Know your KPI’s before you chose web analytic tools

Avinash Kaushik tells us in his book Web Analytics 2.0 that often analysts do not get the respect that they deserve because they do not adequately measure one golden concept: outcomes (Kaushik, 2012). In fact, he believes that many of us spend so much time in the “weeds” reporting on detail data such as visits and time on site that we often forget to actually analyze the data and see what it means (Kaushik, 2012).

What is Outcomes analysis? Outcome analysis asks the question “Is my website getting it done?” “It,” of course, is the goal of your website’s existence (Herr, 2012).

This can create a real challenge for the web analyst. Since there are so many social media platforms available to the marketer, can a web analyst truly rely on one primary platform to provide the outcome metrics they need, or do they have to mix and match platforms based on the web media channels they are using?  Ultimately, the tools an analyst needs is going to depend in large part on the unique strategies and goals of their business.

In order to decide whether to use one or many platforms, we should revisit the concept of outcomes. If the ultimate purpose of analytics is to inform the business and to provide meaningful direction based on outcomes, then first the analyst needs to understand what is key to the business and what KPI’s need to be measured. Using these KPI’s, the analyst can then work backwards to which tools and platforms are going to provide the most meaningful data to analyze. For example, Chris Lake from eConsultancy states that “What you're ultimately looking for is a wide range of tools to help people interact. It doesn’t matter whether this interaction happens onsite or offsite, but only that it happens. You can measure it either way” (Lake, 2009).

Chris believes that the web is all about engagement, and the goal of any social engagement strategy needs to provide the right tools that allow people to make that engagement happen with a brand. Catherine Novak agrees with him and says that “Conversation is king, Content is just something to talk about” and conversation puts “human interaction at the centre of the picture” (Novak, 2010).  It is conversation that explains the rise of social media on the web and the growth of multi-user games on all platforms. To Novak, content without conversation is just broadcasting, or just advertising (Novak, 2010).

Chris Lake takes it one step further and provides a list of 35 social interaction metrics and KPI’s that an analyst can use to inform the kinds of tools and platforms that they need to have in place. A complete list of these KPI’s can be found at: http://econsultancy.com/blog/4887-35-social-media-kpis-to-help-measure-engagement but include the following;

1.   Comments

2.   Downloads

3.   Email subscriptions

4.   Fans (become a fan of something / someone)

5.   Favourites (add an item to favourites)

6.   Feedback (via the site) 

7.   Followers (follow something / someone)

8.   Forward to a friend

So, if a company’s outcome measures and KPI’s include engagement, then there are specific tools and platforms that will be essential to use for capturing metrics and ultimately analyzing these outcomes. Which social platforms are best suited to their needs and the resources they allocate will depend on knowing the ultimate outcomes that they are trying to measure but should include reporting on behavior and experience. According to an article in Communications Network, Herr explains this further:

Behavior - Behavior reports ask the question “What can we infer about visitors based on data yielded during their visits?”

Experience - Experience analytics ask the question “Why are visitors behaving in this way”

Behavior and experience data can come from clickstream reporting that is available through free tools such as Google Analytics or Yahoo! Web Analytics. However; for this general reporting to be most useful, Kaushik suggests drilling deep into reports and, for example, analyzing site search keywords to determine what visitors look for when they visit, or viewing site overlays for a better understanding of how visitors navigate the site.

In his article, Herr provides an important side note that clickstream data can only generate inferences, and different inferences can be drawn from the same data set. This is important to consider when reviewing this data with your team (Herr, 2012). Clickstream data can be considered part of traditional analytic tools and will only take you so far. If a company’s KPI’s include behavior and experience on their website for example, they may want to combine a traditional analytic tool with tools from Tealeaf, Clicktale, or RobotReplay that record all sessions on the website and can provide video playback of the entire customer experience (Kaushik, p. 136).  These specific tools now allow the company to combine baseline data with super rich data for a deeper picture into the behavior and experience of their customers as they engage with the website.  

There is also a school of thought that is more focused on conversions, goals, and Return on Investment. Professionals in this camp have a different set of outcome measures that matter to them. Kaushik has many excellent ideas for companies that are tracking these KPI’s. For example, he states that you can analyze a lot of ecommerce outcomes by measuring organic search. Although organic search makes up a small percent of a website’s overall traffic, Kaushik states that it accounts for a much larger contribution to multiple conversions (Kaushik, p. 108). If a company’s primary KPI’s were focused on conversions on their ecommerce site, then they could continue to use the same traditional analysis tools of Google Analytics or Yahoo!, but then combine them with more robust SEO tools to capture and analyze revenue, average order, products sold and bounce rates. These additional metrics will allow the company to see if they have lost sales opportunities, or if they are maximizing the revenue potential of search for ecommerce.

Bottom Line? While there appear to be many platforms that a web analyst can implement to help create the most robust toolset, the best place to start is with Google Analytics or Yahoo! Web Analytics which provide an excellent baseline regardless of whether your outcome KPI’s are based on transactions or engagement.

From there, an analyst should determine the top set of management and business KPI’s and overlay unique tools to capture the metrics necessary to gain deeper and wider picture of these specific behaviors and outcomes.

It is easy to get caught up in the myriad of tools available today, so take this last word of caution and implement the Kaushik 90/10 Rule: Spend 10 percent of your web evaluation budget on tools and 90 percent of it on people. Deriving meaningful insights from the mass of reporting noise requires a skilled mind, so make sure you find one (or cultivate one). (Herr, 2012)

Want to learn more? Visit these sites:

Herr, L. (2012, September 11). Moving from Web Analytics to Web Evaluation. Retrieved January 26, 2014 from: http://www.comnetwork.org/2012/09/moving-from-web-analytics-to-web-evaluation/

Kaushik, A. (2010) Web Analytics 2.0. Wiley Publishing, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana

Lake, C. (2009, October 30). 35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement. Retrieved January 21, 2014 from: http://econsultancy.com/blog/4887-35-social-media-kpis-to-help-measure-engagement

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. Retrieved January 21, 2014 from: http://socialmediatoday.com/wordspring/152636/why-conversation-not-content-king

 

 

Why Opens and Click Web Metrics Are Worth Caring About

Avinash Kaushik tells us in his book Web Analytics 2.0 that the world of Web metrics has changed a lot in the past 10 years. The most important foundational metrics in the 1990’s used to be website hits, but today “in a world where every home page sends 50 or 100 hits and rich experience dominates, hits mean nothing” (Kaushik, p. 36). So if we won’t care about hits, should we care about visits, click throughs or click through rates?  

These visitor characterization metrics are defined as:

• Click-through: Number of times a link was clicked by a visitor
• Click-through Rate: This is the number of click-throughs for a specific link divided by the number of times that link was viewed
• Visits: An interaction with a web site by an individual consisting of one or more requests for a page

(Wells, 2014)

Metrics and KPI’s keep evolving as marketers have an increasing arsenal of tools that measure every interaction on the web that go beyond click streams. In fact according to Kaushik, we have evolved from hits to page views to visits but now what really matters is outcomes (Kaushik, p.36).

So, what has changed and how do we as marketers understand what the measuring stick of KPI’s should be and what web metrics should matter?

Visits and Visitors are still the foundation of all web metrics and essential to understand more complex metrics that help us understand engagement and conversion. Different metrics help you as a marketer measure what it meaningful to your business, and as such, one size does not fit all.

But we can all agree that the best metrics support business objectives, are simple to understand, and easy to implement. Metrics form the life blood of all measurement we do, and the reason we call the web the most accountable channel on the planet (Kaushik, 2010). And based on this fundamental purpose of metrics, there is still a place for visits, click-throughs and click-through rates (CTR) in web analytics.

Here is an example of why Click Through Rate Matters When Marketing an Event

An event’s date, time, host, and contents is very unique to that event.  It is practically impossible to replicate an event, even when two hosts are competing in the same niche. People who attend events are usually optimizing for three things: Date, time, and contents.  So unless you have two events happening on the same date, at the same time, delivering the same contents, they are not competing with each other.

When event hosts cross-promote their events using cooperative email marketing within their niche, click-through rates go up just because it makes it easier for event prospects to do what they already love to do: browse events in their niche by checking out the date, time, and contents.

Another Reason to Consider Click-Through Rates

When we target cold prospects with email communications, we usually see lower open rates than communications sent to customers. Marketers who only look at the low open rates could make a lot of assumptions including; that the targeted audience is not interested in the communication; that the creative was weak; that the call to action was not compelling; or that they are the wrong target audience altogether. The key with open rate is not necessarily the number itself, or how you compare with other businesses or organizations, but the trend. And when you combine it with click-throughs, you can get real reporting gold provided that you're including calls to action and links in your campaigns (Kahill, 2010).

Constant Contact, an email service provider, explains that click data shows exactly what information people are interested in and can be used to further segment your list for better targeting of subscribers.

For example, if you're writing about multiple topics in each newsletter, click-through information can be used to determine which topics are of most interest to readers. As an example, a business consultant may think readers are interested in leadership tips, but find they're clicking most on articles relating to marketing. Does this mean the consultant stops writing about leadership all together? No, but he may want to change the mix of article topics to favor marketing, since that's what readers are clicking on most often.

Bottom Line? Don’t be so quick to throw the traditional tried and true in favor of the new and shiny metrics. When you combine them together, that is when you will have your best overall measurement that will allow you to meet your business objectives.  

 

Want to learn more?

Kahill, P. (2010) What Do Your Email Results Mean? Retrieved January 19, 2014 from: http://www.constantcontact.com/learning-center/hints-tips/ht-2010-06b.jsp

Kaushik, A. (2010, April 19) Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets. Retrieved January 16, 2014 from: www.ecampus.wvu.edu

Kaushik, A. (2010) Web Analytics 2.0 . p.36. Wiley Publishing, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana

Wells, M. (2013, October 10) Lesson 2: Basic Web Analytics. Retrieved January 16, 2014 from: www.ecampus.wvu.edu

 

 

Will Gmail Tabs Improve Legitimate Visit Metrics?

Since Google launched its new Gmail inbox featuring the Tabs functionality in May 2013, the email marketing world has been scrambling to understand the impact on visitor characteristics and web metrics.

According to eConsultancy, this is what your tabs would contain:

·        Primary: Messages from friends and family, as well as any other messages that don’t appear in other tabs.

·        Promotions: Your deals, offers, and other promotional emails.

·        Social: Messages from social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating services, gaming platforms, and other social websites.

·        Updates: Notifications such as confirmations, receipts, bills, and statements.

·        Forums: Messages from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists.

The impact on promotional email marketing

Of course, this introduction of Gmail’s tabbed layout caused a lot of worries among email marketers. What does this new layout mean for commercial and promotional email campaigns?

Does this mean a decrease in opens, clicks and eventually revenue? The introduction of this new feature has upsides and downsides and can be seen differently based on what your goals are and what you are measuring. In fact different browsers and clients show very different results as seen from Litmus:

Silverpop is beginning to see changes in Gmail subscriber engagement, but it’s not clear whether or how much Tabs is driving this. Return Path and Litmus (both Silverpop partners) found mixed results when studying Tabs’ effect on email engagement.

ReturnPath’s study from August 2013 said “read rate” in the first week or so after Gmail Tabs went into general rollout went up 2.1 percent among highly engaged readers. Inbox placements rates also went up both for medium- and low-engaged customers. However, the read rate plunged nearly 80 percent among lowest-engaged readers, from 2.2 percent before Tabs to 0.42 percent after. Litmus’ study found that Gmail opens fell 18 percent from mid-May to mid-August 2013.

However, Litmus also found Gmail opens had declined overall by 13 percent since July 2012. In the approximately six weeks following the Gmail Tabs announcement, Litmus saw a 7.8 percent decrease in Gmail opens as percentage of total opens across all email clients. Further, its study revealed that Gmail opens accounted for only about 4 percent of total email opens across all email clients. Also, 41 percent of those opens (roughly 1.6 percent of all email opens) occurred in Gmail clients that support Tabs. 

What does it mean for my email campaigns?

An email that gets placed in the Promotions tab faces different types of competition. First it competes with other email marketing campaigns.Second it also competes with Gmail’s native inbox ad placements. Which is kind of a set back, as these inbox ads are placed above “normal” promotional emails, pushing these campaigns even further down the folder.

The main worries for email marketers are the following. Firstly, recipients will spend less time reading emails in the Promotions tab, than those in the Primary tab. Secondly, triggered and transactional emails might lose their effectiveness with this new feature.

These emails are highly effective for ecommerce professionals because they are timely and relevant. In fact, abandoned shopping cart emails have the highest return on investment when sent within the first few hours after the abandonment. If these messages appear in the Promotions tab, it could reduce their effectiveness and the revenue they generate. 

In fact, Return Path sees this as a positive development and believe that Gmail users who matter most to marketers appear likely to continue reading their email at the same rates they always did, and the most engaged may actually read more. The impact of Tabs and similar inbox organizers may vary widely among brands, though. Those with higher concentrations of less engaged subscribers may indeed see sharp drops in email marketing response, while the ones who succeed at engaging their audiences actually enjoy a lift thanks to Tabs.

Bottom Line? If you are sending relevant email communications to an engaged audience, Gmail tabs may actually improve your visit metrics and your marketing effectiveness.

Want to learn more? Download the white papers from the following sites:

Linthorst, M. (2013, October 13). The effect of Gmail Tabs on email marketing. Retrieved January 19, 2014 from: http://econsultancy.com/blog/63569-the-effect-of-gmail-tabs-on-email-marketing

Silverpop (2013, December) Gmail Tabs: Impact on Email Marketing and Strategies to Respond. Retrieved January 19, 2014 from: http://www.silverpop.com/marketing-resources/white-papers/all/2013/Gmail-Tabs/

Return Path, (2013) Gmail Tabs Don’t Stop Shoppers: So Far So Good for Email Marketers. Retrieved January 19, 2014 from: http://landing.returnpath.com/gmail-tabs-marketing-impact-analysis-report-thanks