Analytics

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 27/08/10 and is republished here with permission.

Despite all the known issues and problems with the way we measure the effectiveness of acquisition marketing activity such as the use last-click attribution models, I often wonder whether we’re measuring the right thing at all. By that I mean the point at which we define “acquisition” and therefore the point at which we determine the return on investment (ROI) of our marketing budget. Read more about: Where is the true value of acquisition marketing?

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 13/08/10 and is republished here with permission.

I don’t know whether the number is right or not but a while back I heard that sophisticated marketing companies such as the world’s leading brands spent about 10% of their marketing budget on research and measurement. Irrespective whether the number is accurate or not, it’s a good benchmark I think – 10% feels about right. Read more about: The price of light is less than the cost of darkness

The recent PR furore about the reception issues on Apple’s iPhone4 has got me thinking again about the impact of smart phones on digital analytics. As the world moves to mobile the digital analytics industry may be taking a significant step backwards in its ability to provide actionable insight. Tracking of mobile devices is still developing, so just when the Web Analytics industry thought it was getting to grips with clean data it now has a real challenge on its hands. Whichever way consumers react to Apple’s current problems, the smart phone is here to stay and advertisers who will spend £61 million on mobile in the UK this year, rightly want to know the impact of this spend across display and applications (apps). Read more about: Web analytics tracking mobile

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 16/07/10 and is republished here with permission.

As web reporting and analytics gets more mature as a technique and as an industry, I sometimes now hear comments from organisations along the lines of “We’ve finished our web analytics implementation now and we’re on to the next project”. It’s as if the implementation of web analytics in a business is seen as an event rather than as a process. Whilst the introduction or the upgrading of a web analytics system can be seen as a project, the adoption and the ongoing use of web analytics data in an organisation is something that requires ongoing management and maintenance. Read more about: Like your food, after a while your data can go off

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 01/07/10 and is republished here with permission.

Last time I looked at some of the characteristics of data collected from surveys, particularly data collected from surveys run on websites where you have no control on who is answering the survey. Generally this lack of control can cause some bias in the data which can cause some issues if you are looking at the aggregated reports. For example the data on the profile of visitors (i.e. gender, age etc) that you collected from survey data may not actually reflect the true profile of visitors to your site because of the different propensities of different groups to respond to surveys. So, does that mean that survey data is useless? Not really but it does means that it needs to be handled with a bit of caution. Read more about: Analytics Basics: Interpreting your survey data wisely

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 18/06/10 and is republished here with permission.

Having looked at some of the fundamentals around web analytics metrics over the past few weeks, this time I turn my attention to survey based data and metrics. Over the past couple of years there has been a growth in the number of organisations that are running on-site survey based voice of the customer programmes. These might range from simple “do it yourself” approaches using free or low cost survey software, to a packaged tool like 4Q or more sophisticated programmes like ForSee Results or iPercpetions. As with all things, you pay your money and you make your choices. Read more about: Analytics Basics: Understanding survey data

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 04/06/10 and is republished here with permission.

In this short series of columns I’m going back to basics of some of the metrics that we typically use in our web analytics tool and highlighting some of the things we need to take on board when we use these metrics to measure online marketing performance. In some cases the issues are about the way that the metrics are constructed in other cases it’s about the way that we interpret them. Read more about: Analytics Basics: Ratios and Averages

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 21/05/10 and is republished here with permission.

In courses and workshops that I run on web analytics these days I often find myself talking about “data governance”. As the amount of data we get exposed to explodes from web analytics systems, voice of the customer programmes, social media listening tracking and so on, we need to know where this data comes from and how it’s created. By understanding how our data is created we are in a much better place when it comes to interpreting it. So I always think its worth going back to “analytical basics” every now and then and reminding ourselves how some of these metrics are created and what that means in terms of the way we use them. Read more about: Analytics Basics: Metrics to mind out for (Part 1)