Interview with John Marshall, CEO of ClickTracks

JUN052007

Interview with John Marshall, CEO of ClickTracks

I had the pleasure of talking to John Marshall, CEO of ClickTracks, about his company’s present and future.

The first issue we talked about was one that is difficult to avoid, even though it has probably been discussed to death already. You probably already guessed it, but I was interested in hearing John’s views about the effect of the new version of Google Analytics. He is convinced that many Google Analytics users would never consider paying for web analytics anyhow. Therefore it doesn’t negatively impact ClickTracks’ sales. John saw an increase in sales right after the free version was announced. He explains that people use a free tool as proof of concept and then graduate on from that.

John views WebTrends as the main competitor of ClickTracks.

I also asked John about the plans for ClickTracks Appetizer. He was keen to point out that the key thing about the solution is the free web analytics classes provided by the company. ClickTracks Appetizer is the vehicle that enables them to teach for free and is supposed to suit someone who is getting started in web analytics. ClickTracks is, however, starting to get into some slightly more advanced topics now—teaching more advanced segmentation, for instance.

Every month ClickTracks also announces a Web Analytics Day when advanced features are made available in ClickTracks Appetizer. That combined with free classes is pretty effective, and I was wondering if they had considered taking Web Analytics Day on the road. John told me they would like to, but they would have to team up with a couple of other companies for it to be doable. An idea is to perhaps combine it with tracks about search engine optimization and PPC management.

Many web analytics vendors are branching out and aiming to offer a complete package covering all aspects of online optimization, not just web analytics. I asked John whether ClickTracks has any similar plans, and he said that they are working on some interesting new things that will probably be announced in a couple of months.

When John was on the vendor panel at Emetrics London, he said that ClickTracks has the ambition of making their solution the iPod of web analytics. He also mentioned that their unofficial slogan is “web analytics that sucks less.” I thought both things were very colorful and asked him to elaborate a little. John went on to say that ClickTracks has always tried to attack problems in a different way. One such example is ClickTracks’ approach to funnel analysis, which strictly speaking perhaps should be named something different.

John explained that iPods were much bigger than competing solutions when they came out, plus they went against the convention that portable music players should use flash memory and instead used a hard disk. But it turned out that other players, which used what was considered more modern technology, didn’t have enough storage capacity for people to use them. In the same manner, ClickTracks is not afraid of taking a different approach if it will result in a better experience for the analyst.

The most meaningless report that John has seen is “top paths through the site.” ClickTracks has consistently refused to provide this report as it doesn’t add any value. People have, however, asked for it many times but they are, in John’s experience, starting to learn that it’s not that useful.

ClickTracks’ biggest challenge in 2007 is integration with other tools, and North America is a bit farther ahead in that process than Europe. About twenty of ClickTracks’ clients have integrated, or are currently integrating, with other enterprise systems.

Generally John thinks that companies in the USA are somewhat ahead of Europe, probably because of a stronger tradition of direct marketing and looser privacy regulation.

Approximately one-quarter of ClickTracks’ customers are located in Europe. ClickTracks has its European headquarters in the UK and will be expanding from there. The next country in line is for an office is probably Germany.

---

Part of the interview is available as a podcast:
johnmarshall.mp3

Listen: Podcast

Written by +Lars Johansson

and posted in Author Lars Johansson, English, From WebAnalysts.Info, podcast, Web Analytics

Läs mer: http://www.outfox.com/interview-with-john-marshall-ceo-of-clicktracks/#ixzz3R7WuRZL5
Follow us: @outfox_sweden on Twitter

Pensamiento del Dia

La Doble Moralidad de los politicos enferman a toda administracion publica, y la corrupcion es su arma letal.

Alex Rojas Riva

Event Tracking - Web Tracking (analytics.js)

 

Event Tracking - Web Tracking (analytics.js)

This guide describes how to send events using analytics.js

The analytics.js snippet is part of Universal Analytics. If you're using Classic Analytics (ga.js) visit the Upgrade center to learn how to migrate your property to analytics.js.

Overview Implementation Examples Cross Browser Event Tracking Using jQuery

Overview

Event tracking allows you to measure how users interact with the content of your website. For example, you might want to measure how many times a button was pressed, or how many times a particular item was used in a web game.
An event consists of four values that you can use to describe a user's interaction:

Value	Type	Required	Description
Category	String	Yes	Typically the object that was interacted with (e.g. button)
Action	String	Yes	The type of interaction (e.g. click)
Label	String	No	Useful for categorizing events (e.g. nav buttons)
Value	Number	No	Values must be non-negative. Useful to pass counts (e.g. 4 times)

Implementation

To send an event, you pass the ga function the send command with the event hit type

ga('send', 'event', 'button', 'click', 'nav buttons', 4);

Where:

• button is the category
• click is the action
• nav buttons is the label
• 4 is the value

You can also send events using the following convenience commands. In each command, the optional parameters have been removed.

ga('send', 'event', 'category', 'action');
ga('send', 'event', 'category', 'action', 'label');
ga('send', 'event', 'category', 'action', 'label', 

    value);  // value is a number.

The send command also accepts an optional field object as the last parameter for any of these commands. The field object is a standard JavaScript object, but defines specific field names and values accepted by analytics.js.
For example, you might want to set the page field for a particular event. You do this using:

ga('send', 'event', 'category', 'action', {'page': '/my-new-page'});

Similarly, you might want to send an event, but not impact your bounce rate. This is easily solved by configuring the event to be a non-interaction event using the following code:

ga('send', 'event', 'category', 'action', {'nonInteraction': 1});

Finally, all the parameters of the send command have their own field names. So you can send an event by only passing a field object to the send command:

ga('send', {
  'hitType': 'event',          // Required.
  'eventCategory': 'button',   // Required.
  'eventAction': 'click',      // Required.
  'eventLabel': 'nav buttons',
  'eventValue': 4
});

Read the Field Reference document for a complete list of all the fields that can be used in the configuration field object.

Note: If you use this syntax, keep in mind that the required parameters for an event are the same as if you pass them to the ga function directly.

Examples

You typically want to send an event to Google Analytics when a particular browser event occurs. To do this, you configure a browser event listener and from within that listener, call the event command.
Say you have a link to download a PDF on your page:

<button id="button">Please click</button>

Cross Browser Event Tracking

To track this with pure JavaScript across browsers you would use the following code:

var downloadLink = document.getElementById('button');
addListener(downloadLink, 'click', function() {
  ga('send', 'event', 'button', 'click', 'nav-buttons');
});

/**
 * Utility to wrap the different behaviors between W3C-compliant browsers
 * and IE when adding event handlers.
 *
 * @param {Object} element Object on which to attach the event listener.
 * @param {string} type A string representing the event type to listen for
 *     (e.g. load, click, etc.).
 * @param {function()} callback The function that receives the notification.
 */
function addListener(element, type, callback) {
 if (element.addEventListener) element.addEventListener(type, callback);
 else if (element.attachEvent) element.attachEvent('on' + type, callback);
}

In this example, the addEventListener function is a utility to add event listeners across browsers. This function is used to add an event listener to the PDF download link to listen for the click event. When a click event occurs, the event is sent to Google Analytics.

Using jQuery

jQuery is a popular JavaScript library that handles a lot of the cross browser inconsistencies. If you are using jQuery, to send an event to Google Analytics when a user clicks the link above, you would use:

// Using jQuery Event API v1.3
$('#button').on('click', function() {
  ga('send', 'event', 'button', 'click', 'nav-buttons');
});

Alex Rojas Riva

Ninja Analytics, HiPPO's, Master in Digital Marketing Plan & Direction, Web & Social Analytics, Free Consultation, Mobile: +44 (0)755 2839713, Skype:janibalrojas.

I can't improve your Website by 1000% but I can improve 1000 things by 1%, if you execute my recommendation immediately or action to take care.

There are Data known known, there are Data we know we know. We also know there are Data known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some Data we do not know. But there are also Data unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the web history, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.

What does "Assisted Conversion" means?

Eyes on Analytics

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

What Assisted Conversion means and why it's a good thing

Phil Mui wrote a nice piece yesterday, introducing a new Google Analytics feature that links upper-funnel visits-from-social sites to downstream conversion events. They're calling it "Assisted Conversions", and it's a good thing for Digital Analytics.

The new report, called social value, enables you to see assisted conversions. That is to say, conversion events that in some way started or intervened over the course of a consumer journey, on their way to a conversion.

If Google Analytics is set up properly, either by way of eCommerce pass through, or, assignment of a dollar value to a conversion event, Google Analytics will calculate a social value amount.

Example:

Say that you sell boardgames through your eCommerce store. Say you post something about a latest release on your G+, and Phil clicks on your URL. Phil checks out the game, but he's interrupted by one of his product managers and he doesn't buy. He shuts down his computer at the end of the day and doesn't complete the sale (the horror!). He comes in the next day, and, from the same browser, he executes a Google Search, clicks on an organic link, visits your website, and completes the sale. Google Analytics will attribute that conversion as a socially assisted conversion. It won't be a direct social conversion (the google search did intervene), but it was certainly assisted by social.

That's pretty cool.

A digital analyst wins the lottery. The first thing she says is: "What, I have to buy a new wallet now?"

So:

• No, it isn't perfect. 

• No, it doesn't capture every single social network, nor is it a substitute for social media marketing analysis. 

• No, it isn't immune from high duration consideration effects.

However:

• Yes, it is a [lagging] indicator.

• Yes, it is a feature that wasn't available before.

• Yes, it is useful.

It is a feature that, for a subset of companies and analysts, will assist them in the optimization of some of their social campaigns. It'll also start to shift some of the perceptions and biases against upper funnel events that are very common in digital analytics. It's the middle of the beginning, and I'm most looking forward to that part.

It makes digital analysts smarter.

And that's a really good thing.

***

I'm Christopher Berry.
I tweet about analytics @cjpberry
I write at christopherberry.ca

(If you don't like Phil's new black box, build your own!) 

Posted by Christopher Berry at 6:30 AM

Who I am

 Christopher Berry 

Data scientist and marketing scientist. I turn data into products. Co-Founder of Authintic. Twitter @cjpberry @GetAuthintic

View my complete profile 

Occam's Razor
by Avinash Kaushik

3 Awesome, Downloadable, Custom Web Analytics Reports

142 Comments | Print | PDF

In a world where we are overwhelmed with data and metrics and key performance indicators and reports and dashboards and. . . sometimes all it takes to make some sense of all this "mess" is someone stepping up to share a tiny slice of wisdom from their experience.
That's my plan for this blog post. To share with you three custom reports that I find to be super valuable when I am doing web data analysis. Not only will I tell you about them, I'll give you downloadable links so you can get going right away!
I must forewarn you that my hidden agenda is also to expose to you metrics you might not be using, views of data that you might be ignoring, best practices that are of value and teach you how to fish. Consider yourself fully forewarned!
I love custom reports. They allow us to step away from the oppression of standard reports (/data pukes) and bring an increased amount of relevancy, calm and focus to our day-to-day work and to our beloved data consumers.
If your daily practice of web analysis does not hugely rely on custom reports (and advanced segments) then I am afraid you might be a lot more in the Reporting Squirrel mold and a lot less in the Analysis Ninja mold. Sorry.
With that motivational speech, :), below are three custom reports that are of incredible value. You can use them as is, or, better still, you can download and adapt them to your unique business needs. Either way I promise you'll deliver actionable insights faster!
[While I am using Google Analytics here, you can do custom reporting in pretty much any tool you have access to, be it Yahoo! Web Analytics or Site Catalyst or WebTrends.]
#1: Page Efficiency Analysis Report.
I am often irritated by how fractured page level reporting is. Four or six or ten reports that all tell you how your website pages are doing, except that you don't know which report to use and what the heck to do. So you, and I, do nothing. Faith rules.
My goal was to create one single report for you that would serve as a valuable starting point for page analysis for any type of website, especially a content rich non-ecommerce website. Here it is. . .

Optimally, to judge a page you'll look at three different pieces which are often not on the same report or not in any standard report. We fix that above.
First, what we want to know is: How often does this page act as our home page (Entrances) and how well is it doing its job (Bounces)?
I like reporting by Page Title (hopefully you are good at SEO and have taken care of this). I can quickly see which pages have high/horrible bounce rates. In an instant I know which pages need emergency surgery.
[For the minority of you who believe high bounce rates are ok, I encourage you to see this post: http://zqi.me/akbounce I especially recommend reading comments #153, #157 & #164. Thanks.]
Second, we worry about content consumption: How many Unique Visitors came, how many page views were generated and what content was more consumed more / less?
A lot of focus is on measuring Visits, which in this case I don't find to be of any value. I want to know how many People (approximated by Unique Visitors, plus or minus a few) saw a piece of content. Pageviews gives me a great proxy for knowing how often they might have seen it (not surprisingly more than once for my looooooong blog posts!).
The final metric in this bucket – and this is lovely – focuses on which pieces of content are really consumed. I write really long posts; it is gratifying that people spend 14 minutes reading one, but I can also easily see posts/topics people just skip (not good!).
Super awesome right?
Third, (the part almost everyone ignores), "show me the money!!!!": What value was created by the content for our business? And by business I also mean non-profit, university, newspaper, government websites and chicken farmers!
I don't care about page views if I am not making money / adding value to my non-profit or university. The data in the last two columns shows-pay attention please-differences in value created (for you!) when that piece of content was consumed.
Per visit goal value column shows ultimately how much a page might have influenced impact on your business during a visit where someone viewed that page. So People who see Page 2 end up creating 0.82 value for you, and People who see Page 3 end up creating $1.15 worth of value. Hence content on Page #3 was more valuable to your users and your business during this time period.
I like having Total Goal Completions because sometimes raw $ value hides insights. For example see pages #3 and #4. See what I mean?
Initial job greatness, consumption / "engagement", and value delivered to your business. Do you know this about your content?
Here's how you can get this report:

1. Log into Google Analytics.
2. Come back here.
3. Now click on this link Page Efficiency Analysis Report. It will open in Google Analytics.
4. Click on the Create Report button and it will save it in your account.

If you want to share this report with others (say via Twitter / email) you can use this url: http://goo.gl/09Npp
[Update, Jan 2013]

Instead of downloading the above report, please try the updated version of this report: Page Efficiency Analysis Report v2.
So what changed… Unique Pageviews and Pageviews think of them as rough equivalents of Unique Visitors and Visits for the Page dimension. Entrances/Pageviews shows how often this page is the landing page. Bounce Rate and Time on Page, you know what they are. The last metric (to replace PVGV, TGC) is Page Value, this is, in English, the value created for the business by each page that exists on the site. Page Value works across ecommerce and non-ecommerce sites. For a more technical definition of Page Value, check out: Valuing Content Using Page Value
This updated version of the report is cooler, more focused, uses new metrics in GA that were not around when this post was originally written, and has an additional sweet bonus tab with the technical performance of your site pages!

[/Update, Jan 2013]
Bonus Items:
You'll note that I have pre-built two drill downs into this report. If you click on the Page Title you'll see Visitor Type (New vs. Returning). I like to see for my great / awful pages if the behavior and data differs for those two segments. Then I like to drill down by City, again to see deltas. But you can change this to anything you want.
Remember you can apply segmentation (oh yesss!) to this report. Scroll all the way to the top of the report. Click the drop down next to Advanced Segments. Click on Mobile Traffic (or whatever) and. . . Boom! Mobile page efficiency analysis! Sweetness.
If you have an Ecommerce website you can replace Per Visit Goal Value with Per Visit Value and Total Goal Completions with Transactions.
If seven metrics seem to be too much to analyze click on the Comparison icon on top of the table (in Google Analytics) and you'll magically get this:

An easy peasy fast way to compare two metrics of most value to you and quickly identify the winners and losers. In this case I am answering a common question: Which content is consumed the most by People on my site and of that content which is most "engaging," i.e. cause them to read all of it?
Play with this feature; it is to die for. Change the pairings. Faster insights, guaranteed.
#2: Visitor Acquisition Efficiency Analysis Report.
We tend to be far too obsessed about Search Engines and Twitter and the Next Shiny Object.
Or we are organized by silos. Daniel's responsible for email and Gemma's responsible for Bing and Harun's responsible for display. They never talk (there is no incentive to). There are a ton of reports of course. But everyone's optimizing for their local maxima rather than for the global maxima.
Hate that.
My goal was to create one report where I can review the efficiency and performance across all streams of traffic to the site. Paid media (PPC, Display etc), Earned media(Social Media), and Free media (SEO, Referring Sites etc). I don't want the Next Shiny Object nor the Current HiPPO Obsession to drive our acquisition strategy.
Here's the report that is a fabulous starting point. . .

Let's break down a report you are soon not going to want to live without. :)
First, it shows all traffic sources. This is key. Organic and paid search, direct traffic, Twitter and Facebook, Facebook display ads, email marketing, top referring sites etc etc. No more silos! One place to judge how all streams perform. No egos.
Second, we focus on input metrics: How many sessions (Visits) by how many Unique Visitors and how many existing vs. new?
Senior folks seem to love Visits; I find them harmless. I really care about People. So one column for each of us. Are your marketing dollars chasing visits from people who have already visited your site, rather than prospects? New Visits to the rescue. For example notice the delta between Facebook ads vs. Facebook referrals. Ouch. Cute to know this key performance metric, right?
Third, this one's really important: How many people engage in behavior we value?
Typically you would look at metrics like Average Time on Site or Page Views per Visit. In this context why not use something significantly more insightful? I have created a Goal for the site where anyone who spends more than x amount of time or sees more than y number of pages is really giving me a precious gift: their attention. Regardless of whether they buy or submit a lead or do anything else of value, for me it's success.
Looking at this Goal, rather than Avg Time on Page, is significantly more insightful in judging the initial blush of success. You see even if these people don't buy on the website they might buy offline. Or even if they don't donate or download, they'll at least be much better aware of my brand. Or even if my acquisition campaign (Paid, Earned or Free) did not result in conversion in this visit, maybe they'll come back later.
Use this type of clever behavioral goal measurement rather than Avg Time / Pages.
[Important: When you download this report, below, this column might have a zero or show something incorrect - if you have Goal 6 defined. To use the smart strategy I am recommending you'll have to 1. work with your business leaders to identify what "engaged" behavior is in your case is, 2. create a goal for it and then 3. add that to the report you'll download here, then 4. celebrate.]
Fourth, outcomes baby! How much business value was added.
I don't have to teach you the value of using Conversion Rates and Goal Values. The whole point of this report is to prioritize our focus.
A vein should have popped in your head when you saw the conversion rates between google/cpc and google/organic. Good lord!
You can quantify that your Twitter earned media efforts yield 21 cents of extra value for every visit when compared to Facebook earned media efforts, and a shocking 62 cents more than your efforts with Facebook display ads! OMG.
Will that help you prioritize your efforts better? As Sarah would say: You betcha!
Fifth, this is very important: What did it cost you to get this traffic to your site?
This column in the report will often be zero. If your AdWords account is linked to Google Analytics perhaps you'll see Cost here. But most of the time it will be zero.
I still want you to have it.
Just to remind yourself, and your decision makers, that not all these rows have the same cost to bring that traffic to your site, to get it to engage and finally deliver the value you see in the Outcomes column.
Often we de-prioritize Earned Media and Free Media in favor of Paid Media (it seems sexy). That column is to encourage you to get cost numbers, even rough ones, and then, you'll do this in Excel, add something like Cost Per Conversion or Cost Per Visitor to the report (in Excel). Then and only then will your company be making the smartest possible decisions.
Remember no acquisition is free. Even "Free Media", it just costs less. It is your job to identify that and make your company smarter.
Are you providing this view of Acquisition Efficiency to your HiPPO's?
Here's how you can get this report:

1. Log into Google Analytics.
2. Come back here.
3. Now click on this link Acquisition Efficiency Analysis Report. It will open in GA.
4. Click on the Create Report button and it will save it in your account.

If you want to share this report with others (say via Twitter / email) you can use this url: http://goo.gl/HMPvV
Bonus Items:
You'll note that I have pre-built two drill downs into this report.

If you click on the Source/Medium you'll drill down to Medium. For your email / search / display / social media / video / whatever else campaigns you'll now see the next level of detail (banner ad or rich media ad or. . .).
If you click on Medium you'll drill down to Campaign Name (certain size, duration, destination, promo code, whatever you have coded).
So you can hold all your $$$ accountable.
If you have an Ecommerce website replace the Goal Conversion Rate metric with Conversion Rate and Per Visit Goal Value with my favorite Average Value.
As with the above report you can apply segmentation to this report (please do!) and you can also use the Comparison view and, another love of mine, Advanced Table Filtering.
Faster insights, and massive increase in hugs and kisses, guaranteed!
#3: Paid Search Performance Analysis Micro-Ecosystem!
Allow me to kvetch for a second.  I pull my hair out, and a small part of my soul dies, every time I log into someone's Omniture or Google Analytics or Unica NetInsight account. For the thing that greets me is a massive data puke. Tons and tons of reports created for God knows what reason.
They are the bubonic plague of our existence.
It is as if our lives were not miserable enough with the 80 or 100 standard reports we have no idea what to do with. Now those not savvy in the first place about Visits and Visitors have to wade through even more irrelevant nonsense.
I have championed the elimination of standard reports (who the heck is "standard" anyway? you?) and instead advanced the creation of focused custom "micro-ecosystems" that 1. reduce the number of reports 2. provide a one-stop destination for most answers on one topic, and finally, most importantly, 3. are hyper relevant.
Here are the three steps to creating a self contained micro-ecosystem of relevant data:
STEP 1: Identify & understand who will consume the data.
STEP 2: You are not going to believe this. . ., talk to them (!) to understand their needs and success criteria.
STEP 3: Insert two ounces of your raw brain power. What do they need, beyond what they want?
That's it. I know it sounds simple. Trust me everything below is easy (actually I am going to give you the report for free!), the steps above are really hard.
The micro-ecosystem I have created for you is to analyze the performance of a Paid Search Marketing program. The above examples have been non-ecommerce; this one is focused on ecommerce.
There are three key parties I need to satisfy (as might be the case in your company). The SEM team, who actually spend all the paid search marketing budget day-to-day. The second party is the person who owns the website (Director). Finally the VP of Digital who is responsible for all the spend, across multiple efforts.
Following my three step process above I have noted what each party wants, and, this is important, I have, from my experience, identified what they need.
Here is the micro-ecosystem. . . piece number one. . .
Everyone in the company goes to just one report to analyze the performance of the paid search campaigns. When they log in they choose their relevant tab. It's that simple.
The first tab is focused on the SEM team. Four metrics on this page are what they directly asked for, things they watch every day, things their bonus depends on. I have added two more from my experience to prompt good behavior (Bounce Rate) and tie them to the bottom-line (Average Value).
First, we look at the "input." How many ad impressions were served? How did our ad perform in terms of Click-thru Rate? The team obsesses about this. Match types. Ad Copy. Quality Score. Ad Position. Campaign Structure. Search query. So many things in play, this is where you find out where to start looking for problems.
Second, we look at activity. It is exceedingly rare that the SEM team (or, even worse, the Search Agency) is responsible for Bounce Rate. I think this is criminal. They can't just be responsible for spending money and dumping traffic on the site. However painful, they have to work with the site owner to ensure landing page relevancy, ad message consistency from Bing/Google to website and quality of their ad targeting. This humble metric is to force them to do that.
Third, I am sure you see a theme in all my work, outcomes! The team cares about Cost Per Click and total Cost. Give 'em that. But you'll be shocked that most of the time they don't care about conversions. So I add Average Value (essentially Average Order Size) so they can see which keywords to focus on more or less (see the range above from 82 to 211!) and not just clickthru rate, etc.
The SEM team / Agency will do lots of other reporting and segmentation and deep dive analysis. But they now have a simple and effective starting point.
Next up. . . the person who owns the process after the traffic shows up. This might be different in each company, but typically the website is owned by one person. Here is their tab. . . on the exact same report!

We shift our focus quite a bit as we move to the Director / Site Owner. They don't care about all the upfront stuff. They care about what's happening under their responsibility.
First, we focus on how many Visits occurred and what kind of Visitors they were? Specifically are we attracting just the same old visitors we have always seen or is our money being spent optimally to attract new people to our site? Percentage of New Visits is here as a conversation starter between the Director & the SEM Team / Agency.
Second, what's happening on the website? Are the entry home pages great? Bounce rate is a joint responsibility. Then it is important to realize that sadly not everyone will convert (boo!). I have chosen Pages per Visit as a proxy for an activity of value completed by the Visitor to the site. We know what the Average Pageview per Visit is; this column tells us if by keyword the difference, and if people don't bounce do they connect with our content? If not then why not? As a Director that is my job to figure out.
Third, surely my neck is on the line for ensuring that money (lots of it) is being produced. Hence the Revenue column. It takes less than ten seconds of eyeballing to figure out where there is a mismatch between crowds of visits and a mass of revenue (or not), and between non-bounce content consumption and revenue production.
Sweetness. One report. We are all on the same page!
The SEM team is probably logging into the system all day long; the Director perhaps a few times a week; the VP of Digital probably just a few times a month. But when She/He does they'll go to the exact same report and click on Her/His tab.
Here's what they'll see. . .

[Note: Here are things good Analysis Ninja's worry about. You'll notice Impressions in all three personalized tabs. The Director and VP don't really care about this metric. It is there as an "anchor." Whichever tab you go to the data will always be sorted the same! Tiny detail, but it matters so much.]
The VP is greeted with a lot fewer metrics (remember: always fewer relevant metrics!).
First, they might pay a cursory glance at the summary view provided in the scorecard(which will be on top of the above report but I have cropped for clarity). They do care about traffic. Just seeing the sorting of the Visits, in context of the Impressions, will give them pause. Note the questions that might pop up, even to a VP, as you compare the queries "accuracy vs. precision" and "kaushik".  Or "customer service questions." What is up with that?
Second, VPs care about cost and they care about productivity. These are two columns they use to praise you and get you and themselves a bonus. What is the Cost per Click and, for that expense, what is the Revenue per Click? I don't have to tell you what to do with these two columns. Love them a lot.
Third, VPs care about their bonus. Sorry, I mean they care about company revenue. :) Knowing RPC is important, having Revenue right there is fantastic context about overall achievement. You could have stuffed number of transactions or orders or conversion rate or all that other junk. You don't need to. Remember: fewer relevant metrics!
Your effort into the three STEP process above pays off rich dividends by killing data pukes, focusing on what's important, and creating one destination for everyone to go to and for everyone to point to.
It is so amazing when this works.
Here's how you can get this report:

1. Log into Google Analytics.
2. Come back here.
3. Now click on this link Paid Search Analysis Micro-Ecosystem. It will open in GA.
4. Click on the Create Report button and it will save it in your account.

If you want to share this report with others (say via Twitter / email) you can use this url: http://goo.gl/YpRCs
[Update: Rob Taylor has created a nice version of the above paid search report by applying filters to it, a feature of Google Analytics V5. You can download Rob's version here: http://goo.gl/9jLTm ]
Bonus Items:
If you click on the Keyword you'll drill down to Campaign. This is important because your campaign structure has so much influence on your ultimate performance. If you click on Campaign you'll drill down to Ad Group level (which needs constant love and caring).
You can easily create a micro ecosystem for your Email campaigns. For your Social Media efforts. For your. . . any place your company is spending money.
This report is for Ecommerce. It will work just fine if you're a non-profit or a government entity using AdWords or adCenter. Just swap the outcome metrics with ones mentioned in the first two reports.
You can do segmentation, advanced table filtering and all other good stuff here. Do it.
Extra Special Bonus Items:
Except for the last report, you can create all the above reports in five minutes in any web analytics tool you are using. You will not need to touch the JavaScript tag or go on a date with the IT team or update the contract with your Paid Vendor. If you are using Omniture or CoreMetrics etc you can still create the third report in Excel. Please do.
If you are using Google Analytics check out the delightful quick start guide to Custom Reporting. It covers designing, building and viewing a custom report. Also checkout this helpful article on definitions of dimensions and metrics in Google Analytics..
You will fail at all the above reports if you have not identified your Goals and Goal Values. If you are starting from scratch use the Web Analytics Measurement Model to identify your Goals. If you need more tactical examples from different types of websites please refer to my blog post on Macro & Micro Conversions.
Gentle reminder: No Goals, No Glory.
I had a lot of fun creating these special reports for you. I hope you'll have just as much fun adapting them to your own companies and their unique needs. But most of all I hope you'll release your data customers from the tyranny of data pukes and irrelevant standard web analytics reports!
Ok it's your turn now.
Do you have a favorite custom report? Care to share a downloadable version with the super smart audience of Occam's Razor? Do you have some version of one of my reports above that is even better? Care to share that one?
Incentive: The person who shares the best report will get a personalized signed copy of Web Analytics 2.0!  Please share the report via comments, I know we all would love to benefit from your wisdom and experience.
There were some wonderful reports submitted, please see the comments, but the one I loved the most was by Peter van Klinken [comment #41]. It was a very clever report and the use of pivot tables in GA was particularly cool. I'll be sending Peter a signed copy of W A 2.0.
Thanks to all of you for the wonderful submissions.

Like this post? Share it:

Occam's Razor
by Avinash Kaushik

Web Analytics Segmentation: Do Or Die, There Is No Try!

85 Comments | Print | PDF

My love for segmentation as the primary (only?) way of identify actionable insights is on display in pretty much every single blog post I write.
I have said: All data in aggregate is "crap".
Because it is.
One of my earliest blog posts extolled the glorious virtues of segmentation:
Excellent Analytics Tip#2: Segment Absolutely Everything.
Many paid web analytics clickstream analytics tools, even today (!), don't allow you to do on the fly segmentation of all your data (not without asking you to change javascript script tags every time you need to segment something, or not without paying extra or paying for additional "data warehouse" solutions).
So it was with absolute delight that I wrote a detailed post about the release of Advanced Segmentation feature in Google Analytics in Oct 2008: Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja!
Of course Yahoo! Web Analytics, the other wonderful free WA tool, had advanced segmentation from day one.
And as recently as two weeks ago I stressed the importance of effective segmentation as the cornerstone of the Web Analytics Measurement Framework.
[Update: Please read this post first in its entirety. Internalize it. Then when you are ready to get a jump start on advanced segmentation, download three super cool segments directly into your account from this post: 3 Advanced Web Analytics Visitor Segments: Non-Flirts, Social, Long Tail]
The Problem.
You can imagine then how absolutely heartbreaking it is for me to note that nearly all reporting that I see is data in aggregate.
All visits. Total revenue. Avg page views per visitors. Time on site. Overall customer satisfaction. And more. Tons of data "puking", all just aggregates.
The achingly tiny percent of time that the Analyst does segmentation it seems to stop at New vs. Returning Visitors! I have to admit I see that and I feel like throwing a tomato against the wall.
Yes new visitors and returning visitors are segments. But they are so lame that I dare you to find any insight worth, well, a tomato based on those two. You can't. Because new and returning are still two big indefinable globs!
Even if your business actually is tied to understanding the first and then subsequent visits by a person then you are far better off segmenting using Visitor Loyalty (in GA count of visits).
But I am getting off track (this whole non-segmentation business drives me bananas!).
Deep breath.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Segmenting your data is key to your success and that of your company.
It is not very difficult to segment your data. Many tools include some default segments you can apply to any report you are looking at.

For example when you look at your revenue or goal performance it takes a trivial amount of effort to look at All Visits but add to that report the Paid Search Traffic and Non-Paid Search Traffic and get deeper insights.
You can tell your boss: We made 900k, and while you are obsessed with Paid Search please note that 850k of the revenue came from Organic and only $25k from Paid.
PS: Our business is in trouble because we are over-reliant on Search!
See what I mean, a bit better insights.
Among things in the above image I love analyzing Direct (to understand value of the free traffic), Visits with Conversions (to understand my BFF sources and pages and behavior), and Non-bounce Visits (to understand people who give me a chance to do business with them).
But true glory will only come from going beyond the default segments.
Because default segments are created to appeal to everyone / the lowest common denominator, and we all know that there is no such thing as "everyone".
You are unique. The top three things your business is working on are unique. The multi-channel strategy you are executing is unique. Your investment in tools vs people in your company is unique (you are 90/10 instead of 10/90!). You are struggling with your own unique challenges.
You have to have a segmentation strategy that is unique to you. And if you don't then your employment with the company needs to be re-evaluated. (Sorry.)
So how do you go about identifying unique segments for your business or non-profit?
Ask a lot of questions. Tap into the tribal knowledge. Force your leaders (ok HiPPO's) to help you define Business Objectives, Goals and Targets. [Key elements of the Web Analytics Measurement Framework.]
Let me tell you that without the above there is no hope. The first two will tell you what is important and currently prioritized. The third will tell you where to focus you analytical horsepower (based on actuals vs targets).
If you have O, G & T then it is time to select the segments to focus on, the micro-groups of data you'll focus on.
The Segmentation Selector Framework.
My humble recommendation is that as a best practice you should pick at least a couple of segments in each of these three categories:
1. Acquisition. 2. Behavior. 3. Outcomes.
You'll choose to focus on the micro group that is of value to you, and just to you, in each category. You'll apply those segments to web analytics reports where you hope to find insights (and if you choose the right segments you will!).
Let us look at each category I am recommending.
Segment Category #1: Acquisition.

Acquisition refers to the activity you undertake to attract people (or robots!) to your website.

This would include campaigns you run, like pay per click marketing (PPC), email, affiliate deals, display / banner ads, facebook marketing campaigns.
Acquisition also includes search engine optimization (SEO), because it is an activity on which you spend time and money.
Ask yourself this question: "Where is my company currently spending most amount of time and money acquiring traffic?"
Bam! There's the most important segment you will focus on.
Why? If you do your analysis right you can lower cost (by identifying and eliminating the losers!) and you can increase revenue (by identifying and investing where things are going well).
See the process I followed there?

• Ask the question to identify what's important / high priority for the business.
• Create a segment (and then micro segments) for that one thing.
• Apply on the relevant reports to measure performance using key performance indicators.
• Take action. It will have an impact!

Don't just log into Site Catalyst or WebTrends and go on a fishing expedition, or treat every single thing with equal importance.

Paid search. A specific group of keywords. Television campaigns. Email campaigns to prospective customers in Florida, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Coupon affiliates. "Social media campaigns" (context). Billboard ads on side on highways. Business cards handed out at trade shows.
All of the above are examples of acquisition strategies.
When you look at your web analytics data look at All Visits AND at least one of the above.
Two acquisition segments is normal.
If you make it three then choose one acquisition strategy that your company is experimenting with.
Say you have 1/10th of one person doing some tweeting or facebooking, :), then add that one segment to your top two. This will allow your management to look at what they are focused on and also one thing that sounds cool but they have no idea if it is actually worth it.
(Short term focus) Win – Win (Long term focus)
How To Apply Segments / Analyze Data.
The reports you'll apply your acquisition segment to will depend on the Key Performance Indicators you have chosen. But a typical set of metrics you'll evaluate will hopefully represent a spectrum of success, like for example. . .

The effort will be to try and understand if for our acquisition segment (say all my brand keywords or for email campaigns to increase sales of the most expensive products). . . .

• How many visits did we get (to get context)
• Of those how many were new visits (if that is a focus)
• How many could we get to give us one pathetic click (bounce rate!)
• What was the cost of acquisition (if you can get total cost give yourself a gold star)
• What value could we extract at a per visit level
• How many people could we get to convert (replace total goal completions with conversion rate if you want)
• What was the total value added to our business or non-profit

As you look at your acquisition segments in context of all visits you can quickly see how you can start to find insights faster. Don't focus specifically on the metrics I have used above but rather the thought process behind their selection.
This is not the end of your journey but it is a darn good start!
[If you have Web Analytics 2.0 pop the CD at the back into your computer. In dashboard examples look for Stratigent_Sample_Dashboard.xls, via my friend Bill Bruno at Stratigent. It has an excellent example of segmented acquisition display, you can immediately steal it for your company!]
Segment Category #2: Behavior.

Behavior refers to the activity people are undertaking on your website.

When people show up, what is it that they are doing? Is there anything discernable / important in their behavior that is adding value to your online existence? Or, the flip side, what do we want people do to on our site, and is anyone exhibiting that behavior?
Even people who sometimes have segment their web analytics data often forget to segment by online behavior.
Many, but not all, behavior segments fall into these two buckets: People who see x pages. People who do y things.
Here are some specific examples (all of which you can create in Yahoo! Web Analytics or Google Analytics in a few seconds without having to pay anything extra for vars and slots or having to update your javascript tag or having to buy an add-on, you can also apply them to all your data including all your historical data).
Visits with more than three page views. . .

This can be so valuable on content only websites (more page views more impressions of irrelevant display ads!) or even on ecommerce websites (more pages views the deeper you sink your hook into the visitor, engagement baby!).
Where do these people come from? Do they buy a lot? A little? Do they write reviews? Did we acquire them or did they just show up? If they see so many pages what type of content are they interested in (politics? naked pictures? sports?)?
So on and so forth. Segmenting one behavior, understanding its value.
Similarly another could be focusing on people how add to cart and then abandon the site.
Or people who enter the site on the home page and their behavior. . .

Or all those who did not enter the site via the home page!
Or people who use the site's product comparison chart or car configurator or, my fav, internal site search. Vs. those that don't.
Or people whose Days to Purchase (/Transaction) are 5 vs for those for whom the Days to Purchase is 1. . .

Or, cuter, those whose last visit to our website was 100, or whatever, days ago. Why? And what do they want?
Or people who visited the site more than 9 times (!) during the current time period. . .

Where are these sweet delicious people coming from? (Note: To a blog updated only twice a month!) What do they read? What do they buy? What can we learn from them and do more of?
Those are the types of questions you'll answer from your behavioral segments.
The more you understand what people are doing on your site, the more likely it is that you'll stop the silliness on your site (kill content, redo navigation, make cross sells better, eliminate 80% of the ads, learn to live with 19 days to conversion, don't sell too hard, and so much more).
It is also likely (I want to say guaranteed) that you'll find the delta between what you want to have happen and what your customers want. You'll choose to make happier customers, who in turn, in the naughtiest way possible, will make you happy.
And it all stars with being able to identify and focus on the right behavior segments.
Pick at least two.
But I have to admit in this segment category I truly "play" with the data a lot because it is so hard to know what the right segments are, because visitor behavior is such a complicated thing (they are constantly trying to mess with us Analysts!).
It is only after experimentation (a lot) that I end up with something sweet.
Segment Category #3: Outcomes.

Outcomes are site activities that add value to you (business/non-profit).

I find that here the problem is less that the Analysis Ninjas don't segment, rather it is that they are incredibly unimaginative.
But first what is it?
Segments with outcomes are people or visits where you get a order (at an ecommerce website) or you get a lead (at Organizing for America).
Those two are obvious right?
Segment out people who delivered those two outcomes. Give them a warm hug and a kiss. Now go figure out what makes them unique when compared to everyone else who showed up at your website, all those other people who you worked so hard to impress but failed to.
Take the insights and do more of what works for this group.
Or segment out everyone whose order size is 50% more than the average order size. . .

These are your "whales", people who spend a lot of money with you. Don't you want to get to know them a lot better? : )
But there is more.
Remember macro AND micro conversions!
No one is going to sleep with you on the first date. (Ok maybe a few will!)
So focus on micro conversions that lead up to a macro conversion… like people playing a product video (or on content site watching five videos!). . .

Or adding a product to their Wish List.
Or signing up to show up for a protest for your ultra liberal policies!
Or apply for a trial, or download a trial product.
You can also focus on micro conversions that all by themselves are of value to you, even if not as much as the macro conversion.
For example submitting a job application.
Or signing up for a RSS feed.
Or clicking on a link to go to a different site you want them to go to (like clicking on the amazon link to go buy my book – great outcome :)).
Of course if you are really really good you'll also segment my absolute favorite metric in the whole wide world: Task Completion Rate. It is the ultimate measure of outcome (from your customer's perspective).
Net, net. . . it is absolutely critical that you segment your data by the key outcomes important to your business. Not just because your site exists to add economic value, but also because I cannot think of another way you can earn the love of your boss or get promoted.
By understanding what it is about people who deliver outcomes you can understand what to do with all those that don't convert.
Outcomes. Outcomes. Outcomes!
Pick at least two.
If you pick three or four that is ok.
If you pick nine it might be a signal you don't know what you are doing (and you want to corner your boss in a non-HR-violation manner and ask her to help you focus on the most important).
In Summary.
Segment or die.
It is as simple as that.
The next time you start to do true analysis of your data I hope you have your minimum six segments in hand (two for each category). If you do you'll find that web analytics, this world full of web metrics and what not, suddenly becomes a lot more interesting (and you no longer feel like jumping out of your office window in frustration!).
Love, money and glory await you.
Not to mention how proud I'll be of you when I see your analysis. ; )
Ok now your turn.
Are you a segmentation God? What are some of your favorite segments? Have you used this three category framework in the past to find segments? Do you think they'll work in real life? In the context of segments what do you think is missing from this blog post? What did I overlook / not stress enough?
What's your excuse for not leveraging segmentation? (Best answer to this question win's a copy of Web Analytics 2.0!)
Please share your thoughts / wisdom / critique / guidance.
Thanks.
PS:
Couple other related posts you might find interesting:

• Excellent Analytics Tip#2: Segment Absolutely Everything
• Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja!
• Excellent Analytics Tip#4: Make Your Analysis/Reports "Connectable"
• "Dear Avinash": Be Awesome At Comparing KPI Trends Over Time
• 10 Fundamental Web Analytics Truths: Embrace 'Em & Win Big

Like this post? Share it: