My understanding and from what I can tell it is true social networking / social media tracking, everything from Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ Circles, Digg, Redit, etc.  Just when you thought there was nothing new in web analytics, this comes along, and it was about time.  Despite the fact that I am not that keen on using social networking, tracking how well they are working is critical to understanding if they work at all, because there is sometimes  evidence sometimes it does not work well for ecommerce, but that is to be determined.

So next time you see the LIKE button on a website, and you click it, and you are logged into a social network, that information will automatically be tracked in Google.  I guess what is next is they will know when we wake up and fall asleep… maybe.

How do you see these new analytics in Google Analytics?

You have to switch over to NEW VERSION.     I noticed this click-able highlighted line in red at the top of my browser while looking over Google Analytics this morning.  Once you click over to the new version, you have to select an existing site you have in the system.  Once you click on a site, you will see a new layout of the data and that is where you will notice new stuff on the left and a different layout.  It’s under VISITORS, that you will see the word SOCIAL.  If you click on SOCIAL, you will see a couple new areas that represent “Social Engagement”.  They break it down to Engagement, Action and Pages.  I am still trying to figure this out, but apparently if somebody clicks that “LIKE” button for Twitter, Facebook and Google then you have socially engaged them…  This means that all your previous traffic is not social engaged.

That’s it for now!  Good luck figuring out how to analyze your Social Engagement!

So far in this series of articles, I have described dealing and identifying Assets and dealing with People, the two ingredients needed to build any web site feature.  The next step is information discovery.  The first article talked about Assets.  Assets, as I describe in the first article, need to be understood and evaluated in an open and free environment, not restricted by management that has already indicated the final outcome.  Knowing the exact, final website product on day one is ok as a goal, but to know the exact way it will work is a not just a mistake, it can create a terrible work environment for those who see the mistakes and can’t fix them.  You start with a general idea of where you want to go in development of web features, and great spec’s can make this possible, but there is a transformation that needs to occur between concept and final product, and that is where a lot of websites go awry by simply never fixing what needs to be fixed.

Information Discovery

Information discovery is all about looking through the data, which leads to idea discovery.   But even before you go through reams of data, you need to figure out what you are trying to accomplish.  This is a bit of a conundrum, like which came first the chicken or the egg.  Let’s say you have a web page or a web site that is already doing its job.  Your site could be a simple page or 2 or be as large as a 20,000 SKU online catalog.  I’ve built both sites in the past.  The question is how do you figure out that you need to add a form to collect information or to place ads on the site?  How do you know if the site should be a marketplace or a straight e-commerce site.  This is not just about data here.  This is about business and business models.   If you have worked on developing websites, and at this point in time, and a few million people have, based on the fact that millions own domains, you probably know a thing or 2 about making your own website.

In my first post on this subject, I described assets, where you have to look at few key pieces of information.  Is there any anomalies showing a possible opportunity, or as Google in their web analytics product calls it, Intelligence?  Is this site getting tremendous numbers of visitors?  Is this site already collecting email addresses?  One site I know of, because I am a part owner, gets an email address added to the system every 10 minutes during the day.  This asset is important, because email addresses can be, should be used properly, by properly, I mean when people give you an email address, they are expecting an immediate response.  The value of the email starts to go down when you wait 6 months till you email them.   The fresher, the more valuable, and that’s because people have a small period of time to read that email you will send them.  This has lead to the concept of email sequences.  First time I had heard about this was from my business partner, who pointed out a company called InfusionSoft, that is big on it.  It’s really a simple concept.  You have a series of emails that get sent out to a person that signs up that go out in phases, like one a day, one a week, perhaps growing in length of time.  Each email has a different message that is part of an overall strategy.  You don’t need InfusionSoft to do this, but they are great at it.

Let The Wind Tell You Where To Go

Often data is telling you something.  For instance, on Whois.net, we noticed a high amount of international visitors, yet we did not offer the ability to look up international domains.  So we solved the customer’s quandry by offering what they were looking for.  So one clue is looking at the key words people search on to get to your site in Google Analytics or Adobe’s/Omniture’s Site Catalyst.  This is a simple task and 90% of online marketers know this.  What they don’t look for is the missing link.  The missing piece is what ties information to a new potential set of features.   Another good example is on checkout of most registration sites, there is a term we now call “Co-registration”.  Co-registration means the customer was here to signup for x, and you added another potential thing for them to get at the same time.  We have considered using this in the event business website I am a partner in.  Another interesting anomaly I noticed in the dating business recently, is that people are using Iphones and Android apps to signup, in significant numbers.  This is where you have to brain-storm, not about features, but about assumptions.  You can confirm these assumptions, through research.  My assumption that people are using smartphones, specifically at work during the day, because it offers more privacy, and the employer can’t track you specifically.  This is one of many reasons, but the end result is we need to have an app for the Iphone and Android…  That is simple detective work.  This is the big breakthrough.  It is finding a new channel.  The big question is having the resources to capitalize on this new channel.  It may not be a new channel to you, but to a lot of executives out there, who don’t know how to deal with this channel, it is a strange new world.

In the retail side its called Cross-Sell or Up-Sell.   Just sign-up for Godaddy and you will get your complete lesson on up-sell and cross-sell.  They are the masters at this.  I used to have people say that is not what I would put on the checkout, because it does lead to Friction, one of the key points in the MarketingExperiments.com formula, where it will actually causes less conversion potentially.   This all depends on the site.  On a dating site, yes, it can slow the process down, especially if the person is not ready to convert.  On a retail site, however, when people have made up their minds to buy, only a broken, poorly designed web page can stop them, especially if the deal is an amazingly good value.  So most features are figured out as extensions of what you already have in place.  If you build on your success, you will succeed even more.  There is no need to be radical, as you will find out the hard way…

Slash And Burn

If you let the status quo dictate what you do, or worse, let the current sales and marketing team make all the decisions, you could end up with a situation I call “slash and burn”.  I came across the concept of slash and burn, while working on a few sites.  The analogy of slash burn comes from the military tactic of burning the crops as you retreat, so your enemy will not have the luxury of food.  It refers to the, sometimes unforeseen, consequences of making a decision to kill one part of a website in order to enhance another.  This is a human decision process, typically driven by revenues.  The best example was on this Whois.net site, where, when I arrived at this company, the previous people who managed it, had attempted to drive all the traffic through links on the site to hosting sales on another site, because that is where the money was for them.   This was a major mistake in my mind.  Yes, they had driven people to where they make money, but that is not why they came to Whois.net.  They were there to look up domains that were available, find out who owns them, and potential buy them.

Consistency

Another very important point I learned from MarketingExperiments.com, and I will discuss them a lot here, is that consistency is real important in the process of building out web features.  You have to start at the beginning of the customer path.  The beginning is when they are sitting at their computer on Ipad.  Let’s say they have not even turned it on.  They are interested in South Florida Real Estate, as an example.  They open the computer and type those words into Google.  Google presents them with relevant results.  Let’s say your site is in those results.  When you click on one of the links, and let’s say its one of the top paid links, you are delivered to a web page.  The words you put in should arrive right in your face at the top of the page in big bold letters.  If not, you are not getting a consistent experience.  This is true for many of the paid links, because they are using something called Long Tail, which has a few meanings.  To me, it  means extending the search words they are buying out to more obscure words, to pay less and get more traffic.  This would typically mean they are looking to buy “Real Estate”, but it was cheaper to buy “South Florida Real Estate”.  This is great for smaller sites and pages that are meant to be for finding this exact stuff, but when you arrive at a generic Real Estate Seminar, you are disappointed.  This is not Google’s fault, it’s about people trying to get traffic, and the result is a lot of inconsistency.  Your consistency is critical in making your site found well and sticky, a term these marketing guys love to use (meaning they stick around).

Don’t Make Me Think

If you have not read this book, “Don’t Make Me Think”  and you work in the web field, you should get it, read it, and live by it.  The book’s simplicity, and I will hopefully sum it up here, is that people have developed common methods of experience online.  This means that they are expecting the same words, in the same spot, each time they arrive at a web page.  A good example is the word “About” or the word “Search”.  The book basically says if you say “Quick Search”, you are going to confuse people, and therefor making them think, like is really “Quick” or different.  More importantly, if your site is missing any of these common elements, such as the words “About”, “Contact” or “Search”, there is a customer disconnect.  And you need to understand that “Search” is a feature.  So for the basics, you need to make sure the customer experience is not so different they run away.  That also means that placing the word “Search” in the upper right of the page is preferential to let’s say the bottom left.  From the web features perspective, deliver to customers at least the minimum they are expecting on the site.  More and more, customers are expecting a web form on the home page and sometimes many site pages, where they can put their email address in, maybe with their first name or some additional data and get on that companies’ mailing list.

Short Form or The Long Form

One of questions is whether or not to put a short form or a long form onto a home page.  So, inevitably with these kinds of web forms, information collection forms, you have techniques that are learned over time.  You can learn this stuff by observing and taking the best of breed (they call it) and do things like this.  One of the methods that is recommended is you ask for a small amount of information up front, like just an email address or email address with a first name.  On the second page, you would then ask for additional information, saying that they are now on the list and they can further tell you more information about themselves.  This two step process like everything, reduces friction on the first step and allows the website visitor to make intelligent choices on the second step.  One thing I ran into when working for a hosting company was a situation where they required a domain name when buying hosting.  This was a system requirement.  It turned out to be a very costly financial requirement.  The reason is, and like everything, it came down to how people react.  The visitor, in many cases, had not decided on a domain name, so often they would just pick up and leave to figure it out…

This Web Feature discovery process article is 3 in a series of 3 so far.  The articles about Web Feature Discovery will continue in a new article next month.

Your GMAT Score Is Inversely Related To Your Ability To Run Your Own Business

Your GMAT score is inversely related to your ability to run your own business.  I stole this line from a book I read years ago on how to survive the Harvard business school. Yes, it is true that MBA programs train people to work at companies and deal with big company issues.  It is also true the degree is a generalist degree in many ways, kind of like an engineering degree.  What you learn in school is not what you are going to be doing in real life. And it may actually be true that those who go to get their MBA are often not able to start and run their own business, but when I ask entrepreneurs if they could have an MBA right now to assist them in their business and their answer is always yes.  It is always better to have more education.  I would get a PHD, if I had unlimited money, time and resources.

More Learning Means More Money

If you do some research, like here, you will find that the more education you get, the more you earn in general.  Obviously we would all love to start a company and make money on our own working for ourselves, but the statistics say that overall getting more education means more money.  It is a simple principle.  Also, not everybody can go off and start an Internet company.  There are as many failures in online business as there are offline.  It is easier and faster to start a business online and thousands of new websites every year prove it.  You can’t knock people from trying, but don’t argue this start-up method is an alternative to an MBA.  You can have an MBA and be in a start-up, in fact that combination is more powerful than a start-up founder without an MBA.

I Went To Learn

My MBA education was not about the degree.  Well, it became about finishing the degree in the last year, but overall, it was done over time, at 2 programs and I literally took my time and made often my class work about my day job.  This was not about the degree in my mind, it was about my mind.  I think it is important to learn and not just be handed a piece of paper.  One of the issues that speaks broadly about this, is the lack of ethics among MBA grads.  Well, if they are not about learning, and just about the degree, what do you expect them to be like.  There are many with no scruples, no ethics and why do we often hear about guys like Madoff attempting to run a scam.

Education Realization

I recently had a epiphany not about my own MBA, but about certain pillars of my own learning in the past 10 years, especially about the web.  What I realized is that there are probably a dozen foundational areas of being an expert on websites, such as web design, web programming, web analytics, business development, product management, email marketing, search engine marketing and organic SEO.  What I realized is that you can be an expert in one of these areas.  Once you become an expert, you will find that your desire to learn more in that specific field may top out, especially after many years in the field.

This just means you need to get knowledge in the other areas, if you work in the web.  Our brains can handle the same thing day in, day out for just so long.  And learning something new does not mean giving up what you know, it means building on what you know by learning a new area, especially if it is related. Maybe I am nothing like the rest of the web workers out there, especially if their answer is I am happy knowing my little silo of information and that’s that.  This is a rare person, and in fact, this kind of person is the perfect company person.

Ford’s Assembly Line

If you look at the original concept of Ford’s Assembly Line and why it was so ground breaking, its because of specialization.  Each person in the factory would specialize in one small area of the making of the car and just do their job.  I probably would have quit that job at some point, or maybe I would have moved around the plant and worked on the fenders for a while.  I need to get around and learn more about different areas after I master an area of business.  I had for the longest time been considered a web analytics expert.  This expertise, which is somewhat uncommon in the market, is in my opinion, not an end unto itself, but one of many disciplines needed to truly understand the web.  It is foundational.

The Designer Becomes The Programmer And Vice Versa

I have actually seen web designers start out writing a few PHP programs here and there and turn into a full time programmer.  I have seen designers become directors and engineers become writers.  We seem to migrate towards not what we know, but what we are good at.  In fact, maybe initially we did not even know we were good at these things, but when we found out, by chance, that we were good at it, be decided to like it.  I stole that idea from the New York Times article on why Chinese Mothers are superior (They make their kinds learn something.  They say be good at something, and then one day you will learn to like it!).

Web Education

Let’s face it, you can get an education on any subject in like 15 minutes today.  I use Youtube.com when I cook and watch videos on how to make Indian food.  I use Instructables.com to figure out how to do this or that.  I research facts that make me as knowledgeable as any doctor, on certain matters, in a matter of minutes. I even found out at a retail outlet going out of business recently, the approximate value of a painting on the wall, before it was sold to me.  We are empowered with the ability to discover and learn at a moment’s notice.  Think about the impact of this on future generations who will have an answer to any question imaginable in a second.  Still the web doesn’t give us the core part of an education that we get in the classroom, and that is working in teams, directly with an instructor that can’t exactly be mimicked online.  The day is coming with Skype, Wifi and iPads where this will not be true anymore…

Today I noticed this new Google Analytics feature in Beta called In-Page analytics.  Very simply it is the ability to pull up a specific web page and visually see all the clicks, sales, conversion rates and some other stuff by every link on that web page.  They have had this around in the past, but not at this quality of usability for zero dollars.

This is not a new feature, in fact, its just Google Analytics catching up with all the enterprise analytics companies in the market such as Omniture/Adobe, Coremetrics/IBM and Webtrends.  Is this good news?  Great news for users of analytics, because it makes life a lot easier to analyze stuff visually.  Well its not good news for the old guard of web analytics as Google chips away at features that used to cost thousands per month.   This is basically another step towards devaluation of analytics tools.  Not sure how many companies are out there still doing analytics.  I remember at a conference when Mr. Stern declared that there were 83 web analytics companies at the time around 2003.  And I have seen new ones join the fray in the last few years while old ones like Hitbox have become a thing of the past, being gobbled up with Omniture, which was feasted on by Adobe.

Why Is This In-Page Analytics Different?

Well this in page analytics is not actually as you surf your website.  That is a major difference with competitors and how they run.  Typically they almost all worked like this.  You turned on some application that is local or browser based, so either you download something or click on a new add on per a browser and then surf the site.  This required a lot of effort to surf around and honestly the in page analytics I used by Omniture/Adobe and Coremetrics/IBM hardly worked.  In fact even their staff steered us away from it.  This new Google In-Page Analytics has really created a great feature, where it grabs the page from the website and it all seems to work… Nice.

How To Use In-Page Analytics

Quite simple to use.  Just login to your google analytics account and click on CONTENT in the left side bar and you will see a red BETA next to In-Page Analytics.  Once you click on In-Page Analytics you will notice that your home page shows up.  Notice that links have a little div/verbiage above them with a stat like 1% or 50%.  That stat and others are showing you what percentage have clicked through, purchased, and how much they have purchased.

Hitting It Out Of The Park

So this proverbial Holy Grail of web analytics seems to do all and suffer none when changing to use revenue, goals, or any other analytics.   Yes, the bigger enterprise solutions do have more bells and whistles and flexibility when it comes to in-page analytics, but you have to admit this is pretty much an amazing tool.  You could quickly look over your home page or any page and make a determination visually what link is working well and what does not work well.  This turns web analytics into a real science and brings this cool method to the masses.

The fact they are free is the amazing part, and to the chagrin of several hundred developers at competitors like WebTrends, Omniture (now Adobe) and Coremetrics it is just one more dink in the armor, especially when these types of enterprise features are considered something you would typically pay for.

Ok, so what it is… Well actually if you don’t have much traffic you won’t notice much when you click it.  Since I work for a large corporation and have quite a few small, medium and large Google Analytics accounts for my sites and other clients, I can see the disparity in what you get.  For bigger corporate clients there is data showing up.

2 kinds of data.

One is called  “Automatic Alerts”, the other are “Customer Alerts”.

Just assume the automatic alerts they decide for you, while you have some control on your own.  Weird thing is the actual types of control are very general with a simple low to high sensitivity bar.  Without a lot of information about this tool, I am going to take a stab at the relevance and how to use it…

Automatic Alerts (Variance Reporting)

Like I said, if you have some data coming through that is a bit more than just 10 visits a day, you will see something.  What I am seeing is any form of data that is above a specific variance curve showing up.  If you have had basic statistics.  I suffered through it twice in two MBA programs, you have the basic within like 2.5% of the mean at both sides of the bell curve.  When I see low medium and high settings, this probably is more like the variance of like 20%, 50% and 70%.   You can modify it a bit with that bar.

What does this really mean for analysis?

It pretty much it means they are “Alerting” you to unusual activity in your account.  For my corporate accounts I am seeing things out of the ordinary showing up, like traffic from a specific geographic location has increased by greater than 40%  or time on site has increased from a specific location by over 88%.  You will have to become a hack like me to understand the fact that this stuff is relative.  This means that it really can mean very little depending on the situation.  You have to dig deeper to see why or how it is a variance.

Time Frame

Trying to get a handle on what time frame means, it appears that if you choose a small time frame at the top of the page, you create a statistically insignificant amount of data to analyze, and you will notice that there is no results.  There are two types of time frames involved in this analysis.  There is the time of the report you are looking at, at the top of the page, and there is the “Time Frame”, one day, that is in the middle of the page.  You can shift this “Time Frame” back and forward (if you are not looking at today).  This way you can see if the trend is common each day or just for this day.  Does not look like right now that you can switch this from a day to a week or month, but that would be a nice feature. Maybe I am missing something on the screen to switch this.  Also, seems like this is going to cost us money at some point, so maybe that is the paid feature?  But then, I have not yet gotten to custom intelligence.

Alert Sensitivity Bar & Significance Bar

There is a significance bar on the right side of each metric and dimension.  This significance bar is related to the variance discussed earlier.  It can be used as a measure of how important, or in my old stat class we called this the Sigma.  I actually turned down the Alert Sensitivity bar in the middle right and noticed that a few of the alerts dropped off.  This sounds right, if it is straightforward.  Obviously you will have less alerts if the Alert Sensitivity bar is lowered.

Graphing Anomalies (Alert Data)

Another part of this is the cool way you can quickly access graphing.  Let’s say you are looking at a specific alert.  There is a little graph icon on the left of each alert.  Click on it, and you can that specific target data across the page time line, and BAM a pretty powerful way to use this thing…  Try it and see what I mean.

Alerts Candlestick Bar Graph

Notice this secondary graph beneath the normal graph. This one is tracking how many alerts per day.  If you are just starting out this is set for the automatic alerts only.  If you set up custom alerts, it will track them on this chart as well.  I am going to set up a few and then report back through this blog and my twitter account @dgudema on how they work.

Group By Metric | Dimension Function

There are 2 ways to Group the Information, by Metric & Dimension.  Metric refers to the basic metrics listed on the right side.  Dimension appears to be the more deeper secondary level metrics like region, new vs repeat visitor and other more detailed items.   Interestingly enough the higher level metric may not show the alert that is in the lower level metric.

I am sure that there is more here that I have missed.  I will cover it in my second article coming up soon.