analytics

For most companies using Google Analytics, reporting on website traffic and performance for a few web properties is a straightforward task. However, if your company manages hundreds of web properties, delivering useful and timely reports can become a significant challenge. For many, the only apparent solution is to manually export analytics data for each web property, then combine and compare that data to answer relevant business questions. It’s a slow and costly process and you spend most of your time creating reports instead of carrying out meaningful analysis. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) faced precisely this challenge when it made the decision to use GA Data Grabber by AutomateAnalytics.com. GA Data Grabber works within Excel and uses the Google Analytics API. Users create or choose reports and GA Data Grabber automatically retrieves the Google Analytics data from any number of websites. And with multi-login capabilities, users can seamlessly combine data between Google Analytics profiles that reside under different Google Accounts. Designed for non-technical users, GA Data Grabber generates great-looking visualizations and can automatically highlight important changes in key metrics over a date range. It’s also possible to use Excel’s visualization and data processing features. For example, formulas can be added to calculate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on any set of metrics. Amy Sample, Director, Web Analytics, Public Broadcasting Service explains the challenges that PBS faced and how GA Data Grabber was able to help. “The PBS.org and PBSKIDS.org web sites are made up of hundreds of individual companion sites to broadcast programs.  From a business perspective, there is a need to evaluate performance of individual program sites relative to each other.” As is common for many large organizations, PBS has separate Google Analytics accounts for each program site. “While multiple accounts works well to evaluate the site content and performance, it makes it difficult to look at all of the sites side-by-side without a lot of manual effort.  Our previous attempts to create this type of report were time-consuming and often subject to data input errors.” “Using Google Analytics, combined with GA Data Grabber, we were able to create a benchmark report for our program sites. The monthly report pulls a standard set of KPIs from each of the program accounts and ranks the programs by traffic. The report is used as a management tool by both the PBS.org and PBSKIDS.org teams to monitor monthly performance of programs. The teams have also used it to identify opportunities for programs that are no longer being broadcast but still getting significant online traffic.  Our program producers use the report to benchmark their performance against other sites of similar content or size and determine ways to improve audience engagement. As a result of using GA Data Grabber to pull the data, we can produce this report quickly and accurately on monthly basis.” GA Data Grabber Mikael Thuneberg, Founder & CEO of AutomateAnalytics.com has been using the Google Analytics API since its launch. “I’ve been very happy with the API. Having developed for several other APIs, I can say that the Google Analytics API is by far the easiest to develop for. It’s logically structured and flexible, the documentation is excellent, and it’s easy to get help through the forum. I’ll certainly continue developing for the Google Analytics API. I’ve expanded to other APIs as well, but Google Analytics is still by far the most important one for my business.” GA Data Grabber can be found through the Google Analytics App Gallery and can be downloaded from the GA Data Grabber website. If you’re interested in developing solutions for the Google Analytics platform, visit Google Analytics Developer Program. Posted by Pete Frisella, Google Analytics API Team

In October, we made Google Webmaster Tools available to all users in Google Analytics, allowing everyone to surface Google search data in new Search Engine Optimization reports. Starting today, Webmaster Tools will update how they calculate data to make it better match expectations about what a search engine ranking really means. Based on their research, the answer to the question "What is your rank in search results?" is the first position of a link to your site. Previously we reported the average position of all links to your site. Now your Google Analytics reports will be updated to reflect the first position. An example calculation
We anticipate that this new method of calculation will more accurately match your expectations about how a link's position in Google Search results should be reported. How will this affect my Google Analytics data? This change will affect your Search Engine Optimization reports, when your data in Google Analytics Search Engine Optimization reports will be calculated using the new method. Historical data will not change. Note that the change in calculation means that the Average Position metric will usually stay the same or decrease, corresponding to the same or improved search ranking. We look forward to providing you a more representative picture of your Google Search data. Please let us know any feedback you have. Posted by Chris Anderson, Google Analytics team

The Google Analytics Team has always supported the promotion of analytics education and professional development. We’d like to share this guest post by Wendy Greco & Eric Peterson from Analysis Exchange - an initiative designed to provide hands-on training opportunities for aspiring web analytics professionals while providing free web data analysis to the entire nonprofit community. In the right hands, technologies like Google Analytics can do great things, but unfortunately not every organization is able to hire resources to dedicate to web analytics. What’s more, there are thousands of talented individuals out there who would love to work in this field but don’t have the hands-on experience required to get their first web analytics job. Two years ago Web Analytics Demystified looked at this problem from both angles and decided to create a solution - The Analysis Exchange. The Analysis Exchange pairs a non-profit organization with pair of web analysts --- one a student wanting the experience and the other a mentor with years of direct work in the field.  The trio work together to have the student learn to use Google Analytics to “tell a story” with the data about how the non-profit can better meet their business goals. Thanks to the generosity of all of our sponsors and participants, Analysis Exchange projects are completely free. Google Analytics is the standard analytics tool for Analysis Exchange for a few key reasons:

• No cost means it is accessible to all non-profits
• Nearly 100% of the non-profits we work with already have it installed
• Our students find Google Analytics incredibly easy to learn
• Our mentors, even if they don’t use Google Analytics day-to-day, pick it up immediately

Most importantly, Google Analytics attention to ease-of-use dramatically improves our non-profits likelihood to continue to use web analytics after Analysis Exchange projects.  Our mentors and students teach them to fish, and Google Analytics becomes the fishing pole. Most Analysis Exchange projects take less than a few hours for non-profits and mentors.  Students spend more time, but students have the most to gain as they develop the types of “Analyst Ninja” skills that are required to get a great job in this field. We’re looking for more partners to sign up to the The Analysis Exchange - who are interested in supporting this initiative. You can learn more about our effort at www.analysis-exchange.com or write our Executive Director Wendy Greco directly at wendy.greco@analysis-exchange.com. Posted on behalf of Wendy Greco & Eric Peterson

You may have already heard that Google is rolling out a new main privacy policy on March 1. With these changes, the privacy policy will be easier to read, and will help us create one beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google products and services. The new privacy policy makes it clear that if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services - helping us treat you as a single user across all our products. (To read more about the new privacy policy, check out the Official Google Blog post here.) We know you may have questions about how this affects you and your Google Analytics data, so want to take this opportunity to explain. Most importantly, the privacy policies and controls you have over your website data will not change. Just as it was before, your website’s data is governed by the data sharing settings, which you control directly. You can still choose how much, if any, of your website’s data to share with Google to help us improve our products, provide anonymous, aggregate statistics, or make enhanced features like Conversion Optimizer available to you. Your website data will not be used for purposes other than those that you specify in your settings, which you may change at any time. You can find more information about data sharing settings here. The way that we handle information about your website’s visitors is also unchanged. Their data will continue to be governed by your website’s privacy policies, and their actions will remain anonymous in Google Analytics to both websites and Google. The only change for Google Analytics users under the new privacy policy is that now, information about how you interact with the Google Analytics interface may be shared with our other products. Helping you understand our privacy controls and giving you meaningful choices to determine how you want to share your data is very important to us, and we encourage you to take the time to read through the new privacy policy changes and our data sharing options. Posted by Paul Muret, Director of Engineering, Google Analytics

Continuing our long-standing efforts to support the broader digital measurement, analysis, and optimization community around the globe, I am incredibly happy to announce the creation of the Analysis Exchange Scholarship Fund. You can read the press release and learn more about the effort at the Analysis Exchange web site, but in an nutshell thanks to the generosity of ObservePoint and IQ Workforce we are now able to financially support Analysis Exchange member’s in their efforts to expand their web analytics horizons.

What’s more, as soon as Jim Sterne heard about our efforts, he and Matthew Finlay immediately donated three passes to the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit each year — how amazing is that! Tremendous thanks to Corry Prohens, Rob Seolas, Jim Sterne, and each of their teams for their support of our efforts at the Analysis Exchange.

Analysis Exchange members in good standing are encouraged to apply for scholarship funds. We are open to ideas but in general expect these funds to be used for things like:

• Pay partial travel or registration fees for conferences like ACCELERATE and eMetrics
• Pay annual membership fees for the Web Analytics Association or other professional groups
• Pay partial tuition to the University of British Columbia’s Web Analytics courses
• Pay partial costs for the Web Analytics Association’s certification
• Pay for books, software licenses, and so on

Quarterly awards will be up to $500 USD per selected applicant and I imagine we will give two or three away each quarter depending on the quality of applications we get. You need to be a member of Analysis Exchange in good standing and have earned very good scores on projects to be eligible.

I hope you’ll take a minute to learn more about the Analysis Exchange Scholarship. I also hope you’ve been helping in the Analysis Exchange and you’re excited to apply for this funding!

If you have any questions about these funds please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Executive Director Wendy Greco directly. I am also happy to answer questions.

Thanks

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© 2012 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

When I started Urchin Software with a few colleagues back in 1998, it was hard to imagine the scale and impact that Urchin and Google Analytics would eventually have. And yet, I remember rolling out the first version of Urchin to our customers and being blown away by the response. It was clear that Urchin was filling a fundamental need to understand customer engagement in a new medium. Suddenly, it made the intangible packets of traffic flying invisibly all over the world very tangible. Within a few short years, we built a successful business based on Urchin and “Urchin on Demand”, an online version of the product. In early 2005, we were acquired by Google because it saw the potential of data to create a better web. By liberating this tool we could empower companies of all sizes to become smarter and more effective online. We assigned considerable resources to our online solution and released it to the public for free. Google Analytics has since grown beyond anything that we could have expected. The success of Google Analytics has been incredibly rewarding and humbling, and we are very thankful for the support of our early Urchin customers and investors. The Urchin Software product has now been completely overshadowed by its tremendously popular offspring. And so, it is time that we now complete the cycle by officially retiring the Urchin Software product and focus exclusively on online analytics. On behalf of the original Urchin crew and Google, we thank you and hope that we can continue to serve you with amazing products. Urchin has only been available during the past several years through Certified Urchin Resellers, and new sales will officially discontinue at the end of March 2012. We are encouraging Urchin users to migrate to Google Analytics, although expect that current installations of the software will continue to work fine on most systems for years to come. You can learn more about the retirement of this product on the Urchin Website. Posted by Paul Muret, Director of Engineering, Google Analytics

As investment in digital marketing increases, data and insight continue to be critical assets for marketers and content owners. If 2012 is the year to develop your measurement and optimisation skill set, we have a range of resources to help you. Individual Qualification with Google Analytics Whilst you’re improving your measurement skills and campaign results using Google Analytics you can also work towards becoming individually qualified with a recognised Google certification.  Learn more at www.google.com/analytics/iq. Live Training & Events We have a stellar partner network who offer a range of courses and live training to help you through the basic and advanced capabilities of GA. Google certified trainers run regular 101, 201 and 301 seminars - you can find a Seminars For Success calendar here for North America, Australia and the UK. Another great way to learn about GA and meet the GA team is to attend one of the GAUGE events. This series is hosted by our partner network and is a great way to learn from experts within the network and within other companies likes yours. The next event takes place in San Francisco on March 8-9 where Phil Mui, Group Product Manager and other members of the product team will share some of our newest developments and maybe even hint at what’s in store in 2012. European events are already planned in Brussels (March 20th), Amsterdam (March 21-22nd), and Stockholm (May 8th). Keep an eye on the blog for the schedule and registration details. Online Resources & Best Practices We also have published many articles to help you find your way around GA in our help centre and also have a vibrant forum. If you prefer watching to reading, visit the Google Analytics YouTube channel for a range of educational videos and webinars covering our latest feature releases. What else do you want to see or learn about in 2012? Let us know, leave a comment and we’ll try to accommodate in our curriculum or within our partner events. Sophie Chesters, Marketing Manager for Google Analytics

Since May of last year we’ve been working on a new version of Google Analytics and quickly adding new features and functionality to provide you with fast access to the insights you need. We’re extremely pleased with the new capabilities around multi-channel measurement, real-time analytics, flow visualization and improved device reporting to name a few. Our goal was to create a faster, more intuitive platform for the future and I think we’ve met many of these goals. Before we fully move to the new version we’re ensuring that you have the key functions you’re used to and which enables GA to be integral to your organization. We’re working hard on some priority features - email scheduling and PDF export as a top priority, alongside profile copying and dashboard sharing - and want to let you know that we’ll only fully be moving over to the new version once these are in place. We’ve collected a lot of feedback on things you love and things you miss - but if there is still something you just can’t live without let us know by filling in this survey. We’re excited to bring you more in 2012 - we have a lot on our to do list - so keep reading and I hope to hear from you so we can continue to make GA the most intuitive, useful analytics tool available for marketers and site owners today. Posted by Phil Mui, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics

Just a quick note of thanks to OpinionLab, ObservePoint, and Splunk who have joined I.Q. Workforce as official sponsors of our global Web Analytics Wednesday series for 2012. Thanks to these very generous organizations, my partners and I are going to be able to continue to help Web Analytics Wednesday evolve and continue to be the gathering point for digital measurement practitioners and analysts around the globe.

What these added sponsors mean to all of you is bigger budgets for Web Analytics Wednesday which we hope will lead to bigger and better gatherings. Whereas we typically limited reimbursement from the Global Fund in the past to around $100 USD, we are now able to provide larger sums based on need and demonstrated commitment to the event.

More. Free. Money.

If you have any questions about hosting a Web Analytics Wednesday or how these funds can be used please email me directly. Otherwise I hope you will join me in thanking all four of these companies for their generous support of the entire digital measurement community.  You can tweet them at @corryprohens, @observepoint, @opinionlab, and @splunk or let them know you appreciate their efforts in the comments below.

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© 2012 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

The Google Analytics Forum is a community of people like you, who enjoy exploring making full use of the features of Google Analytics and also enjoy sharing their knowledge within the community.  It’s a place where you can share expertise or seek out answers. It’s also a great way to escalate bugs and critical issues. Googlers such as myself and many of our Google Analytics Certified Partners are monitoring and can provide speedy help and feedback. To make the forums even better, we’ve migrated to the new Google Product Forums on January 12, 2012 as they offer increased stability and the potential to add exciting new features in the future - here’s the link to the Google Analytics forum using the new platform. The most popular forum features - including levels and marking a best answer - will continue to be available in the new forum. The old forum will be archived and any links to old forum content will redirect automatically to the corresponding content in the new forum. Here’s a getting started guide so you can learn about some of the new features. Top Contributors were given a demo of the new platform at Google’s first ever Global Top Contributor Summit in September and I’d like to give special thanks to Top Contributors Phil Pearce (PPC_Guru) and Bronwyn Vourtis (Whims) for attending the event. Thanks also to Rachaell and Nayan for continued involvement in the community and to all of you who have provided feedback and participated in testing.  We’ll continue to listen to your feedback to improve the platform and ensure the migration goes smoothly. Aruna, Community Manager - Google Analytics

In 2011, we saw marketing follow the consumer to more screens and more platforms - from apps to mobile sites to social networks to tablets. And in response the analytics industry made strides to unify this complex picture for marketers through device and platform specific analytics, and to connect the dots to measure and value the multi-channel customer path. With the help of mobile devices and the Internet, consumers also flocked online to fill their shopping carts in 2011. According to aggregate numbers from websites opting in to share their data with Google, there was a 63% jump in the monthly volume of online transactions from December 2010 to December 2011, and on average, the number of ecommerce transactions grew about 1.2% every week in 2011. Last year it became more important than ever for businesses to make sure their online presence and digital campaigns were in check, and that they were measuring what matters. As we turn the page on 2011, here are our thoughts on what’s in store for the industry in 2012: Mobile shines on the mainstage It’s been said that 2011 was the year that mobile turned a corner, and consumers armed with their smartphones show no sign of turning back. In fact, aggregate numbers from websites opting to share their data with Google show us that in the last four months of 2011, weekly volume of mobile visits jumped 40%, with mobile traffic growing at an average of 2% every week. And the weekly share of mobile transactions on overall ecommerce grew 60% in the same timeframe. In 2012, marketers should expect improved tools to measure engagement on mobile-optimized sites and effectiveness of mobile ads that will help them determine what platforms and formats help them catch consumers on the go. Measuring social media ROI becomes a reality Social media has changed the way we shop and interact with brands, but marketers still lack a clear way to measure how their social investments lead to more sales. According to MarketingSherpa, only 20% of CMOs think social media marketing produces measurable ROI, while 62% consider it to be a promising tactic that will eventually yield ROI. In 2012, better measurement tools will help marketers make smarter decisions about their investments in social. Vanity counters, such as friend counts and reshares, will be augmented with bottom line metrics like conversions and purchases, allowing marketers to measure true social ROI of each campaign and compare the effectiveness with other channels. With additional visibility into off-site activity, enhanced campaign tracking and referral analytics, 2012 is the year that social analytics comes to life.  Moving beyond conversions to a cohesive view of the customer In 2012, the analytics industry will move towards bringing the disparate pieces of customer insight together into one cohesive view of the customer. How are your search, display, mobile and email marketing campaigns working together over time to bring a customer to purchase? And once they make that purchase, what can their continued interactions with your brand - both online and offline - tell you about their lifetime value as a customer? Marketers will move beyond individual conversions to make smarter decisions once they understand the entire picture of their customer over time, and we see that picture coming into focus this year. Right ad, right time - applying analytics in real time With real time data feeding into remarketing, ad content optimization, and real time bidding systems, advertisers are closer than ever to finding the right customer with the right ad at the right time. As these real time systems converge, there’s huge potential to integrate analytics to pull in deeper and richer information about user intent. For example, if people who come into the site for more than 10 minutes and watch at least 3 product videos are the high ROI sweet spot customer segment for an online retailer, any such users browsing then abandoning the shopping cart page are great candidates for remarketing. Knowing the likelihood to convert as well as the potential ROI from a sale, advertisers can program these variables into the bid they are willing to pay for showing this customer their ad. Data will become more actionable We’ve always believed that businesses make smarter decisions when they have the right data at their fingertips, but the real impact of analytics will be seen when we make the jump from mere reporting to more actionable tools. While full scale experimentation is still complex, controlled experimentation is something that every marketer should take advantage of, from site optimization to attribution modeling. Marketers are asking for sophisticated yet easy to use tools that help them make sense of the data, and ultimately make more dollars - and I think the industry will respond this year. We’ve only scratched the surface in helping marketers better measure the effectiveness of their campaigns, and as marketing continues to evolve, so will our efforts to make it more measurable and actionable. This year is sure to be an exciting one, so happy measuring! Posted by Amy Chang, Director of Product Management

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a relaxing and joyous Holiday season and are as excited as I am about what the coming year has in store. While I’m not much for making predictions I am a big fan of making resolutions, both personal and professional. Here are five high-level resolutions that Adam, John, and I have made for 2012:

We resolve to continue to provide great value to our clients.

A consulting business like ours is only as good as the value we provide on an ongoing basis. To that end, all of us are committed to working closely with all of our clients to ensure we deliver business insights and recommendations designed to make our key stakeholders look like heroes within their organizations. While we are intensely proud of the work our client Best Buy has done to become more analytically-minded, we want all of our clients to appreciate the same type of high-visibility wins.

We resolve to have Demystified to evolve with our industry.

You don’t need to be an analyst to see that the “web analytics” industry is changing. Increasingly the work our clients do is less about the “web” and more about the entire digital world, and the people, process, and technology required to analyze and optimize the digital world are different than those we have used in the past. We started thinking about this transformation back in 2009, but at Web Analytics Demystified we are committed to adding resources and knowledge to be the best guides possible as our clients begin to leverage digital business intelligence and data sciences.

We resolve to continue to provide great support to the measurement community.

Web Analytics Demystified is fortunate to be more than just a consultancy, we are part of the foundation of the entire digital measurement community around the world. Through our Web Analytics Wednesday event series, our Analysis Exchange educational efforts, our support for the Web Analytics Association, and now our ACCELERATE conference series we are able to connect with analysts around the world. In 2012 we resolve to do more for the community — watch our web site for news in the coming weeks about all of these efforts.

We resolve to provide more web analytics education in 2012 than ever before.

Our educational effort, Analysis Exchange, has succeeded beyond expectation since it’s inception in 2010, thanks largely to the efforts of Executive Director Wendy Greco. With nearly 1,700 members and nearly 200 completed projects, the Exchange has become the de facto source for hands-on web analytics education. But we believe we have found a way to do even more with the Exchange in 2012, creating more projects and opportunities for any individual motivated to break into this industry.

We resolve to make ACCELERATE the best small digital measurement conference in the world.

In 2011 we tried something new with the ACCELERATE conference. While mistakes were made, and an awful lot of nice people weren’t able to join us due to demand, we believe we are converging on an innovative conference format that will continue to be 100% free to attend. But we promise to not just stop when we find something that works — we are resolved to push ACCELERATE to be the most engaging, most fun, and most valuable small event in the industry.

How about you? What are you resolved to do in 2012?

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© 2010 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

It is the season to be predicting the future, but that is almost always a career-limiting move. So I'm not going to do that.

It is a lot easier to predict the present. So I'm not going to do that either.

Rather, I'm going to share a clump of realities/rules garnered from the present to help ready you for the predictable near future . Now here is the great part… if you follow these rules and act on these insights I believe you'll be significantly better prepared for the unpredictable future.

Awesome right?

Now here's another surprise: These rules/insights/mind shifts are not about data!

Here's important context (before we get into the rules for revolutionaries)…

The Fundamental Web Analytics Problem Is Not Data!

A huge part of the last few years for me have been about bringing more data, better strategies, more powerful tools, ever more impactful keynotes to people around the world.

One of my biggest learnings?

Most companies are astonishingly blasé about data and possibilities of measurement. Most web "analysts" remain glorified "data pukers" or glorified JavaScript taggers.

Why?

The problem, it turns out, is not data. The problem is only partly the data pukers or JavaScript taggers. The real problem is that our management teams lack imagination when it comes to the web, and our marketing executives continue to do TV on Twitter, catalogs on display ads, irrelevant shouting on search, etc.

That frustrating reality is the source of numerous problems for the company (and the web as a whole), but it also means Executives ask for unimaginative data. "Count Impressions, in real time!" "Show me Clicks and the count of Facebook Fans!" "My dashboard should have Page Views and Exit Rate!" Sad, unimaginative measurements of their sad, unimaginative campaigns.

If you are doing lame stuff, why try harder in an analytics context by asking for Economic Value or Visitor Loyalty or Conversation Rate or a thousand other super powerful and insightful metrics ?

The problem is not analytics or data (or your blood, sweat and tears). The problem is Marketing and lack of imagination in using the web/digital channels.

And here's the thing… if you are a "Web Analyst" in the broadest sense of that word, then this is your problem. Solve it or suffer the indignity of making decent money doing work that will have no impact on your organization. If you are a digital marketer then this absolutely is your problem. You're the massive, under-appreciated, hidden part.

In the last eighteen months or so, I've spent a lot of time trying to solve that problem. Get the senior-most people in the largest companies in the world to unlock their imaginations when it comes to their digital existence via impactful digital strategies. Convert them to be revolutionaries for their companies and customers.

I've discovered that if we can just get them to imagine a better existence, undertake serious risks, experiment with new better ideas, and spend money executing them… they will ask for more robust measurement! Because you need serious new good analysis to understand the impact of serious new good stuff!!

In the same spirit, if they don't do wonderful, beautiful, imaginative things, we people who play with data will continue to play a marginal, at best, role in most corporations in the world. Even if these unimaginative companies spend a ton of money on Omniture, IBM, WebTrends, Yandex Analytics and Google Analytics, we digital analysts will lead unimpactful puking tagging lives.

And no one deserves that.

In case you are reading this and you are the aforementioned Digital Marketer, then your life is sadder still. How good can it possibly feel to do unimaginative things that barely even worked on TV/radio/magazines/catalogs?

Whether you are the Marketer/CMO or the Web Analyst/Ninja, it is imperative that we unleash imagination.

Why doesn't everyone do that already?

I know that this sounds utterly simple but we, people and companies, don't always realize that the "rules" have changed. Our mental model has not shifted enough to the existing reality. This lack of internalizing the rules jeopardizes our current state to some extent, and our future to a significantly greater extent.

A lot of my work is making companies realize the implications of these rules on their company strategy and structures. You've probably seen these rules sneak into my blog posts. I want to share them below as a collection with the hope that it will motivate you to create a veritable primordial ooze from which new ideas (or indeed life) will spark for an imaginative digital existence.

7 Rules for Digital Marketing Revolutionaries!

These are my observations on changes already underway, changes that are dramatically affecting what marketing is and should be. You might have observed at least some of them in bits and pieces, but perhaps you have not considered them as a whole. Adapting to the implications will allow the creation of a more future-proof you.

#1 Customer expectations on the web are insane, will get super-insane.

We expect more.

High bounce rates show how horrible slow-loading websites are. Lack of loyalty shows simply re-publishing AP stories is useless. After 19 visits, www.bloomberg.com should create a home page around my interests, not their one-size-fits-all pimping to everyone. With an iPhone there is no friction between me being in your store or on your site (or, omg, getting a mobile geo-targeted coupon from your competitor for 5% off your price while I'm in your store!). There are 12 different alternatives to your site that provide free return shipping. Just because your site is B2B, you do not have the right to create a 1940s website and force visitors to type their name, precise GPS coordinates and underwear size to get a PDF that should have existed as a webpage in the first place (as HTML has been invented).

It is no longer acceptable to just meet past expectations. Alternatives to you are one click away, one Google search away, one tweeted recommendation away. Aim to meet super-insane customer expectations and you'll future-proof your business.

Oh and yes, I do get that this is hard. You have to rethink everything. Price of greatness, sadly.

#2 Multiplicity: Competencies, Campaigns, Systems, Everything.

This is something we are most unprepared for.

You can no longer be good at just one thing, or two. It is a 10-thing world now (and maybe a 20-thing world soon).

If you are a catalog company you have to be good at catalog marketing (as long as it continues to provide incremental revenue ), and you have to be good at NASCAR (as long as it provides incremental revenue), and you have to be good at Facebook, and you have to be good at email, and search, and YouTube and… a hundred other things. All while constantly optimizing your portfolio via controlled experiments .

You have to be good at sourcing your products and you have to be good at delivering them.

You have to be good at using clickstream and surveys and competitive intelligence and heuristic evaluations.

You have to be good on every device of every screen size in every country with a monetizable audience.

You have to be good at… many things all at the same time. For far too long we've been able to be successful by relying on our sheer strength on one thing. Catalog. Paid search. YouTube. Billboards. TV. With every passing day that strategy now ensures we are rejecting tons of revenue and tons of prospective customers.

It is hard to rewire the company's DNA to truly execute a multiplicity strategy. That's why you allocate 15% of your Marketing budget to getting good at multiplicity. All the time.

#3 One-trick ponies are going to be a liability.

This is a subset of the one above, but I wanted to call it out separately because I am madly, deeply convinced of its importance.

Increasingly, your people can't be one-trick ponies. Especially not people you consider stars.

If your Marketer is not savvy in basic finance and analytics and writing some html and creating mobile campaigns and tag clouds then you have a long term liability on your hands, and not an asset who is really, really, really, really good at writing copy for display campaigns.

The web demands immense agility and flexibility from every company. Having one-trick ponies can limit your capacity to think smart and move fast.

If you have an Analyst who is just good at Omniture and has never done an online usability study, and used Compete, and taken a whack at a rough digital P/L, then it is time to set them on a path to evolve, or get someone else.

If you have a Finance person for your web business who has never run campaigns on Facebook, and who doesn't understand the uniqueness of mobile applications, and a little bit about the insanity of ad exchanges then over time try to hire someone who does.

At one time, it was okay to be 100% good at one thing, and only one thing. But today companies with people who are 70% magnificent at one thing and have filled the remaining 30% with being good at everything in the periphery of their jobs will rule this world.

You want to change HR hiring practices now to nurture such 70/30 people inside your company, and to make that a mandatory condition for all new hires. Then you'll rule this world.

PS: Here's the raw brutal truth for you dear reader… no company is going to invest in you. The most precious Digital Folks are those who choose to invest in themselves, on their own time. Especially in the 30% area referenced above. Now you know.

#4 Attention is the most precious commodity.

We live in a hyper fragmented world with, quite literally, hundreds of TV channels, thousands of social connections and millions of websites. The single biggest gift any brand can get is attention. And not just the few seconds you get by showing 19 ads on one web page, or tweeting one relevant link in 1000, or showing the same ad for DirecTV six times while watching one 23 min program on Hulu, or showing up for a query for "flights to Sao Paulo" when you only offer flights to Europe, or… a million other ways.

Attention results from understanding the true strength of each channel and then engaging uniquely with your audience. Here's a good example. I bike ride a lot. I walk a lot. In general, I'm a big fan of exercise. I would follow Gatorade on Twitter with the exercise connection of that brand. But you know what they do on Twitter? They retweet other peoples tweets about them. The most lame thing you can imagine using Twitter for. (That is if they don't waste time with condescending tweets like "We've got your back xyz.")

How could Gatorade have my attention? With a Twitter stream about hydration. If their tweets supported their bio on Twitter: "Helping athletes get the most out of their bodies before, during and after activity." I could not find a single tweet of the 250 I reviewed that fell in that category. Why not try that? Why not go for grabbing my attention and then keeping it? Why not go from trying to have a Gatorade ad on every TV sports event in the hopes that I'm watching to doing that plus doing social media right and have a direct relationship with me?

Not one or the other. Both done exceptionally well. That's how you earn attention.

Or consider this example. Why do Priceline or Expedia mobile apps only do prices? Why do they not have a TripIt-like functionality built in? If they did, I would go having to remember which app to use to search for a hotel to having an app that is central to my life (and TripIt provides such value that it is) that I use all the time and that I will of course use when I have to think about booking any travel.

Get it? Attention. Via incredible daily utility.

One more example. With 55k RSS Subscribers and 110k Visits a month, this blog could make a few dollars with AdSense or Display ads or annoying interstitials offers. It could also make a few more dollars constantly pimping my two books in posts. Yet it does not. It simply gives you content (my goal: "incredible, relevant, of value"). You see, I don't want your AdSense clicks. I want your attention. And I know I can monetize that 100x all other things combined.

So what is your business shooting for online when it comes to digital marketing? What are you doing to earn, and keep, attention?

#5 Brand destruction is insanely efficient now. Beware!

United breaks guitars. Kenneth Cole goes too far with Egyptian protests. Gap logo. Bank of America everything. You can add 100 more examples in 100 seconds.

Those are big ones. But there are small ones too. I told 20 people that Nikon's site is slow and profoundly sub-optimal on mobile. (Guess what I had on hand when I saw their sexy ad on TV? A mobile device!) Now these 20 people will tell others. Small, silent brand destruction.

Yet so few companies have built organizational capabilities with this efficiency in mind. The distance between a story and an audience is six pixels (as my friend Mitch Joel might say). It is ever more important to live your values, walk the talk, deliver what you promise, not say stupid stuff, be real and accessible, and all those delightful things.

You see, the power that can so efficiently destroy your business, is also the power that can boost you to untold heights. And that's marketing money can't buy.

Oh, and you are right that people bought Kenneth Cole stuff even after the insensitive tweet because only a few people are on Social Media. The challenge is that everyone will be Social in ways they can't even imagine. Then we move from six pixels to two. Then what will you do?

Imagine a better future for your company.

PS: It is no longer optional for you to just create TV ads and not have the most brilliant, engaging and helpful mobile websites. In case you were wondering, the year of the mobile was two years go.

#6 Being good at the Long Tail matters just as much as the Head.

I've talked about the long tail on this blog, especially in context for Search. But the concept applies across all channels.

Here's a good example. You can spend all your money on the four standard channels on TV and get in front of 1000 people. But you can probably find 1000 people *relevant* to your brand and message by advertising on 28 *relevant* channels in the long tail (those after channel #14). Or the relevant 50. It is much harder to do, and much harder to explain to your boss who is still looking at GRPs, as GRPs for the long tail mostly don't exist. But if you do, you'll be more efficient, shout less, and deliver more value to your company and delight to your customers.

In every channel we have, Facebook or YouTube or Google or AOL or AdMob or pick your favorite, we have the capacity to shout at concentrations of irrelevant people, or show up for the dispersed hyper-relevant few. While I can't dissuade most Executives from the former, I try as hard as I can to help create strategies for the latter. I'm convinced it is the ability to do the latter that makes you future-proof.

Oh, and this is why Multiplicity matters (TV AND Catalog AND Mobile). This is why owing your own strong digital outpost (your own website) and being present in a space someone else owns (Facebook) matters. This is why having multiple trick ponies matters. They combine to get you really good at the Long Tail execution complexity and massive bottom-line benefit.

#7 Glory will come to the precious few who are willing to embarrass themselves.

We don't take risk and try things, imaginative (possibly glorious) things, because we believe the price of failure is so high. And it is in the real world. Consider creating a TV commercial or re-packaging a product or trying a new offer. First, it takes a very long time to actually try something (add longer plus infinity for risky things). Second, when you fail, you fail spectacularly. Heads roll. Companies get entrenched in what they know and end up constantly optimizing for what's always worked, meanwhile the world changes and these companies die, albeit slowly.

Now consider the web. You can have your most embarrassing idea for a redesign/new offer/product launch/whatever out there in one day. AND you can control for risk! You can only show the redesign to 1% of the site traffic. You can try the offer with just one affiliate or some Bing ads. You can launch the product to a selected group of opted-in customers (or only to people in New York). You can literally control for risk should everything blow up in your face. AND you can have analysis of your risk in almost real time to get an early read and in a few days with statistical significance!

And yet it is the rare company that is able to get over its mental model from the real (old) world and try imaginative things in the digital world where the rules are different and stacked in your favor. Yes, brand destruction is easy in our world, but we are not talking about destroying our brand. We are talking about taking controlled risks and optimization. What marketing program in the universe does not need that?

If you are an executive, encourage your company to check its old world thinking at the door. Consider rewarding people with new ideas. Allocate some of your aforementioned 15% budget to experimentation and testing. If you are a large company don't live without someone with strong Design of Experiments skills. Don't brush off Twitter or Google+ because you are B2B or A2K. Try. With 100% effort . Then do more of what works, or kill ruthlessly.

If you can't embarrass yourself, in controlled quantities, you can't become magnificent. and you can't future-proof your company.

Bonus: #8 Data is your friend.

You did not think I would miss this one did you? :)

This blog is about the joys of measurement and the transformative power of data. So I won't talk about it a lot more in this post.

Let me just say this… more of marketing is becoming algorithmically driven and a lot more decisions we make using reports today are being automated to be made faster, more efficiently, on our behalf. The ability to have a real analytical competency will mean the difference between winners and losers.

So do the 7 things above, but ensure you have a clearly articulated Digital Marketing & Measurement Model. Fill it with the best web metrics to measure success. If you partake in analysis, let that be at the intersection of custom reports and advanced segments.

Data + You = BFF = Business & Personal Success.

Eight simple rules for digital revolutionaries to follow in order to unlock the imagination of their companies and be massively successful in the future. Absorb them. Undertake the very hard task of slowly evolving your company to adapt to them. Monetize the opportunity presented, future-proof your company.

I wish you all the very best.

It's your turn now.

Do you agree with my learning that our primary problem is not web analytics/data but, rather, it is unimaginative web strategies? Have your own stories to share about brand destruction? Do you agree with the eight rules for revolutionaries above? Got your own?

Please share your feedback, ideas and awesomeness via comments.

Thank you.

The 2015 Digital Marketing Rule Book. Change or Perish. is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

With only a week before the holiday gift season is over, it’s time to shut down your online ads and turn off the lights at your e-store, right? Not so fast, not if you want to ride the final shopping wave! Holiday shoppers are still out in full force, and “dollars per buyer” are up 12% this year, so you’re likely to get even more bang for your advertising buck. Since Christmas is on a Sunday this year, that means last-minute gift-givers could be shopping up until Thursday the 22nd if you offer 2-day shipping. However, you also have visitors looking for physical stores where they can buy your product, and (if you offer it) those willing to “pick up in store”. With Advanced Segments, you can find these visitors and help them get their gift on time! The first thing to research is who were these last-minute shoppers last year? If you had goals or e-commerce tracking installed back then, shrink your date range from December 18th, 2010 to December 24th, 2010. Next, select the “Visits with Transactions” default advanced segment: (if you don’t have e-commerce tracking, you may want to create a custom advanced segment like this one: where the goal# that you select is your most valuable goal). Then, go to the organic keywords report by navigating to Traffic Sources > Search > Organic. What keywords were these buyers searching on? Were there any good generic terms like “last minute gifts” or “gifts before christmas”? Were there any long-tail terms that are still relevant this year? If so, make sure you’re bidding on these terms in your paid search accounts so you get maximum coverage on keywords that brought in revenue last season. Also be sure to check out the paid search report to see if there were any converting paid keywords from last year that you have been missing this time around. (Also try repeating this process for December 26th 2010 through January 1st 2011 to find trends during the post-Christmas week). Next, find out if there is any crossover between your online store and physical store. If you have a store locator for your physical stores (or that lists stores who sell your products), then create the following advanced segment: With this segment applied, shrink your date range to the past seven days and go to the Pages report (under Content > Site Content) to cross-list those products against any that are out of stock (one reason why they could be checking for stores). Then, call around to make sure the physical locations have the items that these visitors are searching for. If you only sell products online, then create similar advanced segments to the one above for people who visit your most popular holiday promotional pages. Then, go to the Pages report to see what other products those visitors are viewing (and the transactions report to see what people are buying) and feature that content on the landing page to make it easy to find! One more advanced segment tip for you: It’s estimated that half of online shoppers will use their mobile phone while shopping this year. This could be to locate stores, find better deals, or find coupons. This connection to shopping in the physical world will be critical for these final seven days, when shipping costs are high. Check your AdWords report, and make sure you try out the new “non-mobile”, “high-end mobile” and “tablet” default segments. You might be surprised at how your paid traffic behaves differently, so be sure to consider the device when running analysis and set up goals that make sense for them! Happy analyzing and happy holidays! Posted by Jesse Nichols, Google Analytics team

From our initial limited release of Flow Visualization in October to our recent release to all customers, we have received a lot of positive feedback from our customers. The idea of using Sankey diagrams and applying them to traffic through a website seems to resonate with you. Thank you! We’ve heard all your suggestions and we’re busy cooking up great stuff in our labs for you. Stay tuned.... But, this post is about the other fellow innovators in graph visualization and the different ways that Sankey diagrams have influenced their research. Since Google has a deep and treasured relationship as part of the research community, we wanted to recognize their work to make it easy to understand vast quantities of data. Many of us draw our inspiration from Charles Minnard’s 1869 work, epitomized by his diagram of Napolean’s March to Russia. Edward Tufte, who is well-known for his popular visualization books, calls Minnard’s work as “... probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn.” It is truly amazing that this one visualization can show so many insights. Some of our colleagues even wrote in to tell us about their research:

• Network flow - structural changes via alluvial diagrams
• Flow of Energy - energy management and power plant efficiency
• Flow of Traffic - transport analysis and tournament analysis (ex. 2010 FIFA World Cup!)
• Flow of Wealth - money flow, social conditions, and stock price modeling

(Over 170 other examples of Sankey Diagram applications can be found here: http://www.sankey-diagrams.com/) If you haven’t seen the Flow Visualization reports yet, please login to your GA account and check out the Visitors Flow and Goal Flow reports. We hope you find them elegantly powerful. Our hats are off to fellow visualizers - let’s make visualizing data easy! Posted by Phil Mui, Google Analytics team

Today, we updated the Google Analytics IQ course, available at google.com/analytics/iq, to reflect the new version of Google Analytics. An updated exam will appear during the first week of January. If you’re already in the middle of studying and plan to take the exam in December, you may wish to continue using the old version of the course, which will remain available at ConversionUniversity.com for one more week. After that, ConversionUniversity.com will host the new course.

So, what’s been updated? If you’ve been practicing with the old version of Google Analytics, you’ll find that most of the knowledge you’ve acquired will be valid and useful for the new exam. But, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the new version and start using it.

Specifically, you should

• understand accounts, web properties, and profiles in the new Google Analytics,
• know the goal types and when to use each type,
• understand the concepts of “metric” and “dimension”,
• be aware of new Google Analytics capabilities and reports. (Try reviewing recent posts on this blog to make sure you’re up to speed.)

We hope you enjoy the updated online course and best of luck on the exam!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Does your organization have several websites, each serving a particular geographic region? If so you know how challenging it is to analyze the data across these regions in a meaningful way. Visualizations can help, but they can be difficult to design. Newland communities, a developer of residential and urban home communities, manages numerous web properties for each community and is no stranger to these challenges. To address them, Newland used the query tool from ShufflePoint. The tool enabled the combination of data from Google Analytics and Google Earth, allowing Newland to visualize the data in new ways. ShufflePoint implemented a pilot project after discussing the idea with Chief Ingredient and their client Newland Communities. Their goal: deal with some of the problems associated with clarifying large amounts of data in a visually appealing manner. The outcome of the project was an integration of Google Analytics data with Google Earth. Using the Google Analytics API, the ShufflePoint query tool extracts metrics by location from Google Analytics for multiple Newland Communities web properties and creates static and time-animated geographic representations (using KML) viewable in Google Earth. The mashup provides advanced visual reporting on location based campaigns, showing their effect on pageviews, and highlighting any anomalies requiring further investigation. Additionally, the visualization is a great fit for promotional videos, or digital signage needs. “ShufflePoint uses almost every feature and capability of the Google Analytics API. The API has all of the characteristics that a developer could hope for, including great performance, correct semantics, OAuth for authentication, and good community support. The Google Earth based application has given ShufflePoint recognition for doing innovative and challenging things with Google Analytics. This has been beneficial for promoting ShufflePoint’s offerings.” Chris Harrington, CTO The ShufflePoint application can be found through the Google Analytics App Gallery and from the ShufflePoint website. If you’re interested in developing solutions for the Google Analytics platform, visit Google Analytics Developer Program. Posted by Pete Frisella, Google Analytics API Team

Speed is an important part of the users experience of your website and is a key way to understand and improve your site performance. So we’re happy to extend the Site Speed report with more metrics in Google Analytics to help site owners improve performance. So what’s new? In the Site Speed report we’re exposing a new set of metrics available in the “Technical” section that can be found in each one of the Site Speed tabs (Explorer, Performance, and Map Overlay).    Where to access the Site Speed Technical section 
   Site Speed with Technical section metrics overlayed What are the new metrics and what you can do with them? The Technical section of the Explorer and Map Overlay tabs provides details on the network and server metrics. Similarly, the additional sections of the Performance tab shows summaries for each of these metrics. These network and server metrics are one component of Avg. Page Load Time; the other component is browser time, i.e., the browser overhead for parsing and executing the JavaScript, rendering the page and other overheads such as fetching additional resources (scripts/stylesheets/images). In addition to Avg. Page Load Time, the Site Speed report displays the following network and server metrics in the Technical sections:

• Avg. Redirection Time - the time spent in redirection before fetching this page. If there are no redirects, the value for this metric is expected to be 0.
• Avg. Domain Lookup Time - the average amount of time spent in DNS lookup for this page.
• Avg. Server Connection Time - the time needed for the user to connect to your server.
• Avg. Server Response Time - the time for your server to respond to a user request, including the network time from the user’s location to your server.
• Avg. Page Download Time - the time to download your page.

We hope you’ll gain insights into how your site performs for your users from this newly updated report and be able to use it to optimize your pages. Thanks, The Google Analytics Site Speed team

November was a busy time in Google Analytics. In particular, the Mobile App Tracking Team has a few things to announce.

• EasyTracking Library - automatic session management, better integration with Google Analytics SDK
• Updated Google Analytics SDK - More reliable method for sending hits, Android Market referral issue fixed, available via the Android SDK manager
• More samples - new open source application aimed to help reduce the ramp up time for new developers who want to track their apps

EasyTracker Library We’ve created EasyTracker libraries for both iOS and Android.  The EasyTracker library will enable tracking of your application down to the Activity (or UIViewController for iOS) level with almost no coding required on your part.  See the ReadMe file and source code for details. These Libraries are intended for use with the standard Google Analytics SDKs and should make it very easy to add standard tracking to your applications. Another advantage to using the EasyTracker library is session management.  As many developers know, it’s not always easy to determine whether your application is active and when to start a new session.  The EasyTracker library handles this for you.  It will determine when your application has been put into the background and will start a new session automatically. The Android version of the Library not only provides for easy tracking, but also ensures that all calls to GoogleAnalyticsTracker are done off the main UI Thread.  Using this library should address responsiveness issues some Android developers have seen using the Google Analytics SDK. We’ve adapted the Android Notepad sample application to use the EasyTracker library, just to show you how easy it can be. You can find the libraries and sample applications at http://code.google.com/p/analytics-api-samples/.  Check the downloads section for the libraries.  The source for the libraries is available in subversion as well.  Drill down into trunk/src/tracking/mobile/android/EasyTracker for Android and trunk/src/tracking/mobile/ios/EasyTracker for iOS.  The Notepad sample application is there as well.  We’ve released them as open source and contributions to making them better are welcome. Check the ReadMe files in the libraries themselves for more information on how to use them. New Versions of Google Analytics SDK for Android and iOS We’ve released version 1.4 for iOS and version 1.4.2 for Android.  The iOS version of the SDK has one new feature.  Both versions contain several bug fixes as well.  Read on for details. iOS We’ve added a new method, dispatchSynchronously, that blocks while it dispatches hits.  It won’t return until the hits sent have either been acknowledged by the Google Analytics servers or the specified timeout period has elapsed.  This provides a more reliable method for sending hits before your application terminates or goes into the background. We’ve also addressed several memory leaks and crashes reported against the SDK. More details on the new version of the SDK can be found at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/ios.html. Android The Android SDK will now handle referrals from the Android Market properly.  This applies to autotagging as well. We’ve fixed several other bugs in the Android SDK.  Check out the details at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/android.html. Google Analytics SDK now available via the Android SDK Manager We’ve added the Google Analytics SDK to the Android SDK Manager.  You can download the latest versions using the Android SDK Manager instead of checking the website for updates. Of course, this only applies to the Android version of the SDK. MobilePlayground We’ve released an open source application for both iOS and Android that exercises all the APIs for Google Analytics that are available to Mobile Application developers.  You can find them at trunk/src/tracking/mobile. New Home for the Mobile Tracking Documentation The Mobile Tracking documentation has moved.  It now resides with the rest of the Google Analytics tracking documentation.  Check it out at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/overview.html. Reporting Problems and Feature Requests We really value your feedback. If you are having problems with the SDKs, let us know by posting them on the Google Analytics issues website at http://code.google.com/p/analytics-issues/issues/list.  Use the component MobileTracking when entering an issue or looking through the list for issues already reported against the Mobile App SDKs. Please stay tuned for more exciting news regarding Mobile Application Tracking with Google Analytics. Jim Cotugno, Mobile Application Tracking Rockstar