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eMetrics: Beyond Reporting: Using Excel and other everyday tools to explore data by Chris Gemignani, Juice Analytics

By Alex Cohen

Chris Gemignani of Juice Analytics wrapped up my tour of eMetrics with some great, in the dirt tactics to "juice" your use of Excel in web analysis.  Chris focused his presentation on ways to maximize each aspect of the analytics triangle - reporting, exploration and presentation. 

Can You Repeat (Function) That?
If you're a fan of the "over/under" charts in Google Analytics, you can mimic the visualization with the Repeat function.  The syntax goes like this, REPT(characters, # of times), e.g. REPT(“x”,5) -> “XXXXX”

• To make bars = REPT(“|”, F3/10)
• Bar and text, REPT(“|”,5)&TEXT

eMetrics: Web Analytics 2.0 with Eric Peterson

By Alex Cohen

Anyone in the analytics community knows Eric Peterson.  He's an author, blogger, consultant and general advocate for the community as a whole.  Having recently struck out as a consultant, Eric is now vendor relationship free and spreading the gospel about web analytics process and, at this particular session of eMetrics, Web Analytics 2.0. 

There was a time when the complications of an analyst were centered around more finite challenges like cookie deletion.  But in a world of user generated content, an entire web experience inside one "page view", automated agents executing JavaScript, content distribution through XML and RSS feeds, and non traditional browsers like iPhone and Blackberry, you can see how the analyst's life has become a bit more complex.  Eric notes that the markers of web analytics 2.0 are quantitative & qualitative, it captures multiple browsing sessions, measures content distribution, complex event tracking, data from multiple sources, focused on data analysis & optimization, and visitors are persistent as individual indefinitely.  This isn't simple page or logfile analysis, it's a "website optimization ecosystem".

eMetrics: Do You See What I Hear? How The Voice Of The Customer Impacts Customer Experience At Dell by Annette Priest

By Alex Cohen

Wednesday's keynote address by Annette Priest of Dell reinforced the theme that traditional web analytics data (clickstream) is a only one tool in a suite of approaches that you should be using to listen to your customers.  You have to "move from data to empathy" if you want to optimize your site and your bottom line.

Design and content impact prospects and customers at every stage of the customer journey: learning, buying and using your product.  Consider the typical browsing experience: customers poke around for information when interested in a topic and often rely on the sources of information they know and trust, such as ratings and reviews.  As a brand, conversations are occurring all about you.  First, you have to be aware of those conversations.  Second, you have to participate in them.  Dell launched their own blog, but it was largely pushing content instead of having a conversation.  Realizing their error, they relaunched it as IdeaStorm - a place for users to voice their ideas.  The response was immediate, including an overwhelming number of requests for Dell systems with Linux.  The result?  Dell used this feedback to develop new products.

eMetric: Testing At Non-Profits and Search In The Media Mix

By Alex Cohen

Testing in Non-Profits
For profit, business-to-consumer retailers are often the focus for web analytics discussions, but the same best practices and tools can extend to the non-profit world as well.  Sue Citro of The Nature Conservancy (TNC.org) walked us through a couple simple ways this ecologically focused non-profit used analysis to help protect the Earth.

Make Your Email Smarter
TNC sends out regular enewsletters that highlight a variety of content.  Each link in the newsletter is about a different topic, but not each link has a unique landing page.  Using their email software Convio, TNC created simple if/then statements that reordered the content of the landing page to more prominently feature content based on the link clicked. 

Let Users Pick Your Words, Not Execs
TNC promotes coral reef conservation with a "Rescue The Reef" program.  Alliteration is fine and good, but people weren't associating the program with its point of preservation.  After tweaking the landing page to include an image of coral and littering the page with the word "coral", revenue increased 395%.

Online Testing Can Influence Offline Choices
Multivariate testing tells you not only what 'recipe' of variations produced the most optimal results (sales, memberships, etc.), but also which factors boosted or hindered outcomes the most.  These data can help you guide creative and messaging choices beyond the site and into areas like direct mail and telesales.

eMetrics: Search Marketing Round Table with Mike Grehan, Avinash Kaushik, Chris Boggs, and Manoj Jasra

By Alex Cohen

A last minute shift in the eMetrics schedule brought a panel of industry experts together to tackle the audience's burning questions about search marketing.  Mike Grehan, Avinash Kaushik, Chris Boggs and Manoj Jasra were holding court on a variety of topics. 

First up, universal search.  Avinash laid down the law for those waffling on their commitment to SEO and multiple forms of media, “If you can’t have a well thought out universal search strategy, you should, or you’re going to get screwed."  Enquiro, Manoj's employer, commissioned some eyetracking studies on universal search and they discovered look at the video and then across.  End users of universal search won't necessarily scan many of the ads or scroll down.  Chris Boggs highlighted that the majority of the universal search blended results is branded content that is well tagged and well linked.  Practicing now in the branded space is a great way to prepare for unbranded content universal search.  By the way of how-to tips, the panel recommended optimizing content with tags, anchor text supporting your keywords, hosting your content on a page with relevant content, and uploading it into Google Base, YouTube, Google Video.

How do you pick a good paid search agency?  Avinash took a novel, testing based approach during his tenure at Intuit.  First, he invited a longer list of potential vendors out to present a 2 hour presentation in response to a series of standard questions (the final of which was, "What's the biggest difference between you and your competitors?)  Avinash admitted that, "It was nearly impossible to figure out from the marketing pitch who was the best."  Instead of taking a guess, Intuit carved out 3 business segments and 3 finalists and give them each 6 months to see how well they did.  The winner got all the business.  In addition to testing, Chris Boggs recommended that clients conduct quick due diligence by searching about the company + complaint or + award or reviewing forums.  One thing to consider is that no mentions could be a sign of rebranding due to bad reputation, though that requires a bit more research.  Mike Grehan reminded us that it's all about the customers and advised client's to check the vendors renewal levels.

When it comes to paid search landing pages, the basics still rule.  Provide the calls to action you promised in the ad and keyword (Avi).  Testing your landing pages and consider elements like removal of navigation, how many clicks it takes to get to additional information, length and depth of required information, etc (Chris).  Chris Boggs offered up the idea of using vanity url or domain and block it from spiders, so you can repurpose other content from your site without worrying about duplicate content issues that might damage your SEO. 

For Search Marketing Gurus, Alex Cohen of Digital Alex

eMetrics - Jim Novo Presents on Actionable Testing Even a Manager Could Love

By Mike Churchill

I spent the afternoon attending the Behavioral Targeting and Testing track, where Jim Novo of Drilling Down delivered an excellent presentation on “Actionable testing and reporting even a manager could love.”  Jim’s proposal is to develop your reporting efforts such that you are reporting on people – not campaigns. Many times, there are multiple factors influencing the customer’s behavior on site, and the only way to properly account for those other factors is through the use of a control group.

For example, suppose you are running an email campaign to your existing customer base, and during the course of the campaign, the company is also running a PPC campaign, a Superbowl ad, and during this same time a major news event related to the company breaks.  When reporting on the effectiveness of the email ads, how would you account for those other (possibly significant) factors?

eMetrics: Blog Promotion and Measuring its Success by Manoj Jasra

By Alex Cohen

It's no surprise that web analytics bloggers have taken to blogging like, well, search marketers.  Manoj Jasra, himself a blogger and search marketer, took a step off the hard core analytics track to talk about his own personal trials and tribulation with blogging, promotion and measurement of his site and laid out some key considerations:

1. Differentiation Does Wonders - In an ocean of noise, which voice stands out?  There are any number of tactics to distinguish yourself: content frequency, post depth, perspective, writing style, template design, topic choice or even regular features like podcasts or video.
2. Relationships Rule The Day - The virtual and real-life relationships you initiate and foster hold great sway over your ability to continually build a base of subscribers.  For the blogger, you can leverage these relationships for awareness, networking opportunities, and even a perception of authority.  This depends, of course, on the quality of what you have to say.
3. Measure Once, Blog Twice - The ultimate measure of your blogs success is whether or not you achieved your stated objectives, be that an invitation to speak, write or even just lots of readers.  When it comes to metrics, consider things like subscribers (including clickthroughs from your feed), comments, downloads of key content, links in, buzz and media mentions.   

Not every tactic is going to work for every blogger or every vertical.  You'll have to experiment with different approaches and see what sticks for you.  For his part, Manoj has had luck with a few things:

• Turning hot posts into a series
• Assembling valued information into a PDF for download
• Reaching out to sites like Web Pro News to get syndicated (after establishing himself)
• Testing, of course

For Search Marketing Gurus, Alex Cohen of Digital Alex

eMetrics: Rethink SEM/PPC Analysis by Avinash Kaushik

By Alex Cohen

In a standing room only session, Google's Analytics Evangelist, web analytics blogger and author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day Avinash Kaushik challenged the attendees to rethink SEM and PPC analysis.  In his classic energetic, no-nonsense style, Avinash reiterated the conferences theme to "think different" and pushed analysts and paid search marketers in the room to think more like marketers.

The common thread throughout Avinash's presentation is to let the data and your customers rule the day.  An efficient and customer centric PPC management strategy has no place for ego bidding or whim based decision making; it's all about the data and testing.  To that end, Avinash recommended some key tips to remember when you're poring over the numbers:

1. "I came, I puked, I left" - That's Avinash's colloquial definition of bounce rate, and it's probably kind for a lot of marketers.  Are your PPC visitors bouncing?  Scrutinize your bounce rate at the keyword and ad group level.  I would also add that you need to review how your use of match type, negatives and creative can be furthering or hindering your attempts to qualify and convert visitors.
2. Are you ego bidding? - Sure, your brand terms produce a great return.  Are you so sure you are generating incremental revenue with those terms?  You could very well be eating away at organic traffic.  Consider running periods where you pause the results to see the effects.  If you are using brand words in your PPC, remember that you control the whole experience, so think about the ways you can maximize your landing page.
3. Not Testing is Not an Option - “If you’re not leveraging testing and experimentation for your paid search campaigns, you will not be successful ... Your customers will tell you how to relate to them.”  Whether you chose Google Website Optimizer, Sitespect or one of the many other multivariate testing vendors, you must leverage testing both before and after the click.

I'm only touching on a portion of Avinash's advice.  For direct access to his presentation and words of wisdom, check out his new business MarketMotive - Internet Marketing Knowledge on Tap.

For Search Marketing Gurus, Alex Cohen of Digital Alex

Disclosure: Avinash is on the Advisory Board of my employer Commerce360.

eMetrics - Rachel Scotto of Sony Pictures Provides Tuesday Keynote at eMetrics Summit

By Mike Churchill

How do you measure web site success when you have literally thousands of domains, your products are spread across five different media outlets, you don’t sell anything on the site, and the lifecycle of a site may vary from years to as little as several months?  These are some of the challenges that face Rachel Scotto of Sony Pictures Entertainment – Tuesday’s eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Keynote speaker.

Sony Pictures is one aspect of the Sony brand, and in itself is divided into five verticals covering the movie, home entertainment (DVDs), and television.  The site’s focus is primarily promotional , not e-commerce, has no external ads, and has only limited selling opportunities (primarily links to Amazon and Fandango).

The challenges that they face concern integrating Web Analytics, Primary Research, and Secondary Research to get a picture of the many sites’ performance.  Each of these in turn present their own challenges.

Web Analytics
The volume of web sites being actively monitors require them to take a divide and conquer approach, segmenting their work week to provide reports on different verticals on different days of the week (e,g, Monday for movie sites, Wednesday for TV sites, etc.).

There are concerns over switching measurement tools.  Sometimes this is due to changes in management, changes in corporate direction, or is sometimes directed by the overall Sony corporate infrastructure (Sony recently penned a deal with Omniture to roll out their products across ALL of the Sony properties – not just the US sites).  Over the years , switching measurement tools has caused problems due to:

• Labor to implement/customize tracking codes
• Changes in labor force makes (re-)training an issue
• Legacy date/historical benchmarking
  • In one test, she saw 10% delta between tools on one site, larger ("significant") differences on another
  • This makes it hard to gauge year over year performance

She developed a 20 page tracking code style guide that covers the what, the how, and the why of implementing the tracking codes on the site.  This document is provider to the designers and site implementers to insure a complete rollout.  Rachel emphasized that regardless of which tool is selected, the implementation and customization is so important to a successful implementation.

Primary Research
Sony Pictures utilizes a wide variety of primary research tools including:

• Surveys (primarily online surveys)
• Usability testing
  • great when launching new sites
• Focus groups
• Foresee Results (currently working on a study for wheeloffortune.com)

Secondary Research
Secondary research is a challenge for the company because of the limited availability of such information for the entertainment business.  Sony Pictures utilized a variety of sources, including Jupiter Research, Forrester, and eMarketer, as well as 3rd party web audience tools like HitWise and Comscore.  In addition, she is also able to glean some information from research services to which they do not subscribe by researching white papers and press releases released by such organizations as In-Stat and Leightman Research.

To make this information available within the organization, they segregated the reports (saved as :PDFs) into 20 or so category folders.  These files are available for download, and periodic emails are sent out about new additions.  Users can also subscribe to specific topics and receive the PDFs automatically when available.

Web Tracking on SonyPictures.com

Sony Pictures web tracking ability evolved over time, going through three distinct phases:

Phase 1 – basic tracking of html/php page views

Phase 2 – tracking of Flash content, message board use, podcasts.  They also began working with promotional partners to track cross-site behavior

Phase 3 – They implemented a billboard with 5 rotating pieces of content.  In addition, they began tracking what type of link (e.g. thumbnail or linking text) on portal pages

Their current approach to movie sites is to provide an HTML home page with several click options which in turn lead to an immersive, all Flash site.  During phase one, this home page was as far as they could track.  Now, they can track into the Flash site, and also track video viewing behavior.

Sony Pictures have some unique web metrics issues, due to the nature of their site.  Some of the specialized lectures that they track include tracking traffic by division, computing the ratio of home(splash) page to entry/use of the immersive site, video tracking (start, middle, and end of video), and on-site game plays.  They also have some special (although not unique) issues regarding tracking page-name standardization (especially with respect to the inclusion of the word “the”), spikes in traffic slamming their servers (this was especially true of the Spiderman3 launch), and balancing the desire for vanity URLs with a standardized directory structure.

Email and CRM introduce their own set of metrics, including:

• Emails sent and delivered
• Open rates
• Email click-thrus
• Total subscribers vs active subscribers for newsletters (active being defined as a no-bounce email with open/read activity within the last six months)
• Unsubscribe rate
• Email delivery bounce rate

All in all it was an interesting insight into the handling of a large multi-site confederation.

For Search Marketing Gurus, Mike Churchill of KeyRelevance Search Engine Marketing

eMetrics: What's new with Google Analytics? by Brett Crosby

By Alex Cohen

BREAKING NEWS.  eMetrics has a tendency to bring out new and exciting news in the industry.  Last year in DC, Google announced their free multivariate testing tool Google Website Optimizer.  This year was no exception. I made a few predictions about Google Analytics.  What's new with Google Analytics?  Here's the live scoop from eMetrics DC!  It's a beta, so you need to sign up (open to all eMetrics attendees, probably going to be announced to others shortly).

• Internal Site Search - How are people using your search feature?  How do you leverage that to understand, qualitatively, what your visitors want to find?  Remember when I asked Jeff Gillis about this?  Yeah, Google Analytics has 7 new reports, including query refinements.  It answers questions like, "Who searched and where?"  "Where do they search?"  Any search that uses a query parameter can hook into this.  It includes all metrics including ecommerce and content consumption.
• Event Tracking: Web 2.0 Rich Internet Apps - Flash?  Web 2.0?  They can be a web analytics nightmare.  You can now use GA to track user interactions with RIAs, AJAX, Flash, AIR, Silverlight, etc.  You can get sub-page level web analytics without force a page view (on-click event). 
  
  GA uses a new event hierarchy: object, action, label.  Ex: YouTube player is an object, controls like play and pause are actions, label is whatever you want to call it, the content of what you're looking at.  New code will be released to address RIA tracking.  There will be a whole section of reporting interface with all of the details you laid out, just like traffic sources and other sections.
• Tagless Outbound Link Tracking - You used to have to tag outbound links manually or with code.  Now Google Analytics will track it automatically for you.  Again, it will be swept into the reporting interface.
• ga.js - GA is offering a new code ga.js to replace urchin.js.  You need to adjust your tags to use the aforementioned new features.
  
  • It's also a faster, smaller source file
  • Auto-detection of server protocol (http or https)
• Urchin Software from Google - Google is finally releasing a new beta version of the Urchin Software they purchased.  It's software, which isn't available with GA.  The cost?  $2995, but free if you bought advanced support. 

This definitely raises the bar for web analytics vendors, though in more subtle ways. 

For Search Marketing Gurus, Alex Cohen from Digital Alex