Making Web Analytics actionable

with Web Content Management

30/08/2012 – Damien Dewitte

2.

Making Web Analytics actionable

with Web Content Management

Introduction and market overview

Damien Dewitte

Lead ECM consultant

3.

Contents

- Introduction

- The EU Privacy Law

- Analytics Implementation & WCM

- Social Media & Analytics

- Market Overview

4.

“If you can not measure it,

you cannot improve it.”

(Lord Kelvin)

Go, wondrous creature! mount where Science guides; Go measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;

Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, Correct old Time, and regulate the sun

5.

Why Web Analytics?

Web Analytics is a thermometer for your website, constantly

monitoring your online health.

Web Analytics allow you to study the online experience in

order to improve it.

It’s about “Measuring Success”

6.

Monitoring what?

Optimization of content production efforts

Does my content really matter to my visitors?

SEO effectiveness

How do my Search Engine Optimization

efforts perform?

Patterns for conversion

Where do I get the most (un)succesfull

conversions and what can I learn form it?

Errors on my website

Good idea to check for:

404 errors (Page not found)

Forms abandonned

Internal Site search performance

7.

Metrics

“Dimensions” versus “Metrics”

8.

Metrics

The usual suspects

Visitor Visit Pageview

Average Time on Page, Bounce rate, Exits

…

Some metrics are calculated metrics: e.g. Pageviews/Visit

9.

Key Performance Indicators

KPI’s allow to establish the link between the metrics and the

Business Goals.

KPI’s are figures (relevant ratio’s, percentages, averages or

rates)

10.

KPI Examples

Reach: click-through-rate (per traffic source), % new visitors,

cost per acquisition

Engage: bounce rate for landing pages, page depth,

average time on site, usage of apps, social media

engagement

Activate: global conversion rate, conversion rate per goal,

goal value per visit, cost per lead

Nurture: loyalty (returning visitors), conversion rate of

returning visitors

11.

Key Performance Indicators

A KPI is only a good KPI if

it allows to take action

12.

“Categories” of KPI’s

Visitor Acquisition

Visitor Identification & Segmentation

Visitor Activity & Content consumption

Visitor Retention & Growth

Adobe Google

“REAN” model

13.

Conversion

In E-commerce sites, conversion is obvious. Each shopping

cart check-out has an associated value in €. Therefore it’s

easy to calculate the ROI of your website, SEO and analytics

efforts.

But non-transactional sites also have conversion events

(which could be given a value, but it’s more difficult to

express the exact value in €.)

Filling in a contact form

Downloading a document

Signing up for an event

Registering for a newsletter

Submitting a question to a helpdesk

…

The E-Tailing Group Survey april 2011: Average conversion

rate for US Merchant websites is 1-3%

14.

EU Privacy Law

“Cookie-law”

15.

EU Privacy Law

European Union ePrivacy Law, May 26, 2011.

Implying that setting website cookies without a visitors

consent would be illegal.

Interpretation:

Cookies should be completely anonymous (not containing Personally

Identifiable Information or reference to personal information)

Cookies should be “first party” cookies (set by your own website

domain)

Google Analytics and Adobe SiteCatalyst are “OK” (and have

published their own disclaimers) , but still … they require

attention from site-owners and legal advisors.

16.

EU Privacy Law

Google Analytics terms of Service

(http://www.google.com/analytics/tos.html)

You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to

track, collect or upload any data that personally identifies an

individual (such as a name, email address or billing information), or

other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by

Google. .... You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy

must provide notice of Your use of cookies that are used to

collect traffic data, and You must not circumvent any privacy

features (e.g., an opt-out) that are part of the Service.

Adobe (http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/executive-

insights/european-union-eprivacy-directive-update/)

… To address this and related data protection concerns, Adobe’s Web

analytics solution, SiteCatalyst, obfuscates IP addresses by default

before storage and provides an opt-out mechanism customers can

offer their website visitors should such visitors elect not to be tracked.

17.

EU Privacy Law

First Step Advice:

Make an inventory of cookies used on your site

Refer to the inventory from within your Privacy Policy pages

Explain how visitors can disable or delete cookies, or even how they

can opt-out for specific cookies set by your website.

UK Example: BBC.co.uk

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23.

Analytics Implementations and WCM

24.

Which trackings requires extra

attention or implementation effort?

Multiple domains/Multiple languages

File downloads

Outbound links

In-Page events (event-tracking)

Flash animations

Interaction with Embedded Videos

Defining goals

Tracking E-commerce transactions

Groupings of keywords, dimensions

Custom segments

Tracking error pages

Tracking internal site-search usage

25.

Social Media

Is a Twitter follower considered more

important than an email these days?

26.

Social Media

Social Media are powerful referrers to your website, and

therefore deserve specific dimensions and reports in

Analytics.

Unfortunately, analytics can not evaluate all the efforts you

put in Social Media Marketing. Because engagement in

social media communities very rarely leads to a person

clicking on your link and then purchasing your product or

service.

27.

Social Media Monitoring Solutions

Adobe SocialAnalytics

Radian6

Lithium

…

And also:

URL shorteners (like bit.ly, tinyurl.com, goo.gl…) also do

tracking

Services as Hootsuite allow to post on several Social Media

platforms simultaneously and offers tracking

28.

Analytics Tools – Market Overview

29.

Measurement Methods

Logfile Analysis (Server-side data collection)

Page Tagging (Client-side data collection)

30.

Measurement Methods

Logfile analysis approach is fading out at most Web

Analytics vendors.

Page tagging allows for:

More accurate measurement of unique visitors

In-page Event-tracking

…

SaaS offerings, which remove maintenance costs from IT-departments

Logfile analysis though, can still be suitable if:

Website pages can not be modified

Website is part of an Intranet without access to the Internet

Data retention over a long period is important

Company needs to hand over raw data for auditing

Data needs to be re-processed into reports frequently

Company needs to track bandwidth or completed downloads

31.

Market Overview

Forrester Wave on Web Analytics, november 2011

Leaders:

Adobe (SiteCatalyst)

IBM (Unica +

CoreMetrics)

Webtrends

comScore (NedStat)

32.

Market Overview

Vendor Product Hosting Method

Adobe SiteCatalyst SaaS Page

Tagging

comScore Digital

Analytix

SaaS Page

Tagging

Google Google

Analytics

SaaS Page

Tagging

Urchin

Software (offering

discontinued)

On-Premise Logfile

Analysis +

IBM Unica On-Premise Logfile

Analysis +

Coremetrics SaaS Page

Tagging

Webtrends Analytics &

Segments

On-

premise/Saa

s

Page

Tagging

33.

Analytics Tools Landscape

The analytics landscape is populated with a broad spectrum

of tools which fulfill specific (extra) needs:

A/B Testing, Website Optimizers

SEO-specific monitoring tools

Email campaign tracking

Advertising

Focus on e-commerce

Add-ons for Microsoft Sharepoint

Focus on Video

Social Media Monitoring

Some of these tools are part of the broader Suites of the

bigger players. Other are offered by niche players.

34.

Google Analytics

2 Analytics Products

Google Analytics (Free, max 10M Pageviews/month, 25 months data

retention)

(NEW) Google Analytics Premium (150K$/year, max 1.000M

Pageviews/month, 36 months data retention, Support & SLA)

Urchin Software (On-premise, 10k$ per installation)

Market Leader in terms of number of installations

Integrated with Google webmaster tools, Adsense, Adwords

Very often the “default” integration in common WCM

Systems

35.

WCM integrations: e.g. Drupal -

Google

36.

Adobe SiteCatalyst

Part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite, with:

CQ5 (WCM)

Test & Target (A/B Testing)

SocialAnalytics

Genesis (Mail)

…

The Forrester Wave™: Web Analytics, Q4 2011

“Adobe continues to maintain the largest enterprise web analytics

footprint of any vendor… expansions into social media, audience

measurement, and data management show a deep commitment to

providing a comprehensive suite of products to support the analytics

and execution of digital marketing.”

37.

Adobe Digital Marketing Suite Platform

38.

“Why buy Adobe SiteCatalyst if

Google Analytics is for free?”

(Without trying to compare each feature in detail)

Data retention is not limited (Google: 25 months)

No limit on pageviews per month (Google: 10M)

Possibility to import data from external applications into

SiteCatalyst (Google: import is not supported, export only)

SLA (uptime and performance) and Support (Google: no

SLA, support through forums)

Some more flexibility: e.g. On demand, Adobe can apply a

rule or logic to your SiteCatalyst data after it is collected, but

before it is stored in the data tables.

39.

Thank you!