Following today's Executive edition of the web analytics Academy with Richmond Events in the UK, participants can post their questions and topics. Look out for some of the links on the main Analytics classroom page as a way of gaining more insight on key points already raised...

http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/analytics

Without knowing where people are coming from, it’s hard to know which elements of your content and online marketing activity are really working.

The good news is that help is at hand, and in the form of a thousand flavours of web analytics tools and techniques that can instantly give you a good understanding of the trends. However, many companies readily bolt in their web analytics, but then forget to invest the time and energy to interpret the outcomes. Get it right, and it will show you, at every step, how customers are progressing through their journey to reach a sale or deep interaction with the online presence of your brand.

Here are some tips:

• Start with measuring the 5 Ps of website traffic, and figure out your ‘passion’ metric
• Once the tools are in place, harness them as part of the weekly or monthly management reports the organisation uses to measure performance
• Set yourself goals by extracting a few of the key performance indicators from the data
• Pay particular attention to where traffic comes from, how it discovers you, and which part of the site it arrives at

Where do I start in web analytics?

Audience measurement: are new models on the way?

Since the start of web publishing we’ve used page impressions and unique users as the core of the currency. When pages were simple HTML and when all marketers were interested in was a simple reach figure, this worked well, but as web marketing has evolved, the needs of both client and media owner have changed. That’s why the currencies will be evolving over the next few years and why website strategists need to pay attention to their key metrics to ensure the right information is coming out of their analysis tools.
The page impression has been under the hammer since the creation of AJAX. Sites like Second Life (one page) make a mockery of what was once the primary measure of audience data, and that’s why there is a growing groundswell that is more interested with the duration of engagement than the number of pages used up in a session. Duration gives a more realistic measure of involvement (albeit with caps about active keystroke and mouse events so we don’t start counting people downloading their music overnight). This leads towards measures of engagement and intensity which are just as critical for the brand marketer to understand as they are for the media owner.
Similarly the idea of ‘unique users’ has enjoyed high criticism for a long time. Since 2000 when cookie churn became an identified problem, many website owners have mistook their ‘user’ figures to imply ‘unique users’. Data from NetRatings and others has painted an accurate picture of how cookie churn and cookie blocking can over-inflate the audience figures for a website, and the models to recalibrate have been poor at best. It’s still safer to reduce back down to a daily figure than to try multiplying up all of the numbers to get a monthly reach figure that could be over 50% out.
In the web analytics classes at the European Emetrics summit, we outlined some of the challenges with the Web 1.0 metrics and gave an overview of the issues and some practical hints and tips media owners and brand marketers can use to get back onto the right track. Try the video and the accompanying lecture notes to learn more about the problems, and then consider the implications for your own analytics tools. The web offers the promise of near perfect accountability of marketing spend and we’re short changing our customers if we don’t have accurate figures about the numbers of real people who are exposed in a timely way to their communications.

Are the key website traffic measurements of unique users and impressions set to stay?

Remember that there are dozens of tools on our Digital Training Academies that can help you put into practice the ideas we disucss here. If you missed the last Digital Training Academies in your country, then check the termtime pages to see when the next public access courses are in your areas: http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/termtime/
... and remember that most of the time firms invite us inside their company to train the whole team in one go! Email me for details of how we could do this for you and your team. We're waiting to help boost your group's output straight away!

GETTING STARTED IN WEB ANALYTICS

Without knowing where people are coming from, it’s hard to know which elements of your online marketing activity are really working.

The good news is that help is at hand, and in the form of a thousand flavours of web analytics tools and techniques that can instantly give you a good understanding of the trends. However, many companies readily bolt in their web analytics, but then forget to invest the time and energy to interpret the outcomes. Get it right, and it will show you, at every step, how customers are progressing through their journey to reach a sale or deep interaction with the online presence of your brand.

Here are some tips:
• Once the tools are in place, harness them as part of the weekly or monthly management reports the organisation uses to measure performance
• Set yourself goals by extracting a few of the key performance indicators from the data
• Pay particular attention to where traffic comes from, how it discovers you, and which part of the site it arrives at

Where does my website traffic come from?

WHAT IS WEB 3.0?

We've been asked lots about this in training over the last year. Sometimes as a joke and sometimes in all seriousness. Like much digital future-gazing, you can never be sure what the next step is, but when we interviewed Joel De Rosnay about the models for computing and the collision of the virtual and physical worlds, he had some pretty clear ideas - Web 3.0 could arrive sooner than you think. Lock down the digital glasses, plug yourself into the grid, read the interview, and then follow the links... http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/thoughtleaders/2007/07/joel_de_rosnay.html

(And let us know what you think afterwards!)

TRACKING ONLINE AD CONVERSIONS

When the success of a campaign is being measured in the return on investment the client sees in sales, then getting the measurement and metrics right at the start is key. Many clients need to invest in the right analytics tools to ensure they can relate a click to a sale, and when several entry points and source websites could be linked to just one customer (after all we don’t all buy just on one visit to a site), there’s an additional challenge for how leads are attributed.

The value of each lead will vary based on their propensity to buy, the site (and brand’s) propensity to convert, and the margin the business makes from the sale. Savvy classically trained marketers will also factor in the lifetime value of their customers as the way of making sure they get the numbers spot on.

All of this works well in theory for an online business, but where it gets messy is in the world of blended retailing: our friend shows us the latest iPhone, we review a product online, we go into the store to play with it, and then we order on the web. These types of customer journeys are incredibly hard to track, and many retailers, consumer brands and business services are still doing little more than making educated guesses. The good news is that help is at hand: econometric modelling, smart statistical analysis, and some survey based customer feedback, can all help figure out how the model is working and what is generating the sales. But this remains one of the most complicated elements of online advertising measurement, and for many situations there simply isn’t the data in place to be able to confidently say exactly how the sales were generated.

How do online advertisers track and account for their conversions of searches into actual transactions / sales.

(a)Obviously if the vendor is purely operating an online business it's easy but where customers use the internet to research and go on to buy from a call centre e.g. Motor Insurance or Travel Agents the results would surely be skewed?

(b) Do online advertisers make allowances for transactions / sales that originated via another stimulus such as a directory, TV ad or billboard?

>>WEB 2.0 SOCIAL NETWORKING METRICS [Posted by Tutor]

Hi there... I stumbled upon this site when reading about Social Networking KPI's and would of course like to add my take on it:

Social Networking business objectives:
- Increase Advertising and/or premium member-ship Revenue
- Increase User Engagement

Social Networking advertising revenue KPI’s:
- Advertising Revenue
- Visits per week
- Ad units per visit*
- Ads served*
- Ad CTR

Social Networking user engagement KPI’s:
- User Engagement*
- Anonymous visitors to members conversion rate*
- Active member length
- Time since last login
- Total time spent on site

Cheers

Dennis R. Mortensen, COO at IndexTools
BLOG: http://visualrevenue.com/blog

RECAP: TEN LESSONS

Here at the Emetrics Summit, we drew on ten lessons from our web analytics academies to help marketers think again about the way they use online advertising and the way they record its effectiveness. Here are the ten lessons in online marketing analytics we looked at today. In one of these Digital Executive Briefings we can only scratch the surface, but let me know how you find them and how greater insights into data unlocks value for you and your firm. Remember you can download our summary notes here as well.

Lesson 1: Review your metric options, decide what to count

Lesson 2: Data needs insights to become knowledge, know the weaknesses, tackle the weaknesses, be clear about weaknesses

Lesson 3: Turn data into KPI tools that can drive your business

Lesson 4: Measure market position with meaning

Lesson 5: Build, share and manage the data dashboard

Lesson 6: Advertising 2.0 and Analytics 2.0 - start tracking

Lesson 7: Web 2.0 and social media - start evaluating

Lesson 8: Unlock revenue through operations data

Lesson 9: Invest in your data analysts, train your data analysts

Lesson 10: Lead your team, give analytics weight, appoint CIOs

MySpace, youTube, Social Media - where does it all fit and how does this weave into our online ad metrics? Our agency just does impressions and reach at the moment. What should we be doing?

WEB 2.0 SOCIAL NETWORKING METRICS [Posted by Tutor]

Most marketers are still using the key metrics developed in the early nineties as being the way to measure the effectiveness of their sites. Page impressions, advertising impressions and visits are still valuable, but in the Web Analytics Academy we explored alternatives. The business metrics of customers, cash and conversions are increasingly rising to the top of the pile in the choice of web analytics metrics.

What Social Networking has added is the notion of popularity and importance on the web. Sites like You Tube and tools like Blogger have opened up the scope for what's possible in terms of content, and measuring the impact of the web marketing you're doing in terms of its reach, influence and engagement is increasingly key. If you're running a corporate blog then the influence and link equity may matter way more than the actual page traffic. What's key is to research the right basket of metrics for you.

You say that search should figure in our brand metrics. We use PPC and SEO right now but it's all for acquisition so how can we get brand value here, and then how do we track it?

BRANDING AND SEARCH: A NEW ERA [Posted by Tutor]

The metrics you use to measure a campaign might need to be a little broader than you think. Here's an example…. In search engine advertising it's normally all about the direct response, the immediate sales and the customers that are acquired. However, from 2005 onwards it's clear that lots of marketers began to explore the value of search engines as a brand building tool, using the listings to boost key metrics such awareness. On the Search Academy we explore how Carling's sponsorships of music venues around the UK have helped deliver this – their example is one of the most extensive strategies we came across in 2006 - but any brand can benefit from a top ranking that everyone sees.

The classic four groups of brand metrics are:

- Brand awareness – either prompted or unprompted

- Brand attributes – or 'image statements' (all unique for each brand)

- Advertising recall – measuring the awareness of the specific advertising creative you have

- Purchase intent – or 'brand favourability'

Think about the ones that are right for you, and if you need advice on how to use these in practice then get in touch.

Where do we get more data analysts? We've got three open headcounts across our group and we're finding the process of recruitment surprisingly tough. Any tips?

THE RECRUITMENT CHALLENGE [Posted by Tutor]

In Western Europe there's still crisis in the digital marketing labour markets: we just don't have enough digital marketers or data analysts. All of the power of digital marketing – accountability, measurability, control – can only be unlocked if the firm is able to learn and respond to what it sees. And that's where the data analysts are key. For every dollar invested in analytics technology, probably nine times that should be invested in the staffing and expertise to make sense of it.

Here are a few suggestions from the Digital Training Academy for overcoming staffing shortfalls…

- Acknowledge the problem

- Recruit from classic direct marketing

- Nurture internal talent

- Train the industry en masse

- Outsource to specialists

- Raise the profile and esteem of data analysts

- Reward data analysts from business results; incentives, bonuses

- Build their stature in the firm

Engagement in online advertising seems like the key, but how come there are not any answers yet? When will we have a single metric?

AN ENGAGEMENT INDEX [Posted by Tutor]

This is the most illusive of advertising measurement tools. Trying to appreciate and quantify the scale and impact of web communications is tough, because the language that's often used does little to create comparability to other media. If a viewer clicks an online ad and is carried through to an immersive brand experience, then there simply isn't the comparability to traditional media. I'd argue that a viewer who responds to a video ad for a car by clicking it open and then wanders through the different video clips within the advert, isn't only spending more time there, but they are way more engaged; leaning forward, attentive and focussed on action. Get the creative right and you may find viewers spending minutes interacting with the ad. If you'd like more information on how Great Creative Boosts Online Branding then simply email one of the team.

How do we do the Dashboard? We're a multinational FMCG and have data across dozens of centres. What's the process we need to go through?

DASHBOARDS MAKE LIFE EASIER [Posted by Tutor]

A dashboard collates data into a single access point, making it easy for marketing departments to see the complete picture of their digital marketing. Fusing web analytics, sales and competitor data together reveals a deeper window into your business' performance. Why not share access to the dashboard with other departments, agencies, parent companies and stakeholders? Invest the time and you'll be able to share data more efficiently.

Which KPIs should I be using? We're a media group...

MEDIA GROUP KPIs (Posted by your Tutor)

Core key performance indicators in media groups include Volume (of advertising), yield (of advertising) and the share (of the advertising and audience market).

At Digital we developed the 5 Ps of web traffic measurement…

- People (unique users)

- Pages (impressions)

- Persistence (stickiness / duration of visit)

- Pulling power (repeat visits)

- Passion (intensity of their activity; posts, community involvement, bespoke metrics)

Try these out as your starting point and you'll be well on the right track. If you need more then ask us about the Management Information Academies we developed for media groups.