), content groups, campaigns, path analysis, workflows, e-commerce, browsers & mobile devices, scorecards & KPI’s, overlays and many others. And because we all have our own specific needs, it is possible to create your own custom metrics, reports and dashboards.

WebTrekk customer base is mostly composed of German companies in different industries, such as e-commerce (Esprit, Hugo Boss), finance, media and others (Grohe, Bundesliga...).

WebTrekk offers the possibility between SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) or in-house solutions and it exists in two versions (light and full) – the light one already offering the most important features.

So what does differentiate WebTrekk from the other players on the market?

Unleashing the power of segmentation!
The main differentiator is that WebTrekk Q3 works with “raw” data that is neither sampled, aggregated nor pre-processed. Whenever you access what is called an “analysis” (usually called a report in other tools), the corresponding query is run against the raw data and the corresponding results are calculated on the fly.

But what makes WebTrekk Q3 really powerful and flexible is its “filter engine” - probably the most important feature of the tool. The filter engine is basically a real-time segmentation engine. It allows you to filter (i.e. segment) any analysis on almost any criteria available in the tool – be it a dimension (e.g. all visits coming from search engines) or a metric value (e.g. all visits with more than 10 page views). The filter is directly applied on all your data set. Data segmentation is retroactive so there is no need of reprocessing your data.

You can combine multiple criteria in order to build advanced and complex queries. And depending on the objects used in the filter, you can choose different scope (called “context"). For example, if you use a filter on page name, you can filter at page level (e.g. retrieve all pages with name that contains “product”), at visit level (retrieve all pages viewed during visits where product pages were viewed) or visitor levels (all pages viewed by visitors that viewed at least once a product page during any of their visits).

The filtering engine is not only used for segmenting analysis but also for creating custom metrics and formulas – providing a lot of freedom to create your own advanced metrics. Custom metrics and formulas can be added to any report at any time – here again, no need of reprocessing.

As said, I have loved working with WebTrends Analytics product but on-the-fly segmentation was the feature I lacked the most in that tool. It is very difficult to do effective segmentation when you have to define in advance the appropriate custom metrics/reports/filter and to reprocess past data to have your segment applied to your historical data. Segmentation is a "dynamic" process and it requires flexibility.

Now I feel very different and being able to segment in whatever way I want, is really great! Not just for the sake of doing segmentation but for the insights you can get out of it. Yes, the true power of segmentation, finally! :-)

What else, Georges?
While it is not possible (yet) to query directly the WebTrekk Q3 datawarehouse using external query client, it is possible to export raw data tables of your choice so you can possibly import these in your own database or system (BI integration anyone?).

Aside that, there were a few other features that got my attention and that I think worth to be mentioned:

Advanced campaign configuration with the ability to configure the attribution model (first, last, both, weighted...) and the possibility to see what are the preceding / following campaigns (for a specific campaign). It is possible to manage look up files or rules so you can “translate” not-so-friendly campaign ID’s into a meaningful hierarchy. And you have all freedom to create all the campaign attributes you need, the way you want.

Depth of engagement report is a kind of high-level funnel report where you can define different levels of engagement and see how your site is driving visitors across the different groups. For example, from Homepage to Product View to Add to Cart to Purchase complete. And best is that you can segment such report the way you want to see how different segments performs.

Others interesting features include cross tables (allows the combination of two dimensions into a single data table - displayed in a visual way), built in heatmap report (similar as the overlay report but shows click density on top of the webpage), SEA and SEO data integration (Google Adwords API to integrate data from your Adwords account (at additional costs), reports with SEO data such as page rank, search volumes, backlinks for a defined set of pages).

For a more comprehensive list of WebTrekk Q3 product features, please have a look at their official website.

On the "down" side...
All tools on the market have weaknesses, WebTrekk Q3 is not an exception. On the negative side, let’s mention:

The user interface: It is not very “sexy” to say the less – especially when you see what competitors are doing. It looks a bit oldish in my opinion. It is not the most user-friendly interface nor always that intuitive. Some basic functions are not always that straightforward or require more clicks than necessary. But it does what it needs to do.

The learning curve: WebTrekk Q3 is certainly not “easy” to use for non-expert users. It requires some practices and training to use correctly and to know how to leverage its “power”. This is partly due to the interface but also because it is more complex to "configure" an analysis. But once you get it, it proves to be very powerful and flexibe.

Performances: Because it works on raw data and calculates results on the fly, it is slower than what I used to see (in WebTrends or Google Analytics for example) and for complex queries, you will have to wait. This can become tedious when you are creating and testing reports but, it is the price to pay I guess.

Mobile apps tracking: It is possible to track mobile websites but when it comes to mobile apps, it is a bit limited at the moment. A SDK is available for iPhone only but WebTrekk is working on SDK’s for other platforms such as Android.

A tool is just... a tool
To be honest, I was not so impressed after my “first encounter” with WebTrekk Q3 – especially from a visual point of view. But as I started discovering the tool, I got quite pleased with the possibilities it offers and its flexibility. Considering that WebTrekk is a rather small company compared to the big ones such as Adobe, WebTrends or Google Analytics, they have done more than a pretty decent job there!

But let’s not forget that a tool is just...a tool. What is important is not the number of features and gadgets that it offers, it is what you are able to do according to your own needs i.e. can it help you answer questions and solve business problems you have? In my case, WebTrekk Q3 seems to be more than enough so far and it complies with some important company requisites that others such as Google Analytics or WebTrends don’t.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that WebTrekk is the super wunderbar Web analytics tool. My point here is to present an interesting tool that I am pleased to work with. It is always good to know what exists on the market. So if you are an European company and if you are looking for a Web analytics tool, have a look at WebTrekk Q3. It may be an interesting alternatives to the traditional players and may fit your needs.

I hope you found this post interesting. If any of you has some good or bad experience with WebTrekk, I'd like to hear your thoughts and impressions. Or if you have experience with other “less famous” Web analytics tools that deserve to be known, do not hesitate to share your review.

Related posts & resources:

WebTrekk official site
"Webtrekk, un nouveau venu en Web analytics orienté Business Intelligence" - Hub'Sales blog (March 2011, in French)

Web analyst – the poor lonesome cowboy?

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:53:00 +0000

Last month, the 2nd Web Analytics Camp was held in Lille, France. The principle behind the WA camp is to have informal conferences (or "non-conferences" as the organizers define it) around different topics. By limiting the presentation time, the audience get a chance to participate, to give feedback and to ask questions. This year event was built around two different themes: "innovation in Web analytics" and "the profession of web analyst".

The idea behind the second track was to have a number of practitioners coming to share their views about their job, their role in the organization, their experience or the challenges they are facing. I had the pleasure to be one of the practitioners together with 4 other web analysts from various sectors and experience (from few months to several years):

Marie Cappelaere from Monabanq (Internet banking), "10 good reflexes to have as a Web analyst"
Sophie Néron from Boulanger (retail, e-commerce), "10 winning tactics to develop a Web analytics culture in your organization"
Olivier Guillaume from Becquet (retail, e-commerce), « My first 5 impressions as a Web analyst"
Carole Da Silva - Guillot from Reed Expositions (events organization), "5 successful processes for managing Web analytics in a multiple-sites context”

On my side, my presentation aimed at giving a quick view of the Web analyst main traits, inspired from the "Web analytics, a new profession?" post I wrote last year in the context of the “A journey into Web analytics”. The idea was to show that working in Web analytics isn’t just about tagging a website, mastering a tool and extracting numbers into an Excel sheet.

Despite the fact that each presentation and experience were different, several aspects kept coming back creating a feeling of “déjà-vu” for the 5 of us.

When marketing meets technology
The first one that made a consensus was that Web analytics requires a strong mix of “technical” and “marketing/business” knowledge. While a Web analyst doesn’t have necessarily to be a Web programmer, it is important to have a good technical knowledge about most common Web technologies and data collection mechanisms. It is crucial to be able to translate business requirements into practical implementation, to know what are the possibilities and limitations. One can’t interpret the data nor guarantee its quality without a good understanding of the Web and data collection methods.

But you don’t do Web analytics for the sake of technology. Web analytics first serves a business purpose. Therefore, technical skills have to be complemented by a strong knowledge and understanding of the business environment. Context is key - You can’t put in place de right KPI’s and metrics, you can’t put the right meaning without being business-minded. You need to work closely with the business or better, be part of it :-).

Educate your organization you will

It is probably a bit cliché but most people imagine that the biggest part of the Web analyst job is to look at figures and create fancy Excel dashboards full of tables, charts and pies. What an exciting job it would be! Because today there is clear lack of understanding about the role of Web analytics and what added value it can bring to organizations, we have to spend a significant part of our time educating people, helping give a business meaning to online data.

Most people are not familiar with concepts that we use on a daily basis and that may look like a no-brainer for us. Remember the time it took you to get where you are? :-) It is key to invest enough time in explaining things – because if you want business stakeholders to act on your data – they have to trust it. And there can’t be any trust if they don’t understand it.

Web analytics is not just about...Web
Many people wrongly think that Web Analytics is limited to the Web area. Web analytics is actually a cross-functional discipline that can benefit other departments – if not the whole organization sometimes. Simply those other business functions ignore it.

Therefore pro-activity is essential. It is part of our duty as Web analysts to look for opportunities to show the value of online insights. Don’t stay idle waiting for people to come to you. Go evangelize them! And seize opportunities when they arise.

Sophie Néron from Boulanger gave a very interesting example. In a previous job – working for a French retail company, someone from the Product team wanted to add new licensed products (such as Disney "Cars” or “Hello Kitty” bed sheets for example) to their offer but wanted to know if there was real demand for it. Sophie went to have a look at internal search results to see what kind of licensed products were searched by customers but not present in the current offering. Using this knowledge, her company was able to identify real business opportunities that were successfully added to its product catalogue.

"Boo hoo hoo, I am all alone!"

There was one point that I didn’t think about but that instantly made me react when it was first mentioned by Marie from Monabanq: the “loneliness” of the Web analyst.

The awareness about Web analytics has quite increased here in Belgium and in France – companies are starting to hire Web analysts. But you won’t see that many that have more than one analyst in their staff. So, as a Web analyst, you are often on your own, having to handle a lot of different activities, to face a constantly increasing demand (as you educate people around and as they come to you, asking for help), to find solution to complex problems without anyone to turn to for help. A very, very familiar feeling I must say.

The danger here is to get overwhelmed by all the requests – especially “reporting” requests (or data pukes” as Avinash Kaushik calls these) that are not only time-consuming but also lacking added-value. You should concentrate on putting your expertise to good use, where it adds value i.e. “analysis” (if you don't know what qualifies as an "analysis" then check out Avinash's recent post).

To avoid that, there are two things you should do:

Automated what can be automated: Analysis can't be automated but reporting should be. This will free up a LOT of time.
Train people on how to get the data they need – make them responsible and self-reliant for such kind of tasks. Note that training and education are two different things.

Both require an investment in time but it definitely worth it on the long term otherwise you will find yourself entangled in the mass of data requests. Once you get stuck in there, it is damned hard to get out of it.

No, you are not alone
But are we, web analysts, that alone? Are we coming home under the sunset like Lucky Luke, the cowboy, singing “I am a poor lonesome analyst...”? :-) No, we are not.

One great thing in our discipline – that I mentioned in a past post – is our incredible community. There are so many ways to get help today – via Twitter, the Yahoo WA forum, blogs and others. Of course, you can’t ask others to do your data pukes for you but the community is readily available whenever you need advices to tackle problems or to get feedback on analysis questions.

Informal events like the WA camp or the Web Analytics Wednesdays are also a great antidote against that "loneliness" feeling (it does work!). These are also great opportunities to learn from others, to meet peers who may be helpful later on. Don’t go there just for the free drinks...

In the end, I am confident that we, all the speakers, uccessfully demonstrated that working in analytics is far from being a dull job – where you just stick your head all day long in figures & excel dashboards, all alone in a dark cave. The questions and feedback we got from the audience supported that impression.

And you how do you see the profession of Web analyst? Do you feel like a poor lonesome cowboy sometimes? What’s your secret antidote against loneliness?

I would like to thank you to Nicolas Malo and to the WA Camp organizers for such great event – I look forward for next year edition! Now, I need to go. The sun is setting down and Jolly Jumper, my horse is waiting for me. Cheers!

(Check here for the Lucky Lucke "Poor lonesome cowboy" theme :-))

Time for a change!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 09:15:00 +0000

6 years & half ago, I joined Toyota Motor Europe headquaters to work as a IT Business analyst for Web related projects. At that time, I had never heard about a strange discipline called Web Analytics. Less than two months later, I was assigned to be responsible of the Webtrends platform that the company was insourcing and I took my first Webtrends training. That was a start of a new and unexepected career path.

I discovered what would become not just a job but a real passion. Over those years, I had the opportunity to work on extraordinary projects, in many different areas (e.g. web analytics, mobile, social media monitoring…) with fantastic people. I did my best to make my company more data driven (for the online area), day after day. I shared my passion whenever I could – teaching the value of online analytics to people across the organization (but also at agencies) and helping them to do a better job. Developing Web analytics practices was quite challenging – often a constant fight – but all together we brought some positive changes (that’s what I like to believe).

But time has come for a change…

Keeping the flame alive
Passion in my work is for me a crucial factor. It is important to wake up every morning with the feeling that what you do can make a difference – even if a small one, even if it takes time. If this feeling disappears then it is time to go looking for something new. We only live once - no time to waste.

For years, I felt like David fighting Goliath – no matter how small you feel, what you do is changing the world around you. But for different reasons, things changed and I started feeling like Don Quichotte – fighting windmills, feeling that whatever I do, no matter how hard I try, there are things I can’t change , that I can’t control.

Passion to Perform!
Fantastic opportunities arose and I decided to seize a new challenge. I will continue working on the practitioner side – with the opportunity to act at a more strategic level. A challenge where I believe I can leverage my expertise and - more important - keep developing it, discovering new areas.

I will move to the business side - joining the e-marketing department – so no more IT for me ;). I will work more on a national scope but on a multi-channel context with the ability to go deeper, to work closer to the ‘action’.

It will mean no more Webtrends for me (sorry guys) so new tools to discover including customer intelligence tools! Woohoo! :) It will be in a different industry – still I will continue keeping an eye on the automotive industry.

It was not an easy decision as I liked very much work in the automotive, with such great people and projects but I know I took the right decision - based not only on "facts" but also my "gut" feelings (both are important).

Anyway, I will certainly tell you more about my new role and challenges in coming weeks (by the way, there is a small hint in this post regarding where I will work).

In the meantime, I invite you to read my last interview (as working in automotive industry) on Emer Kirrane’s blog in the context of her great Silly series. Worth reading (the full series - not just my profile)! Or you can come and meet me at the 2nd Web Analytics Camp in Lille, France (site is in French) on the 18th of March 2011.

I would like to finish this post by thanking everyone I worked with, from Toyota Motor Europe headquarters but also from Toyota national companies, agencies, partners & vendors. I am really grateful to all of you - it was pleasure working with you and you gave me the fantastic opportunities to learn and evolve. Thank you!

Cheers.

My Web Analytics Top 5 – 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:38:00 +0000

First of all, let me wish you all an Happy New Year 2011 (better late than never). As it is the tradition when a new year starts, I want to do like previous years and to share with you some personal thoughts about the top 5 things related to Web Analytics that played an important role in my work or that I would remember from 2010.

So, here we go…

1. The challenges of Social Media Monitoring

In 2009, I made my first steps in the world of social media monitoring, getting my hands on some tools.

In 2010, I pushed further in this area. I had the chance to see and even test some of the best tools on the markets including Radian 6 (again), Synthesio, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Vocus, Dow Jones Insight, Attentio and others. Selecting the right tools is far from being easy especially when you need to meet the requirements of large set of different stakeholders. The perfect tool doesn’t exist yet - one needs to find the one that match most closely the organization needs.

Based on my first experience, I would say the some of the key challenges are:

Defining clear requirements & goals while remaining down-to-earth. I think many organizations have far too high (and unrealistic) expectations.

Resources, expertise & organisation: tools are just… tools. They just collect data – still you need to have the resources (i.e. people), the expertise and the right organisation (including processes) to turn all this data into insights. This aspect is often underestimated (like in Web Analytics). Without these keys elements, your project will deliver nothing valuable and it will be just a waste of money and time.

Data quality – most vendors like to tell you how many zillions of blogs, tweets and posts they track. But most organizations are only interested a tiny portion. This usually leads to lot of “noise” getting collected - making it difficult to find the important information. If setting-up of social media monitoring tool is easy, getting quality data is not. And that’s where you see big differences between tools

Social monitoring is a very interesting area but quite difficult and challenging. I will certainly continue working in this area in 2011, developing further my expertise and knowledge.

2. My first experience in Mobile Web Analytics

If you have attended a online marketing or web analytics conference over the past year, it is very likely that you have heard the word “social media” and “mobile” a lot :-). For sure, mobile is the other “hype” thing around. I didn’t escape it as the company where I work launched its first mobile sites in 2010 and I was really happy to do my first steps in mobile analytics – another exciting and promising area to be honest.

Mobile analytics pose its own specific challenges as I detailed in my first post on that topic. In spite of these challenges and limitations, mobile analytics can be highly valuable if put to good use as I demonstrated in my last post of 2010.

I must admit I only did the “basics” in that area - I can’t wait to get my first experience on mobile apps tracking but I am pretty sure that wish will be fulfilled soon.

3. My first steps using VOC surveys

"Voice Of Customer" (VOC) tools like online surveys are key tools but still under-used. They allow you collecting extremely valuable insights: the customer perspective and opinion about your online services. By listening to your customer using such tools, you can collect qualitative information that common “clickstream” web analytics tools can not. Why trying to guess why people came to visit your site and how they feel about it based on clickstream data? Simply ask (some of) them?

In 2009, my blog served me as an experiment field to test some VOC survey tools like 4Q-survey and to learn how these can be used to bring value to the organization where I work. Next step was to convince stakeholders but finally, I got there. In 2010 we ran some first real-life convincing tests before implementing our own framework that integrates both qualitative and quantitative data - the ultimate combo!

Now it is time to leverage this incredible source of customer insights. I can't wait to see it happening!

4. Webtrends (continued) renaissance

If you have read this blog last year, you may remember how enthusiastic I was when Webtrends finally released the software version of Analytics v9 and how I enjoyed attending my first Webtrends Engage conference in London.

I listed Webtrends not just for its Analytics product. Actually, I have been really impressed by its global strategy and product evolution. I remember that two years ago many in the Web analytics community were predicting the end of Webtrends. Look at what they did since then! Webtrends took a new marketing approach, it improved its existing offering ant it expanded it with new services and products such as mobile analytics, Facebook analytics, Optimize and Apps. And there is more to come in 2011.

Webtrends has an interesting and ambitious vision – aiming at offering the ultimate Web “Wide” analytics platform. Aside that, Webtrends continued to put a lot of efforts in developing a strong community among its fans and customers base. The success of events like the Engage conference or the brand new forum launched in 2010 are good examples. Keep it up with the good work!

I hoped to get my hands on Webtrends Analytics 9 before end of 2010 - unfortunately it didn't happen but my analyst wish is about to come true. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Side note: According to many experts in the Web Analytics industry, Webtrends will be bought out in 2011. The question seems not to be when but by what company. Time to bet!

5. IBM acquiring Unica and Coremetrics

Aside Webtrends, the other company that got my interest in 2010 is IBM. In a few months, IBM acquired two key players of the Web Analytics landscape: Unica and Coremetrics. If you were having doubts about the “seriousness” and future of Web analytics in the enterprise world then IBM move is the evidence that should make you change your mind.

I am convinced that Web analytics "destiny" is to become a "sub-area" of business intelligence. IBM acquisitions may take our industry to next level and it will worth keeping an eye on IBM. Future will tell…

That’s it – my Web analytics top 5 for 2010.

Me, my blog & I
I would like to close this year review with some quick words about my blog. I has been another great year for me, I had lot of pleasure in writing posts, getting interesting comments and seeing my blog audience growing up (more than +25% vs. last year). From the deepest of my heart, I thank all of you who took the time reading my thoughts and articles on Web analytics.

In case you wonder, the top 5 posts (in term of visits) from 2010 are:

Personally, I had also a lot of fun in writing the “A journey into Web Analytics” series. I sincerely appreciated the feedback I received and I was honored to see part of the series being translated in Polish (on Conversion Blog) and Spanish (on Guseimetrix blog).

The disappointment I had regarding 2010 is that I could not spend the time I wanted on this blog. While the audience has being growing, I have not been able to post as much as I want - as reflected in the decreasing number of posts (a poor 1.5 post/month!!!! Oh, that's bad). I would like to say it will change in 2011 but I am afraid it will not happen soon as this year promises to be even busier with new exciting projects and challenges ahead. But I will do my best to keep this blog running and to continue offering you quality content.

Again, Thanks to all of you for reading my blog and I wish you all the best for 2011!
Cheers!

And you what were your prefered blog posts from Kaizen Analytics? What’s your Web Analytics top 5 for 2010? What would you remember from last year? Please tell me, I am really curious to hear.

Mobile Analytics – are you reaching all your mobile audience?

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:54:00 +0000

More and more companies are launching their dedicated mobile sites, specifically designed for mobile users. If you are one of these companies, you are probably very happy to see some traffic coming to your new site – thanks to the mobile analytics solution you have in place (whatever solutions you have implemented).

But are you sure that your mobile site is reaching all your “mobile” audience i.e. mobile users surfing on your online domain? Does all mobile traffic, whether it is direct traffic or coming from search engines lands on you mobile site?

The problem
As I am working in the automotive industry, I will use industry related examples. Let’s first take BMW. They have a mobile site accessible at http://www.bmw.mobi. Great. But if I type www.bmw.de on a mobile device (an iphone for example), I don’t get redirected to the mobile site but I land on the main site that is… well, not designed for mobile devices. Now, if I search for “BMW” in Google (still using a mobile device) and click on the first results, it redirects me to… the web-based site, not the mobile one. BMW is kind of assuming people would use the www.bmw.mobi URL.

Let’s take another one example - Audi (another premium brand). If I type www.audi.de or search for “audi” on Google Germany using a mobile device and if I click on the first result, I get redirected to the Audi mobile site. Hurray! Much better. But now, if I search for “audi a1”, the result I get points to the Audi A1 product page. Clicking this result gets me on... the main Web site, not the mobile one! Worse, I land on an error page telling me that pop-ups are blocked. Bummer!

So both BMW and Audi are certainly missing a significant part of traffic on their mobile site - traffic that lands on the web site instead. Not really an example of the most optimized user experience.

The Metric
You can easily evaluate if your mobile site is really getting the traffic it should get by measuring both your website and mobile site – ideally using same platform - and by having a global profile (web + mobile) and a dedicated profile for the mobile site.

Looking at the traffic from mobile devices in the former profile will give you your total traffic from mobile devices i.e. ideally the audience you want to see surfing on your mobile site. The dedicated profile will give you total traffic on the mobile site (for consistency, make sure to look at traffic from same list of mobile devices).

Using both, you can calculate an interesting metric that I call the Mobile site reach:

Mobile site reach = Mobile site traffic / Total traffic from mobile devices.

It should be as close as possible to 100%. The resulting gap is a lost opportunity. I think the gap should not exceed 5%-10%, depending on the size of your audience.

In our case it was higher than this limit - the mobile site reach ratio being quite below the 100% mark. The mobile site could hardly be considered a success if it was not reaching the intended audience. The business goal is to provide mobile users coming to our brand sites with the best online experience i.e. experience adapted to the support their use.

Note that in my perspective such metric deserves the title of Key Performance Indicator (KPI) as it relates to a clear business objective (reach mobile users), it is easy to understand and it is actionable (see further).

The cure
The finding triggered a reaction! Resources were invested in implementing a device detection mechanism together with clever redirection mechanism that ensures that both direct traffic or traffic from search engines and referring sites gets redirected to the most appropriate page

Note that we made sure that the redirection passes the original referrer in order to not loose the precious information. Otherwise it would mess up with key reports like referring sites, search engines and campaign reports.

The results
The result was immediate – the gap went below 5%, less than 2% in best cases. The trend graph looked like this (these are “dummy” results used for illustrative purpose):

In the end, the total traffic to the mobile site increased – additionally search engine traffic share significantly went up as product related search terms started driving traffic directly to the mobile pages.

The learning
This example illustrates that it doesn’t requires hours of data analysis to come up with “insights” and recommendations. One just needs to ask the right question in first place before diving in the numbers. In that case my question was: “is our mobile site reaching its audience?”. By looking at two metrics, I got my answer, found an issue and got it fixed.

The finding was backed-up with an explanation of the root cause (i.e. search traffic not redirected), facts (i.e. Web analytics data) and a proposal to solve the issue. The proposal was then discussed with the technical team that could come with a practical solution. Once the solution was rolled out, we measured the impacts of our change to validate our finding.

Analytics in action – that’s what I live for!

Now that we addressed the "reach" aspect, we can move on by looking how the mobile site perform in terms of engagement and conversion. But that's another story...

What do you think? Did you find this post interesting or useful? Or not at all? Please share your thoughts and remarks.

Related post:

"Mobile Analytics: vertical-specific vs. traditional Web Analytics solutions" (March 2010)

Eco Driving Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:15:00 +0000

For a few months now, I am a proud Toyota Prius driver (disclosure: I work at Toyota :-))! My wife wanted to have a car that is more environmental-friendly (and we all know that what women want, men do :-)). Not only the latest Prius achieves a low fuel consumption and very low (if no) particle emission compared to diesel cars (as we used to have) but it is also packed with advanced technologies and gizmos – which didn’t leave the engineer that I am indifferent.Choice was made!

Recently, an eco driving challenge was initiated at my workplace with the main goal of reducing average fuel consumption of all participants. I decided to join this challenge to learn how to drive in a “greener” way. Additionally, as a Web analytics geek, I saw it as an opportunity to do a different kind of analytics and to get experience from a different area. I think it is essential to keep an open-mind and looking for ideas outside our little online word. On top, for once, I would be on the other side – the “customer” side.

Eco driving & Web analytics
How does such eco driving challenge relate to (web) analytics? Well, judge by yourself:

There is a clear and well defined ultimate goal for the company – reduce average consumption by X% (and therefore reduce car fleet running cost)
This translated at my level in a personal target: Achieve an average of 4.0/100 km (= 71 mpg) or lower. And to encourage me to reach my target, there are a series of incentives.
Performances will be measured over time using specific measurement devices and well-defined metrics & KPI’s.
Performances will be reported on a regular basis in an appropriate format and analysed by experts who will help identify areas of improvements and will make recommendations.
It will be up to me to take actions and follow recommendations as much as I can. Actions can be to follow eco driving training, adapt my driving style (something I did already), test different itineraries (ah, the importance of testing) or other.
Performances will be continuously measured and analysed in order to assess the impacts of my actions.

You see, it isn’t that different compared to Web Analytics – in theory and principle at least. When it comes to Web Analytics, these nice principles are not always followed. When you do Web Analytics, are there always clear and well defined business targets? Do you provide practical recommendations or just fancy charts and figures? Are actions taken or are they simply ignored? Is Web analysis a systematic and continuous process or something that is done on ad-hoc basis (to please the boss)?

Think about it!

Ecodriving analytics in action with the Prius.

I quickly realized that the Prius is a dream car for analytics freaks. Really! Aside the reports and analysis I will get in the specific context of the eco driving challenge, the Toyota hybrid car provides you with plenty of features to track and improve your fuel consumption on a day to day basis.

For those who are not familiar with the Prius, it runs on a fuel engine combined with an electric engine. The great thing is that depending on the driving conditions, the car can run solely on the electric engine meaning NO emission and no fuel consumption (for more info on Toyota full hybrid technology – check here). So, in a simple way, the principle is to try running as much as possible on electric engine or minimizing solicitations of the fuel engine. But the difficulty is that the electric power is limited so you need to keep the battery sufficiently charged – by efficiently recovering braking energy or using the fuel engine wisely.

On top, the Prius offers different driving mode like the Eco Mode, EV (Electric only) mode or Power mode (when you need an extra boost).

Enough about the car - now to the analytics part: the main key performance indicator (KPI) is the average consumption – in litre per 100 km here in continental Europe (*). The other metrics I look at when driving are speed, engine power level and instantaneous consumption.

Now comes the analytics fun: the Prius dashboard! It is unlike any other car. The left side displays the speed, fuel gauge while the right part offers multiple displays that you can easily change using the steering controls.

Energy monitor (**): Very visual – it shows the battery level and the energy flows from the different engines as you drive. You can see in real-time when the engine is running, using the electric motor or recharging the battery. Mostly useful to learn how the hybrid system behaves in different driving conditions. And to impress guest passengers :-)

Hybrid System indicator (**): This one is key and very operational. It is a kind of economy gauge that fills in depending on how much you press the “gas” pedal (i.e. power you use). As long as you are in the green zone, you are running on battery mode. Past the midpoint you are running on gasoline and if you are really steeping on the gas, it goes in the red “power” zone. And when you brake, it fills in the left part – the “charge” bar as you are recovering braking energy. Additionally, it shows the battery level so you can keep an eye on it while managing your acceleration and speed in order to optimize your consumption.

Current travel consumption in 1 or 5-minute increments (**) that show in real time how efficient I am driving. It helps me to see where I do well and not so well according to road conditions.

Past trip consumption & record: Similar as above, but for past trips. I usually set the start of a new trip whenever I refuel so I can see how I improve over time (my current record is 4.2l/100km and 819 km as you can see in the above screenshot).

Isn’t that a cool car? I wish it would be possible to export the data on a USB stick and review / analyze on my own PC. That would be analytics nirvana. :-D

Since I am driving my Prius, I must admit I have changed the way I drive – slower in general and in a much cooler & relaxed way. Globally it is less stressful to drive in a "zen" way (that is reinforce by the quietness of the car). I went from around 5.0 l/100km (=56 mpg) per full tank on the first month to 4.5l/100km (=63 mpg) in average (mostly driving in traffic jams). But I plan to do much better. Will I become an “hypermiler” and will I go below 4.0l/100km (=71 mpg)?

I will let you know :-)

Drive different: 10 eco driving tips

To end this post, let me share some eco driving tips – so you can try too, to lower your fuel consumption and contribute in a greener world. Every contribution matters, even if small ones:

Plan your trip: Plan unfamiliar journeys to reduce your chance to get lost. If you have a GPS, use it! Aside that, combine short trips (picking up kids, going to the bakery….) as cold starts are inefficient.
Leave promptly: Don’t start the engine and stay idle. It is wasted fuel. Just start when you are ready to go.
Anticipate – avoid unnecessary braking: Look far ahead down the road rather than just at the car in front of you, and anticipate changes at traffic lights or queues. Slow down gently – don’t brake hard!
Manage acceleration and gear shifting: accelerate gently and smoothly. Try changing up at an engine speed of around 2000 rpm in a diesel car or around 2500 rpm in a petrol car.
Mind driving slower: Drive at or within the speed limit – the faster you go the greater the fuel consumption. Driving 5-10 km faster on most trips will not lead in a huge time gain – few seconds to few minutes at best depending on the travel distance.
Control tire pressure: under-inflated tyres increase consumption by few percents. Check the pressure once every month or two.
Use air-co wisely: When going slow, turn it off and open the windows instead.
Remove unnecessary weights: Leave wife and kids at home :-). No, seriously remove unnecessary stuff from your boot. Heavier car means higher consumption.
Remove roof racks if no use: they increase air resistance and therefore the power required to maintain speed. It can increase consumption by several percents even if no luggage box on it.
Turn off engine: If you car doesn’t have stop/start technology, turn off the engine whenever you get stuck and think it will last more than 30s – 1min. Modern cars have become much more efficient at start so it is more efficient to turn it off and restart than staying idle.

Have a nice and greener drive!

What do you think? Did you find this post interesting? Do you do eco driving? Will you do? Please feel free to commment!

Related resources:

Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive technology explained (Toyota Europe site)
"Eco-driving: fuel saving advices from the AA"
"Top 10 eco driving tips to beat fuel rises" from Cnet UK
"EcoDriving principles - Economical & Ecological driving" from EcoFleet.

(*) for your info, 50 MPG =5.6 l/100km
(**) Display screenshots are not from me except the last one. I borrowed those nice examples from this blog. I hope they won't mind.

WebTrends Engage London 2010 - I was there!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:21:00 +0000

WebTrends held the 2nd edition of its European Engage conference in London on the 19th and 20th of October with as main theme: “Art & science”. Luckily, this year I was able to attend – no conflicting agenda this time. I was really looking forward for the event with some expectations in mind:

Learn more about practical applications of the several new features that offers WebTrends Analytics 9 as On Premises, the software version that was released in August 2010.

Get more insights about the other WebTrends products and also about what’s come next.

Networking: meet the people behind WebTrends products but also Web Analytics peers I haven’t seen for a while or never met in the offline world. It is always an enjoyable moment, to chat & share experiences with other practitioners.

So, did WebTrends deliver? Did the conference meet my expectations?

Day One – plenary sessions & the party!
I have to admit that, yes WebTrends did, mostly! When I arrived at the conference, I must say that the first thing that struck me was the size of the audience. Wow! Hundreds of people, from all across Europe: UK but also from other the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and more.

Day one offered plenary sessions – with some very good ones. I really enjoyed the presentation from David Rowan from Wired UK, on the top digital trends that disrupting the business landscape. Interesting and pretty well delivered. It kicked off with a fantastic video from 1999 AD movie (1967)! Classic!

In the afternoon, Casey Carey & Bruce Kenny from WebTrends spoke about the product vision & strategy. They presented what will come next regarding the different products and main direction WebTrends will be taking – seamless integration was a common denominator and their idea of a Web-Wide-Analytics platform sounds very promising. During the Q&A, I had the opportunity to ask Casey Carey if segmentation will be available one day in Analytics. The answer was yes – but not timing yet. Any, one of my goals was reached – get more insights on WebTrends product strategy. Cool!

Other presentations were neither especially bad nor uninteresting but it was a kind of “déjà-vu” – nothing really new to be honest.

Heston Blumenthal, chef at the Fat Duck (a 3-Michelin star restaurant) and culinary alchemist closed the day. He took us through his journey at The Fat Duck, explaining in a passionate way how he merges art & science (the conference theme) in his profession. He also shared the creation process of some of his amazing recipes. Impressive and very interesting.

Oh, there was also a party to end of day one but I can’t tell much about it – memories are a bit blurry, go figure why? :-)

Day Two – here comes the break-out sessions
Day two agenda looked very promising with plenty of break-outs session to choose from: social media (no surprise!), website optimization, visitor behaviour, Web analytics, tip’n’tricks and marketing optimization. Maybe it was a bit too much in one single day because, to be honest it was very difficult to make a choice. There were few dilemmas and I felt a bit of frustration to have to drop one or two sessions. But that’s life…

I mostly attended sessions about the Analytics features like Insights, the data extraction and collection API’s, mobile tracking… There were some very cool stuff, especially about the data collection API and how it can be used to feed in external data in the analytics platform. Very promising! This definitely got me even more impatient to have Analytics 9 at work.

Unfortunately, I had to sacrifice sessions on Facebook analytics and I didn’t really have the time to see other products like Optimize. I guess that will be for another time. That is my main regret about the event. The fact that there were not more practical sessions on first day and that break outs sessions were not split over the two days – allowing people to choose between plenary sessions and practical ones.

Aside the break out sessions, I enlisted myself for a paper prototype testing of the coming Campaign Analytics product. The test was lead by Justin Garrity from the WebTrends User Experience (UX) team. It was really interesting – the future product looks very promising and it will bring some great awaited features – I guess that my excitement is far to be over. It was a funny experience to do such testing and to be on the “tester” side. Thanks to Derek Fine for the opportunity – I hope that I have been a useful tester.

I was also happy to finally meet Web Analytics “rockstar” Jacques Warren in the offline world! He’s really good and a very nice chap!

Great job from WebTrends – top-class organisation and content overall. Very insightful and fun at the same time. I am looking forward for London Engage 2011.

Related posts & other resources:

"Here comes WebTrends Analytics 9 On Premises!" post (August 2010)
WebTrends Engage London 2010 Official site
"Engage London 2010 - Day One Recap" on WebTrends company blog
"WebTrends Engage Conference 2010" review on Contagious Magazine

Improved search queries dashboard in Google Webmaster tools

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:39:00 +0000

Over the last few days, I have been working on a search engine optimization (SEO) project - digging into Google Webmaster tools great dashboard that is the search queries dashboard. It was significantly improved earlier this year in April and it is one of the most useful tools for SEO. There are so many things you can do with it, including measuring your organic clickthrough ratio.

This morning I logged in and what a surprise! The dashboard format has been enhanced and it now displays change percentages (vs. previous period) for all key metrics that are available. And because change values are displayed in appropriate colours (red if going down, green if going up), it gives a visual clue for what to look at. You can quickly see what keywords significantly changed - whether in term of impressions (increasing customer interest?), clicks, clickthrough rate (CTR) or average position (do your SEO efforts are paying?). In the screenshot below, I can see that impressions for one of the keywords went up by 174% and clicks by 212% - knowing there is a lot of promotion at the moment around this product, it is an encouraging indication of increasing interest.

To make your life easier, you can order the search queries by change percentage of any of the displayed metrics to quickly find out terms with high increase or those going down.

Really cool! Great work Google! If you have not yet checked your Google Webmaster tools account, do it know. It worth it! :-)

Do you like it?

Related post:

"A SEO KPI: Organic Clickthrough Rate" (May 2010)

A journey into Web analytics (Part IV): Web analytics, a new profession?

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:55:00 +0000

[This post is the last one of the series I started in June. Previous posts went through some of the key aspects of Web Analytics such its value for the business, challenges and key factors for success. I want to end it with a post dedicated to the profession of Web Analyst, Web analytics specialist or whatever title you like – there are so many of them.]

We are the people
People are an important factor, often acting as the main catalyser for successful web analytics. If you have been wandering in the Web analytics sphere, you have certainly read or heard Avinash Kaushik’s 10/90 rule: “Web analytics is 10% tool, 90% people”. How is that possible? How can Web analytics be a full-time job? Why, as an organization, should I hire some specifically for the role?

After all, Web analytics is easy – it is just about setting-up a Google analytics account (anyone can do this) and providing visitor counts & top page listings here and there (any reporting squirrel can do this).

Don’t smile! This is a common problem – still (too) many people tend to have a very simplistic perception of the role of a Web analyst. It goes far beyond copy-pasting a piece of Javascript in a website and creating fancy pie charts in Excel.

Hello, my name is Michael and I am a Web Analytics specialist
Have some doubts? Then let me briefly explain my own role, working as a Web Analytics specialist in a large international organisation.

In short, I would say that I work on and manage online analytics related activities and projects. This includes responsibilities like gathering business requirements for online measurements, identifying key business metrics and performance indicators (KPI’s), providing technical specifications and coordination measurement implementation, implementation coordination, testing & quality auditing, setting-up tools & reports, training & coaching business users, analysing data & making recommendations, presenting resulting to different level of stakeholders, managing resources & budgets, managing relationships with vendors & suppliers. And I can keep going on. So yes, I do more than just Excel.

As you can see these tasks comprise technical tasks as well as business and management tasks. Of course, depending on the particular role, the company and the person’s own interest, it can be more technical oriented (like implementation or tool expert) or more business oriented (“pure” analyst or e-marketer). Even though, it is not rare that Web analytics is between the two sides, requiring varied skills.

The main traits of a Web Analytics specialist
What are the key skills? If you want to lure into the realm of Web Analytics and make it not just an activity but a real full-time job, a good mix of the following skills you will need:

A good technical background: While it is not necessary to be a Web developer, you need to be technically savvy and have a good knowledge about the Web and related technologies (HTML, Flash, Javascript). You need to understand how the Web and online measurement tools work, what are the technical constraints and limitations, impacts on the data, etc. And because you are likely to be in contact with developers, agencies and technical staff at some points, mastering a minimum of technical language is essential.

Business-minded: To be honest, that’s the side of the job I prefer. While online analytics rely on technologies, it first serves a business purpose. Your primary goal is to help business being successful – not to deploy state-of-the-art technologies and gadgets. Good Web analysts have a strong interest in the business aspects and objectives. You can’t do this in you don’t dive into the business world, learn to think and act in a business-oriented way.

Strong communication skills: This is critical as you will spend a lot of your time conveying messages to different types of audience. You need to be able to explain in simple ways sometimes complex concepts and information. You need to remove complexity from the measured data, to turn this data into business insights and recommendations. You will be the interface between two worlds and you will need to translate business requirements into technical terms and vice-versa.

Diplomacy & psychology: These come with the communication skills. Political aspects in organizations are important and online analytics is no exception – especially when facing HiPPO’s (Highest Paid Person Opinions). You will have to be careful in the way you communicate – making sure you don’t offend anyone while keeping moving forward. Not everyone is prepared to know the truth about their online business (what I called the “Ignorance is bliss” syndrome). Add to that the fact that IT and business rarely have a love relation and you will get a good understanding of why diplomacy is required.

Analytics notions: You will juggle with data almost everyday therefore having a good grasp of basic statistic notions is important. These are important when analysing results, calculating sample sizes for tests or surveys, when evaluating the confidence level (how far can you trust your data?)... While it may be not required to be statistician – in some cases, advanced analytics skills may be more than just an asset.

Patience & perseverance, curiosity and more: Web analytics is a long journey as explained in previous parts of the series and it often takes a lot of patience and perseverance. It is still quite young and constantly evolving with the web (i.e. fast) – just look at the development of mobile or social media. You will not have to be afraid of changes and remain curious about new technologies, new practices, and new challenges.

These are only some of the key traits of a good Web analyst. It is not always possible to find all these skills into one single person. It may be achieved by assembling an analytics dream team composed of different persons, each having specific competencies.

Web Analyst, a new super hero? Not!

Web analytics is a very interesting area (of course, I am biased when stating this :-)). Being related to online marketing and web, it is constantly evolving and changing – no time to get bored and one needs to be always willing to learn more, to be curious to explore new territories.

I am not saying that working in Web Analytics is THE ultimate job of the moment but the importance of the “people” factor in Web analytics is often under estimated or wrongly perceived. Web analytics is definitely not just a “side” job or function.

But it is up to us, Web analysts to evangelise our organisation about the business value of Web analytics, the challenges and how we can help make theory a reality.

Is the Web Analyst the new business super hero? No but it is a true profession on its own. And a challenging and exciting one!

Don’t you think so?

If you are not a Web analyst, I would love to hear your views on how you perceive Web Analytics in general, its purpose and the role of a Web analyst.

Related posts & resources:

"A journey into Web Analytics (Part I): The Value of Web Analytics" (June 2010)
"A Journey Into Web Analytics (Part II): The challenges" (June 2010)
"A journey into Web Analytics (Part III): Critical factors for success" (August 2010)
"The 10 / 90 Rule for Magnificent Web Analytics Success" by Avinash Kaushik (May 2006)

A journey into Web Analytics (Part III): Critical factors for success

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:52:00 +0000

[It is time to resume the series I started in June. After presenting the business value of Web Analytics (Part I) and the some of the key challenges and obstacles lying on the path to successful Web analytics (Part II), let’s discuss what it takes to get a chance to reach Analytics nirvana]

“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”
Web Analytics can start as an “underground” activity i.e. activity that is part of project or within a team. You can do some analysis here and there, making some recommendations or encouraging actions. It can develop on its own and grow larger in a certain extent but at some point – it will stagnate.

Don’t hope that you will be granted everything you need (i.e. money, resources, tools, responsibilities) “naturally” just because you do understand the value of Web analytics, because you are a analytics super-ninja and doing a good job. It doesn’t work like that, believe me! I have been there, I have done that and reality bit me, hard. Ouch!

If you want to turn this “activity” into a “culture”, if you want Web analytics to grow across the organisation, you will need to come with a strategy. And preferably a good one if you don’t want to see Web Analytics becoming your Waterloo.

Critical factors for success
Ok, saying “you need to have a strategy” is easy to say – anyone can do that. But more practically, what does it mean? Your strategy - your battle plan - has to address several key aspects – what Stéphane Hamel presents as the critical factors for success in his Online Analytics Maturity Model:

Management & governance
Objectives & Scope
Process & methodology
Resources & organization
Technology & tools

You will need to make sure that your strategy covers each of these factors. Now, keep in mind that addressing these will not guarantee success – but not covering these will certainly lead to failure. Well, that’s what I have heard and based on my own frustrations…er, experiences – I tend to believe it :-)

Getting top management support

I think that management factor is certainly one of the most important, at least it is the one you should address first. If you want Web Analytics practices to become part of your organization culture, getting top management buy-in and support is a must do!

Without it, it will not be possible to implement the necessary process & organization changes, you will not get the budgets you need for resources & technology and you may address futile objectives.

So try to identify what level of management you need to convince in order to get enough support to implement (and enforce) new processes, new organization and very important, to get money. Make sure you get real commitment - management will have to believe in the necessity of developing an online measurement culture. Your key sponsor will have to be ready to fight and die for your cause.

Don’t underestimate the task - getting management support is NOT that easy – it requires an appropriate “language”, to present complex concepts from a totally different perspective. It is very likely that what is soooo obvious for you will not be for them.

Scope & objectives
Once you get a general to lead your war, you will need to have objectives! What problems will you try to solve? How will online analytics contribute to your company bottom-line? Which area will be covered: internet sites, intranet sites, mobile, social media, other?

As said in part I, your ultimate objective should be to contribute to at least one of the three essential goals: increase customer satisfaction (customer first, remember?), increase revenues and decrease costs. But you will need to be a bit more precise than that.

You will need to break down your macro objectives in smaller and reachable objectives in a “SMART”(*) way. Tie these to your company raison d’être so these have a meaning for top management and executives. You will certainly end up with a long list, prioritization will be necessary. Where can you get most added-value? Are there any quick win? It will be a question of compromise.

Don’t be too ambitious - try not to address too much areas and objectives at the same time, if you don’t have the capabilities to do so. It is better to do few things fully rather than a bit of everything (that will bring no or very little value). Extend your scope and objectives as you get more “mature”.

Process & methodology

In previous part, I explained that change management is one of the thoughest challenges (like in many other areas). How to make people change the way they work? How to make web analytics practice something systematic? The answer is you need the right processes and methodology that you can apply across the organisation on all online projects.

Many people tend to be allergic the term “new process” :-) - it often evokes time-consuming-useless-annoying tasks documented in a 100-pages document written by someone who will never do the work. Actually, A process can be very simple. Instead of reinventing the wheel, try to link Web analytics practices to existing processes. Keep it simple and flexible! Avoid big changes (it will not work) but rather start smoothly and then enrich your process, improve it on a regular basis (in true Kaizen way). You also can look for inspiration in proven processes like Six-Sigma or PDCA.

Don’t forget: a process is useless if no one is aware of it – so communicate it inside the organization using top management support.

Additionally, you need a methodology for turning business requirements & objectives into key performance indicators (KPI’s), metrics and reports. You can invent your own or, again, look for existing ones and adapt these to your context. I suggest having a look at the Nokia methodology – it is very simple and flexible, it has been more than a source of inspiration for me. Steve Jackson’s “Cult of Analytics” book also details a methodology to develop KPI’s

Resources & organizations
In Web Analytics, people are essential. Ideally, you need a good mix of varied competencies in technologies, analytics and business among others. It may be difficult to find all these in one single “champion” – so you may need to look for different persons, either internally or externally. Getting help from outside is definitely an option to consider – especially in the beginning – as it can bring valuable experience. If you have someone internally, take care of her/him – talented people are hard to find and very demanded (just have a look at this recent job trends chart).

But having the resources is one thing, defining the right organization is another one. For large organizations, I strongly believe in models like the “centralized decentralization” model (as Avinash Kaushik refers to it in his latest book) or the “hub & spokes" model (as described by Eric T. Peterson for example). The various skills are gathered in a central team that makes the bridge between the business & technology so the business people can focus on the thing they do best: business. The Analytics team will deal with all other aspects like what data to measure, how to collect it (tools, technology, and implementation) and it will teach how to use it.

The big question will quickly arise: where should Web Analytics sit in the organization? I raised the question previously and to be honest, I guess that the answer is that “it depends”. Wherever it sits, it should be as close as possible to the business. There is no point to have it at a level where recommendations are made too far away from decision makers, resulting in no or slow action.

Technology & tools

Last but not least, comes the technology i.e. the tools. Web Analytics is like gardening: you need different tools, each having a specific purpose. You can’t do gardening with just a shovel. Have you ever tried to cut hedges with a shovel (even if the most expensive one)?

It is the same with Web Analytics where you need different tools for different purposes: for measuring clickstream data, voice of the customer, competitive intelligence, social media, testing and others. Welcome to Web Analytics 2.0 and Avinash Kaushik’s multiplicity model! A model that definitely worth discovering.

But don’t get me wrong the number of tools is not important – it is what you do with them. It makes no sense to have a tool if there no use for it in your context – the one with most analytics tools doesn’t win anything. Based on your objectives and associated KPI’s, identify the type of data you needs and the required tools. Make sure to “integrate” any new tool in your existing framework – here again, adding these one by one will be easier than having to integrate them all in one go.

Know where you are and where you want to go
To get started with your online strategy, it is important to know where you are (your current situation) and where you want to go (the ideal / target situation). One way to do this is to use Stéphane Hamel’s Online analytics maturity assessment tool. Do a true and honest assessment of your current situation (or ask Stéphane to do it for you). It will help you to see where are the gaps (and how big they are) and what factors you need to address first in your own context.

I strongly believe that addressing these factors is essential for developing a successful online analytics culture on the long term – especially in large organizations. For sure it is easier said than done - building an online analytics culture is a long journey. This is the path I decided to take for the best and worst. Future will tell me how a good or bad choice it was.

I would be curious to hear your feedback and own experience regarding these aspects. Is it the right way to go or disillusion awaits me? Don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

(*) SMART = Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely

(Next and last part: Web Analytics - a new profession?)

Related resources:

"Overview of the Web Analytics Maturity Model" by Stéphane Hamel (August 2009)
"Online Analytics Maturity assessment tool (beta)" by Stéphane Hamel (2010)
"Cult of Analytics" book by Steve Jackson (2009)
"What is your Web Analytics communication strategy?" by Eric T. Peterson (February 2008)
"Who Owns Web Analytics? A Framework For Critical Thinking." by Avinash Kaushik (December 2009)
"Rethink Web Analytics: Introducing Web Analytics 2.0" by Avinash Kaushik (September 2007)

"A journey into Web Analytics (Part I): The Value of Web Analytics" (June 2010)
"A Journey Into Web Analytics (Part II): The challenges" (June 2010)
"A journey into Web analytics (Part IV): Web analytics, a new profession?" (September 2010)
"Web Analytics - Where should it sit in the organization?" (July 2009)
"Defining actionable & business-driven KPI’s – a practical methodology" (October 2008)

Here comes WebTrends Analytics 9 On Premises!

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:32:00 +0000

Summer is usually a quiet period – still, WebTrends decided to release the long awaited (at least by me :-)) software version of Analytics 9 and all the great features that come with it! And they even renamed it for the occasion in "Analytics 9 On Premises". Hallelujah!

It was about time!
I must admit that WebTrends v8.5 really started aging – especially when compared to other Web analytics products. Last year, I had an opportunity to have a go at the On-demand version and since then I have been desperately waiting for the software version. This day has finally come. But why am I so happy? Which features make me rejoicing like that?

There is of course the new WebTrends Analytics Insight, its nice interface, the account dashboard and story view but to be honest, I am more excited by some of the features and services that come with it:

The REST data extraction API: I wrote a post on it already last year and it seems like my wish has been fulfilled! REST API is in the software version. The ability to extract data in a much easier and more flexible way will make data reporting and – more important – data integration more powerful. Web data will not be isolated anymore. While WebTrends Analytics already offered an ODBC driver, it showed some limitations when used extensively. The new data extraction API should be more powerful (and support Unicode).

The data collection API: the collection API provides alternative (and more accurate) methods to collect data from different sources such as mobile and Facebook apps. This is coming at the right moment for me and it will be put to good use, for sure.

Alerts: Oh this feature was really missing in previous version! Of course alerting can be used by business users to be informed of major changes but it is also an additional mechanism to improve yourr measurement quality assurance. Ever been in a situation where a developer / agency made changes to a website, messed up with the tagging and you only found out at the end of the month when doing the report? I have been through this toooo often. Alerts will allow me to be notified directly. Yes!

Exportable trends: Oh God! How many times have I been asked “how can I export the trend graph of this report” and I had to answer “You can’t – you need to export day by day manually” (usually followed by a “oh” expressing the user’s huge disappointment)? I stopped counting. This time is over – Insight offer ability to export trend data via the Export API.

Annotations: Very simple but so useful – I used it a lot on Google Analytics. It will help to put data in context and you probably know how important context is for data interpretation. I hope it is sharable like in Google Analytics.

There are also some new features in the Analytics product, others than the new brand colours:

Traffic source reporting: Oh God (bis) – another feature that was cruelly lacking in WebTrends - the ability to have simple categorization of traffic sources: organic search, paid search, direct, campaign and other referrers. It is there now!

Ability to add new measures while preserving old data: this more a technical enhancement but a really useful one. It is so frustrating when you create a custom report and then few months later you want to add new measures but either loose past data or need to reprocess EVERYTHING just for a measure. Now, it is possible. Thanks WebTrends.

These are the main reasons that make me, the analytics geek, so excited. Still I will have to wait a little more, until we upgrade our infrastructure here at work as the upgrade will required quite some work. I hope I won’t be disappointed – shouldn’t be. I will let you know, for sure, when I will get my hands on it!

Anyone else dying for having its WebTrends software upgraded to v9? Any On-Demand users willing to share their experience regarding the features I mentioned? I am really curious to know.

Note: I have not mentioned the addition of the bounce rate, a metric that has become a ‘standard’ and missing in WebTrends. It is now available in Analytics Insight but only available at profile level – not at page level. If this is the case, it is a bit a disappointment because bounce rate at profile isn’t that useful. I hope WebTrends will include as a standard measure in a near future - it will avoid a lot of manual calculations.

Related posts & resources:

"Analytics 9 On Premises", WebTrends press release (August 2010)
"Dear WebTrends, I need REST" - post from September 2009

Build your free competitor monitoring dashboard with iGoogle

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:59:00 +0000

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that I am a big fan of Google Insights for Search. It can be used for many purposes; my favourite being as a “competitive” intelligence tool to monitor overall interest in your brand and products vs. your competitors. I covered an example last year with the Prius vs. Insight and earlier this year I illustrated how the tool can be used to “evaluate” the impact of offline events like TV campaigns for example.

The “problem” is how to make this valuable information usable on a regular basis? How to keep an eye on what is going on? How to get an overview at a glance without running each query? Of course, you can bookmark each query but still, you need to manually select these one by one to see if there is or not anything noticeable. This can be time consuming – especially if you are monitoring several markets or products. And if you want key users to use this tool you have to make their life easier :-).

iGoogle Insights for Search

The answer came from one of the comments made by a reader(1): use iGoogle to save your favourite queries. To be honest I have never been a iGoogle fan (shame on me!) but I thought it would be a good idea to give it a try. And what a good idea it was – soooo simple but how useful. Not only I really liked it but I got very positive feedback from colleagues at work. Therefore, I thought it would worth sharing it with you.

Here is a example I made – for once not an automotive one ;-) - that show interest trends for some smartphone brands (iPhone, HTC, Nokia and Blackberry) over 3 key European markets (By the way, look at the similar “impact” of the iPhone 4 launch across the different countries. Wow!). This is a simple example and I am sure "iGoogle Insights For Search" can be used in many different ways – depending on the context and needs.

Share it!

Building a dashboard in iGoogle allows you to see multiple queries in one screen (like comparing different products over different markets). You can build multiple tabs to easily navigate through different topics, terms or markets. On top, you can share a full tab with other colleagues using the Share Tab function. Don’t keep these valuable insights for yourself; communicate it across your organization!

How to do?

Create a Google account – one you will use at work and that you may possibly share with colleagues
Create a new tab where you want to regroup related reports (e.g. Smartphones – UK/DE/FR). Choose the layout that is best suited (In my example, I use 3 columns)
Go to Google Insights for Search and create the report you need.
Once done, add the trends line, rising searches and top search terms to your iGoogle account (under the tab you created) – just click on the “iGoogle” icon next to each item.
Organise the various items – I use following order (from top to bottom): interest trends (very visual), rising searches (to spot “hot” or new topics) and top search terms at the bottom.
Make you iGoogle your default homepage.

And voilà, there you go, whenever you start your browser, you will get your competitor monitoring dashboard displayed! No way you can “forget” to check it. Now you can keep a eye on what’s going in on – with direct access to key elements. And if you want to drilldown you can easily access the full reports. And all for free! Isn’t life great sometimes?

What do you think? Have you already built your own iGoogle Insights for search dashboards? How do you use it? Any example you would like to share with me?

(1) Special thanks to Urs Gattiker from ComMetrics for his valuable suggestion!

Related posts:

"Measuring the impact of offline events with Google Insights for Search" (February 2010)
"Competitive intelligence for free: a practical example" (May 2009)

A Journey Into Web Analytics (Part II): The challenges

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:09:00 +0000

[After an introduction post on the business value of Web Analytics, the second part of this series covers some of the major challenges & obstacles that await you on the long journey to successful online analytics.]

“Web Analytic is hard”
Web Analytics holds attractive promises for businesses. After reading part I, it certainly sounds like online analytics is the magic silver-bullet that most businesses are dreaming for. Then why so many companies are failing in seizing such opportunities? A simple and common answer is that “Web Analytics is “hard, damn hard”!

Ok, let’s be honest with ourselves: most people would certainly say about their job that it is hard. But for sure leveraging Web Analytics value isn’t certainly easy – not as easy as many people think or as most vendors used to claim it. Creating an online analytics culture is quite challenging as there are many difficulties and obstacles to tackle on the way. And these are not always lying where you think they are (ooh, the vicious ones!). Many companies fail because they underestimate the challenges behind successful Web Analytics.

I have a Web Analytics tool so…
Usually, the first challenge that comes to mind is the technology and the tools. I think too many people believe that Web analytics is just about deploying a great tool, getting online content tagged properly and that’s it. So how can that be so difficult? After all, nowadays most businesses have a Web analytics solution implemented on their websites. For example, last year I had a look at European automotive sites and only 4% had no recognized analytics solution. So does that prove that the other 96% are doing what is defined as “Web Analytics”?

No. Having a Web analytics tool just proves that you are doing online measurements and possibly reporting but not that you are doing analysis (i.e. turning data into insights) or that you are taking actions. The purpose of Web analytics is about understanding and optimizing online usage!

Moreover, having one tool (or two) whether it is Google Analytics, WebTrends, Omniture or Analyser Nx is not enough as these are just measuring quantitative information know as the "What" (=what happened on your site) and the "When" (= when it happened). But what about the qualitative information - the “Why” (= why people came to your site) and the “How” (= how do they feel about it)? Usually measuring qualitative information will require different and specific tools.

Finally, in many cases, the online channel is just a part of a (much) larger business picture. Online data can not sit alone on their side – they fit in a lager context (see further). Therefore to be really effective, online data has to be integrated with other data. That means integrating your Web analytics tool with other systems (such as CRM, other databases…). Oooh, system integration! That is where things usually get dirty. Now, we are talking about challenges! :-)

Too much data

Ok, let’s assume you have overcome the technical challenge. Now you are likely to face another typical challenge of Web analytics: having way too much data – more than any data geek can handle. The great thing with the Web is that it is probably the most measurable media we have so far but it is also a problem. Indeed, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by the huge quantity of data that can be collected.

The measurement possibilities are so enormous that it is tempting to succumb to let’s-measure-every-single-click frenzy and to turn any Web analytics tool into a data-report-puking machine.

The problem is that the insightful information is usually a very small portion of this mountain of data. But this is the one you need, the specific data that will bring real insights and that will make you take the right actions. So finding this tiny piece of information is often like finding a hairpin in a haystack.

For that you need the right people and that is the next challenge…

Lack of “staffing”
Another typical problem with Web Analytics is that many limit its scope to a tool and technology. Too often, the focus is on allocating budget for implementing tagging, configuring the tool and the thousands of reports that come with it. But when it comes to allocating people: nothing, nada, nicht, que dalle!

Ok, now is the right time to slip in some intelligent expression like “Owning the best hammer doesn’t make you a good carpenter”. Just replace the words “hammer” by “web analytics tools” and “carpenter” by “analyst”. Amen. Web analytics tools are just er… tools. They don’t analyse nor interpret the data, they don’t make recommendations, yet (but who knows, I am sure people like Joseph Carrabis have probably their own idea on that topic).

This is the job of (Web) analysts to put the data in context, to grab its complexity and turn it into business intelligence. And, this is not a job you can assign to first person you will find. It is not something that can be done one hour a day. Don't get me wrong here, I am not picking on Avinash’s great book, “Web Analytics an hour a day” (highly recommended reading by the way) – I just want to say that analytics is not a side task, it is a real new job that requires specific skills and experience (more about this in Part IV).

And even if you decide to assign dedicated persons, you will need to find these. And you will not find them at the corner of the street. Experienced analysts are highly demanded and come for a price. What about hiring junior or freshly graduated Web analysts? The problem is that online analytics is not much taught in universities or high schools – apart for few exceptions (but it is slowly changing). Online analytics is more something that you learn by yourself, on the job. It may get easier in the future thanks to great projects such as Web Analytics Without Borders and Analytics Exchange that offer the opportunities to beginners, students to develop their skills and acquire experience on real projects.

Siloed organizations& the reluctance to change

But then even if you have good tool and a good analyst, it will not be a guarantee for success (at least it is a good start). You will need to face “organizational” challenges. It is very typical (and even almost unavoidable) that big companies are organized in a vertical way, with what are commonly called silos. Each department focusing on its own area: Internet marketing takes care of the website, media department handles advertising, sales department is responsible for lead & sales management… All these departments contribute to the whole business process and it should be the same for Web Analytics. Its scope shouldn’t be limited to the website (or online channels) and to the few departments that are managing it. Online data are part of a more global context: business processes.

What is it the point to measure online lead conversions and increase these if it is not linked with sales? I mean, a Internet marketer, may be doing a great job at using the website to double the number leads but if these don’t turn into sales because of their poor quality, it makes no sense. Online data can prove to be useful for many departments inside the company: product design, sales/production planning, brand strategy, marketing intelligence... The problem is that there is often a lack of awareness and sharing. It is very likely that most departments are not aware about the existence of online knowledge and about possibilities.

Therefore to really leverage the value of online analytics, one will have to “break” the silos. I don’t mean re-organizing the whole company - that would be impossible :-) - but making people communicate and work more together, change people habits, change processes, change the culture. And if there is something difficult in big organization, it is change. Finding the right organisation is a challenge on its own – as who should own Web analytics? Where should it sit in the organization? Vertical vs. horizontal? Centralized vs. distributed?

Patience & perseverance, you will need!

Beware the Hippos

The people you work for can be a serious challenge as well. Internet marketing managers had a quiet life – as long they could persuade people around that their job was brilliant. The boss could impose any idea because he/she was the boss and there was nothing to contradict it. Web Analytics means a possible end to this “state of grace”. Web Analytics is often a painful reality check - “bye bye” judgement based on gut feelings or influence and welcome to facts & figures! And the Web analyst is likely to be the bad news messenger. So the persons that are supposed to support you may do it to a certain extent only – as long as it serves their interest. Many people prefer to live in ignorance (I call it the “ignorance is bliss” syndrome), they won’t say it out loud of course but in practice…

Your findings may go against the HiPPO’s - highest paid person opinions. How will you handle that? How will you make people accept something that may show they are not doing such a great job? You can’t just come in and throw your facts & conclusions at your boss face while saying victoriously “Ah! Ah, see how wrong you are!”. When it reaches a certain level, political aspects get in the way and you will have to deal with these with extreme caution.

And there are more…
Challenges don’t stop there. The media itself make it challenging. The Web is a (super) fast evolving media. First, there is what some call the “decentralization” of the Web, induced by social media. Content is not centralized anymore in a limited number of sources (typically your sites) but it is disseminated across multiple types of sources and platforms. Companies now have RSS feeds, blogs, YouTube channels, Facebook brand page, Twitter account… Brand content can be shared by consumers or embedded in other sites. Each source and platform need to measured, usually in different ways, leading to multiple data sources that you will have to put together in order to grasp the your full ecosystem.

Secondly, there is also the multiplication of technical platforms as well. Until not so long ago, it was easy as the majority of people used their computer to surf on the Web but now they can access Internet via their mobile phone, their tablets (like the iPad for example), their TV, their game console or even from their car systems. The same person will use different platforms at different moments for different usage, bringing more challenges in terms of measurements and data reconciliation. For example, measuring mobile sites does not work exactly the same way as measuring websites.

The consequence is that online analytics is constantly evolving (and fast), setting new challenges. No time to rest…

Don’t despair!
The challenges covered here are just examples. I could keep on enumerating more but this post is already quite long (you can find more for example in last year Econsultancy’s Online Measurement and Strategy Report or in this great post from Avinash) but I guess you get the idea. Web analytics is certainly not that easy, it is not just a matter of having one tool implemented that provides you with tons of sexy reports. Technology is just one of the difficulties with other aspects like organization, company culture, people, expertise and others. Like in many other areas, whenever significant changes are required, you are up for a long and difficult battle. Even the constantly changing nature of the media itself adds its own set of difficulties.

But don’t get desperate – successful web analytics exists (well, I truly hope so – I keep repeating that to myself :-)). All challenges can be overcome. How so? Find out in Part III – “Critical factors for successful Web Analytics”

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Your turn now: based on your experience, what are the toughest, trickiest, most vicious challenges you encountered on your Web analytics journey? I am curious to know so please share your experience.

Interesting posts on Web Analytics challenges:

"Barriers to an effective Web Measurement strategy" by Avinash Kaushik (July 2009)
"Big problems & little problems: why companies fail at measurement" on WebTrends blog (June 2010)

A journey into Web Analytics (Part I): The Value of Web Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:43:00 +0000

This post is the first one of a series of posts inspired from presentations I did at the eDataXchange automotive forum in Brussels and more recently at FeWeb conference on Web Analytics. The purpose of this series is to give a general overview of Web Analytics: the “business” value of Web Analytics, the typical and not so typical challenges that lie on the way, what it takes to make Web analytics successful in an organization and the Web Analytics profession. I hope you will enjoy this series. So let's get started with the value of Web Analytics...

Internet - the new revolution.

Gutenberg’s invention, press printing, was a revolution in its time as it played a key role in making knowledge and information accessible to the mass. In a similar way, many consider Internet as the revolution of our time. It has given us access to almost unlimited information and knowledge. It changed the way we communicate and it is even changing the way we interact socially (the famous “social media revolution”).

But Internet not only changed people’s life – it also impacted many businesses and industries. Just look at the news, music or travel industries for example. In the automotive industry, Internet has become an important sale & marketing tool. In 10 years, the percentage of car buyers using Internet as source of information went from 20% to almost 90% (1).

Today, businesses don’t do websites anymore because it’s cool or because the neighbour has one (well, I hope you do have better reasons than these :-)). Whether you are investing 10,000 EUR, 100,000 or a million EUR in online channels, it is to server business purposes with specific direct or indirect objectives. And performances against these objectives need to be measured. You need to be able to assess if you are doing a good or crap job and to understand how to make it even better.

That’s where Web Analytics (or shouldn’t we say online analytics - I tend to prefer this name more and more) comes in play as its main purpose is not about measuring, collecting or reporting Web data but to understand and optimize web usage. It really irritates me when people think that Web Analytics is just about counting visitors, measuring most viewed content or time spent on a site.

Listen, ask, understand and optimize!
Compared to traditional media such as TV, print media or radio, Internet is probably the most measurable media we ever had so far. There is a (almost) endless list of what can be measured online. And it doesn’t stop to measuring online activity – the impact of offline events or campaign can be measured online too in some cases, using proper tools and techniques.

There are unique opportunities for businesses that will manage to leverage the use of online analytics:

Listen to customers: For example, social monitoring offers to possibility to listen to what people say and think about your brand and products: what they like, what they don’t, what they dream of. You can learn what products your customers are interest in using Web Analytics - for example by collecting configurations made on a online car configurator tool. Of course that’s a big change – we have been so used to talk to our customers, not to listen to listen to them. But there is a beginning for everything.

Ask your customers: Not sure about what your customers want or think? Stop doing wild guessing, ask them. Online surveys and other Voice Of Customer (VOC) tools make it possible to gather valuable qualitative data. Combined with your clickstream data, it will bring you real actionable insights fulfilling your analyst wildest dreams.

Understand your customers: All this input together with quantitative measurements will help you to really learn about and understand your customers: who they are, what are their needs and desires, how they use your services and more. Customer intelligence - it is right there so help yourself.

Target your customers: By better understanding your customers, you will be able to offer them what they want – not what you think they want. Competition is too tight today – by delivering the right services or information at the right time can make a difference.

Keep an eye on the competition: You are not alone in the ecosystem – it is not just you and your customers. There are competitors! Web analytics is not just about measuring your own performances. There are tools and benchmarks - whether free or paid ones - that make it possible to monitor your competitor activities and their impacts. Welcome to online competitive intelligence.

All this will help you OPTIMIZE YOUR BUSINESS - not just your website or online campaigns but the whole company business.

Customer comes first
In the end, online analytics ultimate goal is to contribute to the main goals of any business, that can be summarize in 3 main objectives:

Increase customer satisfaction by offering them the best online experience. Any online interaction with your brand should not create any unsatisfaction nor frustration. I am not saying it should be a climax moment (but you can manage it, why not?) but online experience should be smooth, straightforward and pleasant – certainly not a pain in the ass (as it is too often the case). Online analytics helps you identify what works and what doesn’t – so you can fix it

Increase revenues by improving your site efficiency and customer satisfaction, it should lead to better lead conversion and hopefully more sales i.e. more revenues. Online analytics brings valuable information to help you optimize your processes, your content and better target your different types of audience (segmentation rules!)

Reduce cost, improve return on investment (ROI): Online analytics provide you with the information you need to prioritize your investments according to the potential (positive) impacts. Invest your money where it worth it – make the best out of your investment based on measurements and facts, not anymore based on gut-feelings. For example, you can reduce your media cost per sale: drop low performing advertising channels and formats, promote performing ones.

(Note that I put customer satisfaction in first position because customer comes first – it is the basis of any customer centric approach)

Web Analytics is not just copying Google Analytics code in your site. It is not about measuring basic stats and throwing these in nice sexy Excel charts. It is an outstanding opportunity to improve the whole damned business! Are you ready for this?

But…
So, it looks attractive. It sounds like online analytics is the magic silver-bullet any business is look for. Then why so many companies are failing in seizing such opportunities. Well, unfortunately Web Analytics value isn’t certainly easy. It is quite a challenging task, much more than majority of people think. There are many difficulties and obstacles to tackle on the long Web Analytics journey. And these are not always lying where you think they are (ooh, the vicious ones!).

But what are these hurdles? Where are they hiding? Well, you will find out in part II - "The Challenges of Web Analytics"…

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Any feedback? Any thoughts on the value of online analytics? Please feel free to share your comments, it will be very appreciated.

Other posts from the series:

Part II - "The Challenges of Web Analytics" (June 2010)

(1) Source: Cap Gemini Car Online 08/09 study

A SEO KPI: Organic Clickthrough Rate

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Mon, 17 May 2010 11:25:00 +0000

How do you evaluate the performances of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts? Too many times, the focus is on measuring patiently your ranking in search results for those holy keywords you have identified. When finally you achieve high ranking in Google (what?! There are other search engines than Google?! You must be kidding? ;-)), you think it is time to party and make the joy dance. Are you sure?

Measuring your SEO success: ranking is not a KPI!
Hold on your horses! Search engine optimization ultimate goal is not about being #1 in search results. It is about increasing quality traffic, getting visitors engaged, driving more conversions and hopefully more revenues. That is why you should do SEO not for the pole position - search optimization is not a race.

You must measure if your efforts drive traffic to your site - the quantitive part - but also the quality of those visitors. Do they just “come, puke and leave” (to quote Avinash Kaushik’s bounce rate funky definition)? Or do they actually explore you site deeper? Do they “convert”? Do they make you richer?

Audience quality can be measured using bounce rate (or any proxy you have defined for “engagement”), conversion rate and average revenue (if possible). Such metrics or key performance indicators usually come from your beloved Web Analytics tool (or hated one – depends on the relationship you have with your tool) – segmented on organic traffic (and per keyword for deeper analysis).

One can use organic traffic share (% of visits coming from organic search) as performance indicator for evaluating how your SEO efforts impacted your site traffic. But the problem with such ratio is that it can be influenced by other factors.

For example, your organic search traffic rate can go down if you are doing search engine advertising (SEA), banner campaigns or any major offline campaign. It doesn’t mean your optimization efforts are not performing well. Or if search results are misleading visitors and driving inappropriate audience to your site, effective optimization efforts can result in a significant decrease of search traffic share (but compensated by an increase of quality).

What you may want to know (and you should if you are doing search engine optimization) is if your optimized copy texts are sexy, attractive and driving action (i.e. click on the result link). Are people more likely to click on results that point to your site after you made the changes? What changes delivered the best improvements? And which ones failed?

The Organic Clickthrough Rate
To answer these important questions, you need to measure the clickthrough rate of your organic listing texts – in a similar way as you do for adwords or banner ads. Yep, the infamous clickthrough rate also known as CTR. It is calculated as follows:

Organic CTR = Number of clicks on Organic search results / Total number of impressions

The number of impressions being the number of times pages from your site were viewed in search results. “Yes, sure but how can I measure organic impressions? I don’t have this info and no way my Web Analytics tool can measure that – I can only get clicks and visits” you may say.

Traditional Web Analytics tools can not provide you organic impression figures but Google Webmaster Tools offer this valuable information in the new Search queries report that was released last April.

It provides you with all you need to calculate global Organic Clickthrough rate and more:

Total number of impressions
Total number of clicks
Impressions, clicks, clickthrough ratio and average position per keyword

(Note: Figures provided by Google Webmaster Tools are rounded therefore the number of clicks will not match 100% the number from your Web analytics tool).

But the best part is that you can drilldown and gets details for each keyword: you can see impressions, clicks & CTR per position and per entry pages. And results can be sorted on the different columns.

The key features of the new Search Queries report are:

Impression & click trends over time
Configurable time period (over a bit more than last 30 days)
Segmentation per search type: all, Web, Mobile, Mobile (Smartphone) and Image.
Segmentation per country
Keyword bookmarking to follow-up and analyse your important keywords
Export to CSV format

How to use Organic clickthrough rate?
Well, if you did a good job, it should translate into an increase of your Organic CTR over time or at least for the keywords you have optimized. But looking at the Organic CTR is not enough. You should keep an eye also on the “quality indicators” such as the bounce rate, conversion rate and average revenue.

Google Webmaster tools allow you to easily identify keywords that are performing well and those that don’t while looking at the impression level. Make sure visible ones get a better organic CTR while trying to improve ranking of those that have a very good CTR.

Too bad it doesn’t give overall clickthrough rate but you can easily calculate it and track it over time. For example, the chart below is based on Google Webmaster Tools report and show how the global CTR evolved during last month.

Finally you can segment per platform (i.e. Web vs. Mobile for example) to better optimize each one (segmentation rules!).

Google Webmaster Tools is not just a great tool for any website owner involved in search engine optimization. It is a must! It offers many other great features such as inbound links, indexing stats, most common keywords found and more. It’s easy to set-up and it’s 100% free. Thank you Google! I definitely recommend to try it out if you don’t know it yet.

What do you think about the Organic Clickthrough as a SEO indicator? Any comment? Do you have any experience with this new Google Webmaster tools feature? Or any tip to share using Google Webmaster Tools?

I am curious to hear from you.

Related articles:

"How to Determine Your True Organic Google Ranking" from SEOmoz.org (May 2010)

Free Web Analytics conference - Brussels May 25th 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Fri, 07 May 2010 11:49:00 +0000

(Update 19th of May 2010: Conference agenda has been slightly modified).
I am glad to invite you to the coming FREE Web Analytics conference -"Web Analytics - a new profession!" on the 25th of May 2010 from 19:00, at the mVillage Business Center, in Brussels, Belgium.

The event is co-organized by the FeWeb, the Belgian Federation of Web Developers, the BetaGroup and the Web Analytics Association. The mission of the FeWeb is to defend the interest of Web development in Belgium and to guarantee a quality label.

The theme of the conference is to uncover a key aspect of online business: measurement, analysis & optimization i.e. Web Analytics. The conference will demonstrate that Web Analytics isn't just about gathering tons of metrics and putting these into nice charts & pies. Web Analytics is more about understanding online usage and transforming raw figures in actionable insights to support the business strategies.

Several professionals - practitioners and consultants - will share their expertise based on their experiences and practical cases. The speakers will be:

Yours truly, representing the Web Analytics Association
Pierre Dubois, member of the CIM/Internet commission and working at the RTBF.be, the Belgian French-speaking public service broadcaster (radio, TV, Internet...)
Mike Mitchell, CEO and founder of web positioning agency eTeamsys

Presentations will be followed by a Q&A session. A cocktail will close the event, allowing to meet and network with fellow Web & online marketing professionals. REGISTER ONLINE NOW!

Participants:

Agenda:

18:30: Welcome
19:00: Conferences
20:30: Drinks, snacks & networking

Location: (map)

mVillage - Business Center

Rue des Palais, 44

1030 Brussels

Online Registration & practical info
Event page

It is a casual and free event, it is open to everyone having interest in online marketing or Web analytics - whether you are a marketing manager, an online marketeer, a SEM specialist or a Web Analyst.

See you in the center of Brussels, on May 25th!
Cheers.

Organizers:

Web Analytics Wednesday in Charleroi @ Charleroi Expo, 28th of April

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:14:00 +0000

I am pleased to announce that Web Analytics Wednesdays (WAW) are (finally) coming back in Belgium! For the first time, it will be held in Wallonia (the French speaking part of Belgium), in Charleroi at the Espace Geode (Charleroi Expo) on the 28th of April, kicking off at 18:00. The Web Analytics Wednesday will take place in the context of the E-Commerce Camp and the WebStartup Day organized by TechnoFutur TIC.

The e-commerce camp will include 7 different tracks including one on Web Analytics - the Analytics Forum. Both events and all conferences are FREE and open to everyone.

Host:

The Web Analytics Wednesday will start at 18:00, closing the Analytics Forum. As a representative of the Web Analytics Association but also as a Web Analytics practitioner, I will share my experience and news from the Web Analytics industry.

The proposed “menu of the day” will be:

Starters (Start at 18:00):

Introduction on the Web Analytics Association

Web Analytics: industry & local news

Main course

(audience to choose between):

"Mobile Analytics – what you need to know"

"How to develop an online optimization culture"

Dessert (from 19:00):

Business & Networking cocktail

Location:

Espace Geode, Charleroi Expo in Charleroi

(Map)

There will be also a special “edition” of the Café Numérique and of the Betagroup meeting. Cocktail will be followed by a “Powerpoint Karaoké”(!).

Feel free to register to this Web Analytics Wednesday on the WAW official site or on the e-Commerce Camp site. You can also register and attend to other conferences of the two main events. And everything is absolutely FREE!

Hope to see and meet you in Charleroi on the 28^th!

Mobile Analytics: vertical-specific vs. traditional Web Analytics solutions

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Notté) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:53:00 +0000

(Updated April 19th 2010: following comments, minor updates have been made regarding links & notes)
Earlier this month, the company I worked for launched its first two European sites dedicated to mobile – the Toyota German mobile site and the new Lexus CT 200h pan-European site.

The Toyota German mobile site was specifically designed for high-end mobile devices such as iPhone and provides information on “hot” topics, Toyota models (pictures, specifications, colours, prices…), a simple configurator and a retailer locator based on Google Maps services.

The Lexus European mobile site supports the launch of new Lexus C-premium hybrid car, providing pictures and information on the car features plus the possibility to register to the newsletter.

Enough with the promotion… From my perspective, as a Web Analytics freak, this meant my first steps in mobile analytics! Hurray! (me jumping in the air, full of joice and happiness ;-))

Mobile vs. Web analytics
This is an exciting experience as it is opportunity to expand my expertise and learn new things. It also means new challenges to tackle as measuring mobile sites does not work the same way as measuring Websites. The differences come from the specific aspects of the mobile platforms and devices.

The biggest challenges with mobile analytics are

Identifying unique visitors because mobile devices do not support cookie and the changing of IP addresses

Collecting client information such as device model, manufacturer, screen resolution and others. Most common ways of collecting data for web analytics relies on the use of Javascript but not all mobile devices support execution of Javascript. Gasp!

And finally, retrieving geographic information (if important) can be difficult as well – again not all devices enable geographic detection.

This means that traditional “out-of-the box” Web analytics tagging method will not work (or with limitations). Oh damned! So what can we do?

Well there are other methods to collect data. Phew! We are saved. So what are these alternatives? Basically there a four main solution types:

Server log-based: process the raw data coming from you web server (My take is to forget about this one except if you are really a geek and that you have plenty of time to loose! :-))

Packet sniffing: a hardware device or software is added between your server and the Web. It listens and analyses requests sent and received by the server. No need of having tags here but additional hardware or software is required (meaning you will need help from your IT best friends!)

Image tag-based: A call to an image is added in the content with appropriate parameters & value in the querystring. Data are sent to a collector server by the client device each time a page is rendered. Parameters can be dynamically set by the server back-end when the content is generated. Easy but it has some limitations (see previously) and can not be used for event tracking.

Server-side script: A script is added on server side that sends data directly to collector server when requests are processed. It doesn’t rely on the device to get the data. Data are extracted from the received requests and set dynamically based on the request/content. This solution is getting more and more used by traditional Web Analytics vendors.

Web Analytics solution or vertical-specific mobile one?

Less than a year ago, the best option would probably have been considering a specific mobile analytics solution such as AdMob(1), Bango, Percent Mobile (2), Amethon to name few of them. But mobile analytics has become almost as hot as social media monitoring and it only took a few months to see most Web Analytics vendors offering technical solutions for mobile site tracking whether this is Google Analytics, WebTrends, NedStat, Omniture, AT Internet… Just check with you nearest local vendor for more info.

So which one should you choose? Before considering a tool, you must first need to clearly identify what are the business objectives of your mobile site and its strategic importance. This will help you defining what KPI’s, metrics & the required level of details you need (see here if you need a good methodology to define your online KPI's). For example, do you need to go as deep as identifying model of a specific device brand or knowing the platform is enough for you? Keep in mind that it is not the quantity of data you can get that matters, it is what you do with it!

Think wisely!
My personal opinion is that mobile specific vendors have lost a big part of the edge they had compared to traditional Web Analytics vendors. If possible, you should try first using your existing Web Analytics solution. Why? Here are some points to consider:

Tagging & data consistency: using same platform for both your Web and mobile sites means you can tag & measure content in the same way. If you need to compare web vs. mobile performances, at least you will be comparing apples with apples.

Web & Mobile data integration: By having both Web and mobile data on same platform – data can be aggregated and segmented at will. For example, what content is more efficient on mobile? It will give you a global view of your online ecosystem on one platform while being able to isolate each main segment.

Leverage existing knowledge & expertise: why learning a new tool when you can leverage years of expertise you already have? It can be fun of course to learn new tools but do you have the time? Can you or your business stakeholders afford the risk?

Reusability: If your mobile site is an extension of your website (or very similar), you may reuse existing tagging guidelines, mechanisms but also reports and indicators. No need to reinvent the wheel! In my case, for our mobile site, 80% of reports are existing ones (from main site) and 20% are mobile specific ones

Costs: If you go for another solution there may be additional costs involved either for the software/hardware or for the technical expertise and implementation.

Of course, you must make sure that your most important needs are covered and if there are limitations, these are acceptable in your business context.

Use a Kaizen approach
If Mobile analytics is new to you (as it is for me), I also recommend a Kaizen approach – start small & simple, use first the tools and expertise that you have. It is a learning process. It is better to take the easy way and improve & develop your mobile analytics capabilities step by step rather than a big leap with the risk to make it more complex and more risky than necessary.

If you find out it is not enough or too limited – think how you can enhance it easily. For example, you can use a image tag-based implementation using your existing Web Analytics tool and complement it with a free mobile specific solution to get missing information such as used devices & handsets, screen resolution…

When you reach the limits of your framework then it will be time to consider moving to something else – plenty of choice there – by that time you should have gained enough experience and expertise to make the right choice and justify any additional investments in time, resources and money. Well, that’s what I think. Future will tell if I am right.

So what do you think? Does it make sense? What are your thoughts on the different methods & solutions? Any other key aspects you would consider before making a choice? Any experience with mobile analytics you are willing to share? I would be curious to know.

Related articles:

"Lost in the Mobile Maze", White paper on mobile analytics by Bango
"The Truth about Mobile Analytics", white paper by Eric T. Peterson (June 2009)
"Mobile Analytics", post by Anil Batra (October 2008)
"The Challenge of Mobile Analytics" (Part I and Part II) - CMS Watch (May 2008)

(1) Note that in November 2009, Google acquired AdMob (more info here) but the deal is under investigation (maybe seen as "anti-competitive").
(2) Former TigTags analytics solution has been "absorbed" by Percent Mobile.