Metrics, Metrics, Everywhere!

Choosing the Right Ones for Your Website and Social Media

or

"I Got 20 Retweets! Wait - Is That Good?"

Brian AlpertWeb Analytics and SEM Analyst

Smithsonian Institution

@balpert

Elena VillaespesaDigital Analyst

Tate

@elenustika

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Outline• Intro to Web analytics• Segmentation • Social Disruption• Step-by-step process• Benchmarking social • Case Study I – Effie – Women’s History Month• Exercise• Selecting social media metrics• Avinash Kaushik / TrueSocial• Social media framework• SM @ SI – Tools & Survey highlights• What’s going on at Tate?• GA dashboards (examples)• Steps to create a GA dashboard• Social and your website – Dashboard-SMDG• Interpreting the dashboard - examples• Discussion – attendee dashboards• GA Social Reports• Case Study II – Erin/Muppets• Case Study III – Turner Prize• Case study IV – Weather forecast• GA Best Practices/ Tips and Tricks• Resources

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Search EnginesSEO (keywords, Google rules)SEM (PPC campaigns)

Optimization

Referring sites Usual Unusual Trends / Insights

Create relationships

Direct / OtherEmailBanners

Audience

Visits

Demographics

Behaviour (time on site, new vs. returning, bounce rate, loyalty, recency,,)

Technology (browser, mobile…)

Segmentation

Where are they coming from?

Who they are? What are they visiting?

Content

Page viewsTop landing pagesKey content areasClick pathInternal search…

Test, customise

How are they converting/engaging?

Conversion (shop, tickets, membership, donations…)

Email subscription

Comments

Sharing content

Downloads

Registration

Optimise processes (funnels, page optimisation)

What can we do with Google Analytics?

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Research methods

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/

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Segmentation – by demographics

http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-rundown-new-products-and-features.html

Segmentation - By device: desktop, tablet, smartphone

Pages/visit

UK visits by time of day

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Once upon a time… We just had websites… Website measurement

tools were getting better and better…

Some of the best ones were even free!

We thought we had it all figured out…

And then one day…

Source: Seattle Municipal Archives

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Social media disrupted everything

Today's landscape is a splintered collection of New channels Sublimely-named yet inscrutable metrics A dizzying array of tools both free and paid

Breathing new life into old questions "Why is this important? “How do we know it’s working?“ "What do I measure?“ "What does that have to do with our program?“

BUT – the good news is…

Source: http://rosemia.wordpress.com/2012/02/

There is a systematic, step-by-step process

Articulate your program’s goals. Decide strategies to achieve

those goals. Decide tactics to pursue the

strategies. Decide what and how to measure. Benchmark to get a sense of

what’s normal.

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Source: http://www.homedit.comSlide 26

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Articulating your goals is the hard part

Sometimes your institutional goals: Aren’t precisely articulated. Aren’t articulated at all (!) Are too broad to meaningfully measure.

“An institution for the increase and diffusion of

knowledge." -- James Smithson Source: Smithsonian Institution Archives

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Your goal: storyteller Use data to tell a story. Management loves stories. They turn “So what?” into

something that makes sense: What was happening. What it meant. What you did. What’s happening now.

Source: http://www.squidoo.com

Start by articulating specific goals Not too many! Express what your institution is

trying to accomplish. Distill high-level goals into more

specific sub-goals: “Increase influence” >> “Become the

definitive source on Smithsonian history.”

This makes it easier to identify strategies and tactics.

Articulate goals & next steps on your own.

Work with management to redefine and finalize.

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Reuters: Toru Hanai

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Determine strategies & tactics Strategies – the plans you make to achieve the goals.

Employing social media is a strategy.

Tactics – the things you do to advance the strategy. Producing a specific type of content is a tactic. Individual channels (facebook, twitter) are tactics.

Per the example: Goal: “Become the definitive source on Smithsonian history.” Strategy: Increase engagement with history of the Smithsonian

content. Tactic: Make SI-history content more findable and measureable.

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Decide how to measure your tactics Choose a few measurements. Trend them over time. Per the example:

Measure: segment history-specific content in GA Directories (site.edu/history) Dedicated content (site.edu/historyblog) Google Analytics custom variables.

Apply history-content engagement metrics Visit frequency Visit depth Bounce rate for history pages

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What’s "normal," anyway? You can’t set targets w/o benchmarks You need at least six months of data.

Data fluctuates; is often seasonal. Six months is just an opinion. It also depends on how much traffic your site gets. Peer data is valuable, but hard to come by.

Balance your targets with factors beyond your control: Are the improvements you’re seeking known to be difficult to achieve? What is the current status of your program (i.e., brand new, mature)? How much resources will you have to devote to implementing tactics?

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"I Got 20 Retweets! Wait - Is That Good?" Regular benchmarking is especially important if you use

free tools. Pull data regularly, or you may be out of luck.

Twitter and Flickr API’s limits 3rd party tools to 28 days of data.

Listen to Dana! Twitter for Museums: Measuring, Analyzing, Reporting Start with baseline data: Followers, Replies, RTs, Clickthroughs. Identify 3-5 peer institutions. Track at regular intervals.

Some tools can generate these reports automatically, but compiling/trending them is still up to you.

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Keep it simple!

Don’t do too much. Once you’ve selected your strategies

and tactics, minimize the number of measurements.

If they turn-out to be inconclusive, refine or change them!

It’s an ongoing process.

Source: Matt Groening

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Case study: Smithsonian Archives Tweet your questions to Effie Kapsalis – @digitaleffie

Head of Smithsonian Archives (SIA) web and new media

SIA is a smaller Smithsonian unit with a big mission: “The Archives’ mission is to document the goals and activities

of the whole Smithsonian in its pursuit of increasing and diffusing knowledge, and exciting learning in everyone.”

“The Archives is also responsible for ensuring institutional accountability, and for enhancing access to the rich and diverse resources in its care.”

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Effie worked with Mgt. on Goals

– Become the definitive source of Smithsonian history

– Illuminate the Institution as a research and educational catalyst

– Expand audience awareness of, use of, and access to SIA collections and resources

– Increase understanding of the diversity and relevance of resources and collections

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They moved on to strategies and tactics

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• Become the definitive source of Smithsonian history – Increase engagement with SI history content.

• Make history content more measureable on new website.• Create content about the Smithsonian’s history that’s easily repurposed

by other units.• Illuminate the Institution as a research and educational catalyst

– Tell stories that highlight the Smithsonian’s role in education and research.• Expand audience awareness of, use of, and access to SIA collections

and resources– Increase representation of SIA Collections & Resources on popular resource

websites.• Make content more shareable and accessible • Wikipedian-in-Residence.• Flickr Commons Crowdsourcing.• History Pin.

• Increase understanding of the diversity and relevance of resources and collections– Increase share and quality of conversation about SIA collections and

resources.

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They chose measurements (a.k.a. KPI’s)

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– Website engagement metrics for ‘history’ content• Visit frequency• Visit depth• Bounce rate

– Visit frequency for blog– Number of Wikipedia pages with SIA references– Number of monthly favorites and comments on Flickr– Facebook Insights engagement metrics– Number of blog comments and shares

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“Definitive Source of SI History” Strategy: increase

engagement with SI history website content.

Tactic: make website history content more measureable.

Measurement: “High Visit Depth”

Percentage of HISTORY visits was 94% higher than ALL visits 1.21% average for ALL visits 2.35% average for HISTORY

visits

History-related visits

All visits

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“Increase understanding of the diversity and relevance of resources and collections”

Strategy: Increase share and quality of conversation about SIA collections and resources.

Tactic: Woman’s History Month Social Media Campaign. Facebook Pinterest Tumblr

Measurements Visit Frequency for all visits vs. “WHM

social” visits SM referrals compared to previous year. Facebook Insights engagement metrics. Number of blog comments and shares.

The “Women in Science” campaign ran daily for a month, now continues, weekly.

SIA Women’s History Month Campaign

Social media website visits are "streaky" – they reflect daily activity

WHM segment exhibited higher percentages of moderate (2-9) and high (10+) visit frequency

Peaks as much as 2-4X higher

Referral traffic from the targeted social media sites increased by 52%

WHM ‘social’ visits

All visits

WHM ‘social’ visits

All visits

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Exercise – 40 minutes Split into four groups Each group picks a site / project Go through the steps, articulate pieces – 15 minutes Discuss – 20 mins (5 mins each)

Slide 10

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Social Media Metrics

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Selecting social media metrics Available time and resources affect what metrics you

choose. Social Media metrics tend to fall into three categories:

“Quantity of Stuff” metrics “Quantity-Plus” metrics More advanced, trendable metrics

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“Quantity of Stuff” metrics

No actionable data Scope and context Growth / acquisition strategy

Number of Followers FB TW Instagram Pinterest

Number of ‘Likes’ FB Pages FB Content Instagram Pinterest FB post views

Source:http://janicesyearinsunderland.blogspot.com

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“Quantity-Plus” metrics Still about quantity, but more meaningful Show the type of content your audience

responds to Basic

Reach (FB) Post-Clicks (FB) Website visits referred by social

properties Better - “mini-conversions”

Retweets (TW) Favorites (TW) Comments (FB) Shares (FB)

Source:http://socialmediatoday.com

A classic blog post… Avinash Kaushik’s Best Social Media Metrics Conversation Rate

# of Audience Comments (or Replies) Per Post

Amplification Rate # of Retweets Per Tweet # of Shares Per Post # of “Share Clicks” Per Post (or Video)

Applause Rate # of Favorite Clicks Per Post (TW) # of Likes Per Post (FB) # of #1s Per Post (Goog+) # of +1s and Likes Per Post (or video) (Blog / YouTube)

Economic Value For revenue-driven businesses Sum of Short and Long Term Revenue and Cost Savings Goal is to identify macro and micro conversions and then compute economic value.

A manual spreadsheet is available, here, or…

Source: Occam's Razor

“All data in aggregate is crap.”

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Trendable social metrics – YAY! TrueSocialMetrics offers an automated solution. http://www.truesocialmetrics.com/ Free / $30 per month / $100 per month / $350/month plans

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Conversation rate # of Audience Comments (or Replies) Per Post

“We can get a very good sense for who is following / friending / subscribing to us. We can measure if what we are saying connects to them.”

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Amplification rate # of Retweets Per Tweet # of Shares Per Post # of Share Clicks Per Post (or Video)

“Measure what types of content cause amplification – they allow your social contributions to spread to your 2nd, or even 3rd, level network.”

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Applause rate # of Favorite Clicks Per Post # of Likes Per Post # of +1s Per Post # of +1s and Likes Per Post (or video)

“You get a much deeper understanding of what your audience likes.”

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Here is the bottom line! On a campaign by campaign

basis, you can use “quantity-plus” metrics to tell your story.

“Here was the goal. We did this. That happened. It was the best EVER!

But to improve your entire social media program, you need more refined, trendable metrics.

Source: NY Daily News

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Social media framework

http://weareculture24.org.uk/projects/action-research/

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Social media framework

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What’s going on at SI? Social media tools!

The free flow of unlimited federal money has allowed Smithsonian a full complement of the cream of the crop of the most expensive and powerful social media measurement tools.

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What’s going on at SI? Social media tools!

Ok, that was a joke. But we do have one paid tool.

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What’s going on at SI? Social media tools!

We also use the platform-provided tools: Facebook Insights Twitter Analytics

And the free versions of these popular tools: Topsy http://topsy.com/ Simply Measured http://simplymeasured.com/ TrueSocialMetrics http://www.truesocialmetrics.com/ Tweetreach http://tweetreach.com/ Tweet Archivist http://www.tweetarchivist.com/ Statigram http://statigr.am/ Others…

Hand-built spreadsheets are still in use.

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What’s going on at SI? Survey highlights

Practitioners seem to be expressing the view that while free and platform-provided tools have improved, there is still a need for more power and sophistication.

That could be addressed by improvements in platform-provided tools, or social media budgets for more powerful commercial tools.

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What’s going on at SI? Survey highlights

The fact that 71% of respondents feel their organizational goals are sometimes reflected in their metrics is an improvement from a few years ago.

The notion that no one said always may be reflected in the next highlight…

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What’s going on at SI? Survey highlights

The same percentage (71%) are required to track the least-useful “quantity of stuff” metrics.

The next highlight also presents an interesting, (possibly) connected datapoint…

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What’s going on at SI? Survey highlights

78% of respondents have not, or weren’t sure, if they had used social media metrics to tell their story.

This demonstrates the enduring power of the need to track quantity, BUT…

The 21% who said “yes” also represent a positive shift forward.

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Your survey responses

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Your survey responses (cont’d)

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What’s going on at Tate?

Jean TinguelyDébricollage

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Monthly dashboard

bit.ly/tatedashboard

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Art & artists Tate PapersOnline shop

Within the organization

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Google Analytics – Solutions gallery

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Google Analytics – Dashboards

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Google Analytics – Dashboards

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Digital Analytics group

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Integrating social into web measurement Your website (and thus) GA are still critically important. Use GA to understand your social media traffic

Advanced segment of social media referrals ‘Social’ reports section

Google Analytics Custom Dashboard Enables segmentation and trending. Datapoints mostly relate to ‘engagement.’

Supermetrics Data Grabber Flexible, Excel-based GA automation tool. Enables you to see trends better than in the GA U-I.

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Supermetrics Data Grabber Extracts data from the

Google Analytics API. Easy-to-use and customize. Exceptional charting

capabilities. 14 days free. $348 per year. Limited documentation and

support. Excel for Windows

2003/2007/2010/2011. Excel 2011 for Mac (slow!)

http://supermetrics.com

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Supermetrics Custom Dashboard Store in same folder with

Supermetrics.xlsx ‘Engagement’ oriented metrics

Visit Frequency Visit Length Visit Depth New vs. Returning Visits Bounce Rate Conversion Rate Search Engines

A foundation to make data actionable “Key Trends and Insights” “Impact on Site/Museum” “Steps Being Taken”

The easily updated, trended data is what makes the dashboard powerful.

Dashboard pages are designed:1) To help orient you toward action

2) To communicate with management

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Summary defines and puts the metric in context

Chart shows segmented data tracked and trended over time.

Suggestions for Possible Additional Segments.

Red/Yellow/Greenstatusmarkershows at-a-glance each metric’s status.

‘Action’ section answers the question “So what?”• Key Trends and

Insights• Impact on Website /

Unit• Steps Being Taken

Profile data pulls automatically from GADG; shows metrics at-a-glance.

GADG Instructions; show how to create the reports from scratch.

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Interpreting the Dashboard

All Visits data tells a nice story...

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Minimal loyalty group (purple) downward trend indicates improving content engagement

High loyalty group (blue) upward trend indicates same

Impact of this Data on the Site or Program• This good-looking chart may indicate high content engagement and/or perceived value • This data may correlate to increasing conversion behaviors

Acting on this Data• Identify moderate and high loyalty pages as a means of duplicating, or improving others • Examining conversion behaviors of these segments may yield add'l insights • Correlating high bounce rate pages to one-time visits may yield add'l insights• Test different content types in an attempt to move 'minimal' visitors into 'moderate' group

Key Trends and Insights

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This Impact of this Data on the Site or Program• Organic search listings are driving poorly-targeted traffic• Will result in decreased organic search performance over time

Acting on this Data• Refocus title tags, meta-description tags and page content for important pages• Perform link analysis to see where other SEO improvements can be made

Minimal frequency group upward trend indicates organic listings are not appropriately targeted

Moderate frequency group downward trend indicates same

High frequency group trending slightly downward, in contrast to previous chart’s upward slope

Key Trends and Insights

…But applying segmentation tells a different story

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“Social Media Visits” advanced segment

Regular expression: bit.ly|bitly|blogfaves.com|blogger|bloglines|blogspot|delicious|digg|facebook|feedburner|flickr|foursquare|goo.gl|groups.google|groups.yahoo.com|hootsuite|instagram|linkedin|m.facebook.com|newsgator|ow.ly|pinterest|plus.google|plus.url.google.com|reddit|stumbleupon|t.co|technorati|tweetdeck|twitter|typepad|tumblr|wordpress|youtube

The Regex can be edited to include smaller groups, or types of sites, i.e., facebook, twitter.

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Frequency of Visits – Social Media VisitsKey Trends and Insights

Segmented group trends are ‘streaky,’ indicating interest correlating to social media program activity.

Moderate loyalty group trend is flat but in the same % range as other segments.

High loyalty group share is much higher than either of the other segments analyzed, indicating strong relationship between OP content and this audience.

Impact• Social media visitors visiting the site erratically over time could impede the project goals of fostering a desire to learn more, to continually share and to move visitors along a continuum of learning toward action.

Recommended Steps• If social media/blog efforts are coming in spurts, consider ways to execute a more consistent

schedule. • Engage qualitative effort to gauge possible U-I or search issues, and/or uncover other engagement-

related characteristics.

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GA’s “Social” reports Make data-driven decisions for social media

programs: Identify the value of traffic coming from social sites.

Measure how they lead to direct or “assisted” conversions.

Understand social activities happening on / off site.

Some of the reports require programming goals and assigning values

Understanding ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ involves tagging with the _trackSocial tag Google’s ‘social analytics’ guide

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Social conversions Requires programming Goals into GA “Social performance at a glance and its impact on conversions.” “Which goals are being impacted by social media.”

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“Network Referrals” “Find out how visitors from different sources behave.” This is similar to the custom advanced segment.

Other reports:• “Trackbacks” (backlinks)• “Data Hub" (lacks

facebook & twitter)

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Case Studies

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Case Study: Nat’l Museum of American History

On the anniversary of Jim Henson's 77th birthday, NMAH received more than 20 Henson puppets and props.

Characters from The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Fraggle Rock were donated to Smithsonian.

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Case Study: Nat’l Museum of American History

Tweet your questions to NMAH’s Erin Blasco (@erinblasco)

Erin told a complete story based on a balanced mix of metrics, benchmarks, photos and anecdotes.

Here’s Miss Piggy wearing the Hope Diamond. (Yes, that Hope Diamond!)

Source: Smithsonian Magazine

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Case Study: Nat’l Museum of American History Goals:

Spark excitement about the donation and Henson puppet history. Include lesser-known objects such as the Fraggles (as well as

the most popular objects i.e., Miss Piggy). Inspire reflection on the importance of Henson puppets in American

history and culture, on Henson’s birthday. Clearly communicate that the puppets would not be on immediate

display. Hint that a future display would include puppetry collections.

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“Spark excitement about the whole donation”

Strategy Focus first on the Fraggles

Tactic Pre-launch – “tease” the donation Posted two close-up images Asked followers to guess which 1980’s

pop culture objects these might be.

Measurements Comments Clicks

The first clue: Fraggle hair

Source: Facebook

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Adding to the story w/benchmarks & anecdotes “The second clue received 797 clicks on

Twitter alone, which is a huge number considering that our most popular tweets each month receive between 200-300 clicks.”

“Followers shared messages of excitement, congratulations, and spontaneously told us their memories”

"My son and I used to sing the song from time to time. What a hoot!"

The second clue: Traveling Matt’s moustache!

Source: Facebook

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“Inspire reflection on the importance of Henson’s puppets”

Strategy Promote the complicated conservation process

Tactic Behind the scenes blog post Flickr photo set of conservation efforts

Measurements

Blog pageviews

Flickr photo-views

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More benchmarks and anecdotes

“The blog post was exceedingly popular, receiving 3,162 pageviews in the first 24 hours, a record breaking amount of traffic.”

“Many people responded that the blog post’s focus on conservation sparked their interest. One tweeted: “There are days when I really want to be a #conservator.””

“Almost finished with Grover.”

Source: Flickr

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I know, right?

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Social media story: Turner Prize

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Social media story: Turner Prize

And the winner is… Elizabeth Price

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Social media story: Turner Prize

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Social media story: #TateWeather

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Social media story: #TateWeather

George Frederic Watts, Eveleen Tennant, later Mrs F.W.H. Myers

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Social media story: #TateWeather

GA Best Practices / Tips and Tricks

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Unfiltered backup profile Create a profile that has no filtering of any kind Leave this profile alone – it serves as a backup Protection against unintended consequence Possible names:

Website/view name (backup) Website/view name (unfiltered data)

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Filter-out internal-traffic If you want to exclude visitors surfing from within your network Account >> Admin >> View (Profile) >> Filters >> +New Filter >> External Traffic Only

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Measure only traffic taking place on your site Scraping and re-publishing website content is a common practice. Those sites exist to serve Google Adsense ads and make money.

Unfortunately they also scrape your GA “UA” account number.

Their traffic goes into GA as your traffic!

Include all your domains, Filter pattern:

domain\.com

domain1\.com|domain2\.com

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Use annotations Super easy – a great way to know at-a-glance what

happened on your site, launches, promos, etc. You think you’re gonna remember – you’re not!

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Custom segment: social media visits

Regular expression: bit.ly|bitly|blogfaves.com|blogger|bloglines|blogspot|delicious|digg|facebook|feedburner|flickr|foursquare|goo.gl|groups.google|groups.yahoo.com|hootsuite|instagram|linkedin|m.facebook.com|newsgator|ow.ly|pinterest|plus.google|plus.url.google.com|reddit|stumbleupon|t.co|technorati|tweetdeck|twitter|typepad|tumblr|wordpress|youtube

The regular expression (“regex”) can also be edited to include smaller groups, or types of social sites, i.e., facebook and twitter.

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Custom segment: engaged visitsThese visits: Were

deeper than three pages.

Were longer than three minutes.

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Custom segment: highly-engaged visitsThese visits: Were deeper than

four pages.

Were in frequency more than two times in the measured period.

Were longer than two minutes.

These values can be tweaked for your site, of course!

A nice blog post on this topic is here.

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Resources Supermetrics Data Grabber

http://supermetrics.com/

Automate Analytics Google Group http://groups.google.com/group/automateanalytics/topics

Avinash Kaushik’s “Occam’s Razor” http://kaushik.net/avinash

Lunametrics blog http://www.lunametrics.com/blog

Google Analytics Blog http://analytics.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

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