Analytics Aggregation

Measuring Sitelinks from your Google AdWords Campaigns

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:55 GMT

PPC experts know how important the ability to test and measure results is. Thankfully, we have the ability to do this with sitelinks as well. The ‘Ad Extensions’ tab within the Google AdWords UI offers advertisers data that is specific to sitelink performance. Also, keep in mind that all of this data is rolled up when viewing data for the campaign overall – there’s no need to add the numbers together to get the total, as AdWords already displays the campaign data in that way.

One question I get often, however, is how advertisers can view more detailed data for sitelinks, such as conversion data or performance for individual sitelinks. While we don't have the ability to view this data within the AdWords UI, we can see it within Google Analytics.

Set up Tracking Parameters

In order to track in Analytics, you’ll first need to attach tracking parameters onto the URL of the sitelinks you are using. I usually set mine up as sitelink = [description of sitelink here], so for example:

www.CompanyA.com/contactus?sitelink =contactus

Remember, when attaching tracking parameters to any URL, use ‘?’ to separate the URL from the tagging if the URL does not already have a question mark in it; if the URL already contains a question mark, you’ll want to separate your URL from your parameter with ‘&’ (even if the URL already contains an ampersand). SearchEngineLand offers a great article on how to set up parameters.

View the Content Report

Once the parameters are in place and you have confirmed the link still works correctly, you can view data for sitelinks within Google Analytics by clicking on Content, followed by Site Content and then Landing Pages. Search for your designated parameter in the search box. From here, you can drill down in the Google Analytics interface to determine additional information about the sitelinks, such as which campaigns triggered them, etc.

Custom Reports

Another way to view sitelink performance within Analytics is to set up a custom report that will be saved within the analytics profile for quick viewing in the future. To do so, you’ll need to ensure that tracking parameters have been set up for the sitelink URLs (discussed above).

Within the Google Analytics profile you wish to track sitelinks in, click on Custom Reporting, then New Custom Report. Name the report so that you will be able to easily identify it as the Sitelinks report when you view the Custom Reporting tab (I always name mine Sitelinks Report). Since my sitelinks report usually only has one tab, I just name it “Sitelinks.” I also prefer to view the data by Explorer as the type.

Choose the metrics you would like to view for your sitelinks – this can be limited to just visits, or as many metrics as you’d like, including bounce rates, time on site, etc. Metrics can be combined into one metrics group or multiple metric groups. Name your groups something easily identifiable.

Next, you’ll choose the dimensions for which you’d like to see the sitelink data. I normally like to view campaigns, ad groups, keyword and landing page data at the very least. Note: Landing Page (Listed under Content) must be chosen for the custom report filter to work! The dimensions you choose can be basic like this, or contain more detailed data such as ad slot position, day of the week, medium, etc.

You’ll then need to add a filter for the custom report to pull data for. Click Add Filter, then click Content, Landing Page. Ensure the first box says “Include.” Click the drop down box that says “Exact,” and click on “Regex.” Then, in the box to the right of that, type in the tracking parameter that you would like use to filter for sitelinks. I set my custom reports to filter for the word “sitelink” within the landing page, because my parameter contains that word.

Click save, and you now have a Custom Report you can use to view sitelink information quickly. You will only have to make the sitelink report one time, but you can always update it to view more/less data.

Here is what your completed Custom Report page might look like, before clicking Save:

Implement sitelinks in your Paid Search campaigns, and use the AdWords UI and Google Analytics to track their performance.

Measuring Sitelinks from your Google AdWords Campaigns is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

It's a good time to be at Webtrends...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:13 GMT

I joined Webtrends in '99. The company had just gone public and we were growing like crazy. Our flagship Webtrends software products (LogAnalyzer, Professional Suite, and Enterprise Suite) were minting money, and we were just starting to get some traction with our new "online" tool called Webtrends Live (later renamed Webtrends OnDemand).

In Q4 of that year we had an internal goal to hire 100 people across the organization. We did just that...while the business was still accelerating. It was a fun time.

Flash forward to 2012. Our SaaS solutions revenue grew over 20% last quarter from the previous year, with earnings up an incredible 418%. And we just announced last week that we're going to be hiring 50 new employees - 35 in engineering alone.

The difference this time? It's not a bubble. At least not for Webtrends. We're making money, we're growing, and instead of sitting back and watching it slowly, organically, grow, we are putting our foot on the accelerator.

Want the inside scoop on what we're up to? Take a look at our job openings. A lot of great opportunities all around the company. Make sure you look at some of the engineering jobs to see what we're putting together: streaming/realtime processing, big time big data, deep data mining research, and incredible (award winning) user experience initiatives.

It's a good time to be at Webtrends. If you want to work on the latest technology, serving some of the smartest marketing brands in the world, now's the time.

6 Ways to Use Quora for Research

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:55 GMT

This article was originally published in Social Times.

Have you ever used Quora before to solve an unanswered question or start a conversation about an interesting topic? As a platform, Quora allows its community to post and answer questions about anything of their choosing to gain collective knowledge. One way to take advantage of this question and answer based feedback is using it for your day to day researching needs.

Follow Boards on Any Given Topic

This past December Quora launched boards, making it easier to organize questions and answers on a particular topic. This newly launched feature is a great research tool because it often pulls quality conversations and articles all to one place. It helps bring the best content on a topic to the top of the board based on votes by the Quora community. Think of it as a search engine based on the input of your friends, followers and surrounding community on Quora.

Insider Travel & Public Transit Advice

Follow questions, topics and boards about your city to get tips on the most effective ways to get around. Search for phrases related to your city like New York Travel or Philadelphia Airport to find alternate routes, time savers in the airport, less traveled back roads, the locations of affordable parking garages, etc.

Recipes & Cooking Tips

Planning on cooking up a Mexican feast, but can’t quite remember what ingredients taste best to make your own guacamole? Quora gives you the opportunity to rely on genuine feedback from real people, often your friends that have been there and already cooked that. Take a gander at the many recipes available with insider tips into what worked with that recipe and what really didn’t.

Restaurant & Shopping Suggestions for Your City

Quora can help if you’re looking to research where to get a specific type of food in your area but you just don’t know where to start. Your network of friends and family are often the best sources of recommendations for dining and shopping, but they can’t possibly know it all. This is where you can look and see if someone had the same question previously or post your question for some in the Quora community to answer. Use it as barometer for what range of restaurants and stores are available in your area, reading the feedback on that question or topic about a particular type of food, restaurant, store or product.

Business Insights from the Experts

There are many aspects about the business world that aren’t easy and it’s okay to ask for help sometimes. A question or an issue with your business may not require hiring an expert, but nevertheless you might need some input. Turn to Quora as a research tool by searching if your question already exists or if you should post it under a particular topic or board to get expert input. This can be extremely helpful if the answer to your question is from a valid source, look up who answered your question just to be sure. Nevertheless, answering a quick question like the one above can be done rather quickly and for free, letting you get back to running your business with added insight.

Help on the Job/Hiring Front

Looking for a job can often be a long, tedious process. Having as many outlets for finding jobs as possible can help streamline your efforts. Therefore, be active on Quora and other social channels, especially if you’re looking for a job in a tech based industry. Fill out your profile to its fullest and participate by answering and posting questions on a variety of topics as an expert in your field. See who else is posting and what they’re posting about. Many experts weigh into discussions on Quora, follow them and see what makes them tick. Learn what you can about the companies they run or the companies they work for, getting to know them as you go along. You can get an insider’s look into a company’s culture, while getting your name and some recognition so that you’re more than a faceless resume.

On the other side of the desk, you can learn what others in HR are doing to find qualified candidates. See if the types of questions and screening tactics you’re using are working for others or if you need to sharpen your approach to the hiring process. Search for phrases like jobs, employment and human resources to see what job seekers and HR experts are curious about so you can learn from their discussions and contribute.

6 Ways to Use Quora for Research is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

Welcome Demystifier Brian Hawkins!

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:36 GMT

Adam, John, and I are incredibly excited to announce that industry veteran Brian Hawkins is joining Web Analytics Demystified to help us expand our offerings around testing, optimization, and personalization of all forms of digital communication. Brian is the most widely recognized expert in the field when it comes to Enterprise-class optimization and personalization technology, integration, and strategy. He comes to us from Offermatica by way of Omniture and Adobe, and we are delighted to build on our support for Adobe's solutions, adding Brian's expertise on Test&Target to Adam's SiteCatalyst-related offerings.

Brian's offerings at Demystified will look a lot like Adam's — audits of current implementations, strategic planning for testing and optimization readiness, systems integration architecture and support, and planning support for the entire end-to-end process of site and application optimization in the Enterprise. While Brian's technology expertise is strongest on Test&Target, his knowledge of what it takes from a teams, governance, and process perspective to be successful transcends platforms and I believe will incredibly valuable to any large business trying to become agile in their optimization efforts.

Brian is taking a little time off before getting started mid-month but I will be adding his blog, a description of his offerings, and more about him to the site very soon. Clients are welcome to contact us directly to set up time to meet Brian (and if you're not a client you can call too, that is if you have any interest in testing, optimization, or personalization.)

Brian will be with us at Emetrics, Adobe's Summit in Salt Lake City, and of course he will be presenting at our own ACCELERATE event in Chicago on April 4th. If you're at any of these events and would like to meet or connect with Brian, please drop me a note.

We hope you will join us in welcoming Brian to the team.

© 2012 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

GoalCopy Updated for Firefox 9

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:55 GMT

If you’re not familiar with the Goal Copy Firefox extension, you can read the original post here.

It seems like everyone I know is using Chrome now. It's fast, it's simple, it has developer tools built right in. It's a fantastic browser and it deserves every bit of browser share that it's taking away from the Big Two (Firefox and IE).

That being said, I do almost all of my Google Analytics debugging in Firefox. I love HttpFox and you'll pry Firebug (and, to a lesser extent, Firecookie) from my cold, dead hands. Maybe I'm just set in my ways, but it's the way I do things, and while I love Chrome for everyday browsing, I do all my heavy lifting with the ‘Fox.

Which is why I keep updating GoalCopy. This latest version works with Firefox 9. It still only works with the old interface, but an update for GA v5 should be ready in a few weeks.

For now, just download the latest version of GoalCopy here and get to copying! You might encounter a weird glitch where only the Find/Replace toolbar shows and the Copy/Paste options are nowhere to be found. Just re-enable it through the new Firefox menu as shown below:

What about you? Have you made the switch to Chrome, or are you sticking with Mozilla? What sort of features do you want to see in a Google Analytics add-on? Please leave a comment below and let me know!

GoalCopy Updated for Firefox 9 is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

Google Privacy Policy Updates – a Web Geek’s Perspective

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:55 GMT

Google announces that it will be passing user information across product lines to move forward master plans to create a more unified user experience. Nerdy commentary is provided.

(Their drawing, not mine.)

On Tuesday, Google announced it will be changing its current privacy policy and Terms of Service, effective March 1. Google's made a bit of a deal out of this – you've probably seen the links at the middle or bottom of the Google home page or the yellow box:

(It's nice to see Google making such a “buzz” about changes to user privacy;)

This is another notable display of transparency, what with Google announcing the changes over a month in advance and doing its best to publicize them. And let's not forget Google's Transparency Report, which shows figures and compliance rates on government User Data Requests and Content Removal Requests – an incredibly interesting report on international privacy, government, and freedom of speech that I could discuss for hours. But to get back to the Google's Privacy policy and TOS, Google has clearly broken the bank on the latest computer animation technology to provide a video explaining the changes. The new policy utilizes the simplest language lawyers are capable of, and does seem more user-friendly. Clearly, Google is at least concerned with other people's concerns with privacy, and is doing its best to pre-empt the inevitable backlash and curb mass hysteria by being clear and transparent.

VS.

But is anything really changing? At first glance, the new policy and the current main policy look very similar, albeit one uses more accessible language. The language change and additional explanations of data collection methods and geeky terminology actually helps the new policy seem a lot less creepy. The real difference is that Google will be replacing over 60 additional privacy policy statements (that huge list on the right) into a singular master Privacy Policy for (nearly) all of its products. According to Google, they aim to “create one beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google… In short, we can treat you as a single user across all our products.”

That's why Google will now share user data amongst its products such as YouTube, Maps, Gmail, and even Android. That's where the creepy factor rears it's head again. Not every one is keen on the possibility of their e-mails, chats, video history, search history, and Maps usage to be tied together to their identity. For those concerned about their privacy, I highly recommend Google's consumer education center on Internet privacy and security as well as Google's center of various privacy control tools.

The positive for consumers is that sharing of data really should result in some really cool functionality enhancements. Overall, Google is getting to know you better, and this should result in more relevant search results and recomendations and better predictive features for autcorrect, voice recognition, and the like. According to Google, they “can provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day. Or ensure that our spelling suggestions, even for your friends’ names, are accurate because you’ve typed them before.” Not too shabby.

But the bottom line is… well, the bottom line. A better user experience naturally equates to greater market share. Perhaps more important is that all of this data will drastically improve Google's ability to serve relevant ads. And more relevant ads means more ad clicks. And we know what that mean$.

As an Internet marketer, I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I was absolutely fascinated by the unprecedented ability to combine, with anonymity, consumer behavior data such as video viewing tendencies, search history, common topics of discussion (in email and chat), engagement levels for various subject matters (via email and site bounce rate, time on site, video viewing time, etc.), and geo-location. Serving a man an ad for a flower store using a picture of orchids located on the way to his dates' house right after his calendar reminds him of his date might be weird, but it's still hella intriguing to this nerd.

As an SEO, I can't help but notice there will be more data than ever to assist advertisers, but SEOs, webmasters, and others dependent on Google Analytics are not provided with such luxuries. In fact, the move to pass more data across Google properties works best if more folks are logged in – and you can bet Google will continue to encourage sign-ups and logged in usage. Thus, we can continue to see keyword referral data for organic visits become less useful as (not provided) numbers continue their ascent. Perhaps the (not provided) move really was to make web marketers more relient on AdWords. I tend to see it more as a PR move – a symbolic gesture to watchdogs and concerned consumers that Google really cares about privacy – so that Google might get less flack as it changes privacy policies in order to synergize its empire of advertising real estate. It might be a meaningless gesture since users identities have always been seperate from their keyword data, but PR does stand for perception of reality, right?

Speaking of PR, it will certainly be interesting to see how all this privacy stuff plays out in the public arena. What are your sentiments, readers?

Google Privacy Policy Updates – a Web Geek's Perspective is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

How to Track Conversions for Both Internal and External Campaigns

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:50 GMT

After you learn about campaign tagging for Google Analytics, you may be excited that you can add all that extra information to a simple little link – so excited that you want to put campaign tags on every kind of promotional link that leads to a web page on your site. But there's one kind of link that should never get campaign tags. You should never put GA campaign tags on internal banners or on-site promotions that lead from one page of your site to another.

Why You Shouldn't Use GA Campaign Tags for Internal Promotions

Imagine this sample scenario: A visitor clicks an email campaign link from your latest marketing effort and lands on your site. Google Analytics records the traffic source and starts collecting data for the visit. Of course you hope that the visitor will continue to view pages on your site and maybe even convert on an important goal like registering for an upcoming conference or buying your latest e-book. When they do, you'll be able to attribute that conversion to the campaign and evaluate that campaign's success.

But what happens if the visitor clicks an internal banner with campaign tags before they convert? Google Analytics records a new traffic source and starts a whole new visit. So now you have at least two problems: You've split what was really one visit into two visits, skewing your data. And you can't tie the original email link directly to the conversion, because the conversion happens in a separate visit.

To track internal promotions without splitting visits and losing credit for conversions, try one of these instead:

Add your own campaign parameters (not GA campaign tags) to the links and view the data in your Content/Pages reports
Use event tracking when a visitor clicks an internal banner or promotional link and view the data in your Content/Events reports

Alternative #1: Add Your Own Campaign Parameters

The first method involves making up your own tags, ones that GA won't recognize and will pass right along into your Pages reports with the rest of the URL. Instead of utm_source or utm_medium, for example, you might simply add something like “from=promo” to the target link:

http://www.anything.com/buy-ebook.html?from=promo

Or you could use a more detailed scheme if, for example, you run internal promotions with many types of links in different places. So you might have one parameter similar to campaign name, like “campname=e-book”, and another parameter that describes the links, like “camplink=home-page-banner” or “camplink=side-nav-feature”:

http://www.anything.com/buy-ebook.html?campname=e-book&camplink=home-page-banner

http://www.anything.com/buy-ebook.html?campname=e-book&camplink=side-nav-feature

As long as you stay away from Google Analytics utm parameters, these types of URLs will appear in your Content/Pages reports and you can tell by the number of pageviews exactly how many times a visitor clicked the tagged link to arrive there.

Alternative #2: Use Event Tracking

The second method involves adding a bit of code to the link on the page. Inside the anchor tag (a href=”…”) include an onclick event like this (a href=”…” onclick=”…”). And in the onclick event, add the event tracking code using an event category and action like “internal promo” and “home-page-banner”:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'internal promo', 'home-page-banner', this.href]);"

After the event category and action it's a good idea to include the optional event label. For the label you can simply write the target (href) of the link, using this.href.

View this data in your Content/Events reports by drilling into Top Events through the “internal promo” category, where you can see the how many times someone clicked each of your different internal promotional links.

Combine with Custom Variables for Goal Data

Okay, so where's the goal data? You may have noticed that Google Analytics has Goal tabs in Traffic Sources reports, but not in Content reports. The whole point of these alternatives was to keep your original traffic source intact so you could tie it to a conversion. But you probably also want to know how well your internal promotions lead to conversions, too, right? Of course you do.

Well, there's another set of reports that has Goal tabs, where you can combine conversion data with a set of dimensions that you define, and that’s the Audience set of reports. You can write a custom variable with the parameters or event data you created in either alternative described above. And then you can easily compare goal conversion data in a single table that lists all your internal promotions.

The thing to remember when writing custom variables is that the data needs to piggyback on a _trackPageview or _trackEvent call.

For the event tracking alternative, add _setCustomVar to the onclick event, like this:

onclick="_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 1, 'internal promo', 'home-page-banner', 2]);_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'internal promo', 'home-page-banner', this.href]);"

For the other alternative where you make up your own campaign parameters, I suggest adding _setCustomVar to the page that's the target of the link, right before the usual call to _trackPageview. You can use a little Javascript to read the URL and write the custom variable according to the campaign parameters that appear there. For example, if the URL is:

http://www.anything.com/buy-ebook.html?campname=e-book&camplink=side-nav-feature

The resulting custom variable code (placed before the call to _trackPageview) could be something like this:

_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 1, 'e-book', 'side-nav-feature', 2]);

In both cases I've set a session-level custom variable (indicated by the number 2 above), and I've set the custom variable to slot number 1 (out of 5). If you are already using that slot then you'll need to assign it to another one. Read our post about how to keep track of custom variable slots and scopes for more guidance.

No More Split Visits

Avoid the split-visit problem. Keep visit data together by keeping internal and external promotions separate. Track your external campaigns with GA's utm parameters and try one of the above alternatives for internal campaign tracking. And tie both external and internal promotions to conversion data to evaluate the success of each.

What methods do you use for tracking internal promotions? And how do you tie them to conversion data? Please share in the comments.

How to Track Conversions for Both Internal and External Campaigns is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

What Does Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm Update Mean for My Site?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:50 GMT

Google's most recent search algorithm update – dubbed the “page layout” algorithm change – focuses to punish websites whose content is pushed below-the-fold by multiple advertisements. While the forecasted number of searches affected is less than 1%, it's never a bad idea to use an algorithm update as an opportunity to take a step back and examine your site's search engine friendliness and usability. It is not an occasion to panic, however. Chances are that your site complies with the updated page layout standard. If it doesn't, it would be hard for me to believe that this change is anything but a blessing in disguise.

Will My Site Be Affected?

As Distinguished Engineer, Matt Cutts points out in his post on Inside Search, placing ads above-the-fold isn't exactly uncommon. In fact, many of the most highly trafficked and well respected online information hubs use above-the-fold ads in optimizing their monetization strategy. Hosting doesn't pay for itself.

So, will industry websites like Search Engine Watch (which has multiple ads above-the-fold) be punished? Will your site – the one with a big, flashy banner ad at the top – be punished? Unless you're supplanting your above-the-fold content completely, it's incredibly doubtful.

In his post on Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan makes the point that Google actually encourages the use of above-the-fold ads through their AdSense recommendations. The onus, now more than ever, is on the publisher (or webmaster) to make sure that these ads are used tactfully and in conjunction with actual content.

Need to Make Changes?

Long have Google's algorithm updates catered to the end user (and rightfully so). If your site is guilty of having a page layout that's top-heavy with ads, it's time to make some game-changing tweaks. Asking users (and now search engines) to simply “deal with it” isn't an option. Frankly, if you're at all vested in the performance of your site and the contentedness of its users, it never has been.

As we've talked about before, here at LunaMetrics, conversions rely not only on getting visitors to your site, but also the content and usability of your landing and inner pages. Ask yourself: Is my website providing users with an enjoyable, fulfilling experience, while also serving its end purpose?

While I wasn't able to find any especially noteworthy examples of top-heavy ad placement when searching with Google (hmmm), we can compare the user experience that such sites offer (at least, initially) to that of a parked domain. Now, obviously, with a parked domain (like Cheeseburger.com), there typically isn't any content being displaced by the above-the-fold ads. However, when a user lands on a page that's dominated by banner and text ads, the effect can be discouragingly similar. A poor user experience and a terribly high bounce rate.

Maintaining Page Layout Balance

Just as it is in crafting a gourmet cheeseburger, maintaining balance is vital to the page layout aspect of your inbound marketing strategy. Too little ketchup or one too many pickles can be the difference between whether or not a customer comes back for more. If you're designing a new website or prepping for a redesign, keep this idea of balance in mind. If neither is an option, find a way to improvise.

Remember, the functions of design go far beyond aesthetics. Think about things like ad placement, content-to-ad ratios, the elements of your page that will be visible above-the-fold, below-the-fold, etc. In doing so, you can provide the best experience for not only your users, but also those finicky search engine crawlers.

If you've found your site a temporary casualty of the page layout update, rest assured that the fixes are relatively clear and certainly implementable. Get some quality content above-the-fold. Limit your above-the-fold ad placement. Redesign if necessary. Improvise if you can. Those are your priorities. Where there's a will, there's a way. And where there's a picture of a succulent cheeseburger, there's a hungry search analyst. Off to lunch!

If you've had a personal experience with one of your websites and the Page Layout algorithm update, we'd love to hear about it! Feel free to share questions and comments below.

What Does Google's “Page Layout” Algorithm Update Mean for My Site? is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

Announcing the Analysis Exchange Scholarship

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:28 GMT

Continuing our long-standing efforts to support the broader digital measurement, analysis, and optimization community around the globe, I am incredibly happy to announce the creation of the Analysis Exchange Scholarship Fund. You can read the press release and learn more about the effort at the Analysis Exchange web site, but in an nutshell thanks to the generosity of ObservePoint and IQ Workforce we are now able to financially support Analysis Exchange member's in their efforts to expand their web analytics horizons.

What's more, as soon as Jim Sterne heard about our efforts, he and Matthew Finlay immediately donated three passes to the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit each year — how amazing is that! Tremendous thanks to Corry Prohens, Rob Seolas, Jim Sterne, and each of their teams for their support of our efforts at the Analysis Exchange.

Analysis Exchange members in good standing are encouraged to apply for scholarship funds. We are open to ideas but in general expect these funds to be used for things like:

Pay partial travel or registration fees for conferences like ACCELERATE and eMetrics
Pay annual membership fees for the Web Analytics Association or other professional groups
Pay partial tuition to the University of British Columbia's Web Analytics courses
Pay partial costs for the Web Analytics Association's certification
Pay for books, software licenses, and so on

Quarterly awards will be up to $500 USD per selected applicant and I imagine we will give two or three away each quarter depending on the quality of applications we get. You need to be a member of Analysis Exchange in good standing and have earned very good scores on projects to be eligible.

I hope you'll take a minute to learn more about the Analysis Exchange Scholarship. I also hope you've been helping in the Analysis Exchange and you're excited to apply for this funding!

If you have any questions about these funds please don't hesitate to reach out to our Executive Director Wendy Greco directly. I am also happy to answer questions.

Thanks

© 2012 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

Who Are These People Visiting My Website?

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:00 GMT

This is part 3 of a multi-part series on increasing conversions from your website traffic. If you haven’t already, you should read part one, which introduces the Infinite Conversion Loop. And Part Two which gets your Analytics in order.

Now that you have high confidence in your Analytics, let's discuss the next step of the Infinite Conversion Loop, identifying your visitors. The first thing to understand when you are trying to improve your conversion rate is that not all visitors are created equal, which is why simply looking at your overall traffic numbers is an empty metric.

On any site you are going to have a wide variety of visitors that all want and expect different things. Here's just an example of a few of the types of people you may see if you run a website for used car shopping, but these same type of people exist for many sites.

The Cast

Mr. Shotgun – This guy isn't great at searching, just average. If he wants to buy a new 2012 Audi A6 with leather, his query is probably just “audi”. Then he clicks on the first search result he gets without reading, hits back, clicks the next one, hits back, until he finds something that kind of meets his expectations. These are the people that end up on page 5 of Google result and kill your bounce rate if you don't have a clear message.
Miss Untargeted – This is the visitor you get from Reddit, Hacker News, Drudge Report, etc… when you post a great blog. They give you that big awesome spike in traffic that never seems to result in increased conversions. They make you feel good about your traffic numbers, but really they have no intention of converting on your website. They also make your site-wide conversion numbers useless, and cause Sys Admins to pull their hair out.
Mr. Confused – This person is running IE6, unpatched, he's looking for exactly what your website sells, but can't figure out how to find it on your site, and when he does he don't trust you because you don't have the Visa or BBB logo.
Señor Advanced – This person found your website with a query like: used -new acura tl -reviews “low mileage”. Your website is exactly what they'd want, but your refinements don't let him find what he's looking for in an efficient way so he leaves.
Mrs. Researcher – She got to you by clicking your ad, she's looking for what your site sells, and she even finds product she wants, but wants to make sure she gets the best price, so she'll bookmark your site for now while she looks at some other sites.
Botman 9000 – Some percentage of your traffic will be bots, spammers, or others who have no intention of using your website like a real person, let alone buying something. While the bots won't usually show up in your analytics, they will often submit forms and do other things that makes your “back end” numbers never quite match up with the Analytics numbers.

This cast are the reason your overall visits mean nothing. These people represent the 98% of people you get daily but are not converting. I could give you a million hits today, but if they are the people in this group, you'll see $0 out of it. The key to improving conversions is first getting a handle on what type of visitors are likely to convert in the first place, and then optimizing your site to convert those that are not converting now for some reason (some of the above have the potential, but your website has deficiencies that prevent them from doing so).

The Numbers

So first, let's figure out who IS converting on your site. The first thing I would look at is your landing pages report, ordered by visitors. Specifically the Bounce Rate (The percentage of people that visited that single page then left).

What do these stats mean? First, these are from a profile I use that broadly groups types of content into single URLs. This site has over one million URLs, and I find most useful to categorize everything into types of pages (you can do this with filtered profiles in GA, which is probably the topic of another post). You can see the Index page of the site is how most people are entering by far. 22% bounce immediately, meaning something about the home page felt completely wrong for whatever those people were looking for. We'll examine how to improve that number in future posts. You'll notice a few popular blog posts have much higher bounce rates. These are the “Miss Untargeted” that are coming to your site for one-off content, but are probably not interested in buying whatever you are selling. It is interesting to note that one blog only has a bounce rate of 50%, indicating there is something about that post that invites people to dig further into your site.

Next I would look at the Exit rate (The percentage of people that left on a given page). The Exit rate is useful for identifying common pages that people are leaving your site on. This often points to problems on the page or shows you that people are not finding what they want (for example if a search result page is a common exit point). I order this report by Exit rate, filtering out outliers first.

Next look at where your most valuable traffic is coming from. I would do this by going to Sources->All Traffic, clicking ECommerce at the top, and then sorting by Ecommerce conversion rate. In this case, once you take out a few outliers, it looks like search engines (both paid and organic) are giving us the most valuable traffic. Another case of how blogs, social networks, etc… will increase overall traffic but not necessarily contribute to the bottom line (these things may be valuable for SEO though, so I'm not saying don't do it, just don't focus on overall traffic numbers as a KPI)

Of course it's very difficult to read people's intentions just by looking at numbers. The only real way we can try to find their intent is by looking at what they searched for to get to us (hurry before the number of logged in Google users increases!). Create a report of Organic Search Traffic ordered by Ecommerce conversion rate to see what terms are the most valuable. You'll usually see some good long tail keywords you never would have considered. I would also sort by 0% conversions to see the keywords you may be wasting your time with. Remember to normalize these results by filtering to see keywords with at least 10 visits or so.

Those are some beginner ways of segmenting users or figuring out what they are trying to do on your site, some proactive ways to segment is the use of Custom Variables. Most people use these to track “logged in users” or what affiliate someone came from, but what about tracking those people who found no search results? That's what I did here, and there is no surprise there is $0 revenue from those users… perhaps an opportunity to use spelling correction or show similar products.

Using Custom Variables is a great way to create segments of content and visitors to determine easily what types of users, content, etc… leads to the best conversions.

Hopefully using these tips will get you started in figuring out where your traffic is coming from, the next post in the Infinite Conversion Loop series will delve deeper into actually seeing what people are doing on your website.

Who Are These People Visiting My Website? is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

6 Ways Brands Can Rock Pinterest

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:50 GMT

This article was originally published in Social Times.

Pinterest was one of the most heavily trafficked social media networks of 2011, which was surprising to many because its rise to success was a quiet one. Pinterest is a form of social bookmarking where users pin different images and YouTube videos from across the web to boards they’ve created based on a subject area of their liking. For instance, you can create a board entitled Best Places on Earth and then pin images of island getaways, beautiful landscapes or whatever images you think fit this board best. Your boards are displayed on your profile for your network to see, like or repin to their own boards if they so choose. You’re able to follow other users and/or their individual boards of content they’ve assembled. Pinterest allows users to sign up through their Twitter or Facebook, which makes it easy to connect with your friends already on the network.

This platform presents an opportunity for brands to market themselves in a new arena and truly succeed during the network’s humble beginnings. Here are 6 ways brands can rule at fostering their Pinterest community:

1. Create Custom Images Catered for Sharing

Pinterest is all about discovering images that you wish to share with others in a visually pleasing format. With this in mind, brands should look to create image assets for Pinterest that provide insightful, original or branded imagery and information. After you develop these images, share them on your website and on other social networks to encourage their sharing on Pinterest. The best part of this process is that these images can be pulled from other advertising or used for your other promotional efforts.

For example, Cargo created this image of their EyeLighter product that give users quick and easy tips on how to make their eyes pop. This is exactly the kind of image assets users love to share on Pinterest because it’s visually appealing and gives insightful information at a glance. Brands should take note and continue to create content of this nature in the future.

2. Create a Profile for your Brand
At this point in the game, users can join Pinterest by invite-only. Once added to the network, you can create your account by syncing with your Twitter or Facebook. The same goes for when you’re inviting users to Pinterest, except you can invite them initially via email. Since there aren’t yet brand specific profiles, you’ll have to invite your brand to the network via email. The Facebook integration at this time is only for personal profiles, not pages. Therefore, choose the email associated with your brand’s Twitter account to set up your profile.

Once you’re on Pinterest, it’s time to either keep the profile photo that’s been pulled from your Twitter account or upload a new one. I recommend uploading a new profile photo because this is a different social network with its own unique purposes. To do so, hover over your account name at the top right hand corner and click on settings from the drop down menu. From here you can also alter the name and email associated with account, add a location and website and then add a brief description of your brand. Here you can also choose to link your Twitter to your account publicly.

For example, Whole Foods has set up an account and have been actively engaging their community with visually appealing content. This is good example of how you can brand your profile appropriately to appeal to your audience.

3. Add Pinterest Social Plugins to Your Website
There are a few goodies that Pinterest offers brands to add to their websites as a means of connecting their web visitors to their audience on the network.

• The Follow Button can be added to your website or blog to allow your web visitors to quickly and easy follow your profile on the network. By giving users the option to follow your brand on Pinterest, you’ll be giving them the ability to look through the images and YouTube videos you’ve shared previously, in the hopes that they’ll share them with their networks again, and you’ll be able to share images and YouTube videos with them in the future since they are now your follower.

• The Pin It Button allows your web visitors to pin the content from your website directly to their boards on Pinterest. This plugin should be added to similar places where you would add a Like or Tweet button. By adding this button, you’re making your web content extremely easy to share on the platform.

4. Pin Other Industry Content

Pinterest’s etiquette states that users, this includes brands, should shun away from using the network as purely promotional. Sharing images & videos from other industry related user’s boards will help keep your profile community based and not just a promotion center for your assets and products. Repin & like other content that suits your community, which will help strengthen your reach in the long term.

HGTV’s profile does just this on their Start Gardening board where they share content from both their website and other blogs with valuable content about gardening. This helps them strengthen their relationships with other people of interest in their industry specific community on Pinterest.

5. Add Calls to Action to Your YouTube Videos

The main focus of Pinterest is obviously sharing noteworthy photos, but YouTube videos can also be pinned as well (my guess is other types of content will be able to pinned in the future too). Another means of drawing attention to your content is by adding annotations to your videos, basically a call-to-action for your audience to pin videos they find appealing.

Similar to creating and sharing images that would be ideal for sharing on Pinterest, add annotations to videos that are short, visually appealing and provide true value to your community like a how to video for baking apple pie or to how to apply the right amount of eye makeup. These annotations should tell them the visitor to “pin this video to Pinterest” or provide a link to your Pinterest profile. The annotation serves as another reminder to users to engage with you in another way in a different community.

6. Cross Promote

Since the network is still relatively new, be sure to drive traffic from your existing communities on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or wherever your audience is actively discussing your brand. Post links to your Pinterest profile, letting your communities know you’re on this network and looking for them to join in and begin pinning your content.

How are you using images & videos on Pinterest to promote your brand?

6 Ways Brands Can Rock Pinterest is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

Big News from Web Analytics Wednesday!

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:57 GMT

Just a quick note of thanks to OpinionLab, ObservePoint, and Splunk who have joined I.Q. Workforce as official sponsors of our global Web Analytics Wednesday series for 2012. Thanks to these very generous organizations, my partners and I are going to be able to continue to help Web Analytics Wednesday evolve and continue to be the gathering point for digital measurement practitioners and analysts around the globe.

What these added sponsors mean to all of you is bigger budgets for Web Analytics Wednesday which we hope will lead to bigger and better gatherings. Whereas we typically limited reimbursement from the Global Fund in the past to around $100 USD, we are now able to provide larger sums based on need and demonstrated commitment to the event.

More. Free. Money.

If you have any questions about hosting a Web Analytics Wednesday or how these funds can be used please email me directly. Otherwise I hope you will join me in thanking all four of these companies for their generous support of the entire digital measurement community. You can tweet them at @corryprohens, @observepoint, @opinionlab, and @splunk or let them know you appreciate their efforts in the comments below.

© 2012 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

Google Analytics Configuration Made Easy

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:49 GMT

Create an account, copy the code, and paste it on every page of your site. Easy, right?

Not so fast.

If you're just starting out using Google Analytics, you may not be aware of all the advanced code implementations available, much less how to modify the code for your needs. But if you are tracking across subdomains or multiple domains, or if you want to do some advanced tracking with events that's exactly what you need to do.

To make matters worse, navigating through the labyrinthine administrative interface to find the tracking code snippet can be somewhat daunting. Especially if you're used to the old version of the interface. And although the code wizard in GA does include several configuration options, the instructions are neither complete nor easy to follow for beginners.

To solve these problems, the team at Raven Internet Marketing Tools has built the Google Analytics Configuration Tool. (Full disclosure: we provided consulting on some of the technical details for this tool, so of course we're thrilled to see it's birth). They just launched this free tool, aimed at simplifying the process of configuring your Google Analytics. Out of the gate, there are several specific situations they provide instructions for, including:

One domain with subdomains
Multiple domains with subdomains
Site search setup
404 error page tracking
Event tracking
Setting up goals
Tracking Facebook page and referrers

There's also a URL builder for tagging your URLs with campaign parameters.

Besides just giving you the snippet of code, the GA config tool leads you step by step, asking questions about what you're trying to track and then providing the code and instructions of what to do with it. It also provides the code in either asynchronous or the traditional ga.js.

This is a godsend for people who don't deal with GA on a daily basis. Trying to figure the correct code configurations has generally meant wading through a sea of posts in the help forums, where the information is often outdated and inconsistent. This tool takes the guesswork out of the setup, letting you focus on what matters – your data!

Coming from the folks who also created the Schema Creator (for creating structured markup for your site), not to mention their core suite of internet marketing tools, this will be an essential addition to many digital marketers' arsenals. They're already working on adding functionality to help with regular expressions, setting up filters and other points of analytics confusion.

Go try this tool out and let us know what you think. Are there any other GA-related instructions you'd like to see added? What is it about GA that is most confusing to you?

The comments are yours.

Google Analytics Configuration Made Easy is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

Google Gets More Personal with “Search plus Your World”

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:57 GMT

As of today, Google search has just become richer, more social, and more personalized. Google officially announced today that it is incorporating more results from Google+ into search results for users signed into Google+.

If you are involved in internet marketing or use Google+, you need to watch this video. (If you aren’t, I’d still like you to watch it so that I’m not the only person with that song stuck in my head.)

Search plus Your World Features

In its official announcement today, Google introduces three new features for its search engine that combine together (like an internet Voltron) to create the powerful Search plus Your World. The three key features are Personal Results, Profiles in Search, and Related People and Pages.

Note: These features are just rolling out now, so they may not be fully functional for everyone just yet.

Personal Results

Picasa and Google + have been fused, and photos from people in your circles are likely to show up in your personalized results. Users can also expect to find relevant Google+ posts from their friends in search results. There will be a button so that users can now turn personalization on or off.

Profiles in Search

Google+ profiles have been integrated with predictive search. When you type in the first view letters of a friend or Google+ superstar, you’ll see an autocomplete prediction for their name. You’ll also see a button to add people to your circles. Google has made a nifty interactive graphic on Profiles in Search.

Related People and Pages

There will be a new results segment displayed on some search results for – you guessed it – related people and Google+ profile pages. “How do I get my profile ranking?” you might ask. I could try to go in detail here, but Google actually does a nice job explaining how to appear as a related person or page. Basically, you need to show your Google+ profiles some love, post frequently, and use the keywords you want to rank for.

Privacy and Control

Google states that personal search results will receive the same level of security and privacy protection as Gmail. In addition, personal results are marked with little icons that denote the search result being Public, Limited, or Only You. You can toggle personalization on or off as well.

Issues for Internet Marketers and Search plus Your World

Like with many of Google's major recent developments, Search plus Your World is not all rainbows and unicorns for search marketers.

More Personalization = More Difficult SEO

Remember the days when you knew exactly where you ranked for a key phrase and exactly what the SERPs would look like when anyone in the country typed in the given search term? Those days are long gone, friends. This makes tracking SEO progress more difficult, since rankings are becoming less and less of a reliable performance indicator.

Also, optimizing for Google's standard search is different from (and not always as valuable as) optimizing for specialized search such as Google Images and Google Places – and now we must add People, Places, and Profiles to the ever-expanding Google search marketing mix. We've long known that increased personalization and diversification is a prevailing trend in search results, so we know that multi-faceted SEO plans and higher-quality, more relevant content should be a prevailing trend in SEO – at least by SEO firms that are worth their salt .

More (Not Provided) Keyword Referral Data

Making Google more personal and social – when users are logged in – provides another compelling reason to be signed in to Google while searching. Which means more (Not Provided). Every time a person is logged into their Google account and clicks through to a site via organic search, Google Analytics shows the used the keyword (Not Provided) instead of the actual search term they used. We anticipate that Search plus Your World will result in higher Google account usage and an expansion of this black hole of keyword data. Indeed, Google now has Search, plus Your World landing page linked to from its main page, and this alone will likely provide a boost to Google+ conversions. Increased prevalence of (Not Provided) is something we’ve predicted. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about (Not Provided) besides whine – unless we want to join together in Mountain View, CA and lay down in the middle of Amphitheatre Parkway.

Opportunities for Internet Marketers

Like usual, this change to the search engine game also provides several major opportunities to the savvy Internet marketer:

The increased integration of Google+ and search will really help you gain exposure if you are a Google+ superstar or blue chip. Your Google+ profile and page hits are likely to ramp up in the near future, especially if you put some effort into optimizing your Google+ profile and networking (which you should).
It appears that the ranking algorithm for Google+ pages and posts is based on keyword relevance and engagement. This likely means the engagement level of your posts and the amount of people engaged with your profile or page.
If you already utilize great images and get good results on Facebook or Flickr, you should probably start uploading and sharing your images on Google+.
Authors can better brand themselves. If you are a prolific web author, 3 things you need to do are:

Utilize Google’s authorship program (which will list you as an author in search results and link the name to your Google + profile.
Use a nice profile picture on Google+ (author’s profile pictures will show up on search now).
Market yourself on Google+ by creating a strong profile and networking.

Is Google's Search plus Your World a momentous landmark in the evolution of the Internet? Is it merely Google blowing hot air in an attempt to breathe down Facebook's neck? Time will tell. One thing we know for sure is this is a development that is more than worthy of the keen attention of the Internet community.

What are your thoughts on Search Plus Your World?

Google Gets More Personal with “Search plus Your World” is a post from: Google Analytics, SEO, Social Media and PPC blog

My New Year’s Resolutions, Demystified

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:22 GMT

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a relaxing and joyous Holiday season and are as excited as I am about what the coming year has in store. While I'm not much for making predictions I am a big fan of making resolutions, both personal and professional. Here are five high-level resolutions that Adam, John, and I have made for 2012:

We resolve to continue to provide great value to our clients.

A consulting business like ours is only as good as the value we provide on an ongoing basis. To that end, all of us are committed to working closely with all of our clients to ensure we deliver business insights and recommendations designed to make our key stakeholders look like heroes within their organizations. While we are intensely proud of the work our client Best Buy has done to become more analytically-minded, we want all of our clients to appreciate the same type of high-visibility wins.

We resolve to have Demystified to evolve with our industry.

You don't need to be an analyst to see that the “web analytics” industry is changing. Increasingly the work our clients do is less about the “web” and more about the entire digital world, and the people, process, and technology required to analyze and optimize the digital world are different than those we have used in the past. We started thinking about this transformation back in 2009, but at Web Analytics Demystified we are committed to adding resources and knowledge to be the best guides possible as our clients begin to leverage digital business intelligence and data sciences.

We resolve to continue to provide great support to the measurement community.

Web Analytics Demystified is fortunate to be more than just a consultancy, we are part of the foundation of the entire digital measurement community around the world. Through our Web Analytics Wednesday event series, our Analysis Exchange educational efforts, our support for the Web Analytics Association, and now our ACCELERATE conference series we are able to connect with analysts around the world. In 2012 we resolve to do more for the community — watch our web site for news in the coming weeks about all of these efforts.

We resolve to provide more web analytics education in 2012 than ever before.

Our educational effort, Analysis Exchange, has succeeded beyond expectation since it's inception in 2010, thanks largely to the efforts of Executive Director Wendy Greco. With nearly 1,700 members and nearly 200 completed projects, the Exchange has become the de facto source for hands-on web analytics education. But we believe we have found a way to do even more with the Exchange in 2012, creating more projects and opportunities for any individual motivated to break into this industry.

We resolve to make ACCELERATE the best small digital measurement conference in the world.

In 2011 we tried something new with the ACCELERATE conference. While mistakes were made, and an awful lot of nice people weren't able to join us due to demand, we believe we are converging on an innovative conference format that will continue to be 100% free to attend. But we promise to not just stop when we find something that works — we are resolved to push ACCELERATE to be the most engaging, most fun, and most valuable small event in the industry.

How about you? What are you resolved to do in 2012?

© 2010 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

People Love Beauty. A Dashboard Design Truth.

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:00 GMT

Clear bright white and nostalgic colored string lights adorn otherwise commonplace trees and shrubbery on nearly every block this time of year. Neighborhoods and shopping centers look like beautiful storybook villages as we pass, enjoying our commutes a little bit more in spite of the holiday traffic.

On my drive home last night, the thought occurred to me that data is a lot like holiday lights. When organized in an attractive and appealing dashboard design, the power of data is enhanced and can be even more powerful and meaningful. Data, when displayed in a striking new way can be more intriguing to us, and as a result, we're more likely to engage with it. Perhaps we would have missed the very same data had it been organized and presented in a less pleasing fashion.

By presenting data in a way in which our psyche is predisposed to receive it, we allow our audience to see and hear the story that we have to share, and then help them gain clarity and understanding around the data. It is then that we have their attention and the opportunity to make a point, deliver a pitch, close a sale or ask them to make a decision.

Sharing information in a context in which people are open and most receptive to receiving it is intuitive. It's human nature to appreciate attractive things, especially pretty lights, to give and receive beautifully and thoughtfully wrapped packages and to look forward to the promise of a brand new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Juice Team!

The Evolution of Web Analytics Wednesday

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:47 GMT

I've been thinking a lot about some of the community events that my partners and I have had the opportunity to create over the years lately. While a lot of the focus recently has been on ACCELERATE — the web analytics industry's first free conference series — our efforts more will turn back to Analysis Exchange and Web Analytics Wednesday as we roll into 2012.

I wanted to discuss the latter event.

Since co-founding the event with June Dershewitz in 2005, Web Analytics Wednesday has impacted web analytics practitioners, consultants, and vendors around the globe. Since January 1, 2009, over nearly 12,800 individuals around the globe have attended 524 different events … all free, almost all sponsored, and all designed to create local community value for web analytics professionals.

The best thing about Web Analytics Wednesday, at least in my opinion, is that nobody owns the event series! I get calls all the time from vendors asking about having an event in a city or on a date, and I have to admit I cannot really help them because we are only the brand steward for Web Analytics Wednesday, not the owners, and Web Analytics Wednesday ONLY HAPPENS because of the generosity and commitment of the broader web analytics community.

I think this is amazing.

Dozens of sponsors, hundreds of hosts, and thousands of participants, all coming together to make something happen. The list of hosts is too long to write out, but 99% of them are generous, selfless, and incredibly hard-working individuals who spent their free time organizing these events without any thought of compensation or recognition. When the could be with their families, they are working on behalf of the community. When they could be relaxing, they are organizing.

I think this is humbling.

Web Analytics Wednesday has become a nearly frictionless system, one that anyone, anywhere can help to make happen, and one that has helped people find jobs, find employees, find connections, and find new friends.

I think this is freaking awesome.

Sure, we have guidelines … we ask that hosts use our system for registration, we ask that events not charge money, and we ask that sponsors be treated fairly and appropriately at events, and we ask that when Global Funds are used that hosts take pictures for our Flickr Photo Group so that everyone can share in the fun. We expect Web Analytics Wednesday hosts to be cool, to be honest, and to do what they do for “the community.”

So few people have trouble with this model, the exceptions just become noise in the background.

What's more, we have big plans for Web Analytics Wednesday in the coming year! Where markets have started to languish, Adam, John, and I have started stepping in and offering willing hosts help to reinvigorate their events. Where smaller events have started to grow, the Global Fund has been providing more and more money for reimbursement, and where we see synergies between our other efforts and those of associations and brands we respect and trust, we have been working to organize larger and more diverse events.

And we are just getting started.

If you're new to Web Analytics Wednesday, here are the five most important things you should know about getting an event started in your town or community:

Web Analytics Wednesday is FREE and OPEN. By design, Web Analytics Wednesday events are open to all practitioners of web analytics and related disciplines and, thanks to the generous support of IQ Workforce and dozens of other companies, always free!
Web Analytics Wednesday belongs to everyone. We do not own Web Analytics Wednesday events, we are only shepherds of the brand, working to ensure consistency across a diverse global analytics community. Anyone willing to follow our very simple guidelines can establish a WAW chapter in their town.
Web Analytics Wednesday is what you make it. Because everyone owns Web Analytics Wednesday, the event is whatever the local community wants it to be. In some cities, WAW happens over lunch. In others, in nightclubs. Sometimes there are presentations, sometimes not.
Web Analytics Wednesday is a state of mind. These events are about local practitioners gathering together, not about a day of the week. Any day can be “Web Analytics Wednesday” … if you're willing to put in the effort.
Web Analytics Wednesday is a profitless system. Again by design, and with specific intent, nobody makes money off of Web Analytics Wednesday. Regardless of who buys the drinks, nobody — including Web Analytics Demystified — makes a single, solitary penny off of these events.

This last point is important — if only because some people simply don't seem to understand.

Every year generous sponsors like IQ Workforce, Coremetrics/IBM, SiteSpect, and dozens more agree to help pay for Web Analytics Wednesday events around the world. And every year my firm (Web Analytics Demystified) contributes hundreds of hours to ensure that these events go off smoothly. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent to entertain web analysts in great cities like Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Sydney, London, and hundreds more. But nobody working on these events — from the mightiest sponsor to the most humble host — gets any compensation in return.

Why do we do this? Why give our money and time to something that won't make us money? Why did we bother to help create an event series that wouldn't line out pockets and pay our hourly consulting rate? Simple …

Because we truly care about the web analytics community.

We created Web Analytics Wednesday with June Dershewitz because there was a need back in 2005. We created Web Analytics Wednesday because our community was growing in a strangely fragmented way. We created Web Analytics Wednesday because we could.

I sincerely hope that all of you who have sponsored, hosted, and participated in a Web Analytics Wednesday over the last seven years will continue to do so for years to come. At Web Analytics Demystified, our commitment is to what is right and just when it comes to this event series and, more importantly, to continue to help evolve and improve Web Analytics Wednesday to ensure that analysts everywhere are able to enjoy and appreciate the same community spirit that we enjoy every time we attend one of these events.

I welcome your comments.

© 2010 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

Dashboard Gauges: Indulgence with Restraint

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:13 GMT

Tis the season of indulgence. Sometimes it is indulgence without any semblance of restraint. Case in point, the “Cherpumple” — a combination pumpkin, apple, and cherry pie framed in icing.

When it comes to business dashboards, the gauge chart is often a case of indulgence without restraint. It can be equal parts waste of valuable pixels, low information, and visually deceptive. It would be a lot smarter to use a bullet chart — but who wants to pick the the fruit plate for desert?

Gauges have undeniable appeal to dashboard designers everywhere. Perhaps it is the “skeuomorphism” of a gauge chart. That is, it borrows from the look of something we are familiar with as a way to make us feel comfortable or understand its purpose.

In the past, I’ve fought the good fight against these charts. Now I'm resigned to the fact that eradication is impossible. If that's true, can we at least find some ways to make them better through design? Tone down the brilliant sheen and high-contrast colors; turn up the information conveyed.

First we can start by making them look better. Web designer Christian Annyas shared a beautiful gallery of Chevrolet speedometer designs across the years. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Christian even offers a decent argument for gauges over simply showing a value:

“It’s easy for a driver to get used to a needle that rises and passes numbers that are located on fixed positions. A quick glance is all it takes to see and understand the value it represents.”

Let’s take one of those designs, overlay a few necessary data elements, and see if we can create something worth looking at.

Start with an classy Chevrolet design that lays out so as not to take up too much valuable vertical space
Add subtle indicator of good and bad zones with green and red dots
Show the current value with a bold label
Display distribution of recent history to communicate how the value has changed

While this chart is still far from efficient in its data-to-ink ratio, at least it communicates the small amount of information effectively. Any ideas for how to make it better?

Are you in Google+? We are!

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:17 GMT

Just a quick note at the end of the Thanksgiving holiday to encourage those of you who are still using Google+ to go and circle our new brand page for Web Analytics Demystified:

Circle Web Analytics Demystified in Google+

We have been sharing lots of information about our recent ACCELERATE conference in San Francisco. Moving forward we hope to share more “quick takes” and multimedia content in Google+ as well as hosting Hangouts with greater and greater regularity to discuss the key topics of the day.

Anyway, I hope if you're in the U.S. you had a relaxing Thanksgiving and if you're elsewhere in the world you enjoyed the quiet that happens when the U.S. goes offline.

© 2010 Web Analytics Demystified | www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

Looking for a new job in web analytics? Check out the Web Analytics Demystified Job Board!

Dashboard Designs People Love – A Refresher

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:56 GMT

Using proper dashboard design techniques is a topic that struck a chord when we released our white paper series,“A Guide to Creating Dashboards People Love to Use” a few years ago, and still seems to resonate as people regularly download the content from the Juice Analytics website, and we receive ongoing requests to speak around these key principles.

Since we can all use a little calibration every once in a while to stay in tune, we thought we’d post it again, with a reminder that you can access this oldie but goody, along with other materials on the Juice Analytics resources page anytime — and that all of these materials are available to you gratis.

Should you have a friend, colleague or know someone who could benefit from a little dashboard design “religion”, feel free to let them know where you found yours.