revealing behavior: web analytics strategy 101

Revealing BehaviorWeb Analytics Strategy 101

Ravi Singh

–– About this Talk ––

This talk is about Web Analytics Strategy,

Managing an in-house analytics program,

And leveraging analytics to optimize your product.

The Analytics Mission

Analytics involves measuring, testing and storytelling.

But it’s real purpose is to TAKE ACTION to improve,

based on insights from well-interpreted data.

If you won’t take action, don’t bother with analytics.

Innovate wisely…

Making changes is risky—you may alienate customers,

or over-invest in the wrong things and not know why.

You can be very busy innovating yourself

into failure if you are not measuring outcomes and

taking the right actions all the time.

So how do you make sense of it all?

What is your business mission?

How does your product support it?

What are your “KPIs”?

Who will you report to?

What actions will you take?

Strategy!

Dr. Strangelove © Hawk Films

Let’s Start the Process

Strategic Analytics Process

1 Planning 2 Implementation 3 Analysis 4 Improvement

Business Goals

KPI Worksheet

Analytics Spec

Reporting Plan

Tool Configuration

Development

Validation/QA

Data Collection

Automated Reporting

Executive Dashboard

Investigative Analysis

Optimization Analysis

Action Plan

New Tagging

New Campaigns

Experimental Testing

Strategic Analytics Process

1 Planning 2 Implementation 3 Analysis 4 Improvement

Business Goals

KPI Worksheet

Analytics Spec

Reporting Plan

Tool Configuration

Development

Validation/QA

Data Collection

Automated Reporting

Executive Dashboard

Investigative Analysis

Optimization Analysis

Action Plan

New Tagging

New Campaigns

Experimental Testing

1. Planning

Analytics Planning in a Nutshell

State your business goals

Define your KPIs

Determine your audience

Design your reporting strategy

Plan your analytics

requirements

Key Performance Indicators

Total Revenue

# of LeadsConversion

RateSite Traffic Registrations # of Logins

Email Open Rate

Call reduction

Customer Satisfaction

Bounce RateVisits /

Page ViewsSession Length

Top Content Top ProductsAverage

Order SizeCampaign

ResultsTop

CountriesTime Zones

Unique Visitors

Pages Visited

Social Shares

Error RatesTop

KeywordsEntry/Exit

Page

You may measure everything,

but your KPIs are the few

metrics you monitor closely

Total

RevenueSite Traffic

Bounce Rate

Average

Order Size

Unique

Visitors

Entry/Exit

Page

Know Your Audience

Executives High-level, trended, broad business-oriented metrics.

Will always have unexpected and interesting questions.

Marketers Effectiveness of online and email campaigns, conversion rates for

e-commerce, lead generation.

Product Managers Overall product health, customer satisfaction, positive trends,

effectiveness of features, areas for opportunity.

Developers Evidence of robust activity throughout the application, system

downtime, UI errors and other failure points.

User Experience Actual vs. expected user flows, level of engagement, user errors,

and major drop offs in key flows.

Design the

Right Reports

for the Right

Audiences

Executives

Marketers

Product Managers

Developers

User Experience

End of Year

Summary

Ad Hoc/Deep

Dive Reports

Weekly Email

Dashboard

Campaign

Summaries

Monthly

Presentation

Plan before implementing

Start by recalling your KPIs, Audience and Reporting Strategy

Identify all the things you need to measure

Carefully document your tagging strategy, parameters, metadata

Only then, move on to implementation

2. Implementation

Strategic Analytics Process

1 Planning 2 Implementation 3 Analysis 4 Improvement

Business Goals

KPI Worksheet

Analytics Spec

Reporting Plan

Tool Configuration

Development

Validation/QA

Data Collection

Automated Reporting

Executive Dashboard

Investigative Analysis

Optimization Analysis

Action Plan

New Tagging

New Campaigns

Experimental Testing

CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS

6 Tips for Implementation

1. Choose your platform wisely

2. Don’t be lazy with your tagging

strategy–it will serve you or haunt

you for years

3. Use JS for sites and SDKs for

applications

4. Filter activity from your company

network and dev servers

5. Validate your data collection

before go-live

6. Use tools that work together to get

the big picture

3. Analysis

Strategic Analytics Process

1 Planning 2 Implementation 3 Analysis 4 Improvement

Business Goals

KPI Worksheet

Analytics Spec

Reporting Plan

Tool Configuration

Development

Validation/QA

Data Collection

Automated Reporting

Executive Dashboard

Investigative Analysis

Optimization Analysis

Action Plan

New Tagging

New Campaigns

Experimental Testing

What can

Analytics

help you

achieve?

© Shepard Fairey © 2012, NY Times

Analysis Tips

Start Broad, Looking Across your KPIs

Dive Deep

where

something is

unexpected

Revenue Traffic Conversions Bounce Rate Error Rate

Product MixAverage PriceItems in CartPromotionsSeasonality

Investigate and

correlate to get better

understanding

• Track closely over time

• Make modifications

• Run experimental testsTake action

Analytics Organizational Maturity Model

Ad hoc analysis

Omnichannel

Personalization

Segmentation

Optimization

Basic tracking

Standard dashboards

Automation

3

2

1

6 Tips for Analysis

1. Start broad, go deep, correlate

2. Use different methods to gain

understanding, including surveys and

user feedback

3. Build hypotheses before designing

solutions

4. Measure & optimize marketing

effectiveness (SEM, SEO, Email,

Display, Social & etc.)

5. Look for meaningful segmentation

as you analyze – regions, devices,

demographics, new vs. returning

visitor

4. Improvement

Strategic Analytics Process

1 Planning 2 Implementation 3 Analysis 4 Improvement

Business Goals

KPI Worksheet

Analytics Spec

Reporting Plan

Tool Configuration

Development

Validation/QA

Data Collection

Automated Reporting

Executive Dashboard

Investigative Analysis

Optimization Analysis

Action Plan

New Tagging

New Campaigns

Experimental Testing

Where do we go from here?

1. To keep up progress,

create or update your action plan every month

2. For deeper insights,

implement more sophisticated tagging strategies

3. To drive more value,

plan new campaigns and track their performance

4. To optimize,

test different designs to find the most effective ones

Experiment to Find the Best Design

© Holland Dumbeck McCue

You can split test ANYTHING!

© DailyConversions.com

7 Tips for A/B Testing

1. Have an informed Hypothesis

2. Have a clear Control

3. Test only worthwhile designs

4. Let the test run until your sample

size is dependable

5. Avoid changing too many design

variables at once

6. Make sure you are learning WHY,

not just WHICH won

7. Start a betting pool to get people

engaged

What did all this mean?

4 take aways

Measure so you can take action

Analytics is a full-time job, a strategic program

Advocate for analytic insights because they’re not intuitive

Analytics will drive better design decisions and business outcomes

THIS IS THE LAST SLIDEThank you.