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 GoalsKPI WorksheetAnalytics SpecReporting Plan

Tool ConfigurationDevelopmentValidation/QA

Data Collection

Automated ReportingExecutive DashboardInvestigative AnalysisOptimization Analysis

Action PlanNew Tagging

New CampaignsExperimental Testing

Strategic Analytics Process

1 Planning 2 Implementation 3 Analysis 4 Improvement

Business GoalsKPI WorksheetAnalytics SpecReporting Plan

Tool ConfigurationDevelopmentValidation/QA

Data Collection

Automated ReportingExecutive DashboardInvestigative AnalysisOptimization Analysis

Action PlanNew Tagging

New CampaignsExperimental Testing

1. Planning

Analytics Planning in a Nutshell

State your business

goalsDefine your

KPIsDetermine

your audience

Design your reporting strategy

Plan your analytics

requirements

Key Performance IndicatorsTotal

Revenue # of Leads Conversion Rate Site Traffic Registratio

ns # of Logins

Email Open Rate

Call reduction

Customer Satisfactio

nBounce

RateVisits /

Page ViewsSession Length

Top Content

Top Products

Average Order Size

Campaign Results

Top Countries Time Zones

Unique Visitors

Pages Visited

Social Shares Error Rates Top

KeywordsEntry/Exit

Page

You may measure everything, but your KPIs are the few metrics you

monitor closelyTotal

Revenue Site Traffic

Bounce Rate

Average Order Size

Unique Visitors

Entry/Exit Page

Know Your AudienceExecutives 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 GoalsKPI WorksheetAnalytics SpecReporting Plan

Tool ConfigurationDevelopmentValidation/QA

Data Collection

Automated ReportingExecutive DashboardInvestigative AnalysisOptimization Analysis

Action PlanNew Tagging

New CampaignsExperimental 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 GoalsKPI WorksheetAnalytics SpecReporting Plan

Tool ConfigurationDevelopmentValidation/QA

Data Collection

Automated ReportingExecutive DashboardInvestigative AnalysisOptimization Analysis

Action PlanNew Tagging

New CampaignsExperimental 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

tests

Take 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 GoalsKPI WorksheetAnalytics SpecReporting Plan

Tool ConfigurationDevelopmentValidation/QA

Data Collection

Automated ReportingExecutive DashboardInvestigative AnalysisOptimization Analysis

Action PlanNew Tagging

New CampaignsExperimental 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.