Web analytics

Find here my latest thoughts and findings about Digital Analytics. #measure
What to expect? Articles, Thoughts and Tips about Digital Analytics Practice. 2 Areas of focus : Site Analytics – How-to measure your website performance, what to look for and why ? Media Analytics – How-to measure your media campaign performance? How each channel influence the overall upper and lower business objectives. 2 major tools tips: Adobe SiteCatalyst & Google Analytics.
Keywords: Measure, Attribution, GA, SiteCatalyst, Dashboard, Reports…

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 :)

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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!

Successful Digital Analytics Project Workflow

Successful Digital Analytics Project Workflow

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How digital analytics people should get involved in a digital project ?

For every analytics project, every new digital campaign, new launch,… I usually go through those steps or some of them without noticing anymore. Recently Adobe released a new whitepaper “How to create a data-driven dynasty“, amoung other stuff this document was aiming to provide digital analytics practitioners best practices for a successful digital analytics program management. I found this chart below very useful and a keeper.

The chart “Analytics project workflow [copyright Adobe]” below is illustrating a successful workflow to an analytics project – assuming that every digital project is a also a analytics project :

From an agency perspective and from a client perspective as well, this digital analytics project workflow seems pretty ideal to make sure that analytics is always part of the equation and avoid the common pitfall where is analytics is involved after the launch – and most of the time it’s too late to get things right and meet the business owner expectations:

  1. Plan

    2. This step covers a critical processus when the business owner meet the analytics team to explain the campaign, launch… expectations from a business perspective. The analytics team will then translate the business requirements into a technical tagging guide for the IT team. This document will cover the basic tagging which are most of the time already implemented by default and especially the specific tagging related to the specific project mentionned (e.g. a microsite launch which main goal is its social interest to users: the main traffic metrics will be measured as well as the volume of login through social channels, the volume of shares…).

  2. Implement

    3. As simply as the title is saying, this step covers when the IT Team get clearly involved and implement the tagging. Depending on your ressources, the IT team maybe trained to the analytics tool you are using or not, as long as the analytics team is sensible to that, the implementation will go smoothly.

  3. Validate

    4. As for for every technical implementation, this part covers the testing on an testing environment before going LIVE. I’ll usually use tool such as httpfox and look at QueryString details to make sure that every thing is running smoothly, that the tags are fired when they should be, that the pageName is correct… this works with Google Analytis & Adobe SiteCatalyst.

  4. Launch

  5. Review

    6. Lastly, after reviewing the implementation live, making sure that you are capturing every data points that you need according to the business requirements, will come the time for reporting, analysis and possibly enhancements.
    This part is at last the one the business owner is awaiting for, it will allow him to know if and in which extend his campaign, launch… is successful, which channel driver is performing better, what actions are the users performing, what kind of improvements could be done… The analytics team will be the guarantee of data-driven decisions making.

What about you, does this analytics workflow sound good to you ? what kind of issues are you confronted in this process?

As usual thanks for reading me so far, if you liked this post, please spread the love…

2013 Digital Analytics Roadmap

2013 Digital Analytics Roadmap

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Scroll down for a larger version
Analytics Roadmap
Happy New Year everyone!
Let’s kick off this year with a list of wishful thinking and future articles, I certainly hope I will be able to work deeply on all those subjects and more but I do realize that not everything will be achievable !
I am sharing this list as I intend to write about all those topics this year, so stay tuned if one those items – segmentation, landing page optimization, cross-platform analytics, campaign performance measurement, site search… – is a previous, present or future topic of interest.



  1. Segmentation based on Personae

    In a recent article, When Analytics is King, Segmentation and Targeting are Queens, I was giving my opinion on how important segmentation is to do a better analytics job. There is various ways of doing segmentation and one of the efficient one is to based your audience segmentation on personae. Personae concept goes beyond demographic segmentation, I will soon dive deeper into this subject in the meantime, this article helps to understand the usage of personae in digital marketing.

  2. Landing page optimization : almost there…

    This topic is very large, my objective here is to finish Tim Ash’ book: Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions, this book covers how to prepare all types of content for testing, how to interpret results, recognize the seven common design mistakes, and much more.(Amazon quote). I start reading it few weeks ago, it’s a highly valuable book, can’t wait to share with you a full review of it.




  3. Attribution Modeling & Testing : How to improve campaign allocation performance measurement ?

    Hopefully, performance improvement is a journey, not a destination. When it comes to digital marketing and campaign budget allocation, the equation gets more and more complex as the channels are numerous (Search, Display, Facebook etc.) and understanding each channel contribution to your performance (revenue, micro conversions, user experience…) is a tough job. Attribution models and testing is a step in this journey.

  4. SiteSearch Optimization


    This hilarious video of Google Analytics reminds me, how important site search is, I remember reading in a usability study that approx. 30% of your visitors will ignore your navigation, content links and hero images and use ONLY your internal search tool to look for what they are searching.

    Well, I do hate common views however this one worth taking the time to dig a little deeper and capture the main metrics to help your visitors find what they are looking for in your website in a efficient way.

  5. Cross-Platform Analytics

    A few articles this month claims : 2013 is the year of mobile analytics or 2013 is still not the year of mobile analytics, 2013 is the year of … Well, i don’t really care as the platform of today is certainly the old man of tomorrow’s platform. So I want 2013 to be the year of cross platform analytics : mobile, tablets, desktop, Tv… Whatever ! Where your clients/prospects are, you want to be looking at!
    About that, I wish to use and write about and compare those unified audience cross-platform audience measurement tools :
    – Media Metrix® Multi-Platform from comScore
    – Universal Analytics from Google Analytics

  6. Participate as much as possible to Analysis Exchange

    I joined the Analysis Exchange as a mentor last year, I didn’t have the chance to participate yet, well I hope that 2013 will be the year of my contribution. This exchange is a pretty exiting project run by Web Analytics Demystified to increase practice of web analytics by providing free web analytics consulting to non-profits and NGOs around the world.

Thanks for reading so far ! If you liked this article please spread the love…

5 Good Reasons to have a Business Intelligence Analytics dashboard

5 Good Reasons to have a Business Intelligence Analytics dashboard

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As shared previously in another article about Big Data Analytics, we’ve got tons of information available for us marketing manager / analyst… to take in account to make good business decisions.
Thus we need to be selective in the data we look at, each data should have a purpose, even if we have access to quantity lets aim for quality. A business intelligence analytics dashboard is one step towards this objective: consider qualitative, selective and intelligent data to make easier data-driven decision.

As for a car where the dashboard is the part of a car which contains some of the controls used for driving and the devices for measuring speed and distance, a dashboard from a business point of view is a document showing in a single view the most important KPI (key performance indicator metrics) that need to be measured and monitored to drive your business. A dashboard is not only displaying some of your metrics, the challenge is to display them in a intelligent way : telling a story with your metrics that will help making data driven business decision looking backward and forward.

I am lucky enough today in my new role at MRM Worldwide to work with companies that consider a business intelligence dashboard as a must-have or companies getting to it and part of my job is to help them to build it efficiently.
Let’s deep dive here : Why would your business need a BI dashboard ?

1. BI Analytics Dashboard: What are we talking about?

A dashboard is kind of a reporting variety. A dashboard is a web based tool that deliver selective and relevant KPIs in real time to targeted user. Those KPIs have to be displayed in a way simplistic way – KISS, keep it simple, s… – that include visual guidance as gauge, traffic lights… and the guidance should also come from the ability to intelligently analyze historical and real-time data to model the future.

To elaborate a little more on my last item, each chart/graph should be accompanied with a title such as “What question this chart is answering to”, a platform that send plain English emails to give some alerts or status update and directions in the actions to be taken, a platform that has to be explained and built with the users.

2. It’s 100% tied to your business objectives

That’s the spirit of it.
You don’t really need all the metrics that your analytics and else platforms are allowing you to see. For instance, when every morning I am looking at my blog web analytics reports and I just want to answer few questions : are my loyal readers still there, what about the new ones ? new comments, new shares, how far did they read my articles, did they subscribe, when and where did they drop ? (this is a very ego-killing job but that’s part of the game).
So I do use Google Analytics ability to set my custom dashboard, however I still need to open all my others tools (Clicktale, Feedburner, Bitly…) to get the whole picture and evaluate it versus the expected outcomes I had in mind.

I’m not running my blog as a company, however if I was, using a business intelligence analytics dashboard will allow “my” company to automate comparison with real metrics VS expected outcomes or target and help me increase my operational efficiency. A marketing dashboard offers you the possibility, amoung others stuff, to follow your completion rate towards your company goals and act accordingly. For instance, knowing your completion rate you could use some predictive analytics (i.e. forecasting) to adjust either your goal or your campaign effort (spend, segment…) in order to meet your goals. A dashboard is not going to do the marketer job however all historical data could help to set up some alerts in case your campaign is heading in the wrong direction : run a SEO audit, spend more on this channel, test a new promotional call-to-action…

As a real life example, have a look at the data below from TNS Digital Life : The role of the consumer voice. It does make sense to compare your own site data to TNS data from a benchmark point of view, you’ll easily see then where are your strength and weaknesses:

3. It’s customizable & (B) Intelligent!

It has to be customized to your audience or there is no point having a dashboard.
Your CEO will not look at the same KPI as your Marketing Director, Manager or Regional Director or CMO… however everyone need to see the Big Picture, working in silos is not efficient and it’s frustrating (just my point of view). As you may be using segmentation and targeting for your campaign online or your website content – the same rule apply here : adapt the content to your audience. And as it’s web-based tool, customization could be endless thanks to segmentation, behavioral targeting, widgets for instance and mobility : a dashboard as to be mobile friendly as well. That’s for the customization part. What about “Intelligent”.
What is Business Intelligence ? What is BI when it comes to digital marketing?
From my point of view, it’s when you reach the point of telling a story through your data. To tell a story, your data have to be meaningful :

Well, I think the visual speak for himself, you should fell more guided with the right-hand side version of the visit’s metric. One the right version, you will be displaying the data but also evaluating it to your goal, you will use predictive analytics to measure your chance of success and finally use a green light to let your user know that it’s on track.

According to Gartner, Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance.

 

4. It’s a time savior.

Better use your time to analyse, look for pattern and trends, take decison than building the tool to help you make those decisions.
As a marketing manager, I guess remembering your Facebook Insight, Twitter, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster tools, Google Adwords, Bing AdCenter, Doubleclick, Customer Feedback tool, TweetReach, Mailchimp, Clicktale, Salesforce… and so on accounts, logging to each of them pulling data in your excel file and wrap them up together to get an overall view is not your priority, right? Even though Google made a great job of integrating each of his service into Google Analytics, we are not all Google-dependant some use multiple analytics tools : SiteCatalyst, Webtrends… and your CRM, Emailing, Feedback… platforms are not Google either.
So time is money and if you want to be able to catch the whole story & be close as possible to your customer journey, you may want to consider a dashboard.

5. Because it’s fancylicious 😉

Firstly you would be able to sound very intelligent, I can’t help thinking that Business Intelligence is a very cool word.
Anyway, working for data don’t have to be boring some even that it’s sexy: … I do LOVE excel spreadsheets and plain and simple table with black figures on a white background – always very efficient but I love infographics as well, so why not having both when it’s possible and relevant. To perform efficient data analysis, data visualization matters a lot. And there is a lot of magnificent dashboard that maybe will make you love data, find here my pearltrees about data visualization.

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