Web Analytics

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…

8th April 2010, London: The Web Analytics Association, the world-wide web analytics professional and standards body, has appointed Matthew Bragg, a Key Account Director at cross-channel customer experience consultancy Foviance, to be it’s UK Country Manager. Bragg, who is well known in the UK web analytics community was offered the influential role in order to raise the profile of the WAA in the UK and to champion the benefits of web analytics to a wider community. Currently working as a Key Account Director for Foviance, Bragg assists a number of big name UK brands to maintain a consistent customer experience and get the most out of their web analytics systems. He is looking forward to the extra challenge of helping to run the WAA operation in the UK. Read 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. Read more…

One of the big challenges of providing usability, accessibility and analytics consultancy services to help businesses improve their customer experience, is to ensure that information is digestible and therefore more readily usable and practical.

There is a trend, particularly in the web analytical arena, for some consultancies to simply create more and more metrics for businesses, rather than working on their clarity. Unfortunately, there is also a tendency for many people to suffer from ‘data blindness’ when confronted with rafts of metrics churned out by multiple tools and technologies. Advertising campaign management, web analytics, CRM, and other intelligence tools should enable businesses to interact better with their customers, but for many actually understanding all that information – particularly across wide portfolio websites – proves very frustrating. Read 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. Read 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. Read more…

“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’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’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. Read more…

In response to NMA article, 21 January 2010 Peter McCormack, co-founder of McCormack and Morrison, makes some interesting points in his opinion piece in published in NMA 21st January.

If brands are truly throwing away their traditional marketing campaigns in favour of third party channels such as Facebook then I would agree it is unwise – but only ‘today‘. Because today you cannot connect the dots and establish the identity of twitter’ers and other anonymous users of social networks, but that will not always be the case. There will come a time when total transparency exists online and your anonymity will be lost. Read more…