digital analytics association

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Communicators: take note of changes in digital analytics

by Kelly Kubrick on January 14, 2016

How have analytics changed?

Four years ago I participated in IABC Ottawa’s “Networking in the New Year” event, where communications professionals can speak informally with specialists in different fields. In 2012, I spoke about web analytics. I’m returning this year, and I will do the same. Which begs the question, has anything changed? Most definitely.

The bar is higher on what can (and should) be tracked

By January 2012, our community was

  1. Articulating more complex tracking requirements – instead of merely tracking website visits, there was increasing demand to measure the impact of social media / earned media efforts; while
  2. On the paid media side, measurement of remarketing (or retargeting) campaigns were at the bleeding edge of reporting requirements; and
  3. Google Tag Manager didn’t exist.

Website tag management emerges

This last item is critical, and links directly to item 1 and 2. “Tags”, in the context of tag management systems are used on your website to help you measure traffic and optimize your online marcom efforts. Examples of these website tags include:

  • Your website’s digital analytics tracking code i.e. your Google Analytics or your Adobe Analytics tracking code;
  • Conversion tracking tags (Google AdWords conversion code or the Facebook pixel); or
  • Remarketing (or behavioural retargeting) tags to target previous visitors.

Website tags are different from campaign tracking tags

For those of you familiar with campaign tracking tags such as Google Analytics’ “utm” codes or Adobe Analytics campaign tracking codes, note that they are different from the website tags above. It’s unfortunate that the terms overlap, but each accomplishes different things.

Prior to website tag management solutions, inserting website tags was a messy, inefficient coding effort requiring information technology resources. Then the inevitable would occur – organizations lost track of which tags were where, whether they were up to date or not, and who actually ‘owned them’. Not good. Thus, tag management solutions proliferated, including solutions like Google Tag Manager, Adobe’s Dynamic Tag Manager, Ensighten, and Tealium.

Website tag management: imagine never losing your keys again

bowl-for-keys
Today, tag management solutions are much better known – they have gone from an outlier technology concept to a critical tool in organizations’ digital toolkit. It’s exactly what we all need – a better way to facilitate the business discussion around determining what should be measured, while reducing the need for technical involvement for implementation.

How? By storing all those tags in one container in your website code instead of scattering different tags all over the place. Imagine that glorious moment when you successfully organize scattered key sets into one bowl at the front door. No more frantic searching as you try and get out the door.

Now, the business owner(s) can manage their tags centrally, outside of your HTML using a friendly interface. Other benefits include simplified tracking of video, social buttons or other interactive elements on your website. If your organization hasn’t looked at tag management solutions, I’d add it to your 2016 measurement plans.

Vanquish referral spam

The second big change since 2012 is the acceleration of referral spam clogging all our analytics reports. Consider this the second item on your organization’s analytics to do list in 2016: tackling the deeply frustrating problem of referral spam or ghost spam. What is referral spam? It’s garbage traffic that’s inflating your website traffic reports.

Example of referral spam - notice the 100% bounce rate with zero session duration time?

Click to enlarge example of referral spam: notice the 100% bounce rate with zero session duration time?

To give you some sense of how bad the problem has gotten, I was involved in a website launch in late November 2015. Not quite two months later 32% of the visits are is spam – fake traffic that could inflate our numbers and impact our marcom decisions. How can do we know that?

Fortunately, we followed best practices and set our digital analytics up with multiple data views. We use our primary decision-making data view to measure net visitor traffic (excluding ourselves and referral spam) and we can contrast it to our unfiltered data view capturing gross visitor traffic. This gives us a much cleaner – and more reassuring – view of our real audience numbers and their activities on our site.

Be sure you’ve got the same set up at your organization so that you can better measure the real impact of your communications efforts. Speak with your digital analyst or analytics team to ask them if and how the issue is being addressed internally. Like you, they’ll want to ensure ongoing trust in your organization’s data.

Web analytics broadens to digital analytics

One last important analytics change occurred only two months after the 2012 Networking in the New Year event. To acknowledge the proliferation of digital data sources, the Web Analytics Association (WAA) formally changed its name to the Digital Analytics Association (DAA):

“As more digital data streams became available, the responsibilities of the analyst broadened and the term “web analytics” became known as the study of data collected exclusively on websites…account[ing] for the analyst’s changing role of weaving together data from multiple sources and channels.”

As a long-time member, I heartily agreed with the change. To truly leverage the opportunities of digital, we in marcom need to take advantage of all of the data on offer. Data is a critical output of your digital initiatives and is what differentiates them from their offline equivalent. Knowing that, have you got a handle on your data strategy for 2016?

What’s on your 2016 analytics list?

I look forward to seeing the IABC Ottawa crew on January 28th and to discussing analytics. Bring your questions and concerns or feel free to ask any advance questions in the comments below. See you soon!

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Kelly KubrickCommunicators: take note of changes in digital analytics

An afternoon immersion in digital analytics

by Kelly Kubrick on January 28, 2013

Key Takeaways from eMetrics Tour Ottawa 2013

Our thanks to the 100+ hardy souls who turned up for an afternoon of digital measurement resolutions on the first day of Ottawa’s killer cold snap this month. It was a great turnout; we had folks from all sectors and across all industries having lots of  great conversations. My thanks to Jim Sterne and my fellow sponsors for sharing their insight and information. In the hope that it might keep your own digital analytics discussions flowing back at your offices, here are my top takeaways:

Analytics definitions from Stephane Hamel of Cardinal Path

  • “How an organization arrives at an optimal and realistic decision informed by data”
  • “Analytics is context plus data plus creativity”
  • “Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic into small parts to gain an understanding of it

I agree with Stephane’s statements – that the digital analytics industry’s number one problem today is the lack of rigorous process. In my own experience, the only way to keep ahead of all tool and technology changes is to have a framework that articulates what to measure, based on your ‘why’ measure objectives, regardless of vendor. Stephane uploaded his presentation “10 years of hard learned analytics wisdom in 20 minutes” on SlideShare.

(Yours Truly) Kelly Kubrick from Online Authority

Hobbit-Bilbo-Baggins-in-Doorway I was pleased that folks seem to hear, based on tweets, some of my key messages:

  • To an analyst, reporting is practising scales is to a musician; it gets / keeps you limber so that you are more able to achieve more creativity in your analysis
  • For non-techies, know that deconstructing prose and poetry in literature gives you an edge when deconstructing blocks of data. You already know how to assess the “whole” based on your ability to isolate the parts
  • Annotate, annotate, annotate: they give you a contextual lens to better understand your data as it changes
  • Ideally, digital analysts have a belief in Second Breakfast in common with Hobbits  (vs hairy feet).

Feel free to peruse my my list of recommended resources for digital analysts, or to download my full presentation Changing Habits: An Unexpected Analytics Journey” (PDF). Let me know if you have any questions about either.

Jim Cain of Napkyn

Jim tackled the question of data and design best practices for Executive Dashboards. His words of advice:

  • “Use dashboards to replace intuition with information”
  • “Create alignment ~ draw the line between the numbers to sales/leads etc for executives by anticipating the question: “I showed you this because…”
  • “Good data + great analysis = appreciative execs (+ better decisions)”
  • “Your dashboard should inform ‘data focus’ choices – don’t include ALL the numbers; pick the ones that tell the story
  • “The best way to look at the numbers is to compare current to historical and predictive (the plan)”

And my personal favourite: “Think of Excel as a design tool, not just a data tool. Start thinking of your reports as non-fiction stories”. As someone known for singing the praises of pivot tables, the analogy brought a smile to my face.

If you didn’t get the chance to see it prior to our gathering, here’s Napkyn’s earlier post on the event: eMetrics Ottawa – Awesome, Important, Free! (and Napkyn is in the house).

Jim Sterne of eMetrics and the Digital Analytics Association

  • “Big data” is that which no longer fits in an Excel spreadsheet – love that! Update: per Jim’s comment below, this should actually be credited to Stephane Hamel – and with that, thanks Stephane for coining it and Jim for introducing me to it!
  • Snippet answers from Jim’s question: What Makes a Great Analyst? One who “understands the raw material and the mechanics of extraction”, “the problem to be solved” and who is “mindful of built-in biases that prevent one from looking at one’s data honestly”
  • The low hanging fruit of analysis includes “errors, omissions, complaints, spikes and troughs, ‘that’s funny” moments and anomalies”
  • “Above all, have an opinion”

emetrics-summit-logoAlthough Jim had much more to say, for a great summary of Jim’s presentation, you can’t beat Practicing the Art of Analytics published by June Li and the crew clickinsight in Toronto.

For those of you who might be interested in attending an upcoming eMetrics Summit, but you’d like to know more about it, take a look at distilled learning from eMetrics Toronto 2012.

And, congratulations to the Canadian eMetrics Summit Tour winners!

Allan Wille of Klipfolio

Allan gave us his forecast on trends that are changing the weather for marketers:

  • “1) real-time feeds, 2) data democracy, and 3) using the Cloud”
  • “Real time” of automated self-serve dashboards can make a difference”; break loose from the chains of manually updating Excel spreadsheets!
  • Data democracy is about: “aligning the entire organization behind the data, getting everyone in the organization looking at the data and realizing that data needs to be shared no matter what”
  • Communicate goals, measure then communicate again to get everyone on the bus (idea from book From Good to Great by Jim Collins)
  • “The Cloud has helped to develop the maturity if analytics tools” – amen to that!

Learn more from Klipfolio by taking a look at their pre-event post: Let’s talk metrics! Klipfolio an official sponsor of the eMetrics Tour.

Also, to see how our colleagues at the Montreal stop fared, take a look at eMetrics Tour Montréal – Un résumé des conférences (in French).

And finally – thanks to all of you who tweeted up a storm; it was great to be able to ‘replay’ the event with your documentary effort! In particular, my thanks to @w_grimes@jorrdanlouis@nellleo and @LindsayMMcPhee. You captured a great deal of information, and I really appreciated it.

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Kelly KubrickAn afternoon immersion in digital analytics

Recommended Resources for Digital Analysts

by Kelly Kubrick on January 16, 2013

First published in July 2007 – most recent update: January 16, 2013

Every few months, the opportunity comes up for me to share my list of recommended digital (web) analytics resources. Given the number of times I’ve emailed that list, I think it may be of use to you as a blog post. Enjoy!

Recommended Digital Analytics Resources

1. Follow #measure on Twitter – one of several hashtags your fellow digital analysts use – see example results here.

2. Subscribe to Web Analytics Forum email listserv. You can monitor it online or receive a daily-digest email that includes all postings. Lurk on it for a while and you’ll see the kinds of questions getting asked – sometimes vendor specific, sometimes not. I’ve had superb responses any time I’ve posted questions there. As a point of interest, when I first joined the list, there were approximately 2,000 members. Today, it’s over 7,000. FYI – as a members-only list, you must apply to join, but the administrators are pretty speedy at turning around requests, so don’t let that hold you back.

3. Nowadays, there is a plethora of fabulous digital analytics and web analytics blogs, but one of the most comprehensive remains Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik. The easiest way I’ve found to read blogs is to through an RSS reader  (I use Google Reader), which allows you to subscribe to the RSS feeds of multiple blogs.

4. Over the years, more and more web analytics books have been published, and I try to get through as many as I can. For my personal list including book descriptions, see Critical tidbits from a Web (now Digital) Analytics bookshelf.

5. If you’d prefer to listen versus read, you should subscribe to the Beyond Web Analytics podcast by Rudi Shumpert and Adam Greco. Each podcast is roughly 30 minutes and they do great interviews with fellow analysts, provide analytics event roundups and much more. One of the things I like best about it is that at the beginning of each episode, Rudy and Adam ask each interviewee how he or she got started on the path of becoming an analyst – I’m always intrigued to hear about the various paths people take.

6. Google Analytics’ Conversion University which offers hours of free online training. Although the material was developed specifically to help people prepare for Google Analytics Individual Certification (IQ) test, and so is, of course, Google Analytics-centric, the material is useful regardless. If you like to set your own learning pace, there are loads of great modules in there.

7. If you’re just starting out and are looking for some hands on experience at analytics, you should check out The Analysis Exchange. It’s a great concept – essentially, it pairs not for profits in need of web analytics consulting with eager web analysts, supervised by veteran web analysts. And the best part? It’s free consulting for the non-profits!

8. I strongly recommend you join our industry association, the Digital Analytics Association (DAA) formerly known as the Web Analytics Association. They provide great research and other useful benefits – events, webinars, articles, discounts to industry events, etc.  I’ve been a proud member since 2006. Most importantly, though, you should consider volunteering on one of several committees – I’ve participated working groups for the Education committee and met some great folks as a result.

9. Today, there are many online web analytics and or digital analytics courses you might consider: The University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Award of Achievement in Digital Analytics, Université Laval”s “Analytiques Web”  (in French) course, McMaster University’s Web Analytics Program,  Algonquin College’s certificate in Digital Analytics, and the University of San Francisco (USF)’s  Advanced Web Analytics program.

Full disclosure: I serve on the advisory board of the McMaster program, am an instructor in the USF program and have served on UBC Course Enhancement working groups coordinated by (as they were then) the Web Analytics Association.

10. If your budget allows, you should consider attending one of several global eMetrics Summits. In 2008, I was very pleased to see eMetrics come to Canada. Now entering its fifth year, take a look at the upcoming eMetrics Toronto conference (March 2013).

What about you? Do you have any favourite web analytics / digital analytics resources you would add to my list?

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Kelly KubrickRecommended Resources for Digital Analysts

Your Digital Measurement Resolution for 2013

by Kelly Kubrick on January 9, 2013

May I offer you a New Year’s resolution that doesn’t involve depriving yourself? A resolution that actually gives you good things – and at no cost?

Thanks to everyone who came out! Check out Online Authority’s takeaways from an afternoon immersion in analytics.

No need to deprive yourself

Register now to catch Jim Sterne of eMetrics, Digital Analytics Association and authorial fame roll up his sleeves and answer the question “What Makes a Great Analyst?”

If you’ve got digital measurement on the horizon for 2013 – or are deep in it now – you need to be there. Contemplating measurement frameworks? Or how to structure an analytics team? Need ideas for job titles? Or digital analyst job descriptions? Then block off the afternoon…

Jim Sterne

Jim Sterne

Jim will be in Ottawa for a pre-eMetrics Tour on January 17th, 2013 at Empire Grill in the Byward Market from 1:15pm to 5:00pm. This is your chance to hear Jim help Ottawa’s #measure community contemplate what it takes to be a true artist in the field of digital analytics.

As someone who has had the pleasure of hearing Jim speak multiple times over several years, I can tell you he delivers. Not only does he deliver engaging, intriguing and thought-provoking material, he also believes firmly in the potential of the digital measurement community.

The only requirement? Limited seating: Register ASAP

Speaking of building our community, this event is a great way to do just that in a painless way. Not only do you get to hear Jim’s take on the state of our industry, but you also get to catch:

  • Stephane Hamel of Cardinal Path and creator of WASP (THANK YOU!!!) and of the Online Analytics Maturity Model (when’s the last time you assessed your organization’s analytics maturity? Never? Get on that, would you?)
  • Jim Cain of Napkyn Inc. forger of  new analytics business models (with one of my favourite lines ever: “Where your web analyst works.”) And who will help you use analytics to pick winners and losers. And we’re not talking Charlie Sheen…
  • Allan Wille of Klipfolio Inc. who’s going to give us the scoop on trends-analytical and how things are looking up for marketers (and who you should ask about things dashboard-y); and
  • Myself, Kelly Kubrick: I’ll be talking about applied analytics while making references to Hobbits. Habits! I mean habits!

And in between all this great content, you will meet your fellow Ottawa #measure community. Folks like you from private and public sectors, from across industries and all from Ottawa. Digital analysts, web analysts, search analysts, recovering analysts, future analysts…Come out and meet the crew!

In fact, if you really feel like broadening your Canadian analytical horizons, you can also catch our sister eMetrics Tour in Montreal on January 16th, 2013.

For additional scoop on the tour, check out Let’s talk metrics! Klipfolio an official sponsor of the eMetrics Tour and eMetrics Ottawa – Awesome, Important, Free! (and Napkyn is in the house).

Finally – assuming you are negotiating budget to attend eMetrics Toronto 2013 at this very moment, this is your chance to marshal arguments and perfect your pitch. And, if you are not familiar with the eMetrics Summits, here’s my learning from eMetrics Toronto 2012.

The moment is here…go ahead – you know you want to…register now…Hope you can make it!

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Kelly KubrickYour Digital Measurement Resolution for 2013