Tag Archives: Google Analytics

July 14, 2015 · 11:16 am

Little Data First

One of the more interesting experiences is my first trip through a new client‘s analytics. Much of the time I will have asked them before I look what conclusions they are drawing from what they’re seeing. They are often very detached from the reality of what’s going on, usually because of a couple of reasons. Given the emphasis on data these days, this is a problem, so let me mention a few things and hopefully you can ask yourself if they’re true about your data.

The first reason is faulty setup. One client was all excited about their volume of traffic and the depth of visiting until I told them that they weren’t filtering out visits from their own office. Once we did that the traffic declined quite a bit (but was obviously more indicative of what was going on). Another reason is that there is no filtering in place for spam links. I’m not sure why these companies (whose names I won’t cite here to give them any more visibility) refer traffic to so many sites, but it has the effect of ballooning bounce rates, decreasing time on site, and distorting a few other things.

Another reason the data is less useful is that they haven’t set up site search to report. Most sites of any size have a built-in search box. Analytics can report on what is searched for. This can help spot problems in navigation or topics that need to be given more prominence – maybe promoting them to a main navigation tab, etc.  Sometimes the client has an app that replaces their mobile web experience but they’ve failed either to install analytics or to link them to their web reporting.  Both are huge data fails

Finally, and this one is a bigger problem than most of the others, clients fail to figure out why they have a website in the first place.  What is it that they want users to do?  Buy something?  Fill out a form?  Visit a particular page?  Those should be set up as goals and successful completions should be counted. They fail to link all their other tools such as Webmaster Tools or their paid search such as AdWords into the analytics suite.  All of these things allow you to figure out the most cost-effective ways to use marketing and your site to drive revenues.

It’s funny to hear people talk about big data when the reality is that they still haven’t figured out the little data.  Once you’ve got the little data under control, you’ll be well-prepared to add additional layers to the complex views that result.  Got it?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 1, 2015 · 11:13 am

Foggy Lenses

Are you confused about what parts of your digital marketing are working?  I suspect you are and if you aren’t hopefully today I do a little bit to make you less comfortable about your certainty.  No, this isn’t some cruel April Fool’s joke – it’s me wanting to be helpful.  While sewing confusion might not seem to be helping anyone, I’m hoping what follows gets you to ask more questions and to refocus your efforts a little.  I’ll add, as any good teacher does, that if you’re still confused come see me (OK, call or email me) after class for extra help.

Source: farm2.static.flickr.com

Let’s start with a quick story from my TV days.  When the college football overnight ratings would come in they would be one number.  The overnights were 25 metered markets, mostly the biggest 25.  When the national ratings came in a few days later, the ratings would have changed.  One might expect this as the rest of the US was now included.  However, when you’d look at the Northeast region, for example, the rating might be very different even though nearly all of the population was included in the overnight ratings.  We’d get told it was two different samples which, of course, were measuring the same thing in the same area but through different methodologies and different homes.  It was extremely frustrating.

Fast forward.  We’re deluged in numbers.  The problem is that many of them measure the same thing but give us different answers.  Take search.  You want to know how people search for your site or product.  Google Analytics is mostly useless now since Google’s (not provided) result tells you nothing and represents a ton of your search traffic.  Webmaster Tools provide some search term information but when you compare some of the other information with the same data points in Analytics the results are shockingly different.  Which do you take as gospel? Add to that the data you get from AdWords – also different – and you’re now thoroughly confused.

Speaking of ads, most of the clients I know look at the top of the conversion funnel – how many people saw an ad.  The problem is that some studies say 50%+ of ads are not viewable.  Obviously that affects conversion rates, ad copy effectiveness measures, etc.  You also have these kinds of issues with content publishing on other social platforms and broad measures such as “likes” and “follows.”  The social guys are doing a better job of cleaning up fake accounts but there is still a long way to go.  The results of a content campaign shown to 5% of your followers that are real vs. 5% that are fake will obviously vary widely.

What can you do?  First, look more at trends than at any data point and second work backwards.  Metrics such as sales (lower-funnel metrics) are hard to get wrong.  Each step back up the funnel increases the uncertainty somewhat so be wary and ask questions.  Experiment, watch trends, measure sales, rinse repeat.  Just be careful about attributing that success to anything based on measurement tools that might have fogged up in the heat of battle.  You can’t see very well though lenses that are mostly obscured.

OK?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media

Tagged as , , , ,

August 26, 2014 · 11:37 am

The Only Two Numbers That Matter

Everyone in business has heard talk about “big data.” It Takes 2!There is no question that we know more about our customers, their buying patterns, their media usage – heck, just about anything – than ever before. It’s easy to get trapped into micromanaging all that data which will overwhelm even the best systems and the smartest analysts.  So today I’m going to try to get you to follow some great advice from Thoreau:

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.

He wasn’t exactly talking about big data, but he might have been.  In my mind there are really only two numbers that matter.  While I’m going to speak of them in web terms the reality is that they apply to every business as I will explain.  They are:

That’s it.  Multiply those two and you get a measure of success.  The first is how many opportunities you have to create a successful interaction; the second is the rate at which you do so.  That successful interaction can be a newsletter sign up, a sale, a social share of some content – you will need to define it.  Taking the number of times that successful thing happens and dividing it into the number of people who potentially might have done it (your traffic) gives you a conversion rate.  Simple!

You would be surprised how many of the analytics accounts I’ve looked at over the years haven’t set up goals, and without goals there are no conversions.  It’s not just web-based businesses that can do this.  Retail can count foot traffic and numbers of sales, for example.  Numbers of customer service calls with a successful (in the customer’s eyes) resolution.  Once you’re focused on measuring traffic and conversions, you can place everything else you do in marketing in those contexts.  More traffic without conversions is useless.  More conversions from the same traffic is fantastic.

Big data is great and I use it all the time.  As with all things, however, start with the simple, which often gets overlooked – the necessary and the real, as Thoreau says.  You agree?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , ,