One Prediction and Five Web Analytics Tips for 2012

For past few years I have made several predictions about Web Analytics. This year I am going to make only one prediction but will provide five tips for 2012.

Prediction

This year the push will be towards “Multichannel Analytics”. Integration of various data sources, e.g. email, CRM, social media, call center etc. , with Web Analytics will take center stage.

Five Tips for Web Analytics

1. Expand your web analytics to consider other data sources
   We all know by now that no one channel exists in isolation. Web, email, mobile, social media, catalog, stores, call centers etc. all impact each other. Web is a just one part of the customer’s experience and journey towards purchase. To fully understand customer behavior and optimize your marketing you have to go beyond web analytics and look at data from other channels.
2. Move from “How Many” to “Who”
   Majority of the web analyst today analyze “How Many” e.g. how many people landed, how many bounced, how many converted etc. “How many” is a great start but it is time for you move to “Who”, e.g. who bounced, who did not convert etc. and then think about how to engage with those “Who” did or did not do something. (if you need help with this then ping me)
3. Understand the data structure behind your web analytics data
   I am surprised that many web analysts today don’t understand how the web data is structured, how it is collected, where all the variables that are passed in your JavaScript end up at and how various data elements are related to each other. If you are one of those analysts, take some time to understand the data structure. Open a raw web server log file and start from there. If you company is porting the web analytics data into a database then open up that database and look under the hood.
4. Learn SQL
   This is going to be critical. You can only do limited segmentation and optimization with aggregated data that is provided in the web analytics tools interface. To really understand customer behavior and capitalize on that you should be able to extract the data from the backend. Even if you are not going extract the data yourself, having an understanding of SQL will give you tons of ideas on segmentation, optimization and targeting.
5. Make friends with “HiPP” (Highest Paid Person) and say goodbye to “HiPPO”
   HiPP is your friend, not foe. If you really want to create a culture of analytics in your organization then make friends with HiPP, get them on your side. You need their support. Stop using the term “HiPPO”.

Comments? Questions?

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Web Analytics Jobs

• Web/Digital Analytics Auditing at Audit Bureau of Circulations (Arlington Heights, IL)
• Senior Web Analyst at Pop (Seattle, WA)
• Online Analytics Specialist, Communications, Brookings at Brookings (Washington, DC)
• Director, Brand & Multiplatform Research at Turner Broadcasting System (Atlanta, GA)
• Web Analytics Analyst - Business Intelligence Group at Cmn.com (Houston, TX)
• Senior Manager, Digital Research at NBC (New York, NY)
• Senior Analyst, Modeling, Segmentation, and Forecasting at ARC Worldwide, An Affiliate of Leo Burnett (Chicago, IL)
• Senior Analyst, Digital Measurement | Optimization at ARC Worldwide, An Affiliate of Leo Burnett (Chicago, IL)
• Senior database developer (Sr. SDE) at Optizent (Redmond, WA)
• Associate Games Analyst at Arkadium (New York, NY)
• Director of Analytics at Arkadium (New York, NY)
• Web Analytics Engineer - Contract (POP) at Pop (Seattle, WA)
• Website Analyst at Simplexity (Reston, VA)

Google Analytics Motion Charts Overview with a PPC Example

Most people look at click through rates, clicks or visits when analyzing their keywords. Some people will go a step further and look at the conversion rates. If you have a content site with no end conversion you might look at bounce rate to figure out what keywords are working or you might look at the page views/visit or look at some other form of engagement metrics. To look at all the data points you need to do full analysis, which requires you to look at a few reports and maybe use excel to pull all that data together in one view. Google Analytics Motion Charts make it really easy to visualize several data points in one screen.

In this post I will show:

1. Step-by-step overview of how motion charts work.


2. An example of how I used Google Analytics motion charts to figure out which keyword to spend money on.
   Note (I could have got similar information from a few reports in Google Analytics, but motions charts just made it easier and faster).

Let’s get started

To access motion charts,

1. Click on your report (keywords report in this case).


2. Select the date range that you want to analyze.


3. Click on Visualize button on the top. This will bring the motion chart (see below).

In the motion charts interface you can choose up to four dimensions that you can plot your data point against and see it in this graph. The four dimension areas are circled in the image below. Two dimensions can be plotted on the chart on X-axis and Y-axis, one using the color and the fourth using the size of the bubble that represents the data point.



For the dimensions on X-Axis and Y-Axis you have the option to plot the data either on “Linear” or “Log” scale. I chose linear in this case. (Note: You should choose log when your data points have too much variations in their values from one day to another. Using a linear scale will make it hard to draw them on one chart but log scale will make the chart much cleaner.)



You can select the dimensions by clicking on appropriate section (see below)



After you have selected your dimensions and chosen the scale (log or linear) you want, click on the data points (bubbles in the middle of the chart) to show the name of the data point. Also, those data points are will be tracked when the “Trails” option is enabled (discussed below).



Once all your selections are done you can check the “Trails” check box to track the progression of each data point on each of the dimensions you selected over the time period that you selected. Even though “Trails” is optional, I have found it to be an important feature to explore the full power of motion charts.
Note: if you select too many bubbles (keywords in this case) along with “Trails” then the motion charts become very crowded. You should limit selection to no more than 3 bubbles at a time.

In this case I chose two keywords, Keyword A and Keyword B since I wanted to see how they compare to each other on the dimensions that I chose. (Actual keywords are disguised for this example).

So why did I choose those two keywords? I actually chose a lot of keyword combinations. I was trying to find the keywords which I should buy on search engines to drive more traffic. Since the budget is limited (isn’t that the case everywhere?) I had to pick the keywords that will give us the biggest bang for our buck.

This site had two main site goals:

1. Convert visitors to registered members (Registration).


2. Drive more page views/visit to increase the ad inventory and hence ad revenue.

Based on these goals we needed to see following metrics:

1. Conversions driven by keywords


2. Visits Driven by Keywords


3. Page views/Visit


4. Bounce Rate

Since both the keywords had about same conversion rate, it was not important for us to plot it on X and Y-axis and it was chosen to be represented by the bubble size. I plotted metrics 1 and 2 (see above) on Y-axis and X-axis respectively since I wanted to see how the traffic is driven and how many pages people view when they visit the site. Bounce Rate was chosen to show different colors.

In my option, any critical metrics should go on X-axis and Y-axis. You should play with plotting all different metrics on different axis, color and size to see which one provide you more meaningful view. Plotting them in different ways provide different views and ideas of additional metrics that you might want to look at.

After all the dimension selections were made, I checked the “Trails” option and hit the “Play” button to see the motion chart in action (You can also manually move the slider next to play button).

Here is the final Motion Chart:



Looking at this it is clear that Keyword A is driving more traffic but lower Pages/Visit than Keyword B. The bounce rate is also higher for keyword A. The conversion rate is about the same for both keywords.

It is clear that we should put more dollars behind Keyword B as it helps us achieve goal number 2 better than Keyword A. Goal 1 is about the same for both these keywords.

Hope this post was helpful in demystifying Google Analytics Motion Charts.

For any questions on Motion Charts and Google Analytics please visit Ask an Expert section on my site.

Comments? Questions?

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Looking to fill your Web Analytics or Online Marketing position?Post your open jobs on http://www.web-analytics-jobs.com/
Sr/Lead Analytic Warehouse/Java Engineer at Saas Company In the SF Bay Area (Emeryville, CA)
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Site: AnilBatra.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/anilbatra

Web Analytics Survey by Eric Peterson

Twice a year Eric Peterson conducts a survey of the practitioner, vendor, and consultant landscape in an attempt to answer critical questions about web analytics.
This particular survey is focusing on web analytics tools and will examine their distribution of deployment and overall customer satisfaction with the tools and the vendors who supply them. The survey is completely anonymous, and if you have any questions about the survey, please email them Eric Peterson. Take the Web Analytics Demystified Fall 2007 Survey Right Now! It should take about 15 mins of your time.
Everyone who completes the survey will be given a discount code to purchase The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators for over 50% off the cover price (a savings of $10.00!) Additionally, all of the resulting research will be made freely available through Web Analytics Demystified's web site (you can download research from our Spring 2007 survey here.)

Convergence of Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting

In January of this year I predicted (A lot of my posts start with this sentence):
Web Analytics will be about taking actions – More and more marketers would like to take actions and not just report the findings. It just won’t be about what happened, it will be about taking action to drive sales, user satisfaction, lead generation etc. Incentives and bonuses will be tied to the online KPIs. Optimization and Behavioral Targeting will become a common term used by marketers.

Behavioral Targeting – … Behavioral Targeting won’t exist in isolation. Web Analytics tool will have to support behavioral targeting and visa versa. Also, on-site behavioral targeting will become very common.

So why did I make these predictions?

Well first look at what Behavioral Targeting is and how it relates to web analytics.

Behavioral Targeting is targeting visitors based on their past behavior (on site). Past behavior could range from the very first action a visitor took on the site (if they still have that same cookie) to the most recent action that a user took (in the latest session). (More detailed information is available at Behavioral Targeting)

All these actions are tracked via web analytics data. Web analytics provides the intelligence for behavioral targeting and web analytics is what measures behavioral targeting success. Behavioral Targeting cannot exist in isolation.

Web Analytics provides insight into visitors’ behavior. But insights are only as good as the actions that come out of them. Behavioral Targeting is one of the (better) ways to make those insights actionable. Marketer segment visitors based on the insights provides by a web analytics data and on the business goals. These segments of visitors can then be to target customer with the right Ad/Message/Content/Product (Behavioral Targeting).

I guess Omniture thinks the way I do. The reason I say this is because they filed for a Behavioral Targeting patent and were granted the patent recently. According to a press release from omniture
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the company a new United States Patent (U.S. Patent Number 7,260,551). The patent is generally directed to performance optimization, and relates to online real-time behavioral targeting and testing systems, such as content targeting on Web sites, targeted ad-serving to maximize cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) revenue yields, the maximization of yields from search engine marketing and improved personalization search algorithms.

So how will Omniture use this patent? I am sure they have already thought about it, but here are few of my speculations.

1. They can develop their own Behavioral Targeting Capabilities using Touch Clarity, not just on site but offsite as well.


2. License it to partners who develop behavioral targeting tools or networks that tie in with Omniture’s Web Analytics tool.


3. Get in behavioral Targeting Ad network game, just like digiMine did when they transformed into Revenue Science. I am not suggesting that Omniture should leave the Web Analytics field as they have a pretty good foothold in this field.

They can also make some extra cash by filing lawsuits against other companies that are infringing on their patent.

So what is next for Omniture? Acquisition of an ad serving company?

Thoughts? Comments?

Relying too much on SEO? Think Again.

I usually don’t write about SEO (since I am not an SEO, here are the posts labeled SEO) but this issue has been bugging me for quite a few days so I thought I will write about my views on this topic and open it for comments and suggestions.
Search Engine optimization has become an important part of the marketing strategy. However, I feel, a lot marketers are getting too obsessed with traffic driven to their sites from Google, Yahoo, Live (MSN), ASK etc without thinking about the consequences of dropping off from search engines rankings. I understand that it is relatively cheaper (notice I did not say Free) than paid inclusions, banner ads, affiliates etc. And ranking high on search engine is something to be happy about and proud of, ranking high on search engines provides you competitive advantage. But Free comes with risks.
Relying too much on search engine driven traffic can also mean trouble soon or later. SEO is a powerful and relatively cheaper way to acquire new customers. The problem is when marketers rely too much on it and take it for granted. A lot of markets I have come across do SEO as one time thing, achieve a position on top page and get a false sense of security. Let me remind you that organic traffic from Search Engines is not guaranteed all the time. Yes you are number 1 or on the number one page today but that does not mean you will be there tomorrow. If 60% of your traffic is driven from search engines and 40% of that is driven from one Search Engine (say Google) what will happen if one day you drop out of 1st ranking or 1st page on that search engine? Below I have highlighted some of the factors that can cause you to lose your top position and hence traffic and revenue.

1. Competitive SEO - You are ranked number 1 today does not mean you will be ranked number 1 tomorrow. As competitors are catching up and working with SEO’s you can very easily be displaced from your top position. Number 1 position on the search engines is not guaranteed. No one can guarantee it. If you think you have a good SEO team so does you competitor. Remember only 10 organic results can show up on the first page and 70% of the search users don’t even look beyond the first search result page.


2. Universal Search – As Google and others try to integrate regular web page search, images and other searches on one search result page, a site could be pushed further down the search results. So if you were number 10 even higher before universal search, possibility is that you could be pushed to the next page after universal search is available on your keywords.


3. New Formats of the search results page – Search engines are experimenting with new formats all the time. Example is ASK.com’s new three column search result page, with so much information on one page it will be hard for users to go beyond first page. If you are on page number two and beyond you will see even lower traffic than you originally saw.


4. Personalized Search – As personalized search becomes more common, a site could rank number 1 on search results of one user but not for the other. There won’t be a universal number 1 position for a keyword in personalized search results page


5. Co-op search engines – Co-op search engines are new form of search engines from Google that allows anybody to form a vertical search engine. The proliferation of these kinds of search engines could cause your sites to completely disappear from the search results.


6. Changes in Algorithm and technology – Search engines are innovating all the time. As search engines experiment with new algorithm you could lose your coveted 1st position over night.


7. New Search Engines – Google did not invent search engine. Today Google is number one who knows who and in what shape will be the number one Search engine tomorrow.


8. Negative SEO – There was an article in Forbes on “Negative SEO”. If your competitor uses such a practice they can temporarily throw you out of the SEO rankings hence causing decline in your traffic.

I hope this gives you an idea on why relying too much on organic search engine traffic could mean trouble. Here are some of things that you can do to ensure you stay on top of the game and do not suffer a lot even if Google (or other search engines) decides to drop you from organic rankings

1. Paid Inclusion (Pay Per Click also known as PPC) - Put PPC in place to counter a sudden drop in search engine ranking – This is your backup plane, have set budget set aside for PPC just in case SEO fails. You get up one day, your web analytics and SEO monitoring shows that you have a drop in traffic because you have lost your top position on a keyword. That’s the time to kick in your PPC at full speed while you try to get back on organic rankings. Note you don’t have much control on organic rankings.


2. Diversifying – Just like your financial adviser will say, do not put all your eggs in one basket, diversify. Diversify your sources of traffic. Having 60% of your traffic driven from one source is like investing 60% of your portfolio in on stock. I am sure a lot of you know how that goes. So make sure you are not too dependent on Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK. You should have a strategy to generate traffic from varying sources such as Banners, Affiliates, Link partners, Search engines, direct traffic, newsletters, emails, offline etc.


3. Branding - This is an important part and often forgotten by the SEO. There have been studies which say it takes a visitor 4-5 visits from search engine before they buy anything, so marketers assume that as a norm. Great!!! But what happens if after two or three visits, by a user to search engine, you competitor shows up as number 1 result on the search engine result page for the keyword that initially drove users to your site? It is very important for your brand to make an impact when the visitors first lands on your site. Even if the visitors go back to search engine next time, they should search for your brand and not a generic term to get to your site. Branded keywords are sort of (not completely though) guaranteed to bring your site at the top of search results. In a future post I will show how I used Google Analytics to track if the site was doing a good job branding to search engines driven traffic or not.

Increase in subscribers with longer gap between posts

Ryan Turner has a great post titled “Going Viral is not a Marketing Strategy” on his blog.

In this post, he says

“Anil Batra noted a while back that his number of subscribers increased when he had a longer gap between blog posts. Goodness gracious! What could that mean? Apparently Anil has a theory. Yo Anil, care to share?”

He is referring to the pattern that I had noticed in terms of posting frequency and number of subscribers to the blog. I observed that that when there was a longer gap between my postings the subscribers to my blog increased far more than when I was posting regularly. So why was it happening?

Here is my theory

Visitors see the blog, like the blog, bookmark it (they reason why they don’t subscribe are listed below) and come back to check it. Since I write regularly they come back directly or via bookmark. If I keep writing regularly, visitors make it a habit to come back and check for the new content. But if there is a break in writing, they still want to read what I have to say, they just don’t want to keep coming back only to find that there is no fresh content. So they resort to subscribing to the feed (via feedburner link and a form that is on the right hand side panel).

I think the reasons why some visitors don’t subscribe to the feed blog in the first place are

1. It is probably much easier to bookmark the blog and come back to check.


2. The location of the subscribe form and link are probably not highly visible (right panel), even though most blogs have them at similar locations. To overcome this problem I should have something like the following in every post.

“If you like this post, you might want to subscribe to my blog feed.

Click here to subscribe to Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Online Advertising

I will try above link in next few posts and see if that makes any difference.

Now I need your feedback:
Readers of this blog, I would like to hear your views on this theory.
1. If you are subscriber of this blog then when do you subscribe, first time when you visited, after few times when you got interested in what I was writing or when you saw that there was nothing new for few days?
2. If you read this blog regularly and have not subscribed then what have you not subscribed? Is the subscription link hard to find? Any other reason?

Bloggers, have you noticed similar pattern? What is your theory?

I will further explore the traffic patterns, subscriptions and gap in the postings. If I find anything interesting I will post them on this blog.

Monthly Recap: May 2007

May was a bit slower compared to last month in terms of posting. There are two main reasons (excuses) for this slowness

1. I was at eMetrics
2. I was not feeling well for 3 days in this month.

I noticed that when I don’t write anything for few days the number of people who subscribe to the feed of this blog goes up. Does anybody have an idea why this is happening? I have my own theory (Well I am a web analyst) but would like to hear from others.

Here is the list of articles that I psoted.

Web Analytics

• <Web Analytics Job Market is Hot - Update on the web analytics job market. Last month was the highest ever month in terms of open jobs since January 1st. Open Jobs in web analytics were up 68% from January 1st. Omniture was the most sought after tool experience followed by webtrends. My next update is coming tomorrow.


• Are you doing Web Reporting or Web Analytics? – A lot of marketers confuse web reporting with web analytics. I explain the difference between web reporting and web analytics in this post.


• Live from eMetrics - My quick update from eMetrics in San Francisco.
  eMetrics Conference in San Francisco – My second update from eMetrics in San Francisco.


• What does Website Optimization mean? – The word “Optimization” and “Website Optimization” means different things to different people. This article is my attempt to clarify the definition of “Website Optimization”.


• Hot off the press: Actionable Web Analytics – Jason Burby and Shane Atchison of ZAAZ released their first book on Web Analytics.


• Do you really need a home page? - This article was in response to Seth Godin, article "Do you really need a home page? Does the web respect it?". I reiterated what I had said on the similar topic last year.

Web Analyst Interviews

• Web Analyst Interview: Rohan Kapoor


• Web Analyst Interview: Ravi Pathak


• Web Analyst Interview: Daniel Shields

Behavioral Targeting

• Future of small Behavioral Targeting Networks is grim - I think with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all trying to build their own Behavioral Targeting Networks with recent acquisitions of DoubleClick, RighMedia and aQuantive receptively it probably does not make sense to have stand alone Behavioral Targeting networks.


• Behavioral Targeting: Audience of One – My views and follow-up on the Washington past article titled “Web Ads with An Audience of One” discussing the growing use of Behavioral Targeting.


• Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cookies – This article talks about how the recent acquisitions by three giants acquisition are not about ad serving technology but about user data and reach.

Hot off the press: Actionable Web Analytics

Actionable Web Analytics by Jason Burby (my boss) and Shane Atchison (CEO, ZAAZ and my boss’ boss) is released today. I got my copy from Shane today, I will write my review after I finish reading the books.
I expect this book to be a great resource for marketers. I am not saying this because I report to them but because I know how passionate both Jason and Shane are about web analytics and have years of experience helping companies unleash the power of web analytics.

Visit Amazon to Buy Actionable Web Analytics.