Neil Mason

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 07/05/10 and is republished here with permission.

As I write this I’ve just got back to the UK after presenting at the eMetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit in San Jose. As usual I’m trying to process all the input I’ve had over the three day conference and extract some of the key themes. With over 40 sessions running in multiple tracks over the 3 days, it was impossible to cover everything but one of the phrases that kept popping into my head over the duration of the conference was “Signals from Noise”. It’s a phrase that I used in my own presentation to highlight the challenges that we all face as businesses in processing the enormous amount of data that we have available to us at the moment. The web is a very noisy place and the data it generates and the data that we collect is also very noisy. Our role as analysts is extract signals from the noise, to interpret those signals and to produce actionable insights. (more…)

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 23/04/10 and is republished here with permission.

When the graphs are going up and to the right, people are generally happy. Life feels fine when there’s good growth in the right kind of metrics and despite the tough economic trading conditions over the past 18 months, the digital economy has generally been doing OK. Here in the UK spending on online advertising grew by just under 5% in 2009 compared to 2008 with spend on Search up by just under 10%. Whilst that isn’t the kind of stellar growth seen in previous years, the indicators are positive. Business confidence amongst advertisers is higher than it’s been previously and we’re continuing to see growth in the active online audience (up 10% vs. a year ago), some of that being driven by the growth in population of social networking sites such as Facebook. (more…)

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 26/03/10 and is republished here with permission.

When working with web analytics data I sometimes think of it as an iceberg. On the surface it all looks fine and we know what we are dealing with. However, most of the data is under the surface and we’re not always sure what dangers are lurking beneath. As tools such as Google Analytics and Yahoo! Analytics have brought web measurement and reporting to the masses, more people are exposed to the part of the iceberg that is above the waterline. Good user interfaces can make access to the data in a web analytics system easy and intuitive but they can also manufacture an impression of quality which may not be appropriate. So it’s important to look beyond the pretty graphs and reports and ensure that you understand the quality of the data that’s being collected and how to interpret it. (more…)

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 12/03/10 and is republished here with permission.

In the previous two columns I have been looking at different types of segmentation strategies, mainly dealing with what segmentation is, the different types of segmentation strategies and the role each type can play in building up a core understanding of your customers or prospective customers. So once you’ve decided what to create the segments on, the question then becomes about how to create the segments. Remember with segmentation what we are trying to do is to create groups of people who have something in common. (more…)

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 01/03/10 and is republished here with permission.

In my last column, I took a look at the meaning of segmentation and the different types of segmentation strategies available to digital marketers. There are three main types of segmentation; demographic segmentation, behavioural segmentation and attitudinal segmentation. But which one is best? The answer is that it really does depend on what problem you’re trying to solve. (more…)

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 12/02/10 and is republished here with permission.

One of the things I like about my job working is a customer experience consultancy is that I’m surrounded by people with a very different outlook on life. Our user experience consultants tend to come from a behavioural psychology background and are great at using qualitative research techniques such as lab testing, eye tracking and ethnographic studies to get into the mind of users and to understand what makes for a good or bad experience. (more…)

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 29/01/10 and is republished here with permission.

 Whilst on the topic of the last 10 years in web analytics (www.clickz.com/3636166) one of the major positive shifts in the past few years has been the emergence of the “Voice of the Customer” market. For far too long organisations tended to be too “site centric” in their approach optimising online performance believing that the solution lay in just knowing “what happened” and “when it happened” as opposed to “who did it” and “why they did it” – or more often than not “why they didn’t do it”. (more…)

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 14/01/10 and is republished here with permission.

In my last column I reflected on 10 years in digital analytics and how far the industry had developed in decade in some ways and how there was still room to grow in others. I commented that I thought that one of the issues was that the online marketing world had been “data rich and analytically poor” and this week I want to explore some of the areas where I think there is work to be done to enhance the quality of insight that digital marketers get from their investments in data capture and reporting technologies. (more…)