Engage-Digital

I see that Eric Peterson has written a nice white paper on what he refers to as ”The Coming Revolution in Web Analytics”, it can be downloaded  here. In it he talks about the future of web analytics and in particular what he calls 3rd generation web analytics.

I won’t paraphrase what he says about 3rd gen WA (really better to read the white paper) except to say that he no longer describes it as  web analytics as it starts to move into the realm of general business and customer intelligence.

Among the thoughts that occurred to me whilst reading his white paper, two stood out:

1. What he says about 3rd generation web analytics / business / customer insight at a practitioner level sounds a lot like the kind of thing econometricians have being doing for years although initially they weren’t including heavy weight web data. But the kind of modelling he talks about is already being done by econometrics units in many media and advertising agencies.
2. What he describes as being 3rd gen (web) analytics is no doubt advanced stuff but I think the problem will be uptake. I think that there will be a small cadre of trail blazers who will get heavily into all the mechanisms he outlines such as cross channel data mining, predictive modelling, confidence analysis of customer segmentation etc. but the trouble is this will be for the big guys who can afford it and even then precisely because it is complex it will probably only be taken up by organisations who have the right people in the driving seat. i.e. despite having a highly capable team of analysts and statisticians, a C level director who’s head is filled with many things may find it hard to champion this stuff unless s/he has a reasonable to good understanding of it his or herself. For the rest of the world – i.e. the majority of small and mid-sized businesses it’s still a long way off.

None of that is to say that A) Peterson isn’t correct in his overview or B) it isn’t what should happen, just that the main obstacle may be one of human resource more than technology, much as it has been up until now.

IMPLEMENT AND CONFIGURE YOUR ANALYTICS TOOL PROPERLY

Bad data is worse than no data at all. Decisions made using bad data can have a negative impact on performance and revenue and that can often be worse than sticking with the status quo.

Thanks to Google and Microsoft a wealth of potentially valuable data about how visitors interact with your site is now available for free. Implementing Google Analytics or Microsoft Gatineau takes little more than ½ an hour and from the moment they are implemented they will start collecting data about traffic to your site including a range of useful metrics to help guide the decision making process.

However, to get the best from these web analytics tools they should be correctly configured post implementation. This involves filtering out unwanted traffic such as your own visits which can skew the data; setting up campaign tracking to understand which elements of acquisition strategy are the most cost efficient; setting up funnels which will identify which levels in the visitor journey through your website have the highest attrition points – knowing this helps focus attention on the most critical points and reduces the chances of wasting precious budget on design updates made on the wrong areas. Additionally setting up internal search tracking is a key part of understanding what visitors are specifically looking for when they arrive on your site, it cam also help inform you pay per click marketing strategy again reducing wastage.

Web analytics data is often the starting point from which wider analysis stems so making sure configuration of your web analytics tool is as good as it can be is critical.

This is an article I wrote for issue 176 of .net magazine in the UK.

I used to be Head of Online Planning and Buying at a London based media buying agency. I was there for 3 years between 1999 and 2002. In my first year our nascent online media planning and buying department experienced a 1000% growth in billings and some growing pains. Of course overall spend was much lower then than it is now as online media was also in its infancy relatively speaking.

Then in 2001 things slowed dramatically. At the time, growth in online media had been fed by new internet start ups with lots of VC capital looking to advertise to help grow their businesses and drive inexorably towards IPO! Additionally it was driven by a growth in interest from mainstream advertisers looking to dip a toe in and check the temperature.

Advertising is often considered a bellwether of economic decline as it’s one of the first things to be cut from budgets as belts tighten and when the slow down came in 2001 billings pretty much flat lined in our corner of the online media world, but other channels fared worse.

Part of the reason why online advertising may have fared better is due to much greater levels of accountability compared with other forms of advertising. Now consider the level of accountability we have with web analytics.

Back then in the early “naughties” web analytics was barely a twinkle in a webmaster’s eye, now it is proudly sitting at the boardroom table.

Not only can web analytics bring even greater accountability to on and offline advertising (if set up correctly) but it also completely opens up the level of business accountability for the website itself. It can be used to drive growth and cut costs through improved efficiencies across the whole spectrum of online communication.

If we are truly staring down the barrel of worsening economic conditions, especially looking forward into 2009 then arguably the worst thing any organisation could do would be to cut its web analytics budget.

Back in January I was working with a client that operates in an industry that is itself suffering but the saving grace for this particular client was their new website which had proved a great success in the face of a generally poorer trading climate.

If economic conditions deteriorate web analytics and the insight that it provides should be safeguarded and pored over with even greater intensity in the same way that normal business reporting and results are.

Analytics seems almost joined at the hip with conversion but improving profits doesn’t just have to be about selling more.

As times (look set to) get tougher improving operating efficiencies can be as important to the bottom line as improving on-site conversion rates. Spending money on valuable resource when it’s being under utilised is effectively wasted capital.

Thinking outside the web server

Improving operating efficiencies of a website is what web analytics was made for but it can also provide valuable information that can guide off-line operating strategies, an example of this would be in businesses running call centers.

Some businesses that have a presence both on and offline, and I refer not just to the “clicks and mortar” (hackneyed expression!) operations but also to others such as catalog retailers, may have found that their offline channel customers behave differently in varying degrees to their online punters. There are also those customers that come through both channels.

For potential customers driven by the web it’s not unusual to see day part website visitor patterns showing two spikes, one at lunchtime and one later in the evening after people have gone home and had supper.

For business that drive response to their call centers the online phone number will most likely be prominently displayed on the site.  A call me back form may also be provided so customers don’t have to waste their money waiting on hold & listening to mind numbing elevator muzac as they move up the queue.

Whether it’s via call me back forms or via the web only contact number, potential customers will pick up the phone at a time that will suit them but staffing call centers is not as easy.

Within in normal working hours businesses can run fully staffed call centers at standard rates but after hours rates for call center staff typically increases by 50% and between 200 & 300% on other “special” days such as Christmas and Easter.

If there is a lull in call center traffic at any point within normal working hours then staff will be under utilised and money potentially wasted. This becomes more acute if call center traffic peaks after hours when either there isn’t the staff to deal with it resulting in lost revenue or there is the staff to deal with it but the associated cost is higher.

To mitigate increased costs through up-weighted call centre staffing at peak times after hours it makes sense to re-coup as much as possible at other slack(er) periods.

Using web analytics to shed light on when web traffic is likely to put pressure on a call center can help improve efficiencies and bring down running costs while keeping customers happy and revenue flowing in.

Where the web is driving a significant contribution to revenue it can pay to keep the web analyst up to speed with issues that don’t necessarily relate directly to the website.

If you use Google Analytics and you’re hot on your SEO and your site has an internal search functionality then you may be faced with a dilemma.

This post is about the apparantly confilcting relationship between URL rewriting and tracking internal search using Google Site Search and why it’s an issue worth addressing.

SEO & Dirty URLs
Everybody wants to optimise their site so it appears high in Google’s SERPs. “Dirty URLs” produced by dynamic web pages are considered harder for search engine bots to read, additionally they are harder for visitors to understand so there is also a usability argument for cleaning them up.

URL rewriting and associated best practice rules effctively turns a dynamic URL with all its query strings into a nice clean easy to understand URL. For a (very basic) example: www.site.co.uk/?page=SearchResult&SearchInput=widget&search=yes into www.site.co.uk/searchresult/widget . As a result the rewrite URL will obviously mask the original URL. The practice of using URL rewrites has been gaining some momentum over the past few months so keeping this in mind now consider internal search on your site.

The importance of internal site search
Internal search is one of the primary ways a visitor will find something on a site. Collecting insight from internal search can help inform and drive action; it’s as if the visitor is marching up to the e-store keeper and asking where to find to ketchup – or whatever. Internal search gives valuable insight on what visitors are actually looking for, in their own words. As a result it can drive tactical and strategic decisions ranging from words and phrases used in the pay per click aquisition strategy to product placement and stock control.

So, both URL rewrites are popular as part of the grander SEO strategy and internal search analysis is important for gaining deep insight into a visitor’s wants and needs as they browse a site.

Google Analytics has recognised the importance of internal search by introducing an internal search tracking function to its product, it’s called Site Search. But like the funnels in GA it needs to be set up using elements from the page URL. In this case it is the search query parameter that GA needs and therein lies the rub. If dynamic URLs are hidden using URL rewrites in order to optimise for SEO, then it is not going to be possible to see the search query parameter in Google Analytics – even though the rest of the data will be easier to understand. GA support confirm the proplem. In their own words:

“To set up Site Search, you’ll need to enter the query parameter. You may not be able to set up Site Search if the query parameter is masked using a URL rewrite.”

The tyranny of the “or”…
It seems like a choice needs to be made, but naturally the best of both worlds is most desired. The answer should in fact be relatively simple. Avoide using URL rewrites for internal search results. By doing this the search query parameter will remain exposed and therefore should be visible in Google Analytics. As a result it can then be used in setting up Site Search tracking.

Getting this sorted out will depend on how the rewrites are set up and the content management system in place but in most cases it should be possible to achieve.

The object of this post has simply been to draw attention to an issue that some may already be facing and which may become more prevelant given the ubiquity of Google Analytics and the increasing usage of URL rewrites on sites with dynamic pages.

The solution should be fairly simple and although it means that uniformity across all URLs will have to be forgone, the ends will most definately justify the means. If there are any other alternatives to solving this please feel free to comment.