Web Metrics & ToolsISM 6910 – Week 3

Week 3 Topics

• Tools Discussion

• Site Metrics Continued

Know your organization

Are you looking for reporting or analysis?

• Decentralized decision making?• Cover your back culture?• Risk adverse?• Distribution of knowledge?

Factoring in price

Free tools aren’t free!

• Implementation can be a huge cost• Cost for custom tags and reports?• What about added cost for dashboards etc.

(example: SQL, Tableau) • Incremental time and cost now added to making

changes on the site (tag management)

Implementation

How strong is your IT?

• We’ll cover implementation in more detail later.• There are consultant firms that pretty much just do

implementation• Get it wrong and all of your metrics can be off!• Support for tagging, custom tags?

Note: If you have any interest in learning or know JavaScript and get certified in one of the top analytics tools you’ll have multiple job offers the next day. There is a big shortage in the market place right now for people with these skills, Razorfish has really struggled to fill these roles.

Clickstream vs. Web Analytics 2.0

How sophisticated are you really looking to be?

• A/B and multivariate testing?• Heat mapping?• Advanced segmentation?

• Most of the big tools do all of the above, but some better than others.

Reporting

How easy is it to pull out the data from your tool? Most of the time your data will finally land in Excel or PowerPoint.

• Easy to use API feeds?• Data exports?• Automation and hooks directly through Excel?

• Most of the big tools do all of the above, but some better than others.

Razorfish POVWeb Analytics Tools Comparison

Platform Pros Cons

Adobe SiteCatalyst v15 and Discover 3

• External data integration• Excel client• Retroactive meta-data integration through SAINT• Strong segmentation• Cross-visit attribution modeling through Discover• Best in class alerts, dashboards, and target features• Focus on ad hoc reporting• Flexible pathing analysis• Custom reports (variables/events)• Multiple levels of persistence • Conversion deconstruction• Genesis integrations with email service providers,

Salesforce, and others• $$

• Complex interface• Learning curve• Complex Tags

Webtrends Analytics 10

and Segments

• Highly intuitive, refined and easy to navigate interface• Storyboard mode• Well-organized profiles through Spaces• Meta-data integration – Translation tables• REST API access through Excel• Good export features• Custom reports (variables/events)• Multiple levels of persistence • Unlimited variables• $$

• Report building backend similar to V8.5• Reports not very flexible• Difficult to perform ad hoc reporting• REST API inferior to Excel plugin• External data integrations mostly custom• Segments tool inferior to Adobe Discover• Complex Tags

Pricing (based on 30MM PVs)$ < $25K$$ $25 - $50K$$$ $50 - $100K$$$$ >$100K

Razorfish POVWeb Analytics Tools Comparison

Platform Pros Cons

IBM CoreMetrics

• Comparative benchmarks and intelligence• Tabbed reporting (report toggling)• Social media monitoring• Visitor profiling – LIVE• Powerful metric attribution features

• Comparative benchmarks limited to content sites• Limited segmentation capabilities• Clogged interface• Sampled data• Limited MS Office integration• Most complex tagging required• Unclear data integration capabilities• Difficult implementation (12 tag types)• $$$

Google Analytics Premium

• Easy to use interface – fast learning curve• Rich dashboards and visualization• Strong segmentation• Click-based attribution modeling• Real-time reporting• Custom reports (variables/events)• Multiple levels of persistence • Social assist feature• Simplest tagging• Intelligence / automatic alerts

• No raw data feeds available• Very limited external data integration• No forecasting• Segmentation is limited to the visit• No metadata upload capability• Very limited user provisioning• New tagging required• Limited unsampled data (no dashboards/scheduled

reports/interface)• $$$$

Pricing (based on 30MM PVs)$ < $25K$$ $25 - $50K$$$ $50 - $100K$$$$ >$100K

Switching gears back to last week and metrics…

Visitor Acquisition

The big 3 (Omniture, Webtrends, and GA) break out visits by:

• Direct• Search• Referring• Other

Visitor Acquisition (cont.)

Some things you should keep in mind with Direct traffic:

• Direct traffic is not free!• If you don’t set up your campaigns right it will look like

direct traffic

Webtrends example: ww.mywebsite.com?WT_id=MyCampaignName

Watch out!

Your Web Analytics tool ad traffic number will never match your ad serving (Atlas & DoubleClick) counts!

• Web analytics tools won’t match either, they all have their own business rules.

• Tags are in different locations on the page.• 3rd party servers have issues to.

Simple segmentation

You can learn a lot by segmenting on just the acquisition traffic source:

• Bounce rates by source• Conversions by source• What are the top key words?• Top converting referring sites• Top performing media?

Watch out for averagesAverages like, average time on site, or average pages per visit can sometimes be a bit deceiving. It’s definitely worth taking the time to look at the distribution.

Another example…The same website but looking at the number of page views.

A page load FYIBe carful when using page loads as an engagement metric. Sometimes one page acts like multiple pages…

A lot of new sites now use tabs and accordions to navigate and display content, if the url doesn’t change it’s not a new page.

Tab example:http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/make-it-great/

Accordion example:http://www.microsoft.com/office/cxm/en-us/small-business-premium/index.html

Time to convertAnother watch out! Most of the web analytics tools tend to focus most of their reports on a single visit.

10 min.

1 hr.

28% of total

45% of total30 min.

43% of total

2 hrs.

62% of total

Num

ber

of

purc

hase

rs

Time between first Visit & purchase (Min.)

68% of total

6 hrs.

Tracking multiple visitsSame as time to convert, here is another example…

I recently needed a new printer cartridge, so I Googled Epson

Found the cartridge I needed, and then started price shopping.

Epson’s cart experience sucks so I ended up buy the new cartridge on Amazon

…but had Epson’s site been better I would have converted on my second visit.

Another watch outIn the last example I used Google to find the Epson site, but on my second visit when I went to purchase the cartridge I just typed in the url… so am I in the search segment or the direct traffic segment? which channel would have gotten credit for the conversion had I actually purchased the cartridge on the Epson site?

What are converters doing?Example: Site visitors to the Windows 7 site who visited the upgrade consideration page were 2x more likely to make a purchase than visitors who only visited the Get Windows 7 page. The Upgrade Consideration page contained content explaining the PC systems requirements and steps for upgrading. An upgrade advisor tool was later added to the site driving higher sales conversions on the site.

FPP Upgrade Conversion RateBy Page Load (FYQ2 2011)

Click density reportsIt’s a real pain to put these reports together but site managers love them:

Heat map reportsSite manager love these reports!

Internal Search Insights• Can shed some light on what content is important

but hard to find or missing.

• How successful are those internal searches?

Focus on the critical fewIts all about a handful of KPIs, don’t get overwhelmed by tracking and interpreting every possible metric.

• Example – share of search, what can you do to improve that metric? We’ll talk more about this one next week.

Macro and Micro ConversionsAnother great method taken from the book on how to decide what the critical few should be

$Support Research Careers

Traffic to Website

Traffic to Website

Conversion

Macro ConversionMicro Conversion

Micro Conversi

onMicro Conversion

Steps to purchaseAnother great approach is optimize the funnel, i.e. the different steps a customer typically takes before making a final purchase/conversion.

One more approachAnother great approach is focus on the customer’s lifecycle. Customers will have different needs and will use your site differently based on where they are in the customer lifecycle. This approach is great for service type products and sites.

Lifecycle approachFor example...

KPIs: • Video plays and completes• Clicks to a case study• Clicks to a white paper

Other metrics: • Visits and Unique Visitors counts.• Bounce rates by conversation and scenario

page• Average time on page• Top internal search terms

Lifecycle approachFor example...

KPIs: • Trial sign-ups and • Trial completes• Trial conversions to

purchaseOther metrics: • Trial sign-ups by channel• Trial sign-up drop off rates by sign-up

page/form• Top pages driving click to trial

Lifecycle approachFor example...

KPIs: • Product activation• Trial product usage

(frequency)

Other metrics: • Visits to training pages focused on

product deployment• Training sign-ups• Newsletter sign-ups

Lifecycle approachFor example...

KPIs: • Product purchase• Product and features

upgrades• Click to find a Partner

Other metrics: • Click to get a quote• Purchase by channel• Purchase sign-up drop off rates by

sign-up page/form• Price calculator interactions• Assessment and recommendation

tools

Lifecycle approachFor example...

KPIs: • Customer churn• Product churn

Other metrics:

• Training page visits• Training sign-ups• Newsletter sign-ups