Friday April 11, 2008
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Friday April 11, 2008 Please Enter Though the Garage
Quick! What percent of your web traffic enters though your home page?Wrong.
Take a close look at the entry pages to your web presence and see what percent of your visitors actually enter on your home page. I bet it's a lot less than you would assume before looking at the data, especially if your site is for a large enterprise.
Why is this? Because home pages are like the front door of your house. It's where strangers and people who have never been there before probably go. But friends, frequent visitors--they come to the side or back door because they know that's the best way to get inside. The quickest way to the kitchen where you keep the beer.
Your front enterence should make a good impression, of course, and be welcoming to visitors.
But it's an easy pitfall to put too much emphasis on your home page, and overlook what most of your customers (your best customers) are probably doing.
Thursday February 07, 2008 Are You Smarter Than Homer Simpson
My favorite episode of The Simpsons has a scene in which Homer goes into the witness protection program and the agents have to coach him to learn that he now has a new name. After many frustrating hours of them trying to get him to respond to his new alias, Homer leans over and whispers to the agent sitting next to him, "I think he's talking to you."Sometimes I'm not sure I catch on a lot quicker than Homer.
My group and I spend tremendous effort in Sun trying to enable the latest and greatest Web analytics measurements-- custom events and special variables and bells and whistles to try to make campaign measurement more insightful or efficient. Marketers and web area owners are constantly asking for more and increasingly complicated measurement features so they can optimize their area of the business better. We try to please. Sometimes we do.
But then the CEO pops out a 10 second email asking a simple thing like how many downloads of X we had over the last two years. Frenzy! Panic! Fire drill teams spring into action! I can readily tell you the clickpaths and fall out rates of users coming from search key word "xVM" last month in Germany vs. Kazakhstan. But I'm not ready to answer a simple question from the CEO.
Thus, the lesson that I am as slow to learn as Homer was his new name. Do the simple stuff first. Do it well. Make sure it works. Make sure it's right.
( Feb 07 2008, 11:22:57 AM MST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Friday November 16, 2007 Every so often it needs to get pruned down, then built back up with the latest, greatest metrics. (I think that's a mixed metaphor.) Corporate and department goals and priorities change and evolve, and metrics reports need to do the same.
As part of the redesign I've asked one of my senior analysts to propose some new metrics. Using best practices she's been very conscientious about including only "actionable" metrics. However, as we progress through the process, and think about the audience that will be reviewing the report (Directors and VPs) I wonder what "actionable" really means at that level?
Online revenue is a great example. I can't imagine not having this metric in the report, but how actionable is it really? If revenue is down, you certainly want to take action, but I suspect the action would be "Paul, go figure out why revenue is down!".
I think the right answer will be that some metrics are "bottom line" metrics and need to be included, but they should be surrounded by actionable metrics which tell me what to do if the bottom line (or top line in this case) slips.
Thursday September 27, 2007 You can find a podcast of this interview at
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/art/?433
in which I think I manage to say a few insightful things, a lot of maybe not so insightful things, and hopefully no outright bone headed things.
At any rate, if we were to run into each other at a conference and you asked me what Sun is doing about measuring Blogs, this is how the conversation would have gone.
Many thanks to Jennifer Day who conducted the interview and was patient and fun to engage with, and Jim Humphrys of the Research Committee of the WAA for inviting me.
Wednesday August 29, 2007 It was a fairly regular habit of mine to slip under my professor's door late at night a chart displaying freshly acquired data that would change the world, complete with an elaborate explanation, lots of exclamation points, and the opening sentences of my Nobel prize acceptance speech.
I'd then walk home, blurry eyed and exhausted, but proud of my great discovery and looking forward to being showered with praises the next day.
The next day I'd arrive back at the lab and look at my notes from the previous night and shout "Oh shoot!" (or something very similar to that) realizing the night before I had a cable disconnected, or had misplaced a decimal point by three orders of magnitude. I'd retrieve the chart from the professor saying "Never mind!" which he never did because he had already figured out my mistake.
It is very easy to discover Cold Fusion buried in Web Analytics data. The key is knowing when to publish it, and when not to. In other words, if you find something very startling in your data, good or bad, as an analyst you need to be sure of your finding before you blow the horn and get everyone in the business worked up.
To that end, here are the rules of thumb I have learned to follow:
1. Find at least one other way to make the same measurement. Run collaborating reports to test and support your finding. The first comment will always be "There must be a problem with your data", so you better be prepared to respond to that.
2. If possible, explicitly test the measurement. Go through the user's experience yourself on the Web site and validate that the data is being produced as you assume it is. (Many times it is not. Surprise!)
3. Once you are confident in the data, anticipate the next two questions and start answering them. Once others believe your data they will want to know "Now what?", "Why is that?", or "How did this happen?". Pursuing these follow up questions not only helps the business take action, but also helps you build confidence in your original finding.
Bottom line is you need to do enough to be confident you're right, but not so much that you never share your results and take action. Discovering that balancing point is key to being a successful analyst.
Thursday August 16, 2007 I was discussing some web analytics reports the other day with a colleague who was fairly new to analytics. He wanted to know what pages were referring traffic to his web page.
"Do you want to know what external sites sent you traffic or internal sites?"
"Well, both I suppose!", he responded.
So I explained that there were different reports for each.
We then went on to discuss external referrers that sent traffic directly to his page as an entry page, or referrers that sent users to his page after entering on another page and navigated to his page. And that search engines were a different question altogether. After a bit of going in circles I paused to explain to him that half the battle with analytics is precisely determining what you want to measure. There are many subtleties.
"Gee, it's amazing how accurate these tools are." he commented.
To which I had to explain , that, no, they are actually rather inaccurate given issues around JavaScript being disabled, blocking of third party images, blocking of cookies (but not all cookies), deleting some cookies (with some unknown frequency and probability), surfing with multiple browser tabs and windows and computers, improperly tagged sites, dropped tags, non-html content, RSS syndicated content, and on and on.
"We inaccurately measure very precise things!", I boasted with a heavy degree of schizophrenic pride and distain for my own profession.
I haven't heard from him since.
( Aug 16 2007, 08:31:59 AM MDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Friday April 13, 2007 Quantum vs. Classical Web Analytics
Let me drag you through your science lesson for the day. I promise you won't need your white lab coat or safety goggles.
There are two basic scientific models of the world. The older one, dating back to Sir Issac Newton is commonly referred to as "Classical Mechanics" and describes the world in terms of continuums. That means that measures of the physical world can be infinitely and arbitrarily broken down into smaller and smaller units. A unit of energy, for example, can be divided in smaller and smaller pieces with no limit to how you divide it or how small you make it.
This model worked fine to describe things for hundreds of years, up until around the early 20th Century when scientists began observing phenomenon that the Classical model could not explain. They found that in reality, the world can not be broken down into arbitrarily small units, but rather, was better explained by a model consisting of small, discretely sized units, or "quanta". This became known as quantum mechanics.
So, what the heck does this have to do with Web Analytics?
Web Analytics is going the opposite direction. We are transitioning from Quantum Web Analytics to Classical Web Analytics.
The paradigm that Web Analytics has been based on is a "quantum" model of page views. The user experience has been conveniently described as a series of discrete steps, from page view to page view. However, this model is starting to break down. With the introduction of new rich internet applications (AJAX, videos, etc.) the user experience is no longer a herky-jerky succession of steps from one page to the next. It is becoming a smoother flow from one activity to the next--more of a continuum rather than a series of steps.
How this change in paradigm will ultimately impact the way we think about web analytics is yet to be seen. However, we might be able to draw upon hundreds of years of scientific models to provide guidance.
Thursday April 12, 2007 The Three Headed Monster. My experience has shown me than an Emetrics Group has three major internal clients: Web Marketing, Web Design, and Web Management. To fully add value you need to effectively serve each of these clients. If you ignore one, the whole value proposition breaks down. Here's why.
My simple minded view of a Web business is like this. Step 1: Bring in lots of qualified prospects. Step 2: Convert them. Step 3: Count your money. (I should teach at Wharton.)
The internal clients, obviously, map to these three steps.
Web marketing's job is to bring in gobs of potential customers itching to buy your products. But doing so is worthless if when they get to your site, the Web design is so lousy that they can't accomplish (convert) their goals. And the accomplishments of both of these organizations is diminished if Web Management doesn't have proper visibility to the bottom line, and the things that lead up to it. If you put too much focus on one area while neglecting the others, you might as well not bother with any.
So, those are five things I've learned so far. Hope you've found them useful.
Friday March 30, 2007 You Need a Customer for Your Analysis: I think there are different schools of thought about how to choose topics to investigate. One is to just start exploring the data and see what you can uncover. Identify those big new opportunities that had been unknown and then advocate for change based on this new intelligence. The other approach is to identify internally where the current business focus, existing resources and funding are and dive into that area to provide guidance and insight to make these existing efforts more successful.
Maybe I'm just too pragmatic, but I've seen more value come from analytics by supporting existing initiatives than trying to create and advocate new ones. I know that sometimes you need to search out the new ideas, but there is always (around here anyway) so much near by opportunity to contribute to and see immediate value that I tend to steer my group to working with people who are ready to take action and accept help.
Web Analytics is a Profession, not a Project: I think this fact has become rather obvious in the last few years with the creation of the Web Analytics Association and the boom of the industry.
My point, however, is to bring people into your group who have internalized this and are committed to the field. I like to tell people that "Nobody ever said Web Analytics is easy" which is rather ironic because people actually say it all the time. It's just that they're wrong. It's not easy and it takes a real commitment to learn how to be good at it. And if the people in your analytics group are not viewing this as a career, they are unlikely to last and be successful.
Sunday February 25, 2007 I was going to write an entry listing the top five things I've learned so far about managing a emetrics group, but I'm feeling kinda lazy, so I think I'll start with two. I can add the other three next time just to increase the suspense (and after I think of three more).
Punchin' Out Chryslers: The beginning of the month is a very busy time for my group. We have numerous reports that we need to produce, each one targeted for a different audience and containing mainly different data. And everybody wants their reports done right away.
Of course, there's only so much you can do all at the same time, and only so much you can automate. Sure, you can create pretty automated dashboards from web analytics tools, but not every piece of data spits out of such a tool, plus the real value is in taking the time to review the data, interpret it, and boil its essence down to a one sentence business friendly sound bite. No analytics tool will do that for you.
Thus, you need to think in terms of metrics production, like you were running a factory. Reports need to be production friendly, there needs to be schedules that everybody knows they need to meet, and all hands need to pitch in to spread the work around so it can be done quickly. And you have to keep looking for ways to make this all run like a better oiled machine because requirements keep changing and new metrics requests keep coming. Which leads me to point number two...
Prune The Tree: It has become apparent to me that people are good at asking for more metrics, but rarely volunteer to let you stop producing any.
There is a constant desire to know the next thing, to know more, to follow the latest new project or initiative. Quite quickly a five page report becomes fifteen and too much for any reasonable person to read (and a production burden...see Point One above).
So, you have to prune back the charts and data that have lost their novelty and impact. Alas, attention spans are short and charts that show an essentially flat trend line just don't garner much interest or action. Identifying these less useful metrics and trimming them away is a necessary and sometimes delicate action you have to take.
Wednesday January 03, 2007 It was clear from the data that there has been a fall off, and we were even able to point to a particular page where users fell out of the process. Click path reports told us where the users were going.
"Thanks, Paul, but why are they doing that? That's not what we expected them to do."
"Well, Joe, Web Analytics are voyeuristic, not omniscient."
I'm not sure he liked that answer, but it was true. We can observe what people are doing, but we can only guess at why.
This is the stage, of course, where team work and collaboration kick in. We looked at the page and postulated a few possibilities, but really the experts in design and usability take over here. I offered to help run some A/B tests to validate design tweeks, but beyond that, I had to accept the limits of my abilities.
Tuesday December 12, 2006 Consider again the issue of "new visitors". When this data was presented at a meeting an audience member said "So, this is just the number of people coming to our web site who do not yet have our cookie?" Well, yes indeed. Well simplified.
Somebody else could have looked at the same piece of data and asked, "If a user is using tabbed browsing, will he show up as a new visitor if he visits from two different tabs? What if he is using two different browser profiles? Then what?" Good questions as well. I suppose we ought to understand that.
So, let me ask. Is a web analyst more like the first person or the second?
( Dec 12 2006, 12:45:57 PM MST ) Permalink Comments [3]
Monday December 11, 2006 I think he'll thank me.
So, why would I be such an unscrupulous wretch, deliberately passing untruths to the person who has so much power to make my career successful or painful? Because that's my job.
I better start explaining. I was preparing some web data for him to use at a presentation he needed to make to his peers and his executive VP. Part of the materials included data about new and returning visits as well as visit number (i.e. is this the user's first, second, Nth visit?), and as I was assembling the slide I found it to be horribly complicated, burdened with nuance and caveats Were cookies deleted? What if the user used multiple computers? How long had we been capturing data for that web site compared to the other we sites? How do I explain the difference between a return visit and a return visitor? (I'm still struggling with that last one!)
So, I simplified the whole mess and gave him a simple sound bite.
The next day I was fortunate enough to be in the meeting when he presented this information. It was received by a smattering of nodding heads which subsequently proceeded to some valuable discussions about marketing strategy, rather than a rat hole trying to figure out what in the world that chart was trying to say. Thus, I successfully removed some trees so that they could see the forest.
So, am I advocating fudging of web data because it is too complicated? No! In fact, if an analyst on my staff were to pull the same trick with me I'd run him up the flagpole for not understanding the data (even if he actually did). My point is that as analysts you need to remember that it is your job to translate web data into business information and that process sometimes requires a judgment call if some details can be safely left out.
( Dec 11 2006, 09:44:25 AM MST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Tuesday November 21, 2006 We recently spent some time on vacation in Tuscany, exploring the beautiful country side and hill towns, visiting churches and museums, and of course, sampling the great food and wine of the region.
One day we found ourselves at lunch in Montepulciano at Osteria Acquacheta (Via del Teatro, 22). If you're ever fortunate enough to be there, don't miss the opportunity to dine there, assuming you can even get in. It's a real authentic Italian experience; family run, over flowing with locals, raucous and bursting with abbondanza. The kind of place where you slam your fist on the table and shout "Bene!" when they drop off your steaming plate of eggplant Parmesian. The kind of place where they serve a small miracle of simple bruschetta drenched in local Tuscan olive oil and enough garlic to deter Mussolini, but to try to recreate at home results in a humbling waste of bread and hope. The kind of place where the wine comes by the carafe rather than the bottle.
The kind of place where the darn waiter won't give you a wine glass for your vino. You have to use your water glass.
Wait! What's wrong with this picture? Why would such a perfect place be too lazy to give you a glass for your wine? They even carefully explain to you that it is a tradition at their restaurant that you only get one glass. Cheap skates!
But as you progress through your meal and juggle the competing priorities of drinking water and wine, you are forced to alternate between glasses of one or the other. And thus, you end up getting less inebriated as you slow your wine consumption and switch off with water in between. Brilliant!
It turned out to be a natural regulating mechanism and we left the meal perfectly delighted with the food, comfortably soothed by the wine, and well hydrated.
( Nov 21 2006, 04:35:00 PM MST ) Permalink
Saturday November 18, 2006 As I see it there are two fairly clear levels of privacy on the web. If a user anonymously visits a web site, then they should be treated anonymously. This seems to be the equivalent of window shopping.
That said, if I own a conventional bricks and mortar store, I feel I have the right to watch how users look in my windows and observe what displays catch their attention the most. I distinguish one person from another by an anonymous attribute. The guy in the green sweater is interested in the golf clubs at 10% off. The woman in the dress likes the brand of Italian shoes I'm offering.
The other situation is when a user comes to a site and logs in, telling me who they are. Now I know that Joe Smith is in my store and is interested in the sale on golf clubs. I might even give Mr. Smith an extra discount because I know he shops at my store often.
But there is this gray area on the web I'm not sure what to make of.
Let's say at one point Joe Smith told me he wants me to send him emails when I have some kind of promotion. I send a personalized email to Mr. Smith and he clicks on a link that brings him to my web site. He has not logged in but I could easily know it was him on my site. That seems a bit sneaky to me if I were to track him by name.
Let's make it even grayer. (Hmm. Can things actually be more gray or less gray?) I send Mr. Smith an email which he clicks to come to my site. I direct him to a personalized portal customized for his needs. The top of the page says "Welcome, Mr. Smith!". I have let him know that I have identified him by name. He didn't really ask me to, but he went along with the attraction to come to his personalized site. If I follow his actions now on my web site, I know exactly who is looking at what.
But what is his expectation? Does he have an expectation of privacy in this case? I really don't know. I kinda think he does. Until he takes an explicit action to log in and tell me who he is, he has not taken the initiative to identify himself. Yes, he chose to come to the personalized portal, but did he choose to become no longer anonymous?
So, I'm full of questions at this point and not so many answers. I welcome your thoughts on the matter.
( Nov 18 2006, 02:03:37 PM MST ) Permalink Comments [1]
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