I’m at Darden today, speaking at an executive education course. Great presentation from Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist at Google. The big idea of the morning?
Analytics 2.0:
– [start here] Clickstream data (the what)
– Multiple outcomes analysis (the how much)
– Experimentation & testing (the why)
– Voice of the customer (the why)
– Competitive intelligence (the what else)
– Insights (the gold) [end here]
Can your company answer the question: "why does your website exist?" in 15 words or less. Craft this statement around business outcomes. Conversions aren’t always sales – they can be interim goals, e.g. could be brand referral or propensity to visit a store.
The job of the online marketer is "learn to be wrong, quickly." The web allows experimentation (A/B testing) at scale previously very difficult. Google did this on Picasa. Current page showed 30% lift. "Free download" text doesn’t work as well as a button that says "try now." A picture showing functionality didn’t work at all (i.e. trying to show how much better than Photoshop).
Three key questions to figure out site intentions. Most sites have conversion of 2%. Why? Not everyone came to your site
to buy something. Goal: to find segments of discontent – and respond
to them at scale. So answer these:
- Why are you here? (aka primary purpose)
- Were you able to complete your tasks today?
- If you were not able to complete your task today, then why not?
Recommendations:
- Insight One: the 10/90 rule. Tools and Professional Services: $10 vs. Investment in intelligent resources: $90
- Insight Two: Data quality sucks, get over it. The web is the most perfect imperfect medium in the world
- Insight Three: Reporting is not analysis. Empower your analysts. The critical few is the secret – on any dashboard you should have max 6 – 8 metrics.
Yahoo! up next.