ACTIONABLE ANALYTICS: DATA-DRIVEN, DECISION MAKING TO ATTAIN YOUR BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

Transcription

1 PRE-CONFERENCE WORKBOOK ACTIONABLE ANALYTICS: DATA-DRIVEN, DECISION MAKING TO ATTAIN YOUR BUSINESS OBJECTIVES Thom Craver Senior SEO Analyst, CBS Interactive

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction The Process & Measuring for Meaning Measuring for Meaning Vanity metrics vs. Business Objectives Exercise Using Goals in Google Analytics Website Goals and Funnels in Google Analytics Exercise Segmentation: Giving Meaning to Data Measuring Visitors in Aggregate Means Nothing Most Common Ways to Segment Visitors Finding Your Analytics Segments Segmenting by Goals Best Practices Segmenting by Non-Goal Behaviors Segmenting by Visitor Dimensions Exercise Tracking Campaigns: Online and Offline Tagging Online Campaigns Campaign Tracking Variables How Tracking Variables Work Web Analytics Campaign Tracking Variables Adobe Analytics Campaign Variable Campaign URL Builder Exercise Automating Campaign Tracking Other Ways to Use Campaign Parameters External URLs Only Exercise

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Key Performance Indicators KPIs vs. Standard Metrics KPIs Correlate to Business Objectives Characteristics of KPIs Examples of Business Requirements for KPIs Exercise A/B Testing Introduction to A/B Testing Exercise Attribution: Credit Where Credit is Due What is Attribution Modeling? Common Attribution Models Lookback Makes a Big Difference Comparing Attribution Models How to Choose an Attribution Model Exercise Reporting and Dashboarding Creating Dashboards Common Mistake: Data overload Data vs. Information Actionable Reporting Exercise About Thom Craver

4 INTRODUCTION eb analytics is more than dumping data points from a tool without insight or actionable recommendations. WYou could search the Web and get several definitions of web analytics. Most definitions are all accurate, but not all-encompassing. Proper web analytics is a cycle the includes properly measuring the right data points, understanding their context when compared to other groups of similar data. This should help you understand multiple business objectives with your website in addition to helping you better understand how visitors arrive at and interact with your site so you can optimize those interactions in the future to exceed your organization's bottom line. 4

5 THE PROCESS & MEASURING FOR MEANING 5

6 THE PROCESS & MEASURING FOR MEANING MEASURING FOR MEANING When collecting data points, know there are few limitations. From mouse movements to individual items clicked or browser commands given, if it happens in the browser window, you can record it. Types of data to collect: 1. Hit Level Metrics e.g.: page views, time on page, downloads, events 2. Session Level Metrics e.g.: visits (sessions), time on site, visitor source 3. Visitor Dimensions e.g.: age, gender, location, language 6

7 THE PROCESS & MEASURING FOR MEANING VANITY METRICS VS. BUSINESS OBJECTIVES The metrics that matter are typically a combination of metrics, limited to select visits or visitors with certain qualifying characteristics. Feel Good But not Useful Help Make Business Decisions Total Visits / Visitors Campaign Performance Most popular pages Revenue By Channel Pages per Visit Avg. Subscription Length Time on Page / Site A/B Test Results 7

8 THE PROCESS & MEASURING FOR MEANING EXERCISE 1. What are the business objectives your website is trying to accomplish? 2. What metrics and dimensions are required to measure those objectives? 8

9 USING GOALS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS WEBSITE GOALS AND FUNNELS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS Can be based on URLs or user action events. Should include monetary values wherever possible Should only include pathing specific to the goal for every visitor Should not include the goal itself in the funnel steps Can be a qualifying characteristic by which to group business objectives 9

10 USING GOALS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS EXERCISE Go into your Google Analytics account and list the goals you have set up. Star any goals without funnels or whose funnels are incorrectly setup. Below, list steps that could be taken to correct those funnels: 10

11 SEGMENTATION: GIVING MEANING TO DATA MEASURING VISITORS IN AGGREGATE MEANS NOTHING Create groups or subsets Test goals and conversions against visitor subsets, page content ROI of campaigns, lists More meaningful information 11

12 SEGMENTATION: GIVING MEANING TO DATA MOST COMMON WAYS TO SEGMENT VISITORS Segmentation involves grouping particular visitors to specific characteristics to better understand visitor interactions, and/or visualizing business objects and ROI. Most commonly, visitors are segmented by: Goals converted Other on-site behaviors (events) Originating source (campaigns, search, social, etc.) FINDING YOUR ANALYTICS SEGMENTS Google Analytics: Located at the top of report pages Adobe Analytics: Located on the left people icon or under Components menu 12

13 SEGMENTATION: GIVING MEANING TO DATA SEGMENTING BY GOALS BEST PRACTICES Segment visitors or sessions based on goals completed. Do not merely duplicate a goal report, however. Try to find more meaning behind merely raw conversion numbers. For example: Segment visitors by those who have completed a particular goal or goals Segment visitors who converted a goal further to compare against acquisition source, acquisition cost, and revenue generated Are there particular pages common to visitors who convert a goal? 13

14 SEGMENTATION: GIVING MEANING TO DATA SEGMENTING BY NON-GOAL BEHAVIORS Segment visitors or sessions based on visitor behavior events that have meaning. Forms are most common. But don t limit to forms completed. Measure user activity to determine answer to questions like: What elements of a form were left blank upon abandonment? Were errors recorded during submission? What pages were viewed in lieu of form completion or was the whole site abandoned? What percentage of which videos are being viewed? What content are people interacting with most? Why are visitors leaving our site? Are they accomplishing their task even on a one-page visit (bounce)? 14

15 SEGMENTATION: GIVING MEANING TO DATA SEGMENTING BY VISITOR DIMENSIONS Segment visitors based from where they arrived prior. Organic search and social media visits are often built-in segments. Understanding visitors from campaigns or geo-location can help determine answers to questions like: What is the ROI of our marketing campaigns? Should certain campaigns be paused or have their budgets increased? What content are different demographic groups more interested in consuming? Are geo-targeted ads (online or offline) having the desired effect on traffic? Are organic SEO efforts paying off? Are link-building efforts paying off? Was our website hit with a penalty from a search engine? 15

16 SEGMENTATION: GIVING MEANING TO DATA EXERCISE Lookup the custom segments currently defined in your analytics account and list them below. Are these segments useful toward helping clarify metrics by your organization's business objectives? Why or why not? 16

17 TRACKING CAMPAIGNS: ONLINE AND OFFLINE TAGGING ONLINE CAMPAIGNS Tracking parameters conclusively define from which source a visitor arrived at your website. They are most commonly used to track online marketing campaigns via or social media. Links from these sources can often appear as direct visits to a site, unless tracking is appended to the URLs in the calls to action. 17

18 TRACKING CAMPAIGNS: ONLINE AND OFFLINE CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES Campaign tracking variables sometimes referred to as URL parameters are added to the end of a URL and allow analytics software to determine the true source of a visitor to a website. These variables must be unique and do not affect how the page renders to the site visitor. The format is variable name, then an equals sign, then the value. Additional tracking parameters use an ampersand (&) character between the previous value and the next variable name. For example: variable1= somevalue& variable2= somethingelse 18

19 TRACKING CAMPAIGNS: ONLINE AND OFFLINE HOW TRACKING VARIABLES WORK Tracking variable allow you to tell your analytics software precisely from where a visitor originated. 19

20 WEB ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES Google Analytics allows you to track up to five different variables. Three of these are required; the other two are optional. utm_source Referring website, mailing list, etc. e.g.: google.com, t.co utm_medium Type of link or marketing medium e.g.: referral, organic, cpc utm_campaign Promo codes, product, slogans, campaigns of your choosing utm_term Paid keywords (PPC); often used from words bid on in a pay-per-click ad campaign utm_content Special phrases or ad groups of your choosing for granular tracking 20

21 WEB ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES ADOBE ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN VARIABLE Adobe Analytics is much more adaptable. You set whatever variable name you desire. However, it only tracks one variable for external campaigns. However, through SAINT tables and other back-end plug-ins to Adobe's reporting, you can serialize a great deal of information into the value of a single campaign variable. The most common campaign variable name by Adobe users is cid, which stands for campaign ID, and resembles: cid= somevalue 21

22 WEB ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES CAMPAIGN URL BUILDER Google URL Builder is a free tool Google provides to assist you in adding campaign variables to your URLs. Simply fill out your website / campaign URL, add your source and other campaign information, and the Campaign URL Builder provides all the necessary connecting syntax automatically. Simply copy it and paste it into your campaign as the link for your call to action. 22

23 WEB ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES EXERCISE Use Google's Campaign URL Builder to create a custom URL for an campaign for your monthly newsletter with the name November2017. Write the resultant URL below: Use Google's Campaign URL Builder to create a custom URL for any online campaign you recently executed or are about to execute in your organization. Identify the relevant variables in the space provided and write the complete, resultant URL. utm_source: utm_medium: utm_name: utm_term: utm_content: Campaign URL: 23

24 WEB ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES AUTOMATING CAMPAIGN TRACKING Look for tools that help automate campaign variable tagging. Most major service providers, social automation and PPC platforms have campaign parameter tools built-in. 24

25 WEB ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES OTHER WAYS TO USE CAMPAIGN PARAMETERS Offline Visits: 1. Use a shortened, vanity URL like mydomain.com/promoname, bit.ly URLs or even URLs embedded in QR codes 2. Have your engineering team set up a redirect to your landing page with campaign variables. 3. Enjoy the tracking of offline marketing 25

26 WEB ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES EXTERNAL URLs ONLY Only use campaign variables on URLs from sources external to your website. Never use to track internal campaigns. Adobe Analytics has an internal campaign variable that works similar to the external campaign variable that you are free to name as you see fit. Google Analytics will register a new visit every time the utm_source campaign variable changes. 26

27 WEB ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN TRACKING VARIABLES EXERCISE List all promotional campaigns, online or offline, that could benefit from campaign tracking with URL parameters. Which method would you use to track these? Campaign Name Online or Offline Tracking method utm_source utm_medium 27

28 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS KPIs VS. STANDARD METRICS Web Metrics: Numerical data points representing measurable Web site actions Ratios of numbers representing Web Actions Key Performance Indicators: Metrics that directly correlate to the business objective of your Web site KPIs CORRELATE TO BUSINESS OBJECTIVES Use segments and even custom metrics to come up with KPIs pertinent to your organizations business objectives. Add values and provide relative historical context whenever possible. KPIs answer what, which, and/or how questions for understanding your business requirements and solving your business objectives. E.g.: What are my top-converting products? Which pages on my website contribute most to success? Which campaigns have the highest conversion? ROI? gross income? 28

29 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS CHARACTERISTICS OF KPIs 1. Clear Anyone can understand them 2. Pertinent Organization s Business Objectives 3. Timely Now, not later 4. Instantly useful Get it right away 29

30 KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS EXAMPLES OF BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS FOR KPIs Increase revenue generated through web sales of Product A by 15 percent in the current year. Decrease the cost per acquisition of Product A by 5 percent in the current year. Increase sales leads by 8 percent in the current year. Increase new sign-ups by 5 percent in the current year. EXERCISE Establish KPIs for the business objectives you created in your first exercise. Include all pertinent metrics, segments and values. 30

31 A/B TESTING INTRODUCTION TO A/B TESTING A/B Testing sometimes called split testing helps you compare two versions of a web page to see which one performs better to meet your business objectives. In A/B testing, you have two (or more) variations of the same page with one detail changed. The detail could be an image, placement of a call to action (CTA), or even the body copy or CTA wording. 31

32 A/B TESTING INTRODUCTION TO A/B TESTING Code is placed at the top of your page. That code determines if a visitor should see the page or the testing variant. If the latter, it redirects the user to the new version before the page is rendered in the browser. The testing variant works just like the original, except it can only be accessed via the testing script. It cannot be accessed via a menu. However, it still maintains navigation consistent with the original page. What kind of elements can you test? Wording / Calls-To-Action / Offers Images / colors / placement Navigation elements, layout Headlines 32

33 A/B TESTING EXERCISE Determine which pages you think might be underperforming. It could be a campaign landing page, your home page, or even a form. List the page, which elements you'd like to test, and the number of variants you'd have in your experiment. Page Conversion goal Elements to test 33

34 ATTRIBUTION: CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE WHAT IS ATTRIBUTION MODELING? Attribution modeling involves designating which marketing channel or visitor source gets the credit for website conversions. Reports default to what s referred to as a last touch model, basically giving credit for a conversion to the most recent visit s source. However, most people don t convert on the first visit to your site. Giving credit to the channel(s) that contributed to a visitor s experience that led to an ultimate conversion is all part of attribution modeling. Which visit gets credit for the conversion? 34

35 ATTRIBUTION: CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE COMMON ATTRIBUTION MODELS 35

36 ATTRIBUTION: CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE LOOKBACK MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE The lookback window, sometimes called time lag, matters a great deal when attribution modeling. By default, most analytics vendors look back at 30 days of data as the lookback window. If your customer visited multiple times prior to that 30-day lookback, those prior visits would not be counted. In the example below, with a 30-day lookback window and a first-touch attribution model, social media would get the credit for a conversion, not the organic search that happened just two days prior. 36

37 ATTRIBUTION: CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE COMPARING ATTRIBUTION MODELS 37

38 ATTRIBUTION: CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE HOW TO CHOOSE AN ATTRIBUTION MODEL Consider: Business model (affiliates?) Sales cycle length Lead / sales generation process No model is perfect Find models that are useful Use the one that is most useful 38

39 ATTRIBUTION: CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE EXERCISE Select attribution models to compare. Answer the following questions to determine which to use: 1. What is the sales cycle for a typical order or service contract? 2. What kind of lead generation does your company perform? 3. Do you offer value-added offers online? 4. Do you offer reviews or comparisons? Which attribution model(s) appear to make the most sense for your organization? 39

40 REPORTING AND DASHBOARDING CREATING DASHBOARDS Creating quick and easy dashboards of your favorite or often-used reports can be done in a few clicks. Both Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics provide methods to add any standard or customized report to a dashboard. However, using default dashboards especially without segmentation applied often gives meaningless data. 40

41 REPORTING AND DASHBOARDING CREATING DASHBOARDS Quick add to dashboard widgets and dashlets are great for quick overview information. But for actionable reporting, default dashboards don t cut it because they can t show action items. Proper reports should: Show more than data Show patterns, trends Demonstrate rationale for (or against) idea Show benchmarking data (yours or others) Provide insight Make recommendations for action 41

42 REPORTING AND DASHBOARDING COMMON MISTAKE: DATA OVERLOAD Avoid Too Much Data and Not Enough Information This is not how you dashboard. Objectives and recommendations are vague, data is still being benchmarked, historical context is not valuable. 42

43 REPORTING AND DASHBOARDING DATA VS. INFORMATION Data only becomes information when you apply labels & context. Information only becomes useful when interpreted by an analyst. That involves some educated guesswork. This graph means nothing without context: 43

44 REPORTING AND DASHBOARDING ACTIONABLE REPORTING Reports should provide context and Action. Focus on the right number of KPIs and detail for your audience Different audiences might require different reporting Always state your objective Always add insights and pertinent trends / historical data Always recommend action Visualization is always key 44

45 REPORTING AND DASHBOARDING EXERCISE Who are the stakeholders for whom you generate reports? What KPIs should you report based on which objectives? What context and historical trends should include? What would be suggested actions from underperforming KPIs? overperforming KPIs? 45

46 ABOUT THOM CRAVER Thom Craver is a Senior SEO Analyst for CBS Interactive, managing all the CBS News properties including 60 Minutes, Face the Nation and 48 Hours. A seasoned Web developer since 1993, Thom is a technical SEO and digital analytics veteran. From system administration to coding to marketing to measurement, few have the full 360- degree view of modern day digital marketing. In 1997, Thom started his first Web consultancy, New York Web Works, and never looked back. After building spectacular websites, Thom pursued the quest to get more traffic to his client sites. After conquering SEO, understanding analytics and conversion optimization became his next passion. His career has included time at several renowned digital marketing agencies across the U.S. and hundreds of consultancy clients both large and small in nearly every vertical. Thom has spoken and led masterclass workshops at numerous digital marketing events around the world and is also a veteran of the TEDx stage. In addition to multiple industry blogs, he has ghost written over a dozen technical instructional training manuals. He has taught digital business courses at Quinnipiac University, SUNY community colleges and the Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology. Get in contact with Thom at: ThomCraver.com/workshop thom@thomcraver.com (585)