Web Analytics for Business Insights and intelligence

I had earlier written a blog post on “How do you Implement & Measure Form Performance and Conduct Form Analysis” which detailed about implementation part of form analysis plugin, However what I have observed, business owners are not sure how to make best use of them, due to couple of reasons.

• Form Analysis are not accurate or does not collect most of the form data which are required.
• Data looks junk or messed up or unable to read and understand to derive insights out of it.

Here is a 2 stage enhancement which I had made to one of my client to get form analysis plugin better and to make use of the data collected to derive insights out of it.

Enhancement to Plug-in:

Stage 1: Enhance the plug-in to read the form or form element not just with name but also by id attribute.

Plug-in developed by Omniture engineering team reads the form and its element based on its name attribute. However in many instances developer might omit adding name attribute or just add “id” attribute or visa-versa , in other words attribute usage might not be consistent.

Existing Plug-in code: form name and form element name are picked by name

Changes made: form name and form element name are picked by name first, if name attribute is not available then its picked from id attribute.

Stage 2: Enhance plug-in to track visitors who close the browser or click on a link without touching the forms.

What if, if the user lands on a page and closes his browser or clicks on any link move to a different page, Omniture plug-in will not track these scenario, a small change in the code will enable to track abandon due to browser close or click on a link without touching forms.

I am unable to show the test data here, but you can try doing these changes it works pretty well and data now looks lot more comprehensive.

Enhancement to Reporting:

Now that we have data how do we use it?

Here is how the collected data will look like, it contains data like page name, form name, action status - all these in a single row?

Stage 1: Classify it

By classifying this way you can actually view data in different dimension and at the aggregated level as well. For example you can see the list of forms broken down by elements by action so it clearly states where does the max visitor are abandoning the forms.

Area of Improvements:
- More detailed level of tracking can be adopted depending on the level of analysis required, if the domain main objective are lead generation, through additional event usage data representation can be improved.

Stage 2: Automate the classification Process

- Unless classification process is automated its really pain in the neck to create SAINT Classification file every time we need to upload.

Please feel free to comment out your idea and inputs and how have you used this plugin to benefit your clients.

Interesting reads on form abandonment:

• Omniture Form Analysis Pitfalls, How to avoid and optimize
• Form Abandonment by Rudi Shumpert

- Pradeep SV

All of us take meeting notes of each of our meeting and there are many ways we send out the meeting notes, sometime text format, sometime we send out the through mail and sometime on a word document.

If the meeting is one time meeting or one way meeting it make sense to send it inline with the mail. However if we have a recurring meeting, and needs to be viewed edited and updated everyday by different team members and also if it needs to maintain a log of everyday meeting notes to refer back with the previous meetings and follow up, how do you normally do? Which is the best of way doing it?

• How can each of the team member can have access meeting notes at almost real time
• How can each of the team member can edit at the same time?
• How can anyone can access there meeting notes from anywhere?
• How can we make changes so it get reflected to all at the same time?

Simplest way to solve the above need is to manage all the meeting notes through Shared Microsoft OneNote and store it on SharePoint. Solution looks very simple but beauty of it is the way you can manage the entire setup. I will show you on how to Create and Manage Shared OneNote by storing in a SharePoint.

How to Create a new shared notebook in a SharePoint library

When you add a new notebook to a library, the notebook becomes a folder in the library, and the sections are stored as files. Adding content to it and revising it are similar to working with your notebook in any shared location

On the Share menu, click Create Shared Notebook.

In the New Notebook Wizard, do the following:

• Under Who will use this notebook?, click Multiple people will share the notebook, and then click On a server (SharePoint document library, network share, or other shared location).
• To tell others about the notebook, leave the Create an e-mail with a link to this notebook so that I can send to other people check box selected.
• Click Create.
• Note    When you make changes to your notebook, it may take a few minutes for others to see the changes or for the changes to synchronize, depending on the way your network is set up.

How I use this set up @ Project.

1. We have created Shared OneNote (Picture #1) and Stored it in SharePoint (Picture #2
2. All the Work Sheet created (#2) will be stored as files in the SharePoint, you can see it in #2 in Picture #2.
3. Any one who need to see Meeting notes can either download it and see at onetime or they can import to there local OneNote so it automatically syncs as and when we update it, like they can get the daily updates.

How I Utilize this Setup

Best Part of this Setup

• Multiple users can simultaneously access shared notes and contribute to them on an ongoing basis
• A library is a central location on a SharePoint site where people store and manage their files
• You can manage who has permission to view the notebook or contribute notes
• You can also track versions of the notebook, so that people can view or restore an earlier version if needed and receive updates when the content changes by using alerts or RSS Feeds
• When you share a notebook, everyone with permission to contribute to a SharePoint library can access a shared set of notes at the same time
• OneNote synchronizes everyone’s changes to the notebook on the SharePoint site. OneNote also maintains a separate offline copy of the notes on each user’s computer
• Participants can edit notes locally even when they are disconnected from the network. The next time they connect to the shared notebook, OneNote merges their changes with everyone else’s.
• You can see your meeting notes either it from home computer or from your office and you need not send it over mail.

Just try it and you will start seeing its Use.

Please feel free to comment out if you have any more ideas.

-Pradeep SV

Not everyone will talk about naming the menus within SiteCatalyst. Few things which made me write this article are the questions which would arise in developers as well as business owners mind.

Developers:

• I am seeing the value in c3 on the debugger where do I see the report or which menu should I have to see it in? (I know its simple and can see at custom insights 1 to 10, however the problem is if we have not enabled prop2 and prop3 then prop4 appears in second line item, which might be mistaken for prop2 instead of prop4)
• How do I map back custom variables which I am seeing in debugger back, to Omniture reports.

Business Owners:

• If I do not know the report name how do I indicate or index a report back in SiteCatalyst?

Real time Questions:

#1: How do I relate the props I am seeing in debugger to menu within Omniture?

Best Practice for Menu Naming and Convention

• Indicate each of the menu item to there respective customer variables numbers, convention as below.

Reason for using v, c and e for eVar, Props and Events Respectively

• To match with debugger or Omniture image beacons (See Screenshot below)
• Also to align with the Omniture Standards (As per the Implementation Manual)

Menus After Renaming to Standard Naming Convention

Usually it will be difficult to indicate a particular report by name which could be made much easier if each menu has some numbers.

It is a good practice to have a consistent naming convention if you are working with multiple clients and follow the same standards across the organization.

Answer to the Question asked above (#1):

• Its pretty clear that c3 is mapped “New Repeat Visitor” through the proposed naming conversion.
• Also even if we have not enabled any of the variables in the middle of the menu, it still can be correctly mapped with the number indication

I would strongly recommend to use the same naming convention.

-Pradeep SV

Idea / Abstract

The internet space is exploding… Innumerable advertising opportunities galore!
The marketer is looking for…

Cost… Audience Footfall… Audience Demographic… Conversions.. And most importantly ROI!

The options?

Search Engine Marketing… Search Engine Optimization… E-mail marketing.. And the latest trend Social Media

Some facts

SEM and SEO is increasing in cost with CPC in SEM going as high as $10 per click and SEO budgets crossing millions of dollars every year. The low cost per touch email marketing with its downward response probability trend fails against social media that’s engaging today’s consumer!

The Challenge…

How to target the right audience in the least time and the least cost?

Strengths:

• Everyone wants to be on Social Media: it’s the new buzz word in the digital world
• Social Media is powerful: Rich information about what is the consumer looking for!!
• High Audience Engagement: Aged between 18-35 spend around 3 hours on facebook during Jan 2009 with 300 M user base.(Source: Nielson’s)
• Viral Nature: If you have a great idea… it will spread like wildfire!

The Weaknesses:

• Distributed Audience
• Low Predictability: Media is controlled by the audience

The Facts:

• Wide variety of social sites like twitter, facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn exist
• Established micro blogging users having a large number of followers & group members

The bright idea:

Leverage the Social Media network using the established micro bloggers as brand ambassadors and inject any Company’s content/ads into social media sites

The big Question…

But why would these users would promote any company in their groups?

That’s “Social Media Affiliate Engine” where revenue will be shared across all the top micro bloggers for impressions and conversions.

Social Media Affiliate Eco-System

Advantages:

• Sharp Targeting the consumer – the marketer’s dream!
• Large number of Quality Impressions in lower cost
• Opportunity to personalize communication with the consumer who is already receptive
• Opportunity to build a 2 way dialogue and interaction with the audience
• Builds stronger brand by consumer engagement and being present where the consumer is
• Adds value to Search Engine results, which indirectly increase traffic through Search Engines
• Helps in finding results through non-branded keywords

GAIQ: A Good Way to authenticate your knowledge on Google Analytics

Its one pending task which I wanted to do since many days, and this weekend was the best suited for me and made up my mind to take it, GAIQ Test.

Well, I asked myself why should I have taken this test spending $50 just for an online certificate.

when I was thinking and mentioned about taking GAIQ test, Many people commented like its an open book test, you can easily pass if we 2 or more people sit together who have knowledge in GA , I would totally agree them, However I still wanted to take this test…WHY?

Not because it’s a certification by Google or cos I will get one certificate that adds to my resume or it adds honour to my skills, its cos

• it’s a Sense of satisfaction to clear and get authenticated your knowledge on Google Analytics
• Its a benchmark to say I am sound in Google Analytics.
• That’s when you feel you have reached a goal (Goal setting you see..:) )

Google describe The Google Analytics Individual Qualification (or Google Analytics IQ) as “a proof of proficiency in Google Analytics that is available to any individual who has passed the Google Analytics IQ test”.

I totally agree with it.

This Saturday is a personal working day for me cos whole day I spent time in going through all the slides and @ 6 I thought of taking the test, as always I am super lucky!!! Power Cut (For one hour)

@7 I started test at last, and passed in flying 99%

After going through all the training material, GAIQ was not that difficult, but definitely there are few tricky questions.

Course Material was very comprehensive and would sure would not be able to make it in test without going through all the slides.

Though I am kind of happy to see 99% scored, I am still unhappy for not having a badge or a kind of logo to say I am a qualified professional (just like Omniture have)

About Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ):

“Google Analytics Launches Individual Qualification Program” we heard this on March 3, 2009. This was mainly created program to display proficiency in Google Analytics.

For one of my blog HP BPO analytics, I recently published an post “Hewlett Packard bagged the Top PC Vendor award” and when I opened the blog and saw on a Google Adsense, I was surprised to see it was displaying some adult links on Adsense Advertising, How can it happen? I checked all the keywords which are displayed on the Adsense and none of them found on my posted article or any relative synonyms.

Have anyone observed similar pattern, please do comment.

My blog link (one of the blog post) is placed in GoogleBlog - I know its not a big surprise as it pings back all the link in the list or related article but the good thing is its placed #3 (third) in the list which driving traffic.

I had recently written a blog on “How does google Index blog post published so quickly?” the same has been placed in Google blog’s similar Article.

Have a look

But to be honest i am exicited about it

I had actually promised writing about Implementation on Mobile Analytics using Omniture SiteCatalyst as a Web analytics solutions, But due to time constraints I couldn’t managed to write on it, But I will definitely will write about it actually its on queue : )

Well without disappointing this time something on Web Analytic Metrics, We normally get the request from our partners to enable MUVs ( Monthly unique visitors)  to some of the specific reports however most of the time we push them to use DUVs (Daily Unique visitors) instead of MUVs, specially if its support sites.

There is couple of reason for this,

• For me DUVs and MUVs are just numbers to watch the trend month over month for particular section of the website (you know even Avinash is also not too fond of Daily Unique Visitors : ) )
• It drives cost to the company in enabling this additional metrics to any reports.

For this reason we normally ask what is the business value that’s going to drive using MUVs in particular report, believe me 99% of them didn’t had any reason other then just watching the trend of the unique visitors.

If you ask me, Visits, Unique Visitors (Daily or monthly) are just number to watch the trend and the number of people visiting the website, that is they are not an Action Driving metric (A perfect example for Action driven metrics is Bounce Rate - A sexist web metric - Avinash Says : ) )

Due to frequent request, for MUVs (Monthly unique visitors) we have decided to enable DUVs (Daily unique visitors) for whom it requests and educate them to “Estimate” Monthly unique visitors, its little tricky here, it’s just an estimated number of Monthly unique visitors but might not be accurate.

Let’s see how in simple calculation we can calculate Monthly unique visitors using Daily unique visitors.

Assume you need MUVs in most popular site section report, however it has only DUVs enabled, here are the simple steps to add calculated metric MUVs

1. Pull Daily Unique Visitors for one month (site level)
2. Pull Monthly Unique Visitors for one month (site level)
3. Calculate the ratio of between them.
4. Pull the report where you need to MUVs from DUVs 
5. Calculate Estimated MUVs metric by Multiplying DUVs by Average ratio created in #3

1.      Pull Daily Unique Visitors for one month (site level)

2. Pull Monthly Unique Visitors for one month (site level)

3. Calculate the ratio of between them.

i,e Ratio = MUVs/DUVs

4. Pull the report where you need to MUVs from DUVs
5. Calculate Estimated MUVs metric by Multiplying DUVs by Average ratio created in #3

Have a look at the difference between the actual and the estimated Monthly Unique visitor, its negligible or I would say it’s acceptable anywhere between 10 to 20% of discrepancy.

Please drop in your comments just in case if we have better way of calculating Monthly Unique Visitors or if you feel calculation displayed above is wrong or your recommendations if any.

Note: This was not my orgninal idea, it was proposed by my co-partner who is a program manager.

By the way everyone knows (by now atleast) Google has its new “Chrome - Google’s Web Browser” its pretty cool for browsing, its great way or great example on what user wants to feel happy while browsing…

I was wondering why would Google want to build Browser, well they have reason for it, have a look here from Google’s Word - Why Google Wanted to Create Its Own Browser

What I like about Chrome?

1. Way Browsing elements are arranged
2. Wide Browsing area
3. Fast browsing experience
4. Incognito feature - its called InPrivate in IE8

However what I dont like is the memory its taken while browsing, I might be wrong (Please comment it If i am) which slows up the other application, I am getting the feeling that, thats one of the area Google has to concentrate as it was the same issue with Google Desktop.

Anyways, Lets see what I have felt using chrome in details.

1. Way Browsing elements are arranged

What if, if you get exactly what you want in-front of you ? that’s what it happens in Chrome when you open a new tab, it thumbnails all the previously browsed websites in front of you, you need not type in again. Though all browser shows recently typed URL as you typein couple of character but its always presentation and reachable matters website thumbnails are ready in-front of you just click it, don’t you agree with me?

Have a look at some of them.

2. Larger Browsing area

t has larger browsing area which is most required while browsing, if you can observe status bar is smartly built like a  mouseover effect, what i meant is it displays on when you type in the URL on the address bar and while loading and it vanishes while its done !! isn’t it great and wanted feature.

No Menu and we dont want it either, how often do we use it, hardly for setting the connection? I am sure 99% of the users never touch the menu item which are displayed in the top its taken out in Chrome - we dont want it (I know its alredy came in IE7 release)

3. Fast browsing experience

Though I felt Chrome, is pretty faster, Firefox still cliams its 28% more faster then Chrome engine. They might be right also

4. Incognito feature - its called InPrivate in IE8

What is Incognito?

“Browsing in incognito mode only keeps Google Chrome from storing information about the websites you’ve visited” Good for you doesn’t keep track if you visit “family websites” lol and you need not explicitly clear the history, however you might have to put off or pause Google Web History tracking, as it still keep track of search history if you have logged in as Google user.

By the way all new cookies are deleted after you close the incognito window, hmmmmmm if everyone started using “incognito” or “inprivate” (from IE8) what happens to metrics in Web Analytics reports?

What will be fate of Unique visitors - everyone will be unique in this case? any thoughts?

Security flaws

A security expert has criticized what serves as the automatic file download feature that comes enabled by default in Google Chrome. They argued that it could be used easily by an attacker to trick a user into opening a malicious executable file.

Source - Wiki

But now the chanllenge part is how quickly (just in case) Chrome will acquire market share of in the browsers war. It took 5 years to capture 43% of browser market share for Firefox against Microsoft,

Have a look look at the detailed Browser Statistics Month by Month by W3Schools - http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Now its your trun - What do you have to say, Do you think Google Can succed in its Brower market? Please comment.

To Download Google Chrome - http://www.google.com/chrome/

Learn About Google Chrome - http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html

What is Mobile Web Analytics?

Mobile Analytics is no different from Web Analytics other then here we study the user behavior in the WAP website (Mobile Website) using data collected from the mobile users (Data such as visitor information, carrier information mobile used and so on..) to increase ROI through Mobile Users and to target the specific carriers or segmented Users.

Why Mobile Analytics? and How will it be useful?

Insights or Gold in Avinash’s term extracted through the data collected can be used to target the users to enhance and to helps in targeting the segmented users, here is more to say how mobile analytics would be helpful,

• Improve a WAP website or understanding of website architecture.
• Mobile campaign’s audience.
• Mobile Advertising
• Mobile Search Marketing
• Text Campaigns
• etc.

What do we measure?

Different vendors has claims to measure different metrics, some of the useful and most commonly measured metrics are

• Visitor Identification
• Mobile specific information
  • Mobile phone device
  • Mobile network operator
  • Country and Language

How do we Measure?

hmmm this is where the implementation jumps in, which I am going to write it in my next blog post.

Who are the players/vendors?

1. Omniture - With the release of SiteCatalyst 14.1, it has introduced mobile analytics capabilities which can measure the performance of mobile marketing campaigns, Omniture can measure,

1. Visitor Identification
2. Mobile Device Reporting
3. Mobile-Specific Collection Enhancements
4. Geo-location and Carrier Identification

2. Bango - To provide the highest levels of accuracy, Bango provides two different techniques for capturing mobile metrics - link tracking for campaign analysis and page tracking for site analysis.

More on Bango from MarketWatch

Features and benefits

• Site analysis - measure and improve your website for mobile traffic
• Campaign analysis - measure your ROI using independent data
• Unique visitors - how many people are visiting your site?
• Geo-locate your visitors by country
• Operator identification – including virtual networks (e.g. Boost)
• Handset information – make, model and features
• Compare goals against your campaigns and web pages

Source - MarketWatch

3. Amethon - A server side mobile analytics solution that sniffs network packets to track 100% of the http packets traveling between the handset and the mobile web server building real time analytics.

• Bandwidth (total, average per visit, total per file type)
• Hits (average per visit, number of downloads, page view breakdown)
• Visits (entry page, average duration, click paths, referring search engine)
• Visitors (browser type, user agent, operating system)
• Handsets (make, model, screen resolution)
• Mobile Operator (country of origin, operator name)
• Geo Location (country of origin, RDNS lookup)

Source - Wiki - Mobile Analytics

4. http://blog.sitestat.com/ - an another web analtyics service provider

5. Wapalizer - http://wapalizer.com/home/

6. Mobilytics - http://www.mobilytics.net/

7. http://mobilestats.co.uk/ - an another vendor which provides mobile stats

I will write about the Mobile Implementation in my next blog post.

Updated - 20080929

Found another mobile tracking tool

8. Clicky Web Analytics - Web Analytics on your iPhone - you can see some of the screenshots

Update - 20091104

9. ADMob.com - AdMob connects people who want to buy ads with people who want to monetize their mobile traffic through the AdMob Marketplace. We make advertising and publishing easy with solutions and tools to meet your unique needs.