Zara- How One Online Retailer Collects & Uses Data

   The clothing store Zara’s online shopping site collects demographic data from users from the very first interaction on the site’s home page. When visiting Zara.com you are asked to identify your country and language from drop down menus.

Once you enter your demographic information, you are taken to that country’s site (for me it was Zara United States.) From here you can shop via departments such as woman, man, kids, etc. or you can login to your account.

   For new customers, Zara asks that you create an account. Here you are asked your email address, password, first and last name, address, zip code, city/town, state, phone number, and correspondence preferences. You are also asked to accept their privacy policy. Below are segments from Zara’s privacy policy pertaining to information that they collect from visitors and how that information is used.

According to the Zara privacy policy:

We collect three types of information from you: i) information that you provide to us; ii) information we collect or receive from others; and iii) information that is derived through automated tracking mechanisms and technology.

We collect information when you register online or update your account, log-in, place an order, communicate with our customer service representatives, opt-in to receive our e-mails, shop online, request a catalog, participate in a sweepstakes, contest, promotion or survey or join our social networking sites. We may also collect information from you in our stores or through our catalogs or other marketing material. This information may include, but is not limited to, your contact information (for example, your name, e-mail address, billing and shipping addresses and phone number) and your credit card information. If you create an online account, you also have the option of providing your product preferences and demographic information. If you use other functionalities found on our Site, or if you choose to send an e-mail from our site to a friend, we will also collect your friend's name and e-mail address …

We may collect information through automated tracking mechanisms and technology to make our Site more interesting and useful to you and for various purposes related to our business. For instance, when you come to our Site, we may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type. Such information may be used for system administration and to analyze the frequency with which visitors to our Site visit various parts of our sites; and we may combine such information with personally identifiable information.

We also use "cookies," Web beacons, and other tracking technologies…Cookies are used to track the pages of the websites you have visited and do not retain any personally identifiable information such as your name, address or any financial information. We may use cookies to, among other things, enable you to use certain Website features, remember the items in your shopping cart, store your preferences, recognize you when you return to our Website, speed up your searches, track your orders, and monitor and maintain information about your general Internet usage and use of our Website. Cookies help us to improve our Website and to deliver a better and more customized service. They allow us to customize our Website according to your individual interests. (Zara.com, 2011)

I was very impressed with this retailer’s privacy policy. I think that they do a great job of being very upfront about what data they are collecting and how that information will be used. Once users accept this privacy policy, their online account can also store more information such as favorite stores that can be conveniently shipped to, track orders, make returns easily and change account preferences.

   The information obtained by the company from users creating accounts is a marketers dream. Information can be used to track purchases, create future email correspondence, gauge the success of that email correspondence, determine the location of buyers and areas to be targeted and track shopping preferences. In my case, they also have my cell phone number to send text alerts.

    According to the privacy policy, the company not only uses the information that they obtain from you to track purchases but also to,

Maintain a record of your purchases made on our Website and combine this with information you have provided in our retail stores or over the phone in order to serve you better. We may combine information you provide with demographic information and information that is publicly available. We may also use information about your product preferences and interests in order to improve our site design and enhance your shopping experience (Zara.com, 2011).

  
Although it’s difficult to think of how this company could do any better in collecting data about its visitors I think that it could use some help in getting more visitors. For example, the company says that they have “the latest fashion for women, men and kids” (Zara.com, 2012) However, when you search Google for “women’s clothing” Zara does not come up and other retailers such as Macy’s, Victoria’s Secret, New York & Company, Forever 21,Coldwater Creek and many others do. Also, the companies marketers could take advantage of ad space for search’s on “women’s clothing” similar to the companies Ann Taylor, Chico’s, White House Black Market and Zappos. Even when I specifically searched for “fashion for women” or “fashion for women, men and kids” Zara did not come up anywhere in my top results. They could definitely benefit from tracking some of their keywords and enhancing their search engine optimization.

   The company also maintains a Facebook page that has over 13 million followers and a Pinterest site. The Zara Facebook page advertises their Lookbook and sales as well as press coverage. I’m sure that they also collect data from this site, but if not they could gather information of demographics, shares and referrals as well. Zara could work on increasing engagement on their Facebook page by soliciting pictures of followers wearing Zara clothes or soliciting opinions on new fashions. They could also benefit from paid advertising on Facebook to draw more traffic to their site.

   All in all, I’d say that this company does a great job with collecting data and identifying how that data is used. Since the company is a worldwide clothing chain that is continuing to open more stores I’d say that they are benefitting from this data quite well.

References:

Zara.com (2011, September 5). Privacy Policy. Retrieved July 9, 2012 from www.zara.com

A Digital Marketers Tool Belt: Google Goals, Funnels and Filters

   As marketers it’s often difficult to justify a campaign. Determining return on investment is tough if there is no monetary return involved. How do you prove that what you are doing is working? This is where having some good tools available to provide data about consumer behaviors is invaluable. By now I have learned that the most valuable tool in a digital marketer’s tool belt is a good way to track web analytics. According to my web ninja expert Avinash Kaushik, “There is one difference between winners and losers when it comes to web analytics. Winners, well before they think data or tool, have a well structured Digital Marketing & Measurement Model. Losers don't” (Kaushik, 2012).

   According to my husband, my tool expert, Craftsman makes the best tools- they are affordable, dependable and get easy to use. In my opinion, for most digital marketers Google Analytics seems to be the Craftsman of the marketing tools. It’s free, dependable and somewhat easy to use.

   After last week’s snafu with installing my Google Analytics code, I recruited some technical assistance from a trusted web colleague I learned a valuable lesson about reading web code and am happy to report that I have successfully installed my Google Analytics code and am tracking usage! Turns out that I didn’t actually flop, I just fumbled a bit. While I correctly installed the code into my Blogger code, I installed it in the wrong place so it was not capturing all of my visitors.

   I am happy to report that I have had 25 page views from 13 unique visitors! Now that I am collecting data accurately, I want more. This week I learned about Google Goals, Funnels and Filters and how these tools can provide valuable insight to marketers.

Here’s some new terminology I learned in this week’s DMC 642 lesson:

A Goal is a web site page that helps generate conversions for your site. Some examples of good conversion goals include a thank you page after a user submitted a form or a purchase confirmation.

A Funnel represents the path you expect visitors to take on their way to converting the goal (for example, adding an item to a cart, then filling out your shipping information, then your billing information on the next page, etc until your purchase is complete.

A Filter is applied to the information coming into your account to manipulate the final data in order to provide accurate reports. For example, a filter can be set up to exclude visits from particular IP addresses to not count internal user data.

                                                                                                                                    (Wells, 2012).

According to an article from Smart Insights, “Setting up goals in Google Analytics is indispensable for any business looking to get the most from their digital marketing since you:

• go beyond measuring visits to events happening on the site that show that customers have engaged with your business
• can track the value the site is generating for your business from these events
• see which traffic sources you’ve invested marketing in give rise to these goals
• review which content types and customer journeys on the site are helping achieve the go” (Chaffey, 2010).

Here are 10 examples of goals from Smart Insights.

1. Contact us forms
2. Quick enquiry forms
3. Call back requests
4. Registration forms
5. PDF Downloads
6. Product video views
7. Podcast downloads
8. Specific text links
9. Trial/Demo requests
10. Webinar/Event signups

                                                (Patel, 2012).

Aha! This week I realized that I have been using goals all along and never knew it. I never knew it because I never had the right tool for the job. I will definitely be asking our IT guy to install some goal reporting. If he’s not sure about how, I’ll direct him to this site Google Analytics Goal Set Up.

Here are some examples of what a report can look like:

(Chaffey, 2010)

(Patel, 2012)

   Once I got the basics of goals down, I moved on to funnels. Funnels are a great resource that I think most people are unaware of. This testimonial from the Google site sums it up best "Funnel reports in Google Analytics are crucial to our success. We work constantly to improve the user experience. Google Analytics gives us the insight we need to quickly see which step in the online sales process is broken so we can fix it immediately." (Google, 2012)

   Allowing companies to track where in the purchase cycle a user abandons the process is a vital tool. If the majority of users are abandoning at a particular page, knowing this allows them to look closer to see what changes can be made to smooth the process. Hmm, that got me feeling a little bad about all of the times that I added items to a cart and then came back a few days later to place the order or worse never came back at all instead called to place the order.

   Last but not least are the filter tools. I have been a friend of the filtering tools in Google Analytics for a few years. In my organization, I had a company IP address filter installed so that those employees who have our web site set as their home page would not inflate the number page views and visitors. But, until now I had only been using filters to keep people out of my data not to lump users in and gain valuable marketing information from them. This week I learned that I can use filters to help segment visitors (for example, determine how many users are coming to my site from particular domains such as Facebook or Twitter.)

  Once again, there were a lot of lessons learned this week. For those of you keeping track, I think that I have now passed my white and gold belt testing in Web Ninja Training, I am now officially an orange belt web ninja!

References:

Chaffey, D. (2010, December 3). Google Analytics Goal Set Up. Smart Insights. Retrieved July 2, 2012 from http://www.smartinsights.com/google-analytics/google-analytics-setup/getting-to-grips-with-goals-in-google-analytics/

Google Analytics (2012). Case Study. Retrieved July 2, 2012 from http://www.google.com/analytics/customers/case_study_discount_tire.html

Kaushik. A. (2012). Digital Marketing and Measurement Model. Occam’s Razor. Retrieved July 2, 2012 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/

Patel, P. (2012, May 30). Setting goals for B2B web marketing. Smart Insights. Retrieved July 2, 2012 from http://www.smartinsights.com/google-analytics/google-analytics-setup/10-goals-b2b-website/

Wells, M. (2012, May 21). Lesson 6: Successful Approaches in Google Analytics. IMC 642. P.I. Reed School of Journalism, WVU.

Learning to Use Google Analytics: A Hands-On Flop

  

   In the “About Me” section of this blog, you will see that I said that this blog will allow you to follow me as I falter, flop and flourish in the online world. Unfortunately, this week is one of those falters and flops. In the quest for full disclosure, here’s what happened…

   This week’s assignment was to generate traffic to our blogs and begin viewing data from Google Analytics (GA) that we installed. First and foremost, I’d like to disclose that I must have done something wrong when I installed my code for GA. Last week, I did a big push to send out the link to my blog to friends and family encouraging them to visit it and help me get some data to analyze. Many people did visit the site; however to my dismay my GA account is registering 3 visits. Not sure why?

   However, luckily Blogger also has analytics installed in their site so I was able to see that my friends and family had not let me down and I actually had 38 visitors with a big spike the day that I sent out the link which was June 21, 2012.

   This week in class we spent some time looking at other web analytic tools and comparing them to GA. My biggest takeaway is that there are a lot of programs out there and some are not as good as GA, but some compliment GA by allowing a deeper look into some areas. Therefore, for this week’s assignment I will be using the analytics from Blogger to compliment my lack of analytics from GA.

   The first report that I looked at was the Visitors Report. “This section provides information on visitor interaction with your site, the type of visitors, and information about how they are viewing your site” (Wells, 2012). Here’s a comparison of the data from both GA and Blogger.



   Since I am now a little more in tune with data and what it means, my first thought after comparing the two reports was about unique visitors, visits and page views “OMG, GA isn’t wrong Blogger is just counting me every time I log in and view.” However, I quickly disproved this when I had verification from at least 7 people who said that they visited my blog. [Darn, I had hoped maybe I didn’t mess it up for a second.] When I looked at the traffic sources, which tell you how people got to your site, I saw that Facebook was the number one source. This coincides with my big push to get users to visit.

   Had my GA been installed correctly, I would have been interested to see my Content Overview Report. This report shows the page views, unique page views, average time on page and bounce rate. The report below is puzzling to me when compared to the other GA reports, particularly Visitor Overview referenced above. The Visitor Overview report showed that I only had 3 unique visitors, so I was puzzled to see 4 unique pageviews on my content report. I’ll explore this further this week.  



   A Blogger report that would compliment my GA Content Report is Posts. Posts dig a little deeper into reporting and tell you the number of times each individual post has been viewed. This is helpful because GA just measures the main page for the blog not the individual blog postings. I was able to see that my first post “Achieving White Belt Status in Web Ninja Training” was my top visited post. This makes sense because the week that we launched our blogs we all shared our url’s with classmates and visited each other’s blogs. (See below)

   Needless to say, my data even combined from the two sites, is bleak. So, how am I going to fix it? The first thing that I am going to do is look into how to correct my code problem. By troubleshooting the error in reporting, hopefully I’ll be able to capture true data that will show a lot more traffic.  The next thing I am going to work on is driving traffic to my blog. Unfortunately, SEO and web metrics is not a hot topic that sharing with my friends would make my blog a success. So, this week I’m going to try to build viewership from my fellow IMC 642 classmates by adding a blogroll. A blogroll is “a list of other blogs that a blogger might recommend by providing links to them (usually in a sidebar list)” (Wikipedia, 2007). My hope is that by linking to other relevant blogs, their visitors will easily find my blog and check it out. I am also going to explore some of the design features that will make my blog more visually appealing and easier to share.

   As a self proclaimed novice user, I am not expecting my blog to blow up with visitors who keep coming back for more of my web analytics wisdom, but I am going to stay true to my goal which is to use it as a learning tool to break into the world of blogging and web analytics. Once I master these skills, I can then transfer them into a sexier topic like my “Lessons from Paula” blog that I plan to launch that will follow me on my journey of cooking my way through Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible.

   Despite the claims that GA is easy to use, I have learned this week that getting the data that you need does not always work the first time and like many other things, sometimes you need to test, modify and reevaluate. I would not call this week a fail, because I got the code installed and knew enough to know what I didn’t know and that something was fishy.  Hopefully, next week I’ll be able to figure out what I did wrong and my data will start to flourish.

  

References:

Wells, M. (2012) Lesson 5: Google Analytics. IMC 642. P.I. Reed School of Journalism, WVU.

Wikipedia. (2007). Glossary of blogging. Wikipedia. Retrieved June 25, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_blogging

Google Adwords & Facebook Ads – Exploring the Online Advertising World

Today’s exploration into the online advertising worlds of Google Adwords and Facebook Ads was an eye opening experience. To date, I do not have any experience with online advertising. As my work is in the nonprofit world, we tend to not have a lot of advertising dollars to go around and our agency’s mission is to spread awareness so I’ve been a strict develop a message and disseminate it girl.

But as a girl going digital, once again my coursework and quest for knowledge have pushed me into uncharted territory. Here are a few things that I’ve learned…

According to Wikipedia,

Google AdWords is Google's main advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, cost-per-thousand (CPM) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one headline consisting of 25 characters and two additional text lines consisting of 35 characters each (2012).

From the information that I’ve found, Facebook has a very similar dynamic way to target consumers based on the information on their Facebook profiles and target your advertising to them. It seems that the debate of which platform is more effective has been an ongoing one since the first article that I found in Advertising Age was from 2007 (which we all know was an eternity ago in the digital world.)

How can you compare the world’s largest social network and the world’s largest search engine to see which is better? Here is an infographic that I found that compares Google Adwords and Facebook Ads [although I think I should add the disclaimer that I think this was created by a company that is an Adwords rep- even still it’s nice for info]  http://www.wordstream.com/articles/facebook-vs-google-display-network

There seems to be a lot of mixed feelings about which is better, depending on the brand and probably the amount of money spent and search parameters indicated.

General Motors announced this year that “we've found Facebook ads to be very effective when strategically combined with engagement, great content and innovative ways of storytelling, rather than treating them as a straight advertising buy” (Crain, 2012).

However on the alternate side, “Ford Motor said it would "accelerate" ad spending on Facebook in conjunction with the content it's producing for the network” (Williams, 2012).

According to Scott Mondy, Ford’s head of social media, "We've found that Facebook ads are very effective, and they're most effective when we strategically combine them with great content and innovative forms of storytelling rather than a straight media buy,” [adding] “ that 20% to 25% of Ford's overall marketing budget goes to digital and social media)” (Williams, 2012).

Hmm… now I am seeing why my instructor paired these two assignments together – the content is king theme is again in the air. Again, it seems that content is the key to a successful marketing and advertising campaign.

References:

Crain, R. (2012, May 21). Despite the Buzz, Social-Media Users Still Not Really Interested in Your Ads. Advertising Age. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/rance-crain/buzz-social-media-users-interested-ads/234842/

 Williams, S. (2012, May 15). GM Cuts Facebook Ad Spending, But Ford Steps on the Gas. Advertising Age. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/digital/gm-cuts-facebook-ad-spending-ford-steps-gas/234781/

Content Then Conversation

   “If a journalism tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it do any good?” (Mayer, 2011, p.13 ).  Joy Mayer asked this question when she was writing about journalists new responsibilities of engaging the community. This question really caught my attention…

  Over Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I went camping in the woods and in the middle of the night a tree fell. After it came crashing down with a sound that could raise the dead, my husband joked “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” Both of us answered with a “Hell, yes!”

   But, this is not really the case when it comes to spreading news or marketing a product or service. If you put something on the web and no one knows that it’s there it doesn’t make a difference [or a sound]. That’s why we as marketers, take time to learn skills like how to reach our customers and search engine optimization.

This ties directly into the argument of content or conversation- who is king?

    I argue that without one the other is not as effective. So, instead of having two kings battling- they need to join forces to create a stronger army. Michael Greenberg argues that, “Without content, there is not a whole lot to talk about” (Greenberg, 2009). On the flip side, Catherine Novak says that, “Conversation is King, content is just something to talk about” (Novak, 2010). She goes on to explain that,

Content without conversation is just broadcasting, or just advertising. It goes to the listener/reader/viewer/visitor…and stops there. If the sender is lucky, it may lodge as a piece of information in the receiver’s consciousness, and they may act on it someday. If the sender is luckier, or perhaps more engaging, it may be something that the receiver wants to talk about. And then the message gets a whole new burst of energy. The energy behind the message is what gives it meaning, and a life of its own. That happens when we humans like to communicate with each other. Thus the conversation begins. (Novak, 2010)

   An article in Advertising Age, agrees that both content and conversation are important. According to Wheaton (2011) “Yes, companies should pay attention. Of course it all ties into the larger thing we call marketing. But I get the impression that too many people believe that ‘conversation’ matters more than other parts of the puzzle, that it will actually build brands, that it might replace actual consumer research” (p.52).

Mayer suggests that,

Journalists want what they do to reach those who want it. But most are accustomed to putting stories online and then hoping people find them. With so much content out there, hoping isn’t a sound strategy- it’s an excuse. Journalists need to become social by sparking conversation with people whose hobbies, work, ideas or interests make them natural audiences, and then find ways for their stories to enrich the conversation” (Mayer, 2011, p.14).

I believe the same holds true for marketing, you need to have a good story and then know how to engage people enough that they help you share it. Content then conversation.

References:

Greenberg, M. (2009, October 20). Content is king of social marketing. MultichannelMerchant.com. Retrieved April 12, 2012 from http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/1020-content-social-marketing/

Mayer, J. (2011). Engaging Communities: Content and Conversation. Nieman Reports, Vol. 65 (2), p. 12-14.

Novak, C. (2010). Why Conversation, not Content, is King. SocialMediaToday.com. Retrieved April 12, 2012 from http://socialmediatoday.com/wordspring/152636/why-conversation-not-content-king

Wheaton, K. (2011) What we need is a little less conversation, a little more actual marketing. Advertising Age, Vol. 82 (39), p. 52.

Knowing Your Audience

   As a marketer we are trained to know your audience, craft your message and target the dissemination channels accordingly. Imagine my surprise as a Girl Going Digital and tackling the digital world when I recently read a SmartBrief headline that quoted a Los Angeles Times story saying “Facebook is a ‘mom thing,’ teenagers say” (Guynn & Faughnder).

   My first thought went to today's article that I read about Facebook. Could this be why “Facebook Inc. is developing technology that would allow children younger than 13 years old to use the social-networking site under parental supervision, a step that could help the company tap a new pool of users for revenue”? (Troianovski & Raice, 2012)

Then there was relief when the data saved the day…

“Researchers who track the technology habits of teens say there is no statistical evidence that Facebook is becoming a teenage wasteland. Just because teens are using other services like Twitter and Tumblr more — and they are using these services in huge amounts — doesn't mean they're using Facebook less," said Alice Marwick, a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research, where she studies how teens interact with technology. In fact, 8 of 10 teens who are online use social networking sites — and more than 93% of those users have a Facebook account, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.” (Guynn & Faughnder, 2012)

Luckily for us marketers, we have ways to track usage between audiences. Otherwise, this recent article in the Los Angeles Times and the few teens interviewed could have changed the way we planned our messages.

   This article got me thinking about who is the Facebook audience and I soon decided many times it’s the same audience as your other online messages. They are just hanging out in different places. I imagine Facebook like a mall, there are always tons of teens and tweens hanging out, but there are also their parents and grandparents walking around too. So, saying Facebook is a ‘mom thing’ is like saying the mall is a ‘teen thing’ – not true- there’s something and somewhere for each of them.

This is why it’s important to know your brand. A study by Facebook looked at 1,200 posts from 23 brands, it found that

"By far, the biggest predictor of engagement was that the post was on a topic relevant to the brand," said Sean Bruich, head of measurement platforms and standards at Facebook. "It impacts everything, from lightweight likes to more invested shares. It's actually one of the most important things a brand can do. People are seeing the content because they liked the brand, and it makes sense that content about the brand will get them engaged." (Creamer, 2012)

   This ties in to my previous post about having a purpose. According to Kaushik, “the single biggest mistake web analysts make is working without purpose” (Kaushik, 2012). So, with the online world changing so quickly how do you know who your audience is and where to find them? By tapping into the Facebook Insight tools that can give you demographic information about your visitors including age, sex and geographic area.

“Tip: Target posts to your ideal audience. If you’re not getting steady, increasing clicks on your posts over time, the most likely culprit is that you’re not giving your audience members the information they need.

To create more targeted posts, ask yourself:

• Who is my ideal audience? Age? Male/Female? Location?
• What type of information do they want from me?
• What are the main challenges I can solve for them?” (Porterfield, 2012)

Now that I am getting savvy enough to know that numbers and data does exist to help me craft my digital plans and how to start implementing them, I’m one step closer to becoming an analysis ninja!

References:

Creamer, M. (2012, May 7). Facebook to Brands: You’re Posting Stuff Wrong. Advertising Age. Retrieved June 4, 2012 from http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-brands-posting-stuff-wrong/234580/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AdvertisingAge%2FLatestNews+%28Advertising+Age+-+Latest+News%29

Guynn, J. & Faughnder, R. (2012, May 30). Some teens aren’t liking Facebook as much as older users. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 4, 2012 from  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-teens-20120531,0,5676320.story

Kaushik, A. (2012, February 20) The Biggest Mistake Web Analysts Make…And How To Avoid It! Retrieved June 4, 2012 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/google-analytics-custom-reports-paid-search-campaigns-analysis/

Porterfield, A. (2012, January 20). 3 Metrics that Will Change the Way You Market on Facebook. Mashable. Retrieved June 4, 2012 from http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/facebook-metrics-marketing/

Troianovski, A. & Raice, S. (2012, June 4) Facebook Explores Access for Younger Kids. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 4, 2012 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303506404577444711741019238.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

Achieving White Belt Status in Web Ninja Training

   This weekend as I was at the Integrate 2012 conference listening to the morning general session speaker, Dave Pavelko, the Head of Google Travel spoke of Avinash Kaushik. Thanks to my IMC 642 class, for once in my life I felt techie and “in the know” – Kaushik wrote the textbook for my class. It was at that moment that I had one of those aha moments! Holy cow, I’m starting to get it! This is exactly why I decided to enroll in the DMC program so that I could stay current on trends and comfortable in the digital world as a marketer. I took a minute to relish in the moment and feel proud that I was on the right path and was one of the few in the audience who had even heard of Kaushik.

   The name of my blog is a direct bow to Kaushik whose book “Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity” teaches you in easy terms how to be a web analysis ninja. After one week of my class and a few chapters into the book, I am already looking deeper into for my agency’s website statistics and am making plans for changes for next year (which conveniently for us starts July 1).

   According to the Adobe 2012 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey released last week, “When asked to identify the top five optimization strategies they intend to employ this year, marketers cited website analytics and social media analytics.” (ClickZ, 2012)

Whew! Maybe I’m not so behind after all if over half of marketers have the same plan as me for next year.

“The survey found that 53 percent of digital marketers fail to optimize on-site search results and 26 percent "manually tweak" results - meaning that marketers are potentially missing a big opportunity to convert visitors into customers. Optimizing site search ‘is about guiding visitors to exactly what they want to find, enhancing overall navigation, and providing an efficient path for users to meet their goals,’ the report said.” (ClickZ, 2012)

   This seems like such a simple concept, design your site so that visitors can find exactly what they want. Often many of us get sucked into the corporate model of putting the jargon on the web that the board wants that we lose sight of usability.

According to Kaushik, “the single biggest mistake web analysts make is working without purpose” (Kaushik, 2012). Check out Kaushik’s “five step process that forces the engagement of key stake holders to produce a blueprint of why digital exists in a company, and what it is trying to accomplish.”

“You should decide what you are and what you want to measure…Design your own metric system.” (Wasserman, 2012)  

   How do I plan to do this? By digging deeper into my web reports. “Custom reports…are hand crafted by you for a specific purpose with a set of guiding principles ("Acquisition, Behavior, Outcomes! ") that ensure that they don't so much deliver data as much as deliver insights.” (Kaushik, 2012)

Once completed, I believe that I will have earned my white belt and will be well trained in the basics to pursue my web analysis ninja status.

References:

ClickZ. (2012, June 1). 56% Plan to Use Social Media Analytics in 2012. ClickZ Marketing News & Expert Advice. Retrieved June 4, 2012 from http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2181932/56-plan-social-media-analytics2012?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clickz+%28ClickZ+-+News%29

Kaushik, A. (2012, February 20) The Biggest Mistake Web Analysts Make…And How To Avoid It! Retrieved June 4, 2012 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/google-analytics-custom-reports-paid-search-campaigns-analysis/

Kaushik, A. (2012, June 4) Google Analytics Custom Reports: Paid Search Campaigns Analysis. Retrieved June 4, 2012 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/google-analytics-custom-reports-paid-search-campaigns-analysis/

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