Integrate Web Analytics Process into Existing Web Content Production Processes

At the Emetrics summit, Eric Peterson argued for the need for a "Web Analytics Business Process". I didn't see Eric's presentation* as I had made the difficult choice to attend another track. And although nothing beats being in the room, having read Eric's, Marshall Sponder's and Robbin Steif's posts, here's my take.

I agree with Eric. Process is needed. Process defines RACI :- who is Responsible, Accountable, to be Consulted and Informed. Process isn't just about process diagrams. The process (there's that word again!) of creating the diagrams clarifies who's on the hook and for what and that's the benefit of documentation. Laying out the process, printing the map, documenting RACI and getting sign-off should create agreement about the work to be done and who's going to do it.

When there isn't an agreed-upon process, people forget and you have situations such as described by Tim Goudie of Coca-Cola...Because of tagging errors, "we lost one month's worth of data!"

I also disagree with Eric. There is a downside to creating a "new" business process called the Web Analytics Process. Selecting Web analytics tools (one of Eric's slides) should be a distinct process. However, setting up a specific named process for the measurement of content production makes "Web Analytics" an outcome or product of the process. Named processes sometimes take on a life of their own. As I posted on One Degree, Web Analytics isn't an end, it's a means to an end.

Since analytics is all too often an add-on, creating a distinct Web Analytics Process could exacerbate this common occurence. If analytics is positioned as a separate process, analytics will probably continue to be "forgotten".

Instead of a Web Analytics Business Process, I would rather up the ante of the online content/application production process, whether it's search or site or email (or ads, podcasts, videos...). Integrating facets of the Web analytics process into the online content production process and scorecarding the execution of this broader integrated process will lead to longer-term success and a more entrenched measurement culture.

It is unfortunate that the flowcharts and talk of documentation in Eric's presentation seem to have garnered all the attention, burying the benefits of describing and aligning on the process. When aligning on the process, you'll be training all the other members of the online team about Web analytics, and they'll have to understand it to sign off on the enhanced process.

* You can get a copy of Eric's presentation here by email.

What do you think?

June Li
ClickInsight

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My Interview by Marshall Sponder ... and WAA Training Day is Sold Out !

Because of my involvement in Web Analytics Training Day (WAATD), I was interviewed by Marshall Sponder as part of his pre-Emetrics Summit coverage.

WAATD is a 5-session jam-packed day this Sunday, covering everything from the basics to integrated online marketing optimization, selecting your Web analytics weapons and getting support from your organization as you drag them along with you into the new and scary world of data-enabled accountable marketing.

As of this morning, WAATD is Sold Out!

Only 3 days before heading off to the Summit. Some say conferences are dead. This one's alive and growing. I'm looking forward to seeing my friends from past Summits and SES conferences again, meeting in person [Tim Seward, Vicky Brock, Marshall], hearing Avinash speak again, and of course, attend the Special Web Analytics Wednesday Super Tuesday Event.

With 3 simultaneous tracks on the go, the only problem I'll have when I'm not moderating will be figuring out which of the sessions to attend!

June Li
ClickInsight

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The Dark Side of Marketing ROI

More and more marketing managers want to measure the return on every dollar of marketing investment. More and more CEOs are holding marketing executives accountable for marketing results. Higher accountability and a focus on results can only mean better marketing, right?

Apparently not. Extreme focus on the "show me the money" type of results has its dark side. A strong monetization focus may be destroying customer value.

What's happening in some cases is that "return on every marketing dollar" is being executed literally and at a very granular level. At the recent Canadian Marketing Association conference on Marketing Accountability, some marketers said they were being asked to quantify the ROI of sending a thank-you to customers.

I had some hint of this dark side when I talked with Dave McNab of Exchange Synergism during lunch. Dave was presenting after lunch. I didn't quite understand why his point on measuring "customer value" was a contrarian view about marketing result measurement. So I attended the session by Dave and his panel partner Chris Osborne of Redwood Data Sciences. Ten slides into the presentation, I was still confused why this was "contrarian". I was agreeing with everything they were saying about needing to measure customer value through process measures, etc. Then someone started objecting, with another saying quite strongly that they think a marketer should be able to state the ROI for every activity, including writing a thank-you note to a customer. OK, I finally got the point! Some folks believe that the only results worth measuring are monetary, like ROI, and they're taking that ROI focus down to the marketing activity level. This is why Dave and Chris were asking if accounting was now running marketing (btw, Dave is an accountant). Dave and Chris are raising the flag that extreme focus on ROI is causing easily "ROI-able" marketing activities to be prioritized ahead of relationship-building activities. Activities that do generate customer value but whose benefits are difficult to quantify are being bypassed or dropped. [It's time to resurrect the Balanced Scorecard!]

What does this have to do with Web analytics? It's a warning. More and more analytics applications allow the setting of monetary conversion goals. More and more standard analytics reports have conversion value displayed as a standard column in reports. Just having that column there creates pressure to use this feature. Who wants reports circulating that show a "$0" in the conversion value column? Lots of time can be wasted tinkering with this report, trying to attribute ROI beyond the point where it has any value or makes sense.

I'm definitely for, not against, monetizing results. However, I'm against doing it at such a granular level that ROI makes no sense because synergy between activities is ignored.

Lynn Anderson, who was the closing keynote speaker at the conference, put accountabilty in the proper perspective. Lynn, who is VP Marketing, Alliance & Strategy HP Canada, said that HP does want to measure the impact of every marketing dollar. However, HP doesn't individually measure the impact of every tactic and activity. HP measures the impact of a mix of marketing programs for product lines. Through advanced analysis of inputs from many sources, they optimize the mix.

What's the lesson for Web Analytics? Monetizing is a good thing. Don't be a monetization fanatic. Monetization has to make sense. Monetize mutually-exclusive marketing projects. Where it doesn't make sense to monetize because of interdependencies, or where process measures make more sense, remove that conversion metric column full of $0.

What do you think?

June Li
ClickInsight

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Talking Web Analytics with Marketing and Data Miners

At the recent CMA conference on Marketing Accountability, I had the pleasure of being on a Web Analytics panel with Scott Crosby, representing Google Analytics (Scott is Head of Urchin Web Analytics, Vertical Markets Group). Facilitated by Richard Boire of BoireFiller Group, our topic was Web analytics: converting online metrics to ROI measures.

We kept it informal and digressed to answer questions when necessary. My main focus was on KPIs - that good KPIs are indicative, actionable and support the attainment of organizational goals; how coming up with the right KPIs requires a clear understanding of organizational goals as a starting point; with improvement and optimization as key objectives, ratios and trends are typically more useful KPIs than absolute measures.

Scott used Google Analytics to demonstrate how campaigns can be assessed, how monetization is included in many GA reports, and how funnels can be used to troubleshoot dropout and low conversion. He also showed us an upcoming visual, non-tabular enhancement. The question of why GA is free was addressed up front - i.e. Google believes that if people can easily optimize their Adwords spend, they run more Adwords campaigns. Aligned with this position, Scott concluded by encouraging everyone to measure their campaigns, even if this was done by using one of GA's main competitors, which he listed.

It's a challenge to cover off Web analytics in an hour with any audience, let alone with a diverse audience of marketing managers and data mining specialists, so we allowed for lots of questions. Overall, feedback was very positive. Here are some learnings and areas that were discussed:

• Although everyone in the audience appeared to have some exposure to Web analytics, even though we only had an hour, we should have covered off the basic differences between server log files and javascript tagging. This would have helped some of the less knowledgeable folks in the audience when questions arose about unique visitor, accuracy, adserver vs site clickthrough discrepancies, and cookie deletion.
  
• With data miners present in the audience, we need to explain that "logs" are analogous to "records", but not exactly.
  
• Because data mining analysts often work with a transactional database, if a transaction has occurred, it's in the database. Whether or not a transaction happened is not an issue. So some of the potential inaccuracies of Web traffic data are a bit unsettling to a data mining specialists.
  
• Questions were asked about tracking of podcasts, whether it was now possible to measure how much of a podcast is viewed, etc. We couldn't answer this and suggested they might want to post a question on the Web Analytics Forum.
  
• Questions were asked about the prevalence of realtime customer predictive analysis and dynamic content production, sort of like Amazon's recommendations. We responded that walk before you run. Start by closing the feedback loop on current campaigns before trying to optimize in real time.
  
• Who would make a better Web analyst - a data miner or an IT person? My vote is for the data miner. Although either might be great analysts, problem solvers and are always learning, data miners have had exposure to customers, preferences and segmentation.
  
• There was quite a bit of interest in benchmark conversions. Accompanied by the usual "be careful how you apply this" warnings, we directed them to the Fireclick Index and WebSideStory's Statmarket as well as the Internet Retailer Top 500 report. Scott was asked if Google publishes benchmarks based on all the sites being tracked by GA. Scott responded that Google has no plans to publish aggregated benchmarks. Also, no data aggregated or otherwise goes over to the Adwords group from Analytics. Analytics has privacy very tightly controlled, which is a great thing to hear.

A jam packed hour, as you can see!

June Li
ClickInsight

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