Occam's Razor
NOVEMBER 15, 2010
The goal of my recent post on the Yahoo! Web Analytics blog was to pull us up 10,000 feet to do something we do less than 1% of the time in the web analytics world – look at the bigger business picture. It was called: Secret To Winning With Web Analytics? Starting Right! While that was a very strategic post, it got me thinking at a tactical level.
Occam's Razor
APRIL 19, 2010
It is surprising how often these "simple" things come up. "What is the difference between a metric and a key performance indicator (KPI)?" "What is a dimension in analytics?" "What is segmentation?" "Are goals metrics?" And many more. There seems to be genuine confusion about the simplest, most foundational, parts of web metrics / analytics.
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Occam's Razor
OCTOBER 19, 2010
What is the first thing you want when you think about web analytics? Tools! Of course tools. What to do, where to start, what's cool. I was reflecting on that recently and thought it was incredible that in all my years of writing this blog I have never written a blog post, not one single one (!!), recommending tools for the complete web analytics 2.0 spectrum.
Occam's Razor
APRIL 5, 2010
Some Marketers / Analysts use Click-thru Rate (CTR) to measure success of their acquisition campaigns. Nothing much to write home about, but certainly better than executing faith based initiatives. A smaller percent of those Marketers / Web Analysts will move beyond clicks and measure Visits / Visitors and Bounce Rates to measure success. Lovely, warm hugs and smiles for them.
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Occam's Razor
DECEMBER 6, 2010
In a world where we are overwhelmed with data and metrics and key performance indicators and reports and dashboards and. sometimes all it takes to make some sense of all this "mess" is someone stepping up to share a tiny slice of wisdom from their experience. That's my plan for this blog post. To share with you three custom reports that I find to be super valuable when I am doing web data analysis.
Occam's Razor
MAY 18, 2010
My love for segmentation as the primary (only?) way of identify actionable insights is on display in pretty much every single blog post I write. I have said: All data in aggregate is "crap" Because it is. One of my earliest blog posts extolled the glorious virtues of segmentation: Excellent Analytics Tip#2: Segment Absolutely Everything. Many paid web analytics clickstream analytics tools, even today (!
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Occam's Razor
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
Make love? Direct Traffic? Really? I am not kidding. Direct traffic contains visitors that proactively seek you out, everyone else you have to "beg" to show up on your site! Yet this question seems to bedevil a lot of people: What the heck is Direct Traffic? As if that was not sad enough, even people who do know what the definition of Direct traffic is rarely focus on it or work hard to tease out the opportunity that exists in Direct traffic.
Occam's Razor
OCTOBER 4, 2010
Try this. Ask a famous blogger, a published author, a random twitterer or your mom how to succeed in web analytics, or how not to be a Reporting Squirrel. The answer will invariably be: Before you provide the data, ask the requestor what is the business question they are trying to answer. Then fulfill that need. It is a good answer. Most of the time they, Marketers /bosses /HiPPO's, ask and we puke data out.
Occam's Razor
DECEMBER 20, 2010
The last blog post shared custom analytics reports that you can use to find amazing insights faster, enabling you to create a focused, truly data driven organization. In this blog post I want to continue the let's help make your day-to-day life better path. I'll share three advanced segments that I personally find to be of value in the process of moving from data to actionable insights.
Occam's Razor
MARCH 23, 2010
There are more mistruths and F U D about Web analytics out there than I think is reasonable. Part of it fueled by Vendors. What a competitive bunch! Part of it fueled by some Consultants. I suppose the rational is: self preservation before all else. Part of it is fueled by a vocal minority genuinely upset that 10 years on we are still not a statistically powered bunch doing complicated analysis that is shifting paradigms.
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Occam's Razor
MARCH 8, 2010
Data, data everywhere yet nary an insight in sight. Is that your web analytics existence? Don't feel too bad, you share that plight with most citizens of the Web Analytics universe. The problem? The absolutely astonishing ease with which you can get access to data! Not to mention the near limitless potential of that data to be added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided to satiate every weird need in the world.
Occam's Razor
AUGUST 23, 2010
Every believer in Web Analytics 2.0 knows that awesomeness comes not from answering just the "What" question but from also answering the "Why" question. What comes from Google Analytics, Adobe Site Catalyst, WebTrends, CoreInsight / NetMetrics and more. Why comes from lab usability studies , website surveys , "follow me home" exercises, experimentation & testing , and other such delightful endeavors.
Occam's Razor
MAY 4, 2010
The hardest kind of "analysis" to provide is in response to open ended questions. That is why I love asking open ended questions! They expose a person's critical thinking ability (something I highly recommend you test when you hire web analysts: Interviewing Tip: Stress Test Critical Thinking. Please ). They also help you understand if someone really grasps key concepts.
Occam's Razor
SEPTEMBER 7, 2010
Arthur C. Clarke said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That quote comes to mind when I think of a new feature in Google Analytics that carries the unassuming name of Weighted Sort. It is an advanced implementation of technology (mathematical algorithms in this case) and when used it very much feels like magic!
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Occam's Razor
JUNE 15, 2010
Most of the time spent by Marketers & Analysts tends to be spend looking for "known knowns" Things we know and expect to see in the data, we look to see if they are there. " Oh look Google is still our Number 1 referrer and we are selling lots of product x as we always do. Yea! " Some of our time is spent reacting to the "known unknowns" Looking for things we know might be happening but don't know when they happen. " I would like to know when conversio
Occam's Razor
JANUARY 6, 2010
The new year is such a wonderful time. Wonderful smells in the air. The world is full of hope. Unachievable things seem achievable and are being polished into shiny resolutions. World peace seems within grasp. As we spring to action full of passion I wanted to share with you all a short list of things that will expand your little world of online marketing & web analytics.
Occam's Razor
FEBRUARY 1, 2010
Here is a key difference between Reporting Squirrels and Analysis Ninjas: The latter almost exclusively leverage custom reports (powered by advanced segmentation) and the former flirt with one standard report and then another and then other and in the best case scenario pull only half of their hair out. There is nothing particularly wrong with the standard 19,000 reports in your web analytics tool.
Occam's Razor
JULY 12, 2010
Stale. One thing that I never want to be. We all have a tendency to learn up to a point, we get comfortable and keep chugging along rarely investing in our ongoing education. I call it the slow but sure path to irrelevancy. Let me share my prescription for avoiding irrelevancy: Try new things. Simple right? At any given time I have six or seven interesting tools running on this website.
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Occam's Razor
JULY 26, 2010
We lovingly craft reports every day. We try to make sense of what they are saying. When we hear nothing we try to bludgeon them, hoping for the best. My hope in this post is to share some simple tips with you that might make your reports and analysis speak to you a bit more. Suggestions that might increase the probability that you'll bump into things that might be insightful, and communicate data more effectively.
Occam's Razor
JUNE 1, 2010
The world of the intertubes should be a lot more data driven and awe-sexy than it really is. Yet for all our collective efforts at writing and tweeting and kvetching online marketing is still based mostly on faith. Not data. Surprising at so many levels right? Last week I had the privilege of being invited to deliver the keynote at the annual CMA President's Dinner.
Occam's Razor
JANUARY 20, 2010
How do you measure success of a online webinar? I recently did a webinar for the Search Engine Strategies conference (I am doing the opening conference keynote at SES London and SES New York ) and my Market Motive co-faculty member Greg Jarboe sent me this KPI via email: "Your webcast was a big success. Your KPI questions per attendee was off the chart!
Occam's Razor
AUGUST 9, 2010
The hardest nut to crack in any type of analytics is getting our decision makers (bosses, leaders, marketers) to take action based on data. The hard nut is not that we all are doing basic reporting about Visits and Bounces. Ok doing just that is lame. But still that's not all of it. It might shock you that the hard nut is not even that we, the people who "play" with data, the Analysis Ninjas if you will, are not leveraging custom reports and advanced segmentation and activity aler
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Occam's Razor
JUNE 28, 2010
We have more web metrics and data than there are stars in the universe (slight exaggeration!). Yet we stink at informing decisions. Our reports are ignored. Sites & online marketing continue to suck. A large part of the reason is that a large part of our job seems to consist of glorified data puking, hoping someone will be impressed. After all there is so much data in those reports!!
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