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

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

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.

I had a request within my company to instrument Form Analysis plug-in, so I thought why not I write about the measuring form performance or the term “Form Analytics”,

• What is a form? What are its key issues
• What to measure while doing the form analysis (to know about causes of failure or the reason for abandonment of form?)
• Solutions to track form interactions
• Setup and Configuration of Form analysis plug-in
• And the Usage part of form analysis.

What is a form? What are its key issues

Form is a bridge between the user and the site owner or just a info collecting junction from the visitors or in a bit technical terms Form is just the bucket or the bowl which has many elements used to collects the data from the user, and form has to be organized such way user should feel happy about filling it up rather it should be projected in such a way user should fill in completely.

Normally, you must have seen there is lot about the analysis, tips, benefits suggestion on most of the web analytics concepts however you must have not observed clubbing all the above along with the implementation and instrumenting part of it, lets see how well I could put forward the combination of both.

Form filling is of one of the checkpoint or the lead generation stage for most of the website, wherein form has to be clearly optimized to generate the lead i.e. it should be projected in such a way user should not get bugged up in filling rather they should fill it in no time with out compromising in collecting the relevant data. This makes analyzing the form more comprehensively where its border line in making use to convert from pre sales to post sales.

Through form we tend to learn lot about the user, what they need and what they are looking, it’s most necessary to make them to fill the required form with in the website and this is the issue/challenge here and we are trying to analyze how quick and how much easy we can make the user to fill the forms.

What do we need to measure while doing the form analysis (to know about causes of failure or the reason for abandonment of form?)

This is a good question, here is where we need to make the decision, we need to decide what to capture to take a better action on optimizing the form lets break this into different parts,

1. What we need from the form? or who have actually filled it?
2. Possible reason for not completing the form or Why user just Abandoned it,
3. Form look and feel.

So generically, we need to know why the form left unfilled and also why it was completed (you must be surprised to see this question have a look into below description)

1. What we need from the form or analyzing who have actually filled it.

If we get the successful form completion that’s not the end and don’t think you have achieved perfection.

There is lot many questions need to be answered even after form is filled completely like,

• Time Taken in filling up the complete form
• Have they filling it sequentially? Or randomly, which form element was filled first.
• Have the user filled the entire form element or anything left out which was kind of optional.

Above details would be much helpful in further optimizing complete form.

2. Possible reason for not completing the form or Why user just Abandoned it,

Again you need to know what could be possible reason in not filling the form completely,

• Technical problem? Like browser compatibility issue? etc.
• Length of the form, too much of field elements.
• Naming conventions, good labeling of each of the field is also important.
• May be even the security issue.

3. Form look and feel.

Presentation is amazingly important wherever you go and whichever field you take, for should look beautiful for user to complete it.

Solutions to track form interactions

Keeping all the above questions, reasons and analysis in mind, we need the web analytics solutions to track all the user interaction within the form and that’s the need of the plug-in to the existing solution.

As I am currently working on the Omniture SiteCatalyst Solution, it has a plug-in for form analysis which you can add to existing code, you might have to request this plug-in from your omniture account manager.

Setup and Configuration of Form analysis plug-in

As I had mentioned above you need to request for Form analysis plug-in from your account manager, insert into your JavaScript file.

There are 2 sections in the plug-in,

• Configuration section.
• Function definition section.
• Form Testing
• Metrics

Configuration section

You need to decide, whether data need to tracked into traffic reports or the commerce reports and set the config variable accordingly. Under commerce you can measure mainly three events a. Abandon, b. Success, c. Error. Based on the decision on viewing the reports (Traffic or Commerce) configuration code will get changed.

Three main configuration variables useCommerce - set to be true if you are using commerce reports, varUsed - need to be set with all the variables used to populate for example prop or eVar variables and eventList - if commerce is used then event list needs to be triggered on success, abandon or error.

Function definition section

On any event like Success, Abandon or Error you have to call below function,

For example if the user while filling the credit card details enters 10 digits instead of 16 then you can call the plug-in function along with the details like error type, page name, form name and description of the error.

sendFormEvent( error_type, page_name, form_name, element_error)

Form Testing

Have a look at the below image, you can see event3 is triggered on successful submission of the form and eVar1 is used to fill the details.

Click on the image for clear picture.

Metrics/Reports

Click on the image for clear picture.

And the Usage part of form analysis

Here the main theme is to provide the comprehensive analysis of each of the users or a bigger picture of information on Success and Failures of the form filling.

Main metrics I would recommend to collect is

• Time Spend in filing the form
• Any unfilled elements
• What stage user abandoned the form?
• Rate of abandonment.

Updated:

1. I have found some of the interesting article that was published on form analytics, one which was impressed me was from Click Tale but I am not sure how difficult to implement it to get those details of data.

2. I have also found the way of implementing of form optimization in one of the article which might interests one who is using Google Analytics as the web analytics solution  “Optimize Form Length with Input Analysis“

I am yet to define my goals for my blog comprehensively, though I have initially thought I should write a very comprehensive posting on Web Analytics Implementation,

As a Site Owner or as an Analyst you must be surely interested in knowing Which Web Analytics Tool does your competitors use, and what Ad Network or the Behavioral Targeting or any other tools they are using.

I found a very interesting Firefox plug-in WASP - Web Analytics Solutions Profiler, to make it more understandable or readable for users who are into Web Analytics Implementation, I would love to call it as WATTT- Web Analytics Tagging & Testing Tool a Firefox extension for implementation specialists who wants to do quality testing and understand how their web analytics solution is implemented. However, the tools official name still remains WASP its known as WASP - Web Analytics Solutions Profiler in the Industry.

I have been into the Implementation from last 2 years, and in my experience the most difficult part of implementation process is testing that is checking if the tracking code matches our requirements. Specially while testing the flash implementations where we need to check each of the Interactions.

Before I goahead and talk about the feature of this plugin, I should say about the author and devloper of this plugin, Its developed by Stéphane Hamel, leading Canadian voice for web analytics. He’s a well known speaker, educator and blogger having presented at eMetrics Summit, as a tutor for the award-winning UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics and a blogger at blog.immeria.net. for more details please visit his website immeria.net

What WASP can do?

1. It can detect any Web Analytics, Ad Network, and Behavioral Targeting Tools which is currently available.
2. It displays all the beacon breakups that is Query Strings & cookie breakdown (whether its first party or third party)
3. It make sure all the pages are tagged correctly and data being captured appropriately
4. For more comprehensive features please visit, http://wasp.immeria.net/index.htm

Getting started with WASP

It’s very simple to install and yeah its only compatible with Firefox, click on the below link, and follow the instructions.

Once you restart your browser and you can see icon on your status bar and there you go you are up with Web Analytics Tagging Testing Tool

As you browse the web, information about the web analytics solutions detected by WASP will be automatically shown in the sidebar.

Let me show you the screenshot,

Open up any of the website in status bar its shows which web analytics tool the website is using, if you click on it, it opens up in the side bar which shows up all the detailed information, such as query strings and cookies using within the webpage.

Below screenshot shows which analytics tool does Dell.com is using.

You can see above, Dell is using Omniture SiteCatalyst, and also notice that when you highlight any of the variables, it also shows what is the Usage of it inside the reports. I have highlighted c1, in details section it shows Usage: Custom Insight (prop) 1.

Please Note: This tool belongs to : http://wasp.immeria.net/index.htm Thanks to Immeria.net