Cut Through the Fog: How to Act on Your Website Data

Cut Through the Fog: How to Act
on Your Website Data
Brian Alpert
Effie Kapsalis
Web Analytics and SEM Analyst
Head of Web & New Media
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Archives
Web analytics is often about:
“So What?”
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What do you mean, “So what”?
• The typical proxy for website success is quantity of stuff.
– Aggregated “big numbers”
– Pageviews / visits / visitors
• Aggregated data doesn’t indicate success.
– It doesn't reflect a website’s efficiency or quality.
– It doesn't reflect a website user’s experience.
– It doesn't help us understand how to improve the website.
• We can’t act on this data.
• “All data in aggregate is crap.”
– Google “Analytics Evangelist” Avinash Kaushik
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What web analytics is really about:
Furthering Program Goals
Reuters: Toru Hanai
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Articulating your goals is the hard part
 Sometimes your goals:
 Aren’t precisely articulated.
 Aren’t articulated at all (!)
 Are too broad to meaningfully measure.
“An institution for the increase
and diffusion of knowledge."
-- James Smithson
Source: Smithsonian Institution Archives
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Your goal: storyteller
 Use data to tell a story.
 Management loves stories.
 The “So what?” factor melts
away because it makes sense:




What was happening.
What it meant.
What you did.
What’s happening now.
Source: http://www.squidoo.com
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A systematic, step-by-step process
 Articulate your program’s goals.
 Decide strategies to achieve those goals.
 Decide tactics to pursue the strategies.
 Decide what and how to measure.
 Benchmark to get a sense of what’s normal.
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Articulate a few specific goals
 Not too many!
 Express what you are trying to accomplish.
 Distill high-level goals into more specific sub-goals:
 “Increase influence” >> “Become the definitive source on
Smithsonian history.”
 Making the broad goal specific makes it easier to identify
strategies and tactics.
 By being specific, strategies can emerge.
 Articulate goals & next steps on your own.
 What do you think they are?
 Work with management to redefine and finalize.
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Determine strategies & tactics
 Strategies – the plans you make to achieve the goals.
 Marketing, social media are strategic pursuits.
 Tactics – the things you do to advance the strategy.
 Advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) are tactics.
 Per the example:
 Goal: “Become the definitive source on Smithsonian history.”
 Strategy: Increase engagement with history of the Smithsonian
content.
 Tactic: Create content about SI’s history that is easily repurposed
by others
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Decide how to measure your tactics
 Choose a few measurements.
 Trend them over time.
 Per the example:
 Measure: segment history-specific content in GA
 Directories (site.edu/history)
 Dedicated content (site.edu/historyblog)
 Google Analytics custom variables.
 Apply history-content engagement metrics
 Visit frequency
 Visit depth
 Bounce rate for history pages
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Let’s connect all that to Google Analytics
 You’ve made progress:
 Your goals/strategies/tactics are set.
 Your measurements are chosen.
 You want to use GA data to understand:
 What’s happening.
 How it impacts your program.
 What you can do.
 Google Analytics Custom Dashboard
 Enables segmentation and trending.
 Datapoints mostly relate to ‘engagement.’
 GA Data Grabber
 Flexible, Excel-based GA automation tool.
 Enables you to see trends better than in the GA U-I.
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GA Data Grabber (GADG)
 Extracts data from the
Google Analytics API.
 Easy-to-use and customize.
 Exceptional charting
capabilities.
 14 days free.
 $348 per year.
 Limited documentation and
support.
 Excel for Windows
2003/2007/2010/2011.
http://gadatagrabbertool.com
 Excel 2011 for Mac (slow!)
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GADG Custom Dashboard
 ‘Engagement’ oriented metrics







Visit Frequency
Visit Length
Visit Depth
New vs. Returning Visits
Bounce Rate
Conversion Rate
Search Engines
 A foundation to make data actionable
 “Key Trends and Insights”
 “Impact on Site/Museum”
 “Steps Being Taken”
The easily updated, trended data is
what makes the dashboard powerful.
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Dashboard pages are designed:
1) To help orient you toward action
2) To communicate with management
Summary defines
and puts the
metric in context
Chart shows
segmented data
tracked and
trended over time.
Red/Yellow/Green
status marker
shows at-a-glance
each metric’s
status.
‘Action’ section answers
the question “So what?”
• Key Trends and Insights
• Impact on Website / Unit
• Steps Being Taken
Profile data pulls
automatically from
GADG; shows
metrics at-a-glance.
Suggestions for
Possible
Additional
Segments.
GADG
Instructions; show
how to create the
reports from
scratch.
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Thanks!
Brian Alpert
Smithsonian Institution
alpertb@si.edu
202-633-3955
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Backup
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Case Studies: Interpreting the Dashboard
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All Visits data tells a nice story...
Key Trends
and Insights
Minimal loyalty
group (purple)
downward trend
indicates
improving content
engagement
High loyalty
group (blue)
upward trend
indicates same
Impact of this Data on the Site or Program
• This good-looking chart may indicate high content engagement and/or perceived value
• This data may correlate to increasing conversion behaviors
Acting on this Data
• Identify moderate and high loyalty pages as a means of duplicating, or improving others
• Examining conversion behaviors of these segments may yield add'l insights
• Correlating high bounce rate pages to one-time visits may yield add'l insights
• Test different content types in an attempt to move 'minimal' visitors into 'moderate' group
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…But applying segmentation tells a different story
Key Trends
and Insights
Minimal
frequency group
upward trend
indicates organic
listings are not
appropriately
targeted
Moderate
frequency group
downward trend
indicates same
This Impact of this Data on the Site or Program
• Organic search listings are driving poorly-targeted traffic
• Will result in decreased organic search performance over time
High frequency
group trending
slightly downward,
in contrast to
previous chart’s
upward slope
Acting on this Data
• Refocus title tags, meta-description tags and page content for important pages
• Other SEO improvements, linking, blogs, social media, etc.
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SIA – High Depth visits of all content average is 1.21%
SIA – High Depth visits of history visits average is 2.35% 94% higher!
AAA Visit Frequency – All Visits (2012)
Visit Frequency from Wikipedia (2012)
Is the trend statistically significant?
Control Limits Definition
Avinash’s blog post
‘Instant Cognition’ (Clint
Ivy) blog post
AAA Conversion Rate (Ask Us)
from Wikipedia
Resources
 GA Data Grabber
 http://www.gadatagrabbertool.com/
 Automate Analytics Google Group
 http://groups.google.com/group/automateanalytics/topics
 Avinash Kaushik’s “Occam’s Razor”
 http://kaushik.net/avinash
 Lunametrics blog
 http://www.lunametrics.com/blog
 Google Analytics Blog
 http://analytics.blogspot.com/
 Slides and future dashboards will be made available.
 Send me email (alpertb@si.edu)
 Questions welcome!
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Brian Alpert
Effie Kapsalis
Web Analytics and SEM
Analyst
Head of Web & New Media
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Archives
Flickr user Rachel Ford James
By Jeremy Zwodny
By Simon Pielow
Target Audiences

Researchers (interns, fellows, academic
researchers)

Serious online researchers (Wikipedians, Collections
mystery solvers on Flickr Commons etc)

General public enthusiasts (Lifelong Learners, DIYer
looking for information and help)

Smithsonian record creators
Broad Organizational
Mission
“The Archives’ mission is to document the goals and
activities of the whole Smithsonian in its pursuit of
increasing and diffusing knowledge, and exciting
learning in everyone. The Archives is also responsible
for ensuring institutional accountability, and for
enhancing access to the rich and diverse resources in
its care. ”
Step 1: Identify Goals
Credit: Avinash Kaushik, “Digital Marketing and Measurement Model,” http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-andmeasurement-model/
Step 2: Identify
Strategies/Tactics
Credit: Avinash Kaushik, “Digital Marketing and Measurement Model,” http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-andmeasurement-model/
Step 3: Identify Key
Performance Indicators (KPI)
Credit: Avinash Kaushik, “Digital Marketing and Measurement Model,” http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-andmeasurement-model/
Strategy: Increase Engagement with
Smithsonian History Content
SIA – High Depth visits of all content average is 1.21%
Strategy: Increase Engagement with
Smithsonian History Content
SIA – High Depth visits of history visits average is 2.35% - 94% higher!
Increase Share and Quality of
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Increase Share and Quality of
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