Analytics 2.0

Much more than just tagging

Campaign comparison Google Analytics vs. Yahoo! Web Analytics

Which is the best Web Analytics solution? That’s one of the most frequently asked questions in this industry. Unfortunately things in the world are not that easy, because if there is one “best” solution why would people buy another one? If there is one “best” solution why competitors don’t just work on the same line of development?

Most of the current solutions are the best…for a particular need. So the first thing to define it is what is your need.

Let’s see a very simple example comparing Google Analytics vs Yahoo! Web Analytics (or Y!WA) :

1. Campaigns with Google Analytics: Google Analytics has it’s own query parameter structure for campaigns. Which means that you have to use one utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content and/or utm_name for any of your campaigns. The good thing is that you don’t have to do anything else to do it. I mean, you don’t need to configure anything on the tool, just add those query parameters with the specific values on the url you are advertising and that’s it. You can even use the Google Analytics URL Builder which concatenate all the values you provide on each field generating the campaign url in a very simple way.

URL builder tool

So, if you have an standard campaign structure Google Analytics is a great solution, simple, faster and very effective.

2. On the other hand Yahoo! Web Analytics or Y!WA count with a more flexible solution that allows you to track campaigns based on different conditionals and variables that allows you to track almost everything. More work but more flexibility and more in depth analysis.

First you can select type of campaign, free campaign, one time cost, cpc or cpa.

 

Secondly you can fill the standard query parameters or even change them by others you are already using on campaigns (ie, adserver)

Finally you can select the required conditions for that campaign like “Url parameters equal”, “Url parameter contains”, etc…

So, none is the best. The best one is based on each client requirement… or just enjoy both! ;-)

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Is the Social Media Monitoring tools industry getting mature?

One of the indicators that shows that a particular vendor industry is getting mature is when the quantity of new solutions decreasing. This situation happens when the extraordinary benefits decreased at the point where the new players get troubles to earn money.

A month ago or so I received an email IDEYA (A Business and Marketing consultancy firm) with a report calle “Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services”.
The report is paid but they share some interesting in the Excerpts pdf or the report presentation.

Two interesting points:
1. The quantity of new solutions launched per year (by introduction date) is decreased in 2010 for the first time in 10 years (except for 2006). Actually in 2009, the year of the global financial and economic crisis, five new solutions where launched.

Social Media Analytics per year

2. The quantity of Paid Social Media Analytics solutions is four times higher than the free ones. This is probably because of the R&D constant investment required makes difficult the scenario for companies that don’t earn money with their solutions.

 

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Report your +1 in Google Analytics and Webmasters tools

Well, it is great to find out that at least some players in the industry are taken seriously the importance of information integration, the importance of having all the pieces of the puzzle available when creating the decision making scenario. A way to revert the situation displayed in “Top Performance Metrics“.

Last week Google released the +1 button, kind of a “Like” but for the Google+ Project. The best part of this released is that Google thought about integration from the beginning and you can measure the +1 button from Google Webmasters tools and Google Analytics understanding how +1 affect your traffic and traffic behavior.

Regarding Google Webmasters tools:

  • The Search Impact report gives you an idea of how +1‘s affect your organic search traffic. You can find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out. Do this by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations. We’ll only show statistics on clickthrough rate changes when you have enough impressions for a meaningful comparison.
  • The Activity report shows you how many times your pages have been +1’d, from buttons both on your site and on other pages (such as Google search).
  • Finally, the Audience report shows you aggregate geographic and demographic information about the Google users who’ve +1’d your pages. To protect privacy, we’ll only show audience information when a significant number of users have +1’d pages from your site.

Regarding Google Analytics, the good news is that is you configure the Javascript for Analytics, it reports not just the +1 but also other buttons allowing you comparing the different sharing actions by using Social Plugin Tracking in Google Analytics.
  • The Social Engagement report lets you see how site behavior changes for visits that include clicks on +1 buttons or other social actions. This allows you to determine, for example, whether people who +1 your pages during a visit are likely to spend more time on your site than people who don’t.
  • The Social Actions report lets you track the number of social actions (+1 clicks, Tweets, etc) taken on your site, all in one place.
  • The Social Pages report allows you to compare the pages on your site to see which are driving the highest the number of social actions.
Here I leave you a link to enable tracking for other social plugins in just a few simple steps.

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The top performance metrics that matter most

Today eMarketer publish a note with an study about the metrics that matter most. The result in the following chart:

So, Clickthrouhgs, Traffic to website, Lead Generation/User opt-in, Pageviews (then what’s traffic?), Incremental Sales, ROI, Customer Retention/reactivation, Offer response rates, Requests for more information and Brand Lift or awareness are the metrics that most matters…now I understands a lot!

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A&N Media makes first Latin American investment in Endeavor firm Socialmetrix

I’m glad to announce that the British Public Firm A&N Media had acquired a Minority stake in the business of Socialmetrix, company built by this amazing people and I.

The investment will directly finance the company’s international expansion, as well as an innovative and aggressive plan in product development.

All the Socialmetrix Team and I wanted to thanks Vivian Baring (Chairman of AN International Media), Gabriela Ruggeri and the rest of A&N Media’s team for trusting in our project and in us in particular for this investment.

For more information go to Endeavor Global site or to the Socialmetrix Blog.

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Behavior vs Demographic clusters

 

Behavior vs Demographic segmentation is and was a hot topic since the first websites came along. Since I remember companies use to segment their markets related with Demographic criterions, which means dividing markets into groups based on age, gender, income, occupation, religion, race, etc. This criterions divided into Hard, Medium and Soft. The Hard ones are those that normally never change like the birthdate or gender. Medium are those that can chance from time to time like single, married or divorced. Finally, the soft ones are those that can change any time.
As you can image most of the variables are soft. Actually, inside the soft variables you find the those related with “moments” in people’s life which are the most useful for conversion matters.
Based on the Meta Analytics model, systems (companies) as well as people are living systems in constant change. That is why most of the variables that we can use for clustering are in constant change which means that unless you can connect with people’s brain you won’t have the chance to get all that information for its analysis.

Behavior segments are those generated based on what the people do. People is constantly doing things and a big part of them (if in Internet) can be measure.
So, let’s think about a well known situation. Your company has a newsletter and you wanted to use your newsletter with two objectives, increase loyalty and get incomes. If you use a Web Analytics platform that allows you measure based on each user and it’s userid (like Yahoo Web Analytics just for mention a non paid solution). You can use the platform API, connect it to the email marketing solution, query the Web Analytics Database to get users that yesterday where navigating a particular product, or in case of a content site, a particular content and then send the newsletter. This process can be automatic which means that people will be receiving a newsletter with information that is relevant to them, because just a day or two before they where navigating those contents. What do you think? The results are incredible high lifts in all the performance and loyalty metrics.

The other interesting point about Behavioral segmentation is that allows you to identify the relation between variables (Anova*) in “real time” so you can achieve your objectives in a more effective way even if you have no idea of your user gender, age or country.
Finally I’m not saying “Just use Behavioral” what I’m saying is do not stock on your actions just for not having a demographic information. If you have it, just use it as another variable of analysis and try to identify if there is any relation between a demographic variable and the expected result or conversion.

* The Anova model (Analysis of Variance) is a collection of statistical models, and their associated procedures, in which the observed variance in a particular variable is partitioned into components attributable to different sources of variation (Wikipedia)

There are three classes of ANOVA models:

  1. Fixed-effects models assume that the data came from normal populations which may differ only in their means. (Model 1)
  2. Random effects models assume that the data describe a hierarchy of different populations whose differences are constrained by the hierarchy. (Model 2)
  3. Mixed-effect models describe the situations where both fixed and random effects are present. (Model 3)

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Objective oriented Scorecard

Scorecards are a semi-standard structured report, supported by proven design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions (by Wikipedia), and looks like this:

 

What’s the problem with that kind of Scorecard? Even when the image is small the issue on it jumps from the screen…well, the problem is that there is no relation between the company strategy and the carried on activities (I mean each one of the measured metrics).

Let me show you my recommendation.

In the above Scorecard you can see that there is a relation between each metric that measures the operations performance and the company’s main Objective. In each measure level we can see how much money does each activity brings to the whole company and even find the main restriction in your System (Company), so you can point your budget to solve that particular issue (restriction) that will allow that more money flows through your system (company).

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Web Analytics, Digital Analytics, Online Analytics…why don’t we keep it simple?

Today’s WebAnalytics industry is discussing about how relevant is today the use of the term “Web Analytics”. So the general idea is finding a term that better defines our activity so, some ideas are Online Analytics, Digital Analytics, etc.

Analytics instead of Web Analytics

But before trying to find a new term why don’t we define the root term, “Analytics”. If you go to Wikipedia you will find this definition “Analytics is the application of computer technology, operational research, and statistics to solve problems in business and industry“. It’s looks pretty much like what I do in my daily work so why should we add any other word?

If you pay attention I never (in some particular cases) used the word Web Analytics, but Analytics instead. This is because I never understood why we (The “Web” Analytics industry) are trying to make complex what it is simple? Don’t misinterprets me, I’m not saying that the idea is stupid, it is just that I don’t understand it. Just that.

Most of my colleges from the Web Analytics Association are not just Google Analytics, Omniture or NedStats users. They are working with information to solve business problems.

At the end of the day, we are all talking about integration but then when an channel at the operations level changes need to change the name of what we do?. I think we are living fantastic moments, technology is finally allowing us integrating all our business information generating more realistic decision making scenarios. Are we gonna return to the beginning?

Again…Websites, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, TV, Radio, etc, are not Different Strategic Marketing options, are just channels in which we can execute ourStrategy or we cal also say, in which we can operate our strategic decisions. Should we start negotiating the AA.com domain with American Airlines…mmmhhh ok, we better start soon…it’s not gonna be easy :-)

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