Metrification Autometrically!

Metrics! Metrics! Metrics!  If I have to hear that word one more time I think I might just scream like Doc Brown at the end of Back to the Future II. 

GREAT SCOTT!!  I thought I sent Metric McFly back to the future!

But, that's the life of a web analyst.  They look at metrics everyday.  They read metrics everyday.  They dream about page view percentages and average time on a site.  They search through blogs and books about how to improve their SEO.  They attend conferences and workshops with names like the eMetrics Summit or any of the following:  SearchFest, Social Media & Web Analytics Innovation (try repeating that five times really fast!), or Webstock (which is like Woodstock, just without all of the drugs, half-naked people dancing everywhere and the legendary Santana and Jimi Hendrix).

Let me rephrase that, they devour metrics like 30 year old's devour Alphabits cereal.

Is that a bowl of Alphabits?!  NO, fool it's an ice cold bowl of metrics! Eat up!

Metrics are like the blood that pumps through the veins of web analysts.  They devote hours to scouring metrics with a combination of tools like Omniture, WebTrends and Google Analytics, just to name a few.  They bust out metrics at a party like ghostbusters bust ghosts.  They have Photoshopped pictures of themselves hanging out with Avinash Kaushik....what you don't know who that is?!  Click here for some edumication.

LET'S GET METRICAL!

To further educate yourself in the ways of the web analyst there are is little metrics lingo that you will need to brush up on so you don't look like a complete maroon when attending those really neat conferences I previously mentioned above.

For example, you should know a little about the following:

• Page Views - the amount of times a page on a website has been viewed.  These can be viewed by new, repeat or a return visitor.
• Entry page - which is generally the very first page on a website that is viewed.  For example when you visit Walmart.com, that first page is the entry page.
• Exit page - is the opposite of the entry page!  Exactly!  It is the last page you left from a website.  
• Bounce Rate - is basically the rate of how many times a visitor exited a page on a website versus those that have stayed on the page.  For example, say you go to the Walmart.com link and search for motor oil.  Then you decide that Autozone has motor oil to and for a better price, so you type in your address bar www.autozone.com.  You bounced from the Walmart page to the Autozone page.
• Conversion - this is a measurement of how many visitors have performed or completed some action on the web page.  For example, purchasing an item from Amazon.com or initiating a download from a website.  
• Count - which is a measurement of how many visitors have entered a page on a website
• Average time on Site - How long did visitors stay on your site.

Now with some lingo under your belt, your almost ready to get started into the world of web analytics.  The next step is to understand exactly how some of these measurements are categorized.  Generally there are 3 categories that metrics fall under:

1. Individual - Activity of a single web visitor for a defined period of time.
2. Aggregate - Total site traffic for a defined period of time.
3. Segmented - A subset of the site traffic for a defined period of time, filtered in some way to gain greater analytical insight.[1]

The next step to understand, is that all of these metrics are the results of visitors...visiting a website.  This brings us back to another set of important metric lingo...visitors...

Not these visitors!

These visitors....

There are three types of visitors in the web analyst lingo.

1. New Visitors - Are visitors that have visited a website for the first time.
2. Return Visitors - Are visitors that have returned to the website.
3. Repeating Visitors - Visitors that have repeatedly visited a website during a specified time.
4. Unique Visitors - Wait didn't I say that there are 3 types of visitors?!  I did, and I am glad you caught that, because that means you are actually reading this post!

The three types of visitors: New, Return, and Repeating, are considered part of  Unique visitors.  Unique visitor is defined as "the number of individuals within a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site.  Each visitor is only counted once in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period."[2]

So...uh..What Does All This Mean?

Now that you understand some of the basics it's now time to jump into the why of web analytics?  One metric to notice when you are testing out some analytics tools on your website, is the Average Time on Site.  For example, why were the visitors on your site so long?  

Were they engrossed in a web article like this one 

V-Day Special, How Web Analytics is a lot like Dating or were they staring off into space?  It's a good idea to figure that one out.  

If you have a shopping cart on your site, it's a good idea to ask yourself how long did it take for a visitor to get there and make a purchase.  How many of those visitors were new visitors?  There's a metric for that too!  

So what do you do with all of these metrics?  Like any good web analyst you search for patterns.  

Do you see a pattern? Hmmm...keep looking.

Web analysts are excellent at finding patterns within their metrics.  They can see why visitors spent too much time on their website or why they bounced out after 30 seconds off a specific page.  All of these metrics set patterns and trends that are used to figure out how to improve conversion rates on a website...which is that completed event thing I mentioned before.  

What do these trends tell you?

This is the Bounce rate of this blog.

This is the Number of Visits to this blog.

This is the Percentage of New Visits on this blog

The peaks tell us that there were quite a few that visited this blog on that specific date while the valleys are the opposite.  The same can be said of the bounce rate and the % New Visitors.  Since this blog first got started in January we have had 3,771 visitors, 2,067 of them unique with an average bounce rate of 60.81%.

From these trends we can also see from where our visitors are coming from:

The darker green = where most of the visitors are coming from.

Here you can see the the United States is the main visitor demographic with India in second place.

So far what does all of this tell us?  The majority of our visitors are from the United States and let's see what page is the most viewed....looks like with a total of 10,039 page views that the post in the lead is customer analytics incorporating with 264 page views.  Ah, but look at the unique visitors!  The blog post about the problems with google analytics is leading the pack.

SO....with all of this new information swirling around your brain, it's a good idea to let it sit for awhile.  And while you're at it, read some other more interesting posts like these for our blog site:

Adventures in Ghostery

Yesterday's Web Analytics is Today's Digital Analytics

The time has come to end this post before I get a higher bounce rate!  Please read other posts while on this site to get those rates up!  

Related Resources

[1] http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-standards-26-new-metrics-definitions/

[2] http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/resource/resmgr/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitionsVol1.pdf 

What, No Cookies?

   
    On goes the discussion of whether cookies are bad for you. Real cookies are bad for you, all that sugar and fat. Cookies on your browser aren't bad, but they get a bad rap for being something that invades your privacy. Cookies are simple files that are placed on your browser. These cookies contain pieces of data that uniquely identifies you.(1) "So the cookie on my browser has my personal information in it?" Umm, maybe 1 time out of billion would hold something unique about you. They hold a variable value that is sent in on any request to servers that come from site.

For example, if you login into your online bank account. You get a cookie, this cookie sets your session and tells the website that you are the same visitor as you travel along the site.(2) Good, right? I wouldn't want to login on every page that I go to on my bank site. In this example if you are banking at BankofAmerica the cookie would be set from a domain or www.bankofamerica.com, which is a First-Party cookie, because it set on from the domain of the website you are currently visiting. A third-party cookie would be a cookie set from another domain. A third-party cookie would include analytics and digital marketing cookies. Some examples would be Double-Click, Adobe, or Google Analytics.

First Party Cookie

3rd Party Cookies






This images above are so scary right? I thought I saw my social security number in there, but of course it doesn't.

    "Well what about 3rd party cookies, aren't they some outside company gathering information about me?" Yeah, but not private information about you, just what you are doing on the site. I explained above that it assigns a unique ID to the visitor and keeps the visit together. This is the same thing that happens with the 3rd party cookie. For example, Double-Click would set a cookie on your browser when you land on a website. They would track your interaction with ads or content on the website. They can use this information to form a profile for you based on that cookie value. These profiles provide analytics companies with details what type of content you woud be interested in and then provides the ability to show relavant content. Some think this might be intrusive to have a there actions tracked as they travel around the internet, which is okay, because all browsers give you the ability to disable cookies or block on 3rd party cookies. Doing this can cause some website to not function as intended and wouldn't provide online marketers with ability to provide you relavant content.

So cookies aren't bad you just need to be aware of what they can do and how they make the internet awesome. If you are still scared you can block them. If you want more information on cookies look on the internet :)

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-are-cookies-and-what-they-do-for-privacy-infographic/25479/




(1)http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_cookies.asp
(2)http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cookie1.htm

Bringing Traffic Your Way

You just created that awesome blog site, and your family and friends are proud of you and your work. They come to visit the site a few times a week, reading and commenting on your posts; they actually let you know how cool you are for writing these posts! 

But, you want to tell the world about your blog. You want to start driving traffic your way! Well, I’m going to help you with some cool ideas so your blog can get your first 1 million hits.

 Social Media Working for You 

You did it! Your blog is looking pretty awesome. You have created a cool brand and now you’re ready to take it to the next level. Here’s where social media can help immensely. Go to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to create your precious brand personal accounts. Even if you believe your blog won’t be a success right away, is better to avoid headaches by creating your own accounts on every social networking site.

Now that you have created accounts on these, it’s time to start sharing every post to them. Make sure to invite friends to like or join your name so they receive notifications and or emails every time you post a new blog.

Using Analytics to Track Everything

Install Analytics Tools on your blog and let it collect data. Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Site Catalyst can be installed on the back-end of your blog. These tools track everything from new visits, to time spent on pages. Analytics can also track, where your visits are coming from, if the visitor landed on your blog by an organic search(1) or by a paid keyword(2). These tools can be configured to your liking and they provide detailed information in reports that can be customized and delivered automatically. 

If you have been following this post from the beginning, you should have a Google+ account. That’s all you need to create a Google Analytics account. The interface is very simple and Google provide great documentation for it. You can also take a look at the Universal Analytics brand new tool from Google in this post. Here's a great post about how to use Google Analytics.

Study Your Audience and Write Accordingly to What They Want

Finish your blog posts with specific questions; you’re going to start knowing your visitors based on the answers you get.

You can also try sending surveys via email or post these surveys along with your blog post. This is a quick way to understand what your visitors want. You can start writing about what your visitors wants once you get the necessary data about them.

Again, use social media to interact with your users. Learn from them and become their friend. Participate in communities your visitors visit frequently and learn as much as you can from them.

Use Great Designs on Your Website

Make sure you visit different blog sites to see and learn the trends used. Stay away from using bright colors that can cause temporal blindness on your audience, and use one font type for your posts. Use pictures and videos related to what you’re writing about and listen to feedback from your visitors.

Reply to Comments

Interacting with your audience is just another way to increase traffic to your site.  Make sure you interact with them when they leave a comment. Even if it’s a simple “thank you,” from your part; they will be grateful and come back to visit your blog. Replying to the audience comments creates a great discussion environment. Try to avoid religion or political comments unless your blog was created for these purposes.

Conclusion

We talked about using social media to interact with people and expand your blog to different audiences. We also talked about creating a Google Analytics account and installing these tools in the back-end to learn about your audience. Along with that, we took a look at studying your audience, using great designs and interacting with your visitors. I hope I was able to help you and my words encourage you to start writing about the things you really love.
 

One more thing…

Keep posting and don’t be discouraged if you had a few visitors this week. Don’t give up and be consistent.

Do you have any ideas on how to start bringing blog traffic your way?

References
Seomoz.org
dauofu.blogspot.com
Google.com/Analytics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_advertising

Alley Oop in Analytics: Multi-Channel Funnels

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/85578/20090316GortatLayupMillsap_FernandoMedinaNBAEGetty.jpg

 From football to basketball, or even soccer, most Americans have a deep understanding of sports. Digital analytics? Not as much. But, by the end of this article, starting with a basic understanding of basketball, you should know enough to understand multi-channel funnels, their place in analytics, and why anyone with a website should care. More after the break.

Customer Analytics: Custom-fit, timely ans just a bit creepy!

Customer Analytics:

Custom-fit, timely and just a bit creepy!

     You're browsing the web, searching for hotels in San Francisco. The next time you come to your search page, there are deal offers for flights from your town to SFO. On your email account there are great coupons for a restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf. Wait! Discount tickets for a tour of Alcatraz! Hold on a moment ... who knows I'm going to a conference in the Bay Area? The Web knows. Sites you have visited are leveraging customer analytics to decide what to show you.

     As with any technology, service - or any aspect of life for that matter - there are always risks and benefits to this form of marketing.  The long and short of it is that customer analytics differ from other forms of analytics in that they deal with specific opinions, feedback and behavior of individuals, not visitors as a group. Sites and services are interested in what their individual customers are doing.  They will then use this information to improve their sites or to individualize a singe customer's experience, ads, etc.

     At the risk of paraphrasing a method actor, what's the motivation here?The general motivation and desire of any website is to get the visitor to act in the intended way based upon that site's mission.  If it is a travel site, they want  you to book travel, a strictly informative site wants you to read their content, a search site wants you to click on their paid advertisers and find what you are looking for quickly, an eCommerce site wants you to buy. Beyond the simple idea of getting you to buy, they want you to stay on their site, find what you are looking for and feel happy with the experience so that you will come back
     The first step for sites to do is to identify an individual. This is primarily done using cookies. A site assigns an identity which is stored in a cookie. This allows a site to track an individual browser, and presumably, a unique customer.  This information will be lost if the user deletes cookies.  The information will also be less accurate if multiple people share the computer/browser (it's a bit less than ideal for a kid to get ads for viagra when he wanted to look at action figures). Ideally the site will be able to entice a visitor to sign on to the site, make a credit card purchase, sign up for a loyalty account, or use some other function that more truly uniquely identifies him or her to the site.  Furthermore, once someone signs in, their demographic information can be stored and associated with previous matched visits (by the cookie identifier) and data regarding this person's activity can be collected and acted upon.
     What are the things that can be captured?

• Purchases
• Product views
• Shopping cart additions
• Video views
• Review reads
• Registering for a webinar
• Accessing downloads
• Requesting help
• Forwarding a link
• Posting a comment
• GPS location - some mobile devices

     Individual information from customers can also be obtained through online surveys and interactive chat.
     It must be remembered that with all web analysis information, data can go stale. A person's travel interests will not necessarily be the same in six months. Also, once a big screen tv or car is purchased, a person will start to get annoyed by more ads regarding these products.

Some uses of these data are successful:

• Market deals on similar cheaper items when items in a cart are abandoned
• Market region-specific deals
• Market products, deals, etc. after a search and before a purchase

Conversely, some will be failures:

• Continue to market products after a purchase is made
• Incorrectly identify a home city and market travel from the wrong city

On the other hand, some might find the degree of information collected to be an invasion of privacy.

A bit of an extreme illustration

from SuperNews

     Business will always do as Business does. If there is a business technology that serves to increase success and profitability, this route will be pursued (at least where legal). Some degree of security can be maintained by purging cookies every time the browser is exited. Features like In Private Browsing can help with this. On the other hand, if you sign on to a website to use all its features, it is going to be a little tougher to maintain privacy.
     Clearly there are advantages to the use of these analytics, people do buy, act and respond to the directed marketing. Furthermore, many must appreciate it or it would not be successful and would soon disappear.

References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5wS9Y7S_O0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_analytics
http://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/feature/Put-consumer-data-privacy-first-analytics-value-will-follow
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/What-is-InPrivate-Browsing
http://www.current.com/supernews