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	<title>Foviance &#187; Measurement</title>
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	<link>http://www.foviance.com</link>
	<description>Foviance is a ground-breaking customer experience consultancy, providing usability consulting services, web analytics, user experience and accessibility consultancy in London, UK.</description>
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<copyright>Copyright Foviance, all rights reserved.</copyright>
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		<title>eMetrics: You thought this was going to be easy?</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/emetrics-you-thought-this-was-going-to-be-easy/</link>
		<comments>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/emetrics-you-thought-this-was-going-to-be-easy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 09:27:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guy Stephens</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=10099</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The first time I attended an eMetrics conference was in 2005 and was overawed by the calibre of the people speaking...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I’m giving a short talk at <a href=" http://www.emetrics.org/london/2010/agenda.php#k04" target="_self">eMetrics London</a> next week (18th May). I was absolutely chuffed to be asked by Jim Sterne to take part. He has asked me to provide a ‘real world’ context of what metrics are being used by companies out there.</p>
<p>I remember the first time I attended an eMetrics <a href="http://www.emetrics.org/html/london_2005.html" target="_self">conference in 2005</a> and being overawed by the calibre of the people speaking. It was also the first time I came away from a conference with a souvenir bag full of goodies including what looked like a sextant. <span id="more-10099"></span></p>
<p>The 2005 line-up included: Avinash Kaushik (Who was he then? Reminds me of a time when Bryan Adams was a supporting act at a Police concert and no one listened. I tell you what, everyone listened to Avinash that day and from then on), Matthew Tod, <a href="http://www.foviance.com/who-we-are/foviance-consultants/neil-mason-director-of-analytical-consulting/" target="_self">Neil Mason</a> (Foviance’s own and speaking again this year), Mike Grehan, Dave Chaffey, <a href="http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/jim-sterne-on-customer-centricity/" target="_self">Jim Sterne</a> himself amongst others. Best practice case studies for that year included Carphone Warehouse, Lastminute.com. Lovefilm, Royal Mail and Direct Wines.</p>
<p>Some of the titles of the sessions included: Getting beyond the basics, Catering to the masses online, Measuring your misery, Getting buy-in from the top down, and finishing up with &#8211; You thought this was going to be easy?</p>
<p>It struck me, even with the continuing mainstreaming of social media, how little has changed in many respects. Companies are still caught between paranoia and paralysis. I can measure everything, so I must. I do measure everything, but why? What I do measure, what is it telling me? What do I do with the stuff I am not measuring?</p>
<p>We are daily reminded that everything can be measured, so why is it still so difficult? People haven’t significantly changed between 2005 and 2010. We still buy and we still complain, and we will continue to do so. Social media and smartphones have simply made doing this a little bit easier, a bit more accessible and very much more public.</p>
<p>As a customer I can engage with a company in store, via email, web site, fixed phone, mobile phone, social media, chat, word of mouth… There’s no doubt that we have far more channels than we’ve ever had to communicate or engage with a company.</p>
<p>So where does it all seem to come unstuck?</p>
<p>Surely companies define their objectives, define what success or failure looks like, define what metrics they will use to understand this&#8230; the metrics are simply a tool to gauge progress or lack of. It seems to me that the problem with metrics has little to do with metrics and more to do with understanding what you’re trying to actually achieve. The fact that we can supposedly measure everything, isn’t a cause for paranoia, it simply gives us a richer toolkit of metrics to choose from.</p>
<p>A quick glance at the session headings for eMetrics London 2010 shows me that the conversation has moved on, with social media featuring prominently. And if nothing else, I’ll look forward to getting a new souvenir bag, as my one from 2005 finally fell apart shortly after seeing Jim again at the Travelling Geeks event last year.</p>
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		<title>Welcome to the Foviance Newsletter: March 2010</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/welcome-to-the-foviance-newsletter-march-2010/</link>
		<comments>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/welcome-to-the-foviance-newsletter-march-2010/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:54:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Paul Blunden</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=9499</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In this issue we focus on cross-channel customer experience with views on information visualisation, the way ahead for experience...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Welcome to the Foviance &#8216;crossing the channels of experience&#8217; March newsletter. I have taken over as editor this month, as sadly Marty has decided to leave Foviance after nine years. Marty is leaving the life of consultancy to set up a new online venture and we wish him the very best of luck and success.</p>
<p>In this issue we focus on cross-channel customer experience. I relay my own experiences from a recent practical master class with a number of senior marketers, Sean shares his views on information visualisation, Adam points the way ahead for mapping experience, while Guy rises to the challenge of cross-channel measurement.</p>
<p>If you enjoyed this latest newsletter, you might also enjoy reading and commenting on some of our consultants’ thoughts and opinions on our regularly updated <a href="http://www.foviance.com/category/what-we-think/blog/" target="_self">blog page.</a></p>
<p>I would be very interested to hear from you directly with any <a href="mailto:info@foviance.com?subject=Newsletter feedback">feedback.</a></p>
<p>Paul</p>
<p><a href="http://www.foviance.com/who-we-are/foviance-consultants/paul-blunden-ceo/" target="_self">Paul Blunden</a>, CEO, Foviance</p>
<p>In this issue:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/customer-experience-master-class/" target="_self">Customer experience master class</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/information-visualisation/" target="_self">Information visulisation</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/mapping-the-experience/" target="_self">Mapping the experience</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/conquering-cross-channel-customer-measurement/" target="_self">Conquering cross-channel customer measurement</a></p>
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		<title>Measuring the success of your iPhone App</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/measuring-the-success-of-your-iphone-app/</link>
		<comments>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/measuring-the-success-of-your-iphone-app/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:30:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Xavier Klingenfus</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=9072</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“Number 1 app in UK, France and Germany…”. The success of mobile applications should be measured in the same way that a website is. i.e. by defining and tracking KPI's...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>“Number 1 app in UK, France and Germany…”. Those who regularly browse the Apple AppStore hunting for applications (apps) will undoubtedly be familiar with this type of catch phrase.  It&#8217;s generally what users first read when they land on app description pages (as if they were all number one!). Developers and designers use this type of technique to lure candid users to download the app by making them believe it&#8217;s the best of its kind on the market. This also illustrates how the success of an app is often assumed: the higher in the ranking, the more successful it is. But as you may probably know already, this approach is entirely flawed. <span id="more-9072"></span></p>
<p>First of all, one can wonder how these rankings are built. As it is rarely clearly stated, we can only suppose that the number of downloads of an app governs its position in the table. But again, over what period of time? Number of downloads in the last month, quarter, year? This brings in the process a lot of vagueness and can surely not be used as a success measurement tool. Moreover, as Jakob Nielsen suggests in his column about iPhone App (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-apps-initial-use.html), users download more app than they actually need and use, which corroborates the idea that the number of downloads is not representative of the usage and can be resorted to as success criterion.</p>
<p>Then comes the question of the popularity of an app. App owners can write comments on the app description pages of the AppStore and rate them on a scale from 1 (negative) to 5 (positive). As a user experience professional, I strive to get the voice of the customer heard by my clients but I don’t consider it to be a viable success measurement method. Personal opinions are very subjective and tend to be only expressed when something goes wrong or incredibly well. Moreover, most of the app ratings derive from the ‘rating prompt’ that pops up on the iPhone when a user decides to delete an app. This biases the results in a negative way.</p>
<p>So how should the success of your app be measured? From a business perspective, the response is simple: the success of an app should be measured just like the success of a website, i.e. by defining and tracking KPI. Most of the apps provide a web-based service, which implies a digital connection between phones and web servers, just like there is a connection between PC and web servers. This allows data to be captured, such as number of information requests, conversion rates, app usage duration, app usage frequency, etc. In terms of web analytics tools, the capture of mobile phone applications usage is only at an embryonic stage but the trend is on the up and some of the current tools on the market are already capable of monitoring app usage.</p>
<p>Boasting about an app being the most used rather than the most downloaded would surely be more credible to end users!</p>
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		<title>Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/do-or-do-not-there-is-no-try/</link>
		<comments>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/do-or-do-not-there-is-no-try/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:34:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Paul Blunden</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=8669</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Being pretty good at international work, mostly for western clients that want to test things in Asia, Foviance as a result has gained quite a bit of knowledge of and fair few relationships in the Chinese market...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>“Never try, never fail, those are the words I live by”, or so says Drew Carey&#8217;s character Crank in the animated kids film ‘Robots’.  I heard these words coming from the back of the car a few days ago as I headed off on holiday with the family for a week in North Devon. You could run a business by that motto but I’m not sure it would last long or be an exciting place to work.</p>
<p>On the contrary,  it is the belief of both my team and I that we must try, that sees Foviance opening for business in China this quarter, with a new office in Shanghai. <span id="more-8669"></span></p>
<p>Our plan is a fairly simple one. Foviance is pretty good at international work and as a result we do a lot of it, mostly for western clients that want to test things in Asia. As a result we have gained quite a bit of knowledge and a fair few relationships in the Chinese market. If we could also generate some business in the local market for Chinese companies looking to market to the west, we should have a nice little business plan. Sounds simple doesn’t it? I thought so and yet the planning has taken nearly 18 months and we are only just ready now.</p>
<p>Initially we are focusing our efforts on core user experience services in web and mobile, which is where we believe the largest initial opportunity is. Usability is a growing discipline in China with a large and expanding UPA membership and an ever-increasing acceptance of the benefits. If everything I have read about the Chinese market is true, I believe that we will soon be providing our measurement strategy, customer insight and strategic customer experience capabilities. Initially though, we are staying focused to ensure we keep a handle on the quality of delivery and the market differences.</p>
<p>We know there will be plenty to learn. We have experienced the differences first hand testing various web and mobile services in China for western clients. There are differences in the way people use devices and the web of course but most startling are the cultural variations. It is little wonder that the field of usability is dominated by behavioural psychologists given the need to match interaction design with user behaviour.</p>
<p>International culture differences will add a completely new dimension to the work we conduct developing personas to help organisations design with their audience in mind. Some years ago we carried out work for a gaming company that was looking to launch a Mandarin website. One of the most surprising findings was that there was no translation for ‘lucky dip’. The term simply doesn’t exist and is a perfect illustration of the challenges western organisations face going to China. The reverse is true of course for Chinese businesses wishing to market their services in the west.</p>
<p>In the Star Wars film ‘The Empire Strike Back’, the character Yoda tells Luke Skywalker after he has tried and failed to move an impossibly heavy object (his space ship), “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try”. I think his point was that if you approach something in a half-hearted way you stand a fairly good chance of failing. At Foviance we trust that our planning and steady execution will enable us to be successful in China but we are not naïve. It will be hard and we will have some success and some failure, but we will do it, because we believe it is important to the future of Foviance.</p>
<p>This article was written as part of our <a href="http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/welcome-to-the-foviance-newsletter-february-2010/" target="_self">February newsletter</a></p>
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		<title>Emetrics &#8211; optimising analytics</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/emetrics-optimising-analytics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/emetrics-optimising-analytics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:12:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Neil Mason</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=7848</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 23/10/09 and is republished here with permission. It&#8217;s been a busy couple of weeks on the conference circuit. WebTrends held their Engage conference in London and last week I was in Washington DC for the Emetrics Marking Optimization Summit . It was good [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 23/10/09 and is republished here with permission.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.clickz.com"><img class="alignleft" style="padding: 5px 0pt 0pt 0pt;" title="ClickZ logo" src="http://www.foviance.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/logo_clickz.gif" alt="ClickZ logo" width="192" height="57" /></a>It&#8217;s been a busy couple of weeks on the conference circuit. WebTrends held their Engage conference in London and last week I was in Washington DC for the <a href="http://www.emetrics.org/washingtondc" target="_self">Emetrics Marking Optimization Summit</a> . It was good to see WebTrends out and about in the market, showing off some of their latest stuff. They&#8217;ve been working hard on their messaging by the looks of it and getting a distinctive market positioning going. The core brand themes they talked about were &#8220;Power&#8221;, &#8220;Elegance&#8221; and &#8220;Openness&#8221;.<span id="more-7848"></span> By &#8220;Elegance&#8221; they were referring to the usability of the solution for the end user and it was interesting for someone who works at a user experience consultancy that they have built an in-house user experience team on ensuring that they have the right focus on making the data as accessible and digestible as possible. Information visualisation is definitely on the agenda at the moment. By &#8220;Openness&#8221; they are talking about the ability to get data in and out of the application via APIs. As someone who thinks that web data should be &#8220;liberated&#8221; and not locked into reporting tools, this is an approach I approve of.</p>
<p>Emetrics was the usual three days of input, stimulation and networking. Jim Sterne kicked off proceedings by challenging us to focus on turning web intelligence into business value and there were some great examples of how&#8217;s that being done in some of the presentations I went to. One of them was from Joe Megibow, VP, Global Analytics and Optimisation at Expedia. Megibow took us through some of the initiatives and changes that had been happening in analytics at Expedia over the past 6 months following a global re-organisation of the business. Some of the work they are doing to tackle marketing attribution problems was interesting, but what was more interesting to me were some of his thoughts about how to get analytics and optimisation initiatives higher up the food chain at organisations. Some of his advice included the need &#8220;to construct meaningful narratives&#8221;, i.e. the need to add insight and interpretation rather than just hand over the numbers. That resonated with me as I&#8217;m always asking my analysts to &#8220;tell a story&#8221; rather than just present a bunch of charts. Other useful bits of advice from Megibow were to &#8220;do less but accomplish more&#8221; and to &#8220;start small and communicate&#8221;. It&#8217;s clear to me that he&#8217;s focused on delivering business value and he said in response to a question that at the moment he wouldn&#8217;t grow his team because the business wouldn&#8217;t be able to necessarily get more things done from the insights they generated. Therefore the return on investment from the additional hires would be zero. At the end of the day, the return on investment from analytics is dependent on an organisation&#8217;s ability to execute on the findings.</p>
<p>A continuing impression I got from the conference was that measurement of some of the newer digital channels is still hard to do. When it comes to the measurement of mobile, audio, video, social media and so on, people are figuring out as they go along. So it was good to see some of the various approaches that companies were taking to the measurement of these various channels. What struck me also was that there are an increasing number of possible tools that can be used, particular in the social media monitoring and measurement space. But whatever, the technology the key thing is to have a process and that came through loud and clear in a couple of the sessions that I went to on social media measurement. A bit like the dotcom days 10 years ago, it&#8217;s tempting for companies to jump on the latest bandwagon without being clear about what their objectives are and what they want to get out of it. So planning is key and the measurement approach follows from that.</p>
<p>Sterne wrapped up the conference with a quick digest of the things that he had learned from the previous US conference back in May in San Jose. He went through the highlights of the &#8220;Analysis Symposium&#8221; that lead to his report on <a href="http://www.emetrics.org/101things/" target="_self">&#8220;101 things that you should know about analysis&#8221;</a> . He summarised it as follows: &#8220;When doing analysis you should make it:</p>
<ul>
<li>About people</li>
<li>Actionable</li>
<li>Not about you</li>
<li>Prioritised</li>
<li>Intriguing</li>
<li>Pre-determined</li>
<li>Compelling (rather than precise)</li>
<li>Palatable</li>
<li>Relevant (to the individual)</li>
<li>A treasure hunt</li>
</ul>
<p>And finally you should make it <em>happen</em>. I don&#8217;t think you can say fairer that that.</p>
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		<title>Building analytics into your business processes</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/building-analytics-into-your-business-processes/</link>
		<comments>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/building-analytics-into-your-business-processes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:11:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Neil Mason</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=7830</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<!--:en--><!--:-->]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p> This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.<a href="http://www.clickz.com"><img class="alignleft" style="padding: 5px 0pt 0pt 0pt;" title="ClickZ logo" src="http://www.foviance.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/logo_clickz.gif" alt="ClickZ logo" width="192" height="57" /></a></p>
<p>I&#8217;m increasingly convinced that the issues that most businesses face around the successful deployment of <a href="http://www.foviance.com/what-we-do/analytics-consultancy/" target="_self">analytics</a> in their business are not to do with their technologies but to do with their businesses processes. That view was reinforced this week when I was running a workshop with a group of students studying on a Masters Programme in Internet Retailing. <span id="more-7830"></span></p>
<p>As part of the session I asked the class what they thought some of the key ingredients were in executing successful internet optimisation. They started off by throwing out items like &#8220;good data&#8221;, and &#8220;technology&#8221;, and then moved on with things like &#8220;flexibility&#8221;, &#8220;willingness to fail&#8221;, &#8220;good hypotheses&#8221;, &#8220;risk culture&#8221; and &#8220;strong business model&#8221;. I then asked the class how many of them worked in organisations that had those characteristics. No hands went up.</p>
<p>Often organisations are happy to spend money on new campaigns or large scale product development on their site without thinking or being explicitly clear about how they are going to measure the effectiveness of the campaign or the new piece of functionality. So how do they know that they have done a good job? The measurement piece also needs to be built into the campaign or product development process as well. Here is a simple framework to use as part of that process.</p>
<ul>
<li>State the objectives</li>
<li>Define the success indicators or KPIs</li>
<li>Perform a gap analysis</li>
<li>Create the measurement roadmap</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>State the objectives</strong></p>
<p>Before you start, be very clear about what you are trying to achieve. State your objectives and make sure that they are not what I call &#8220;marshmallow objectives&#8221;. Marshmallow objectives are ones that are soft and squidgy. They are not firm and they don&#8217;t hold up to scrutiny. These objectives are difficult to measure. People often talk about making objectives <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria" target="_self">&#8220;SMART Objectives&#8221;</a>. SMART objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound. You should try and make your objectives as SMART as possible. If you come up with objectives like &#8220;to improve the user experience&#8221;, force yourself to be Smarter and ask yourself questions like: &#8220;why?&#8221;, &#8220;which users?&#8221;, &#8220;in what way?&#8221;, &#8220;by when?&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Define the success indicators or KPIs<br />
</strong><br />
Next define the measures of success or the Key Performance Indicators. These should relate directly back to the objectives. If the objectives are SMART then the definition of the success metrics should be relatively straight forward. Constantly ask yourself &#8220;What does good look like?&#8221;. If your are achieving your objectives, what will be happening in the business or on your site? Sometimes it can be difficult to measure objectives directly with significant cost (see below) then you may need to come up with other success metrics that are indirect measures of success.</p>
<p><strong>Perform a gap analysis</strong></p>
<p>Once you know what it is you want to measure, perform and analysis of what you can measure now versus what it is that you ideally want to measure. Where are the gaps? Do you have the right measurements systems in place already and are they configured the right way? For example, f you want to improve likelihood of someone booking a holiday once they have done the research on the site, you might set up a success metrics that is something about visitors propensity to book at a later date. You may need a survey in place to be able to measure one. So do you need to set up a survey from scratch or do you just need to ask a specific question on an existing Voice of the Customer programme?</p>
<p><strong>Create the measurement roadmap<br />
</strong><br />
The final stage is to create the measurement roadmap. This is effectively the plan of how you are going to measure the things that you need to measure, or as I like to say, &#8220;Count the things that count&#8221;. A key part of this is prioritising the work that needs to be done, being clear which gaps you are going to plug in your measurement systems and then how that work is going to get done. This could range from just ensuring that there is a specific custom report developed through to the implementation of a new piece of software or the adoption of a new service.</p>
<p>The process I have outlined can take days to complete or it might just take a matter of minutes. It might be a very strategic piece of work looking at the business overall or it might be quite tactical, for example running an A/B test on a landing page. Whichever it is, it&#8217;s a way of putting measurement and analytics at the heart of your business processes. So anytime you&#8217;re planning to do something, ask yourself (or your colleagues): What does good look like? How will we know we&#8217;ve done a good job?</p>
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		<title>Gearing up for growth</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/gearing-up-for-growth/</link>
		<comments>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/gearing-up-for-growth/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:02:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Neil Mason</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=6293</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<!--:en--><!--:-->]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.<a href="http://www.clickz.com"><img class="alignleft" style="padding: 5px 0pt 0pt 0pt;" title="ClickZ logo" src="http://www.foviance.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/logo_clickz.gif" alt="ClickZ logo" width="192" height="57" /></a></p>
<p>There&#8217;s the saying doing the rounds at the moment &#8220;why waste a good recession?, meaning that times like these provide an opportunity for organisations to become leaner and trim off some of the fat in the business. Whilst it&#8217;s not necessarily a very pleasant experience, the trading conditions that we are experiencing at the moment helps organisations focus on being both effective and efficient. Data and analytics have been helping organisations to optimise their processes and improve their returns. My sense though, is that the focus of analytics over the past year or so has become increasingly tactical and operational, now with murmuring in some quarters about green shoots of recovery it&#8217;s time to start thinking about how analytics is going to help companies gear back up for growth. <span id="more-6293"></span></p>
<p>Some of the disciplines that have become necessary during these tough economic conditions need to be maintained as markets begin to pick up. Tight and robust measurement of marketing performance, strict accountability being required on marketing investments are all activities that organisations have been forced to adopt to ride out the storm. As conditions ease these disciplines need to retained and embedded into the business processes. They should become the hygiene factors of marketing management in the post-recessionary environment.</p>
<p>In my last column I talked about the use of maturity models and looked at the WebTrends maturity model in some detail. As I said it&#8217;s a useful contribution to the debate and can potentially provide a framework for comparison and benchmarking. I think greater value comes from taking a maturity model approach, customising it to the organisation and using it to create a roadmap for the development of the measurement and analytics capabilities into the future. Or perhaps in more simplistic terms; defining where the organisation is now, where it wants to be in the future and how it&#8217;s going to get there.</p>
<p>The approach is to take a look at the current competencies of the organisation on a number of different dimensions. The WebTrends DM3 model has some suggestions but there may be others which are more relevant or appropriate depending on the type of business or the industry sector. It should include attributes such as the breadth or data sources and tools, the analytical processes, the level of data integration and the level of business adoption as a minimum. A simple model would then capture where the organisation is currently on each of those dimensions and then where it wants to be in the future, say in a year to 18 months time. The next stage is then to use the model to develop a roadmap. The roadmap outlines how the organisation is going to move up the maturity curve and becomes in effect the measurement strategy for the next year or so. This provides the framework and context for all the decisions around data, systems, processes and people and so helps to provide the answers to questions like; &#8220;How many analysts do I need and what skills should they have?&#8221;, &#8220;What technologies do I need to invest in and when?&#8221;, &#8220;Which data should I be starting to integrate?&#8221;.</p>
<p>Whilst it may not look like it, the timing is right for this kind of more strategic approach. We&#8217;re not going to be in a recession for ever (though it may feel like it) and when the upturn comes companies need to be poised for growth. New marketing strategies will be created, new tactics will be implemented and new measurement approaches will be needed to measure the effectiveness of those strategies. So now is a good time for organisations to map out how measurement and analytics is going to support their recovery and keep it sustained.</p>
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		<title>Where are you now? Where do you want to be?</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/where-are-you-now-where-do-you-want-to-be/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2009 07:58:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Neil Mason</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=5625</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Maturity models seem to be all the rage these days...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.<a href="http://www.clickz.com"><img class="alignleft" style="padding: 5px 0pt 0pt 0pt;" title="ClickZ logo" src="http://www.foviance.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/logo_clickz.gif" alt="ClickZ logo" width="192" height="57" /></a></p>
<p>Maturity models seem to be all the rage these days. These models help organisations to identify where they are on the roadmap of whatever discipline or capability the model is about and where they need to be. They help to describe the journey to world-class status or best practice. I have been using a simple &#8220;<a href="http://www.clickz.com/3633100" target="_self">maturity model</a>&#8220; for a few years to help organisations identify where they are in terms of their development of their digital marketing optimisation capabilities. I&#8217;ve found it a useful device to help people understand the journey they are on and a sense of the ultimate destination. <span id="more-5625"></span></p>
<p>At Emetrics in San Jose WebTrends launched their own maturity model called the <a href="http://www.webtrends.com/Services/Digital-Marketing-Maturity-Model.aspx" target="_self">Digital Marketing Maturity Model</a>. Having taken a look at it, I think it&#8217;s a useful contribution to the debate. They are clearly hoping that it will be adopted as an industry standard and that, over time, organisations will be able to benchmark themselves against others. There&#8217;s a survey you can take based on the model that will help to build industry norms.</p>
<p>The model seeks to help organisations assess the development of their digital marketing measurement capability on six main dimensions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Measurement strategy</li>
<li>Analytics resources and domain expertise</li>
<li>Data integration and visualisation</li>
<li>Data analysis and insight</li>
<li>Adoption and governance</li>
<li>Ongoing optimisation</li>
</ul>
<p>These dimensions cover the bases and reflect the fact that an organisation&#8217;s maturity is not just based on what technologies they have invested in but also the infrastructure they have in place to support and the way that they are using them. The model recognises that one of the key criteria is that an organisation needs to have a coherent measurement strategy. Too often, still, we see organisations investing in measurement technologies without a clear idea of which problems they are trying to solve or with little recognition as to where the technology fits into an overall plan.</p>
<p>The other useful aspect of DM3 is the recognition that &#8220;adoption and governance&#8221; is also an important component. This section is essentially about business processes around the measurement technologies. Do organisations have procedures around some of the key processes such as campaign tracking, content tagging or user support. If they have those procedures, are they actually being followed? Again, too often, analytics and measurement technologies are implemented without the necessary rigour of the business processes around them leading to disappointment and poor quality data.</p>
<p>WebTrends stress that DM3 is a piece of work in progress and are looking for feedback. My own feedback is in some of the detail of the construct of the model in the different dimensions. For example, one of the components within the Data Analysis and Insight dimension is called &#8220;Social Media and Competitive Analysis&#8221;. For me these two things are completely different. You can have good benchmarking capabilities and spend a lot of time monitoring your competitors and at the same time do doing absolutely nothing about monitoring or measuring social media activity. These two elements need to be separated out.</p>
<p>One of the notable exclusion in DM3 is anything about mobile measurement. Given all the attention that mobile is getting at the moment and the challenges in getting decent mobile metrics, I think that it would be important to have it in the model somewhere or other. It probably highlights one of the challenges that the DM3 might face and that&#8217;s keeping current and up to date with emerging digital marketing channels such as mobile.</p>
<p>I also feel that the model is too orientated towards site centric measurement systems. Any digital measurement strategy needs to incorporate Voice of the Customer type programmes to a greater or lesser extent. Whilst it is implicit in some of the dimensions around Data Integration and Data Analysis, it needs perhaps to be a more explicit competency which an organisation needs to display.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s early days for the model and I&#8217;m sure it will evolve but I think that DM3 is a useful tool by which organisations can take a look at themselves and make an assessment about where they are on the learning curve. The model also gives some guidance about what needs to be done next to move to the next level. On the basis of this type of formalised process and scoring, organisations can be better informed about how and where they need to invest their efforts next.</p>
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		<title>Digital analytics</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/digital-analytics/</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2009 07:49:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Neil Mason</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=5622</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Putting customers at the centre of the company’s strategy...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p> This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.<a href="http://www.clickz.com"><img class="alignleft" style="padding: 5px 0pt 0pt 0pt;" title="ClickZ logo" src="http://www.foviance.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/logo_clickz.gif" alt="ClickZ logo" width="192" height="57" /></a> </p>
<p>Last week I was over in San Jose for the Emetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit for three days of input and output on all issues around digital analytics. As usual there was a wide variety of content to absorb and a breadth of issues to discuss. As I sit and write this at the airport on my way home (got to meet those ClickZ deadlines&#8230;) I get a chance to reflect on some of the key themes that came out of the conference. <span id="more-5622"></span></p>
<p>This was my fifteenth Emetrics conference in the last six years on both sides of the Atlantic, so I have had the chance to see how the event has grown and developed over the years. Whilst some of the fundamentals remain the same (such as how to get analytics embedded into an organisation), the debate has moved on. I attended sessions covering mobile analytics, social media measurement, voice of the customer programmes, marketing mix modelling and data integration.</p>
<p>One of the sessions I found most interesting was from Joe Megibow from Expedia. Megibow outlined how they have invested huge amounts of time and effort into integrating their various sources of customer experience feedback, specifically OpinionLab and TeaLeaf. This gives them the ability to link comments left by users on the site with their actual sessions, so they can see the comment and then replay the user&#8217;s session to more fully understand the user&#8217;s experience that led to the comment. The integration is interesting but what was impressive was the detailed analysis that went into understanding and solving very specific customer experience issues. Megibow certainly washed some of his dirty laundry in public by taking us through a number of examples of how they had uncovered problems with the site through the voice of the customer, the impact that the problems were having on the customer experience and the steps they had then taken to solve them. What struck me was the fact that often these were very small specific problems affecting perhaps a relatively small number of people but when you added them all together they were having a significant impact on the user experience. In fact Megibow said that since they had embarked on this systematic programme that conversion rates were being steadily improved but that the major success had been &#8220;winning the cultural shift of listening to customers, institutionalising analytics in the business and executing against the outcomes&#8221;.</p>
<p>Putting customers at the centre of the company&#8217;s strategy was a theme taken up by Greg Dowling from Nokia as well. He took us through the challenges of developing and implementing a global measurement strategy for a business that is looking to develop consumer data as a strategic asset. These challenges that had needed to be addressed included the lack of a common language around metrics, the fragmentation and quality of the data, the lack of competencies in certain areas and the fact that data and insights were not part of the business processes. Anybody who works in a large global organisation will probably recognise one or more of these challenges. Over a two year period Dowling and his team had worked to address the challenges and is his words &#8220;behavioural data is at the heart of our relationship with customers&#8221;.</p>
<p>One of the tough parts of implementing the Nokia measurement strategy had been around getting the mobile analytics strategy sorted. This was taken up in more detail in a further session by Dowling and Gary Angel from Semphonic. I touched on the issues around mobile analytics in my last column but in this session I really discovered how tough it is at the moment to get decent data on user behaviour on mobile devices, let along integrate that with the same users&#8217; behaviour on the fixed web. All the issues that impact our ability to measure on the fixed web 10 years or so ago plague the mobile web such as the data collection methodologies and browser standards. There are challenges around visitor identification and measuring mobile applications usage. However given that it&#8217;s expected that by 2012 more mobile phones in the world will be accessing the internet than PCs it&#8217;s clearly an area that organisations need to start to address and given the evidence I saw in San Jose, the sooner they start to think about their mobile measurement strategy the better.</p>
<p>Having said that, there is still a ways to go for many organisations in term of sorting out their fixed web measurement strategy and WebTrends contribution to the debate was the release and publication of their Digital Marketing Maturity Model (DM3). This model provides a framework against which organisations can assess the maturity of the measurement capabilities on a number of different dimensions. I haven&#8217;t had the chance yet to look at it in detail, so something for next time. Till then&#8230;</p>
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		<title>Conference season lead the change</title>
		<link>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/conference-season-lead-the-change/</link>
		<comments>http://www.foviance.com/what-we-think/conference-season-lead-the-change/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:15:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Neil Mason</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.foviance.com/?p=4918</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The theme of the conference was "Lead the Change" and was kicked off with a keynote session... ]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.<a href="http://www.clickz.com"><img class="alignleft" style="padding: 5px 0pt 0pt 0pt;" title="ClickZ logo" src="http://www.foviance.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/logo_clickz.gif" alt="ClickZ logo" width="192" height="57" /></a></p>
<p>The first sign of spring is the beginning of the conference season and it kicked off for me this week when <a href="http://www.foviance.com/who-we-help/strategic-partners/omniture/" target="_self">Omniture</a> came to town hosting their European Summit in London. Around a 1,000 people from across Europe gathered together last Tuesday to listen to what one of the largest marketing technologies companies had to say. <span id="more-4918"></span></p>
<p>The theme of the conference was &#8220;Lead the Change&#8221; and was kicked off with a keynote session from Josh James, Omniture&#8217;s co-founder and CEO. I wasn&#8217;t at the Omniture Summit in Salt Lake City but I assume that the message was the same. James asserted that prospects were still good for our industry even in these difficult times. &#8220;Technology is no respecter of the economy&#8221; he told us and outlined the potential based on the fact that &#8220;less than 10% of transactions are being optimised&#8221;. A number of product announcements were made in the keynote including the introduction of the Omniture marketing suite into Europe, the launch of Omniture Recommendations, new reporting capabilities in Site Catalyst for measuring how viral videos are and the integration with 24/7&#8242;s Open AdStream. Much was made also about Omniture&#8217;s partnership with WPP and James interviewed Mark Read, the head of WPP Digital. Read stressed the importance of digital to WPP these days (accounting for over 25% of business) and it was interesting to hear that WPP&#8217;s digital priorities were around social media, mobile and analytics.</p>
<p>My sense of progress from the opening sessions was it was more evolutionary than revolutionary. There was talk about the impact that social media and mobile would be having on the way that consumers and marketers interact and there were announcements of new measurement capabilities in those areas. There were also hints that there would be more focus on improving measurement capabilities on content and lead generation sites in the future. There was also talk about more activity on integration, including the integration of SearchCentre (their keyword bid management) tool and Test an Target (their multi-variate testing tool), as well as more concentration on Developer Connection and their data integration capability, Genesis. So for me the start of the conference painted a picture of consolidation and amalgamation which is perhaps not surprising given the expansive and acquisitive nature of the company over the past 2 years.</p>
<p>Ed Thompson from Gartner Group gave an interesting and wide ranging presentation. After talking about the shifts in the CRM space from operational CRM to analytical and collaborative CRM strategies, he focused on talking about customer experience management. He highlighted the trend for companies to look to differentiate themselves through the customer experience but identified some of the major challenges facing those companies. First of all customers are becoming more powerful, secondly no-one in those companies &#8220;owns&#8221; the customer and thirdly, on the whole, employees don&#8217;t care. So the challenge is to find someone who &#8220;cares about customers&#8221; in the company and then to put the right measurement frameworks in place. Thompson also offered an interesting insight based on his analysis on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). He looked at the profile of the companies with the highest customer satisfaction scores. They were food companies, internet companies and the like. From this he came to the view that most of the companies with good customer satisfaction scores didn&#8217;t actually deal directly with customers. &#8220;Humans screw up the customer experience&#8221; he said and warned companies not to confuse customer intimacy with good customer experience. I guess that underpins the need to get the web experience right as often people don&#8217;t want to deal with other people, they just want to get the job done.</p>
<p>I took the opportunity to take in a few presentations from the social media track at the Summit, covering aspects such as mobile and video measurement. Greg Dowling from Nokia summed it up for me when he said &#8220;mobile measurement is hard&#8221;. Many issues such as the proliferation of devices and browser, the lack of industry standards, problems with visitor identification combines to create a number of different measurement challenges. It reminded me of the web analytics world about 8 or 9 years ago. Matthew Langie from Omniture outlined a mobile analytics &#8220;maturity model&#8221; which starts by measuring the mobile opportunity through to profile based targeting. I think for most companies measuring the opportunity is about as good as it gets at the moment.</p>
<p>Later this week I head out to the West Coast to get another dose of conference input at the Emetrics <a href="http://www.emetrics.org/sanjose" target="_self">Marketing Optimisation Summit in San Jose</a> where I&#8217;ll present on predictive analytics, May 4. I&#8217;ll give you a round up on that one next time.</p>
<p>.</p>
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