Web Analytics Rock Stars

Stéphane Hamel is a freelance consultant with over 20 years of experience. Based in Québec, Canada, he is the creator of the popular Web Analytics Solution Profiler tool which he recently sold to iPerceptions, long time tutor of the UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics program and teacher of a graduate-level, full semester course on web analytics at Laval University (Québec-city). He’s been a member of the Web Analytics Association since 2005 and a member of the board & treasurer for a year.

What brought you to web analytics?

I graduated with a college degree in computer science in 1987 and quickly became a sys-admin & DBA. Business requirement analysis, data and providing insight and recommendations has always been a part of my job. Being involved in a research project, I was lucky to have early access to the Internet. When HTTP and Mosaic came out in 1993 it was natural to dig into log files to increase performance and optimize. I became a “webmaster” and worked on numerous projects as a practitioner or consultant in all imaginable roles ever since. I used log parsers, WebTrends, and several other tools over the years. Six years ago, working for an agency, I tried to develop an offering for web analytics… sadly, I was a pioneer and it didn’t work out, so I moved on. I continued to do web analytics as a practitioner and the 40 years old crisis struck: I switched to freelance in 2006 and have been enjoying it ever since!

How did you get involved with the WAA?

In the early days of the Web there was a tremendous level of collaboration and an exciting flow of innovation. I first met Jim Sterne in 1996 at the now defunct Internet World conference in Los Angeles. He was already talking about the importance of online marketing and measurement. Several years later Jim’s name came back in a discussion and that’s how I found the WAA. The WAA opened a network of like-minded professionals and I reached out to them – it felt the same as the early days and I wanted to be part of it. Gradually, I got even more interested, participated in committees, contributed content and did a bunch of different things.

… then you decided to run for the Board?

Well, yes and no. In the meantime, I created WASP because I had a real issue to solve and decided to make it publicly available. It turned out I was solving an issue most web analysts had: how to easily do quality assurance of tags. Several thousand people were using it and it brought me a good visibility in the market. Someone suggested I should run for the Board and it worked – I was not really expecting it but I took the responsibility seriously and I’m honoured to be part of the team.

What does it involve exactly?

In some ways we’re lucky because the previous Boards had to go through the infancy of the Association with all the stumbling and hard work it implies. We can say the WAA is now in its adolescence – getting more effective and mature but still facing challenges. As Board members, we try to stay at the strategic level and drive the vision of the Association. We hold monthly conference calls to discuss the advancement of important initiatives and develop new members’ benefits in order to achieve our mission of fostering education and research, standards and best practices as well as professional networking worldwide. We also get to meet face to face four times a year where we spend at least a full day working on strategies. The call for nominee states 15-20 hours a month and this is not an underestimation of the level of effort and commitment required of Board members.

What are the challenges facing the WAA?

Let’s be positive: they are not challenges, they are goals! Let’s pick two of them.

One of our main objectives in 2010 is to launch the Certification program. In a fast paced industry such as web analytics, there needs to be a way to separate the wheat from the chaff. Anyone can claim to be an “expert”, a “guru” or a “ninja”, but now there will be an independent and rigorous way to prove you are! The Certification addresses all aspects of being an analyst. It will be launched at eMetrics San Jose, in May.

“Globalization” is also important: empowering local groups with the information and services to become effective spokespersons for the WAA. The Board already has some representatives from outside the US (for one, I’m from Canada, and even more, I’m French Canadian!) and Vicky Brock is in UK. Aurélie Pols has taken the responsibility of Globalization Chair, coordinating and being the ears and voice of country leaders who want to get involved. About 40% of our members are not in the US so it is crucial to represent and offer member values that are relevant at the local level.

What has the WAA accomplished over the last year?

It’s not only the result of the Board, but one of engaged members and great people at Virtual, the agency helping us managing the Association on a daily basis. Here’s a little round up:

• Launched the new WebAnalyticsAssociation.org website, a platform that will make it a lot easier to manage and offer increased member value
• We concluded agreements with organizations in Spain and Finland to become part of the WAA
• We released our Outlook 2010 survey that provides unique insight into the key trends, directions and challenges for the industry
• Held over 8 webinars on a diverse range of topics such as measuring social media, measuring Web 2.0, campaign tracking, etc.
• Concluded another WAA Championship
• We just confirmed the hiring of Mike Levin as our new Executive Director
• Provided comments and position statements on the use of cookies and web analytics to the US Government, as a first step towards developing a comprehensive advocacy position on privacy and online measurement
• Completed the first ever Benchmark survey on the use of web analytics and digital measurement for public, non-profit and education sectors
• We recently tabled a groundbreaking document for public comment on Social Media Measurement and Standards
• We launched the Web Analytics Without Borders project, where members can gain real experience by helping a non-profit organisation – Save The Children

Would you recommend becoming a Board member?

It is a volunteer position; it does require a fair amount of commitment, engagement and belief in the value and mission of the Association. The rewards are numerous: a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of doing something that can make a difference, a passion for the field. You get to meet with the top influencer and most brilliant people in the industry. After all, when do you get to share lunch with executive from WebTrends, Yahoo! and Omniture at the same table? When can you share tips with senior managers from Dell, Microsoft and Sony or meet consultants from all around the world?

What’s next for you?

Going freelance, it was clear in my mind I wanted to do a mix of consulting, education and research. In 2009 I worked with many clients, tutored for UBC, sold WASP and completed my eBusiness MBA. In 2010, I’m voluntarily lowering my consulting involvement and actually work with only two major clients in order to spend more time doing education and research. It’s funny some people are now calling me “academic” when I was flagged as a “techie” for most of my career! You can expect more things related to the Web Analytics Maturity Model (WAMM)  in the next few weeks and months.  I’m touring several cities to present workshops based on WAMM where I address the managerial side of online analytics. I will also be at eMetrics Toronto, San Jose, London and Paris as well as the Web Analytics Congress in Amsterdam.

What is the Web Analytics Maturity Model?

While working on my final eBusiness MBA project I was asked to create a full-semester, graduate level web analytics course: over a period of 18 months I studied why some companies succeed at web analytics while so many fail. I was puzzled by people saying “web analytics is hard” when so many other things businesses have to do are much more difficult. I wanted the course to be more business oriented, more about “analysis” and less about the tools. I studied about a dozen maturity models from fields such as Business Intelligence, Business Analysis and others proposed by web analytics vendors and consulting agencies. I also leveraged my years of experience as a practitioner and consultant, interviewed practitioners and managers to come up with the six key process areas for success, represented in five levels of maturity. For those familiar with Tom Davenport “Competing on analytics”, the Web Analytics Maturity Model represents an earlier stage, more narrowly focused area of analytics. In fact, following the WAMM approach will allow you to easily move on to Davenport’ model.

It received lots of positive and constructive feedback from practitioners, agencies and vendors worldwide so I’m pursuing in this direction with an updated and more exhaustive version of the model, several workshops and some other things I can’t elaborate for now!

Tags: analytics vendor, eMetrics, freelance consultant, internet world conference, interview, marketing, measuring social media, metrics, social media, Web Analytics Association, webtrends
Posted in: Interviews, Online Analytics by Corry Prohens
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Rudi Shumpert is a web analytics practitioner in the Atlanta area. Last year he launched a podcast series that has become very popular in the web analytics community: Beyond Web Analytics. Rudi has enlisted some of the top web analytics practitioners in the world to help with his podcasts and has had an amazing list of guests over the first 11 episodes. 

1.  Rudi, this is all pretty amazing to me. How did you even get the idea for this series of podcasts? How did you have the technical know-how to pull it all together? How did you get Adam Greco on board? In short, how did this all happen??

It all happened out of a growing fascination with Web Analytics, and last summer as I spent time scouring the web for every resource I could find to learn more I noticed that there did not seem to be many active podcasts on Analytics. I have been a fan of many types of podcasts from history, entertainment, and more technical ones as well, and I have always wanted to produce one myself. A friend of mine runs a podcast called Tweak & Geek, and I was able to sit in on a few of those to get a good feeling for how to record and manage the podcasts. I already had a variety of audio and video editing software, so it was just a matter of finding the right folks to be on it. One of the things I love about the web analytics community is the sheer number of people out there that are willing to help and lend their knowledge to others. As I have been working with Omniture most of all, I was/am quite a fan of Adam Greco’s blog posts and had interacted with him on twitter for a while. So I reached out to Adam and others to see if there was any interest in doing a podcast, and fortunately he was. It has been great working with Adam, James, and the all of the other guest hosts we have had on the podcast. 

2.  You took an interesting path to web analytics, having been successful in other analytics disciplines and having strong technical skills. Can you talk about that a bit?

I am a true developer at heart, and I have been developing web sites/web applications for about 14 years now. From 2005-2009 I worked for a small company that did hosted data analytics for schools k-12. In this job I helped build a reporting engine similar to Omniture’s SiteCatalyst, that would allow school administrators to segment and track/trend the students throughout the school year. I also spent a lot of time working with the variety of raw data files from the schools to transform them into a common format and load them into our own data warehouse. So when I went to work for Ariba last March it was a natural and rather smooth transition to work with web analytics and the data collection methods that go with that. So with the developer mindset, I read a few books on Web Analytics, and then sat down with the code and web sites and starting tinkering.

3.  You have had Gary Angel, Jim Sterne, Josh Manion, John Lovett, Akin Arikan… some of the top people in web analytics as guests. Who else is out there that you would love to have as a guest? Similarly, are there topics that you have not covered that are at the top of your list?

We have been very fortunate to have the caliber of guests on our podcasts that we have had, and that we have scheduled. Adam and James were instrumental in reaching out to folks they know in the industry to be on the podcast, and the current success we have enjoyed is a direct result. One of our goals of the podcast is to remain vendor agnostic, and we have tried to ensure that we have people from multiple vendors on the podcasts, and we are open to speaking to any vendor in the space. I think this objective stance is key in establishing and maintaining credibility in the Analytics community.

Personally, I would love to talk with Avinash Kaushik and Josh James. We have some great guests lined up to record over the next few weeks, and have some great podcasts recorded that are not yet released, including the second part of the series we did with you. We would love to hear from the listeners out there that have real world analytics challenges to come on the podcast and we will have a guest host whose focus is on the specific area of the challenge, A/B Testing, Multi-Channel, Staffing…etc. Then we would be able to help the listener work through the issue and hopefully come away with some possible solutions. So if you are out there and you would like to be on the podcast to talk shop with us, we would love to have you on the podcast or you can submit a question on the web site www.beyondwebanalytics.com .

4.  Can you share your stats? How many downloads have you had on the podcasts so far?

As of March 9th, 2010 we have had over 9,500 downloads combined. And the velocity of the downloads has been increasing since the beginning of the year. 

5.  The most recent episode was the Omniture 2010 recap. What was the consensus about the Summit this year? We have been really busy so all I have heard about so far was the Killers concert.

The Omniture Summit 2010 Recap is our single day record holder. It had over 250 downloads on the 1st day and also resulted in the highest traffic levels we have seen for a single day. The consensus of Summit, is that it was a first class conference. It exceeded my expectations in being able to learn new things, and being able to interact with not only other attendees but also Omniture employees and other industry leaders. It was really cool to actually meet with listeners and guest hosts of the podcast and the scores of others that I have interacted with on twitter and other forums. And yes, the Killers were incredible! However, seeing Josh James & Bret Error sing a Beastie Boys song might have topped the Killers. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttEqjh0qwGQ) 

6.  You seem to have a natural ability to host these things… you even have a great radio voice. Have you ever done this sort of thing in the past?

Thank you! I have not done anything like this in the past, but I have found the whole process to be very rewarding. A few years back I might not have been willing to tackle an endeavor like this or present at a major conference like I did at the Omniture Summit. Again, I think it is the developer in me that keeps pushing myself to learn new skills and to continue to take steps to practice and refine those skills in order stay current that has driven me start blogging, podcasting, and presenting. 

7.   What is your favorite episode? 

It would be too hard to pick just one. This might sound like a line, but my favorite podcast is the next one. I really look forward to planning the podcasts and getting the chance to talk analytics with our guests and being able to continue to interact with each guest long after the podcast has been posted.

Twitter: @rrs_atl

Podcast:  www.beyondwebanalytics.com

Blog:  www.rudishumpert.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rudishumpert

Tags: analytics rock stars, blog, podcasts, web analytics, web analytics podcasts, Web Analytics Professionals
Posted in: Interviews, Online Analytics by Corry Prohens
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In the process of using several Social Media Monitoring tools for the work I do in Social Media, Online Search and Public Relations (i.e.: Radian6, Alterian/Techrigy, Sysomos, BrandWatch, Biz360, Crimson Hexagon, Viralheat and Scout Labs to name a few) I discovered a richness in textual based keyword research within one of the tools I use often, Sysomos Map; I’m betting people who perform SEO or SEM probably aren’t aware of how quickly Social Monitoring tools are evolving and how they can help both Search and Web Analytics (I’ll get into the Web Analytics aspect of Social Media Monitoring in a following post).

One thing I noticed while doing traditional keyword research is that it’s tough and tedious to do, and often you end up with very boring keyword phases helpful in driving traffic to your sites; this might be even more true for a job recruitment site like IQWorkforce.com.

By using Sysomos Map I was able to go far beyond search keyword tools such as WordTracker, Google AdWords keyword tool, WordStream or Keyword Discovery in order to discover the phases I Workforce’s audience are using in blogs, message boards, twitter, facebook and mainstream online media. Using Social Media tools you can actually cut down the time it takes to do keyword reaserch for a customer or for yourself.

Sysomos has text mining tools allowing for insights that is intriguing from and SEO standpoint, take this “Buzzgraph” produced from a query (i.e.: IQworkforce OR “IQ Workforce” OR iqworkforce.com)

Source: Sysomos Map

Sysomos Buzzmap shows interrelationships between words and concepts in common with IQworkforce; Sysomos highlights the most frequently occurring terms in context to each other with darker interconnecting lines.

In addition, Sysomos will allow you to create a “segmentation” keyword search (using “sub-keywords”) similar to a web analytics segmentation of traffic by referral source. I can bookmark and compare various keyword segmentation and treat them just like web analytics segments in Google Analytics, Omniture and Coremetrics, for example.

Once I applied the sub-keywords of “analytics OR contractor OR contractors OR web” I got the following Buzzmap, allowing me to drill down deeper into the keywords surrounding IQworkforce.

Sysomos also collects all the blog posts, tweets, forum and message boards, Facebook and online news media that mentions IQworkforce and extracts the most significant phases being used by the authors of those pages. Most SEO/SEM keyword tools were created to just extract phases most often searched for in Google. On the other hand, Sysomos extracts the phases most often used by the online conversations about your brand – and that’s quite different.

I noticed a while back the results of Google’s keyword tools aren’t the most relevant keywords to use for your site – rather, Google gives you the most relevant keywords to advertise against (big difference). As a result, a Social Media keyword extracted list, such as the one I’m producing below, is superior in quality to what average run of the mill keyword research tool actually provides.

Notice how Sysomos identifies phases such as “analytics specialist”, “analytics contract”, “analytics consultant”, “analytics practitioners” and “Karma Analytics” (you can click on the phase and drill down to the actual post/listing if you want).

Sysomos looks at Twitter and Forums and extracts significant phrases out of those sources of online buzz. Often, the information extracted from Twitter or Online Forum conversation threads is somewhat different than what shows up for blogs:

Tweets mentioning IQworkforce also talked about “strategist role”, “quantitative analyst”, “web analytics blogs” and “talent management universe” – these are phases SEO tools normally would fail to pick out, and if you don’t believe me, go ahead and try it using WordTracker, SEOBook, Google AdWords keyword tool, etc.

Most Search tools do not attempt to deal with sentiment analytics while most Social Media Monitoring tools provide sentiment analysis and sometimes, geo-location.

Quite predictably, Sysomos shows that almost all the online chatter in the last 6 months comes from New York State; this is probably OK for a local firm but might be a problem for a national firm. The sentiment about IQworkforce is favorable and if you want to hone in on specific positive/negative mentions, Sysomos allows you to do that.

Often, in SEO keyword research we will look at other competing sites focusing on the same business we do, to find out if we are missing anything in our own keyword metatags. There is an equivalent construct in Social Media monitoring – looking at the related or “blog influence network” to a particular blogs influential in related subjects. First, we identify the influential blogs/bloggers around IQworkforce using Sysomos Influencer Search:

Next, we view the blog influence network of the most influential blog that Sysomos shows us:

We can then go and test out the blogs in the “blog influence network” to find more keyword phrases if we need to.

Armed with the information we extract using a Social Media Monitoring solution like Sysomos you would add those phrases to your content or create new content if your community is uses concepts and words that are absent entirely from your own site (as a result of the way people mention your brand our service online) and increase your rankings on those phases.

To end this article, the main difference between Search Engine Optimization /Marketing and Social Media Monitoring is in the way we search. In organic search engine optimization, we often seek to discover what drives our audiences and what they are searching for in order to “intersect” those searches with content rich with the keyword phases being searched on. In Social Media Monitoring, we are more interested in finding out what other people are “talking about” in related communities we want to be part of, and making sure we are present and part of the conversation – which will also drive traffic to our site.

That’s why Social Media has a different focus than Search and requires different tools – the focus is conversation between virtual friends who are influential in topics related to your business or area of focus. If you want to know more about how to use Search and Social media together – subscribe to my webmetricsguru.com blog – see you there.

Tags: keyword research, monitoring tools, segmentation, seo keyword research, Social Media Monitoring, sysomos, text mining tools, web analytics
Posted in: SEO, Social Media Monitoring by Marshall Sponder
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Greg Dowling is the former global head of analysis for Nokia. He recently left that role to join the senior management team at Semphonic, one of the top web analytics consultancies in the world.

Greg was our client at Nokia, where we worked together to build a global measurement organization that covered the implementation, analysis and data visualization of web and mobile data from Nokia’s consumer services products. He is a good friend for answering the following questions:

1.  The measurement world is buzzing about mobile, yet there seem to be very few practitioners out there that really know the space. Was your phone ringing off the hook with recruiting offers at Nokia?

Well of course you handle all of my recruiting Corry and I would never take a call from another recruiter. However, I have to say that it was ringing, just not as much as you might expect. While industry pundits have been claiming that 20XX will be the “Year of Mobile”, the majority of brands haven’t really embraced mobile fully as of yet. For example, it’s projected that in 2010 only 10% of brands and agencies will have mobile as a line item in their marketing budget and that another 20% are planning to experiment with mobile. So only one-third of the market is looking to do something with mobile in 2010 even though it is the fastest growing and most rapidly adopted personal technology in the world. At the end of 2009 there were 4.6 billion mobile subscribers representing 70% of the world’s population. It has eclipsed Internet growth by a ratio of almost 3:1. With unlimited data plans proliferating and smartphones poised to be almost half of all mobile device sales by 2013 according to Gartner – up from just 8% in 2008, it’s time to embrace mobile marketing and put your strategy together now. This obviously includes a mobile measurement and implementation plan – not an easy thing given the complexity of the mobile measurement space…

2.   I know that you had several internal and external career opportunities to consider. What made you choose Semphonic?

I have been agency side before as part of a digital strategy and analysis organization, but my team was always a ‘part of’ a larger client engagement and not the central focal point of the relationship as it is in a pure analytics consultancy. When I began thinking about joining a web analytics consultancy it was a simple choice – Semphonic. Semphonic has been in this space a long time – 13 years to be exact, and has a stellar reputation as the world’s largest independent analytics consultancy. With a respected team of industry experts like Gary Angel, June Dershewitz and Phil Kemelor, add to that a great roster of clients, the opportunity to build out the New York office, AND focus on mobile analytics – it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

3.   Gary Angel seems like the nicest guy in the world. Tell me the truth – he’s really a total a-hole behind the scenes, isn’t he? Nobody can be that nice.

That’s too funny! Well, I have known Gary for years and have worked with him on several occasions across many different types of engagements. Going back five years ago at Jupiter Research when he briefed me on Functionalism, to most recently at Nokia where he was instrumental in not only assisting me establish Nokia’s global measurement standard, but also leading the hands-on implementation work for several Services. Gary and I have also shared the stage at industry conferences in the past and I think he is one of the most compelling speakers I know. A true master at conveying complex subject matter simply – not a widely held skill, I might add. Truthfully, I can say without a doubt – he is not only the smartest guy I know in the analytics space – but one heck of a nice guy.

4.   You spent ten years becoming an expert in web analytics and the past one or two in mobile. What are you going to focus on for Semphonic? Both? Or is mobile going to be your sole focus?

Both. My title is Vice President of Mobile Strategy & Measurement, but I will focus on all aspects of enterprise analytics including strategy, implementation, reporting, and analysis. Mobile for me is just another channel that needs to be measured. The mobile product offering from Semphonic will seek to provide our clients with the competitive advantage they need to succeed in the mobile space. Our consulting services will range from mobile strategy engagements, where we assist clients is assessing their mobile readiness and the suitability of mobile to their current product offering, through to mobile measurement implementation, reporting, and analysis. The goal is to provide our clients with actionable insights and definitive tactics to make them successful in the burgeoning mobile arena. Oh and of course, I will be hiring…

5.   Given the strength of the Semphonic brand and the growth rate of the web analytics services space, I would guess that they are fighting off acquisition offers from the big agency families. What are the chances that you are working for Omnicom, Publicis (again) or WPP in a year or two?

Strike one, Corry. I actually did work for Omnicom while at Colangelo, so that only leaves WPP as one of my last agency “yet’s”. Of course, I can’t speculate on Semphonic as an acquisition target, but I have to say I think we are in a great position and would be a very attractive acquisition. There are very few boutique web analytics consultancies with hands-on implementation experience AND world class thought leadership – and Semphonic tops the list.

6.    You have been on the agency side, the client side, you have been an industry analyst and now you work for a top consultancy. Unless I am missing one, the only thing you have not done is work for a vendor. What advice would you give about what “types” of people succeed best in each environment?

Strike two, Corry. As matter of fact I have been on the vendor side. In 1995 I managed the New York operations for an online environmental database vendor named Environmental FirstSearch. We had an Internet enabled Visual Basic 5 application that looked very much like Google Maps (except a decade earlier) in which, instead of distance and direction to hotels and restaurants, we populated our interactive maps with hazardous waste sites and chemical spills – good times!

The “types” of people that succeed in any business are those that are passionate about what they do. Folks that take inspiration from challenges and make limitations an opportunity for improvement are bound to succeed. On the agency side it is critical to have a strong sense of urgency as related to client engagements and go out of your way to make the client feel like they are your only customer. Strong communication skills and a knack for business development don’t hurt either. On the client side I found the most success in being able to articulate the current capabilities and inherent limitations of my company’s product offering. Not being afraid to tell it like it is was a great asset of mine. If something isn’t working right, fix it. It’s better to ask for forgiveness later, then to wait for permission now. On the vendor side it’s simple – listen to your customer.

Thank you Greg. Best of luck with your new opportunity. See you at X Change!

Tags: data visualization, digital analysis, digital strategy, interview, mobile measurement, semphonic
Posted in: Interviews, Online Analytics by Corry Prohens
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Across all analytical marketing professions, data integrity is guarded and protected like money in a vault. A major advantage of web analytics over traditional market research methods is the ability to collect and analyze all data, not just sample data.

Do you remember the exit polls of the 2000 Presidential election, where myopic sampling methods caused a major fiasco when TV networks prematurely declared Bush the winner of the presidency? If only pollsters could have polled every person voting in every county, not just samples. Do you think the whole controversy could have been avoided? How can 8,132 voters accurately represent a nation of 280 million? As pollsters learned, they can’t. This is the strength of web analytics: data collection of an entire population.

But what happens when web analytics don’t collect data of an entire population?

A Coming of Age Story

During the X Change show, I had the chance to talk to lots of analytics pros who work in the trenches every day. One story in particular caught my attention and -it seemed like- everyone around me.

It’s the story of a young analyst, who worked as consultant at Omniture for several years. He recently hit the jackpot landed a job heading up analytics for a rapidly growing SaaS company. When the time finally came to do his first big presentation for the executive team, he was disappointed to find some of the data he wanted to present looked anomalous. For some reason, data on the entire population wasn’t collected.

Without the time or resources to track down the cause of the wonky data before the presentation, this young analyst chose to use an asterisk on the PowerPoint slide. It was a heartbreaking story of a once bright and shiny young analyst, learning about the real world.

Welcome to the Real World

We’ve all experienced what this young analyst felt. It’s like learning that Santa Claus isn’t real; it’s innocence lost; the kind stuff that makes nice people become bitter, cynical, and jaded. It’s having to undermine your data with an asterisk because somebody else messed it up!

The problem is that Analytics aren’t front and center in requirements or processes in most companies. All too often, the analyst is left out of the conversation. When that happens, who is looking out for the data? It isn’t the content team, it’s not the director of marketing, and it definitely isn’t IT. How can an organization make data-driven decisions without the data?

Fact: When the right JS isn’t on the most important pages, your organization doesn’t get the data it needs to get ahead – or even to just stay in the game. Lost data causes the best-designed strategies to become little more than high-minded wishful thinking.

What you see in your analytics suite is skewed data. If you recognize it, it’s a lucky catch. But I’ve found that in so many cases, data just isn’t being collected, and what’s worse, it’s really difficult to see it’s not being collected! A classic case of the unknown unknown. Even if it is, sometimes it’s useless because the JS isn’t configured (no page names, for example.) The result: an asterisk on your PowerPoint slide.

Bottom line: tracking down individual pages with individual data collection problems in an environment where you don’t know what you don’t know, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack on the surface of Mars with the rover!

Improving data through planning and process

The adoption of some simple (and minimally invasive) practices can go a long way toward improving your data. The assistance of a few purpose-built tools can actually prove that the data collected is complete, valid, and actionable. Personally, I’m a fan of this three-pronged approach: Development QA, Quarterly Audits, and Continuous monitoring.

Development QA

1. After pages are built in dev, use a tool to audit the analytics implementation on each page.
2. After the pages move to staging servers, all pages should get a complete “pre-flight test”. The auditing tool should be run in live mode, allowing server calls to be made. The success of these server calls should be checked in the analytics solution.
3. Audit new pages after they are pushed out to production to ensure the implementation is still intact and ready for prime time.

Quarterly Auditing

Every page over the entire site should be audited quarterly to confirm analytics are working correctly, to identify any problems, and to show complete implementation for reporting purposes. Specific items to watch for are:

a.   All pages are tagged

b.   JS File is linked and working

c.   Pixels are loading

Continuous Monitoring

Landing pages, checkout process, unsubscribe forms, and other mission-critical pages or multi-step processes should be continuously monitored to ensure the pixels always fire. This prevents long periods of data loss.

Outcomes

With some forethought and the right tools, you can make huge strides toward ousting the asterisk. Processes, such as I’ve discussed here, can remove much of the ambiguity and doubt in analytics data. By confiscating the weapons that management uses to attack analytics recommendations, you can help your organization make use of the insights you find.

The Possibilities:

1. Metrics and significant data associations are presented as the facts they are, not just hypothesis or observational data.
2. Valuate web analytics to management, advertisers, and publishers.
3. Earn upper-management / executive action based on Web Analytics observations and inferences.
4. Earn funding for marketing initiatives.

John Pestana is a co-founder of Omniture, and has recently co-founded ObservePoint, makers of web analytics tag auditing and monitoring software. More information on tag auditing and pixel monitoring tools can be found at http://www.OustTheAsterisk.comand http://www.ObservePoint.com

Tags: actionable analytics, metrics, web analytics
Posted in: Direct Marketing Analytics by John Pestana
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