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Develop your analytics skills ! 2014 and beyond challenges…

Develop your analytics skills ! 2014 and beyond challenges…

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Happy New Year everyone!

I wish you all the best for 2014, may all your dreams come true ! Days were slipping before the end of this month and the end of the new year wishing window although where I live today I do have an extension as Chinese New Year is coming pretty soon ; so this note will be short but still, I can’t start this year without this.

Who says New Year says New challenges and New opportunities, at least that’s what I want to hear. Last year, I had my Analytics roadmap for 2013 with 6 items :segmentation with personae, cross-platform analytics, analysis exchange, attribution modelling, site search and Tim’s Ash book to finish) , well as you can expect I didn’t cross all 6 items but some of them. I had the chance to participate to one project with Analysis Exchange for WWF Vietnam ; I read Tim’s Ash book about Landing page optimization, even though I still owe you a second post about the 2nd part and work on some pretty exciting analytics projects about campaign performance, site optimization, reporting enhancement among others subjects.

This year I’ll keep the same spirit : develop my analytical skills is my one and only focus and have fun doing it.
data-life
So 2014, here we are ! Where to start: 3 things that I am already excited about :

1. Kick starting today a new Analysis Exchange project

I am very happy to mentor this new project, hopefully I’ll share more with you in a few weeks.
Few words about Analysis Exchange :

2. Acquiring a new skill : “The Power to Predict”

I know this another 2014 buzzword word as many others, but I had the chance to participate to a “Data Analysis” course last year online via Coursera and touch-based a little bit about statistics, predictive modelling, R programming: how to organize a data analysis, the structure of files in a data analysis, how to get data, and the basics of how to clean data… This arouse my curiosity hence my challenge will be to firstly understand the basics of Data Analysis with a tool as R then using R to predict.

3. Working in Asia.

The last release of APAC DIGITAL MARKETING PERFORMANCE DASHBOARD – which look into the advancement of digital marketing across the Asia Pacific region – stated that 41% of the world’s Internet population resides in Asia, 78% of Asia Internet population in under 45, 69% of APAC marketers are measuring and testing digital campaigns and more importantly:

“In India, 28 percent of marketers rate their ability to measure the value and return on
digital marketing as excellent or very good, and Australia and Singapore also rank highly at 21% each. However, in comparison, Korea (3 percent), China (7 percent), Hong Kong (9 percent) and the rest of APAC (12 percent) are not yet as confident in their ability to demonstrate return on investment”

That is in my opinion a mine of gold from a learning, knowledge-sharing and skill improvement point of view. How exciting !

Hopefully, I’ll have new challenges and opportunities coming on the way ! You never know.

What about you ? What are your analytics challenges coming ahead? How would you develop your skills?

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Why is data scientist the next sexiest job ?

Why is data scientist the next sexiest job ?

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You may have heard this statement over & over. “Data Scientist : the sexiest job in 21st century”

Honestly, to most people this doesn’t make any sense ; but when you start thinking about it and put your marketer/analyst/geek hat it’s starting to make sense.
Quite recently, one of my client told me

“I can’t believe I am saying this but yeah I am very excited at the sight of getting this report”

 

, hearing is this is sooo rewarding. Yes that’s true Data are exciting ! And I’m glad that from time to time, despite the data austerity first impression, I am able to communicate this to client, colleagues, friends…

Why is Data Scientist job sexy? From my point of view when I work at pulling data, cleaning them, finding the gem, organizing them, making sense of them, presenting them and finally turning them into action plan I feel like I am MacGyver & Sherlock Holmes & Lara Croft: ALL IN ONE !

  1. MacGyver because I am starting from a mess and tons of raw data and have to find a way to create a bomb with it.
  2. Sherlock Holmes because I am conducting a very serious investigation and need to rely on strong logical reasoning to avoid making false assumptions and solve the issue.
  3. Lara Croft because I’ll search and not give up until I find the gem and needless to say she is sexy…!
You got it, huh?

More seriously, I am not per say a Data Scientist as my background is mostly Digital Marketing related and I don’t have Mathematical or Science PHD or whatever but I always was keen to love math and solving riddles and today in brief my daily job is to ‘find the right data to capture, report & analyze it to allow better business making decision‘ hence in my ongoing research to improve those ‘data mining, data scientist, Business intelligence, data visualization…’ skills and find new tools to play with data, I came across those 3 books which I’ll advise for those who either are just curious about this job or wants to learn about the skills or start seriously digging into data.

  • Curious ?
    Read this one: “What is Data Science”In this very small book, you will learn about the general concept of data science with a nice orientation on ‘what for?’. In other word, why would any company need to use data science skills ? To create products. By products the author means real products or services for a client, e.g. Linkedin or Amazon recommendations feature. The author goes through the data science definition and scope, the data lifecycle 1. Data conditionning & cleansing or how to get to the point where the data you have are somewhat usable
    2. Data visualization or how to make your data tell a story and data scientist skills.
  • Want to know more about the job?
    Read this one: “The little book of Data Science”This book though concise will go more deeply into the concept of Data Science: concept, rationale, tools, applications & skillset. Starting with defining Big Data which is kind of a concept inherent to the data science, as in today applications the data captured are numerous, various & in movement, the author continues with the tools such as Hadoop the main programming platform used in this context: a Java-based programming framework that process data used by Google, Yahoo, EBay, Linkedin… The book goes on with more details about the data lifecycle as well: data cleansing, structuring, modeling, prediction, visualization, correlation…
  • Serious about digging into data?
    Read this one: “R in a Nutshell”This book is “a quick and practical guide to just about everything you can do with the open source R language and software environment. You’ll learn how to write R functions and use R packages to help you prepare, visualize, and analyze data. Author Joseph Adler illustrates each process with a wealth of examples from medicine, business, and sports.”
    This book is going to be my bedside book for the few weeks coming and in preparation for my Data Analysis course this winter… Looking forward sharing this experience with you !

Well, I certainly hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I did !

Also, for those who really don’t like to read ; here is an interesting video from Edel Lynch who is working in one of Accenture Analytics Innovation Center – her background is much more scientist but at the end the skills she described as essential to a data scientist / analytics role are: math, solving problem abilities, communication & business acumen. Watch by yourself, from 0:40 to 1:56 she is focused on the power of Analytics ; from 4:41 to 5:43 she is focused on skills & talents required for a career in analytics

I don’t really know if it make sense to say that this set of skills or this job is the sexiest to be, even though I quite understand the thrill of it and the demand for it. Anyhow, the possibilities are endless and from my point of view I can’t see a best career path.

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Analysis Exchange, a great initiative for Analytics passionate and non-profit in need!

Analysis Exchange, a great initiative for Analytics passionate and non-profit in need!

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If you are passionate by Web Analytics and willing to give some of your time for a good reason, please continue reading and hopefully I’ll convince you to sign up as well !
I took the great and challenging opportunity to sign-up as a Mentor for the Analysis Exchange and participated to one project so far for WWF Vietnam.
What is the Analysis Exchange?

I signed up in July 2012 and finally participated to my first project recently. The project was with WWF Vietnam website that we helped to ensure that their analytics platform – Google Analytics – was properly set up and we tried to guide them into taking the most of it.
As a mentor, I tried to give guidance to Trish – the student – who was very involved and willing to provide the best to WWF Vietnam. On the first meeting with WWF Vietnam, we* came up with a simple project plan to define WWF Vietnam objectives in this project, our objectives as analytics consultant and deliverables they could expect from this project.
*By we, I mean Trish and myself knowing that Trish did all the hard work, I was here for her when needed and to give her advice and guidance in the way to approach this project and some documentation as well.

For privacy purpose, I will not go into too much details about WWF Vietnam expectations, however the project objectives were the following:

    • Ensure appropriate configuration of current Google Analytics tracking tools
      Identify key traffic metrics to be gathered, analyzed now, and monitored in the future
      Provide insight into Analytics data for WWF-V team moving forward

    • 3 main deliverables came out of this: we started with a 1) technical audit to understand their Google Analytics configuration and take this chance to help them configure some customized variables to get a better grasp on their users’ engagement against their content.
    We then configured for them 2) a dashboard displaying the key metrics and following a straightforward “visitor journey” structure and answering to their main business question.
    For instance:

    Lastly, we configured for them 3) two custom reports, one focused on the traffic sources performance and the 2nd one focus on their article performance.

    About the experience in itself, here is what I would bare in mind for the next ones:
    Pitfall : Timing and Scope
    Before participating to this project, I read another article where the writer, speaking of his past experience in the Analysis Exchange, encountered the same issue for his project. Even though the project is supposed to last around 3 weeks and even though I was aware of this possible issue, we end up spending around 2 months on the project.
    Why? It would be a fair guess to say that the issue was coming from a too large/vague scope which I should have notice and reduce from the beginning. However, at the end our project didn’t fail, we just spent more time than expected at the beginning.

    Tips for success: Communication
    – Good relationship with the student and the organization
    – Allow regular time to discuss with the student
    – Review and agree on the scope with the organization to make sure that the work scope stay reasonable
    All those items turn around Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!
    If there is one thing, I’ll do differently for sure next time, it will be to make sure that the organization stay in the loop all along the way and engage them even though they are not very active.

    Aside from being pretty happy to have one of my action item from my 2013 Analytics roadmap achieved, it was a really interesting and rewarding experience that I look forward to renew ! And again, if you have the time and desire, sign up 🙂

    Why should you sign-up?
    Student: It’s a great opportunity to have hands-on experience on analytics and support from experience analytics professionals and your resume will certainly not suffer from it !
    Mentor: No need to emphasize a lot, as soon as you are passionate I guess it just make sense to spread the love…
    Organization: A great, great, great opportunity for FREE to get insight on your website, understanding users behavior and get some sense of what could be optimized, what is already working very well, where the budget should be spent…

    Want to know more? Need inspiration, Documentation for a Non-Profit measurement framework?
    – Analysis Exchange Website
    – Analysis Exchange Blog
    – Analysis Exchange Twitter
    – I just ran into this fantastic post from Justin Cutroni which bring grist to my mill: “Measuring the Non-Profit: From Planning to Implementation“, in the nick of time!

    AdobeSummit 2013, 1 week later… what are the takeaways?

    AdobeSummit 2013, 1 week later… what are the takeaways?

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    Following my previous blog post about AdobeSummit, I’ll try in this blog post to list out everything that catch my attention. I’ll be undoubtfully missing a lot of what has been said but I’ll list also every other ressources available.
    As usual, proud to be a data nerd thus data first!
    Check out Summit by the Numbers by Michelle Kiss

    Let’s start with the end:

    1. “Adobe Sneaks”

      2. This session which took place at the end of the Summit exposed features that are either in development or beta testing.

      Here they are:
      #BoomData – bringing in through drag and drop external data such as offline data from a good old fashioned but reliable Excel file and overlaying SiteCatalyst and dashboards
      #SeeAndBelieve – data-vizualisation oriented feature or next generation of Pathing reports, pivoting around any points, including conversion.
      #QuickTrend – real time trends & insights collection for for content/conversion/acquisition with drill-able data.
      #Automagic – next generation of existing SAINT feature, a rule builder application relying on Regex to facilitate campaign tracking codes or else classification – no more .tab file 😉 I love anything which sounds like automation…
      #DAMVideo – video tapestry (rendering video into panorama image). a DAM video solution that renders a filmstrip-type view of each video.
      #OnTheEdge – Not 100% sure to understand this one, what others say: Responsive design quick editor.
      #ClickClickDone – Inline editing, adding components
      #SweetEmotion – Emotion Engine based on tweets which sorts commentary by negative and positive sentiment.
      #TweetBoost – analysis of “influencers” who are driving traffic to the sites by factors including retweets, clicks and conversions and paid views
      #CMOBFF – tools for CMOs

      If I had to choose, 2 out of those 10 sneaks really grab my curiosity : Automagic & BoomData, only because I can see a direct relation to my work and usage of Adobe Products. Let’s say 3 #QuickTrend, because it sounds promising even though I haven’t seen it in action.

    2. Session Takeaways

      3. Keynote Catch phrases

      The Summit was the occasion to clarify the “mutation” for Adobe digital marketing products into 5 core solutions (Adobe Analytics, Adobe Media Optimiser, Adobe Social, Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Target).
      Adobe Analytics which is at the end my main concern, is split into 2 products Adobe Analytics Standard & Adobe Analytics Premium:

      Quote from Tim Wilson, the main difference between both version is that Premium users will have access to Insight while Standards users will not.

      I am not giving up on findings good stuff to share about the actual sessions which took place, however for now ressources are limited so stay tuned, as soon as I get access to some of those below, you will know. In the mean time, I shared some links about the SC advanced time-saving tips & have a look at the ressources below.

      Digital Analytics
      – Solving the attribution dilemma: Five keys to cross-channel ROI measurement
      – Site Catalyst advanced: The time-saving tips you’re not using (Ben Gaines)

      – New innovations for Mobile with the Adobe Marketing Cloud
      – Predictive Marketing: Unearthing hidden behaviors and data patterns

      Targeting & Optimization
      – Adobe Test&Target: Essentials for building relevant, high-converting entry page experiences
      – Adobe Test&Target: Closing the loop: A personalization blueprint for B2B & lead-gen marketers
      – Adobe Test&Target: 2013 Conversion ROI All-Stars: trues stories of optimization success.

    3. Great ressources:

      4. Blog Post suggestions to read:
      The best advice from Adobe Summit 2013 from Ashley Huffman @chicktech
      Adobe Gives Sneak Peek of Leading Edge Marketing Solutions
      Four Takeaways from Adobe’s “Summit” Digital Marketing Conference from Bryan Yeager
      Michelle Kiss & Tim Wilson – Official Summit Insiders

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    AdobeSummit 2013, as you were there even though we are not :)

    AdobeSummit 2013, as you were there even though we are not :)

    weboptimeez

    Despite not being there, I challenged myself to cover the event as much as I could. I’ll update this post daily with my findings, especially today and tomorrow which are the main seminars day (being in Hong-Kong, I have a bit of delay…).
    I’ll cover Digital Analytics and Targeting & Optimization which are my topics of interest and more than enough to cover ! By cover, I mean, I’ll gather all useful information we could gain from going to the summit: videos, whitepapers, case studies, killing sentences, what’s new, best practices… anything that could help a digital analyst real daily life.

    What’s all the noise about?

    1. Adobe Summit: Facts & Data first:

      2. Just looking at 2 hours on Twitter…

      but I could also be looking at Google Alerts, Facebook, Blogger… and I will.

    2. Adobe Summit: General Overview:

      3. What is the Adobe Summit ?
      The Adobe Summit is a digital marketing event hosted by Adobe in Salt Lake City and London every year. It’s a 2 day session with a lot of digital marketing oriented conferences, I guess that if you are not always researching on last trends, news… it may be a good though expensive way to stay tuned with a lot of digital stuff in one go. Give you enough food for thoughts for a year.


      I do really hope that I never speak like that…

    3. Adobe Summit: What will I be covering?

      4. Well, I picked my topic for sure, here are the conferences, I’ll virtually sneak into :
      Digital Analytics
      – Solving the attribution dilemma: Five keys to cross-channel ROI measurement
      – Site Catalyst advanced: The time-saving tips you’re not using
      – New innovations for Mobile with the Adobe Marketing Cloud
      – Predictive Marketing: Unearthing hidden behaviors and data patterns
      Targeting & Optimization
      – Adobe Test&Target: Essentials for building relevant, high-converting entry page experiences
      – Adobe Test&Target: Closing the loop: A personalization blueprint for B2B & lead-gen marketers
      – Adobe Test&Target: 2013 Conversion ROI All-Stars: trues stories of optimization success.

      So please be my guest, stay tuned and I’ll share with you everything useful I’ll find from those conferences !

      #1 Update | Adobe Summit, who to follow on Twitter or who are the noisiest ?

      @rwang0
      @MicheleJKiss
      @epilkington
      @AdobeSummit
      @SocialJulio
      @kristaseiden
      @colltodd
      @thirsty_crow
      @BrentLeary

      The good news is most of them are analytics people or at least digital people, no click waisted!





    #2 Update | Adobe Summit, key takeaways are here!