Jason Egan

Site Optimization, Web Analytics & Social Media

Author Archive

Programming and Web Analysts

Now that Omniture has APIs and WebTrends is doing more sophisticated things with their tools that have ODBC connections, I was thinking, should we Web analysts consider adding to our skill set? Primarily, should we begin to add programming abilities to our skill set? Things like APIs are great, but only if you have the ability to create applications that access these APIs. Should we Web analysts start learning languages like PHP, SOAP and XML so that we can create our own applications?

Also, most popular Web analytics technologies are based upon JavaScript (from the implementation side anyway). So, a better understanding of JavaScript would most likely benefit us all. A better understanding of JavaScript alone could open some doors for better Web analytics opportunities for those not already proficient with JavaScript.

I think that we Web analysts should be immersing ourselves in programming so that we become more than just analysts and the users of tools like Omniture, GA, WebTrends, etc. I for one will be trying to pick up the following skills in 2009:

• PHP/SOAP - for the purpose of programming with Web APIs and creating new applications for analytics and online marketing
• JavaScript - I’m already decent with JS, but would like to be able to do some more advanced things for analytics
• SQL/MySQL - for the purpose of querying Oracle, SQL and MySQL databases

Are their any other skills that you think would benefit Web analysts? What additional skills are you trying to pick up on your own this next year?

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Omniture API Development Contest

With all of the APIs that are out there for Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., I can’t say that I surprised to see that Omniture has now started a contest to see what creative developers can do with the Omniture APIs. I received an e-mail the other day that stated that the first prize would receive $10,000! That’s right, $10K. The interesting thing here is that the deadline for entry into the contest is some time in early February, before the 2009 Summit, where the winners will be announced. Not a lot of time to develop something new if you haven’t already started.

I think that there’s a real opportunity here for some developers given the short time frame and what I would think would be a limited amount of competition. Developing something like this and winning a prize for it would also be a great career booster and way to get noticed for the use of product APIs in a Web 2.0 crazy world where every other developer on the planet has created some kind of Twitter application! Man, I’ve got to get back into some programming so that I can start using these APIs myself!

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Omniture Dashboard Speed & Dates

This post is just to note a couple of things that I have discovered recently about Omniture dashboards. I hope that this might be of help to some of you that use Omniture.

Faster Omniture Dashboards

File this one under what is most likely common sense. But, I have seen many Omniture SiteCatalyst dashboards take forever and a day to run, or you will see the “unable to retrieve data” message. I at first thought that this might be due to the fact that I had seen this most often on dashboards for Omniture variables that were using 20 - 30 classifications. Maybe using that many classifications slowed everything down? But no, it was really just because of the number of metrics that we had for each reportlet. I tried recreating dashboards with only revenue, and voila, the dashboards ran in no time. The down side here, is that a dashboard is only so useful if it has a single metric. If you are experiencing problems with slow dashboards, you might want to try and reduce the number of metrics in your reportlets (maybe to just two or three) until it runs in a reasonable amount of time. The addition of calculated metrics is also a significant factor in slowing down or killing Omniture dashboards. Of course if the dashboard is automated via email, you can add everything you like, and the whole thing will get emailed perfectly fine.

Omniture Dashboard Dates

Just another Omniture dashboard experience that I thought I’d share. We have several dashboards that are setup so that each reprotlet might be reporting on ranked data for the last 30 days. Last 30 days was chosen since a current month would not be all that useful on the first of the month. One of the great advantages to dashboard in SiteCatalyst 14 (as opposed to earlier versions), is that you can change the date for all reportlets in a dashboard at the same time. This makes the dashboards much more useful. So, someone requested the executive dashboard for a custom date range. Knowing that you can do this in SiteCatalyst 14, I changed date range to the custom one requested. Everything ran great, so I sent the dashboard to the person via the email function within SiteCatalyst 14. However, the dashboard that the person received was stuck to the default of last 30 days in which the dashboard was originally created. So, just be aware that while you can change Omniture dashboard dates to custom ranges, the email results will be the default of the dashboard in the way that it was created. I confirmed this with Omniture, and it is not a bug, but just the way it was designed.

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Commitment and Site Optimization

Reading a recent blog post from Jeffery Eisenberg (Realistic Expectations For Conversion Rate Optimization) made me once again think about how a lot of companies fail to really commit to testing and site optimization once they purchase a tool (Test&Target, SiteSpect, Optimpost, Goolgle Web Site Optimizer, etc.). Right now, I see site optimization where I saw Web analytics about 5 years ago in terms of tools and commitment.

A few years ago, businesses were ready to go out and buy the biggest and best Web analytics solution out there, without having any kind of dedicated resources to leverage the information or to ensure that any kind of best practices were being followed or developed. Now, many companies have dedicated Web analysts that can implement analytics solutions and help their businesses leverage the information contained within. Site optimization is, as I see it, about to explode (more than it already has) because companies appear ready to commit resources to the effort as opposed to just buying a solution and running with it.

Most companies do not dedicate any resources to actually making their existing Web sites better.

Most design and development efforts are concerned with developing new features or content. Instead, companies need to remember that they have a ton of content out there that could probably be performing better than it already is. After all, how often do any of us get something perfect on the first try (or the second for that matter)?

There are several things that a company can do to ensure that they are committed to optimizing their Web site:

• Dedicated some of the time of your design and development teams to optimization.
• Commit to designing at least 2 versions of everything that goes out. Make optimization a part of the design process (within reason of course). This is often a big challenge as designers see testing as just doubling their work.
• Find a way to get everyone invested/interested. A lot of companies make the testing process an internal contest of sorts where everyone watches results in real time.
• Pay your employees for coming up with ideas that improve conversion rates. After all, shouldn’t you be paying your employees to impact the bottom line anyway? Here, it’s measurable!
• Realize that optimization and testing is just as important as your paid search and e-mail marketing efforts. All require an ongoing commitment in resources and effort.

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Creating a Hypothesis for Site Optimization

Creating a hypothesis should be one of the first things that you do when you start running A/B and multivariate tests on your Web site. Just because you have the keys to an optimization tool (even a free one like Google Web Site Optimizer), you should NOT be starting out saying, “hey, let’s see if changing this button from ‘Add To Cart’ to ‘Buy Now’ works better!” It’s vital to understand that you need to start with a hypothesis and then set clear goals before you start testing.

Setting a hypothesis is not a difficult thing to do, and it will help you stay clear on exactly what you are trying to accomplish in running a test. Here are a few examples of what might be appropriate hypotheses:

• By changing the button on our product details page, we expect that we will be able to increase the rate at which visitors add products to their carts.
• If we can decrease our shopping cart by one complete step, we can make it easier for customers to complete their purchase, thereby increasing conversion rate.
• If we can provide more targeted information on our most popular landing pages, we can decrease bounce rates.
• Maybe if we make it easier for visitors to use our internal search, visitors will more easily find products of interest, increasing conversion rate.

Creating and starting with a hypothesis, frees you from simply testing graphics and content, enabling you to test your business ideas and site effectiveness (i.e. conversion).

It is the hypothesis that you should be taking to the rest of your team when asking for the best user experience and design ideas to prove your hypothesis. You should not let a designer alone be the one that starts the process of site optimization.

Creating a hypothesis also makes it easier to measure the results of site optimization. If you start with just a design that is going to simply be “better than the last,” there’s no clear way to measure that. For example, if you were to change how you present your internal search results, is your success measure conversion rate, add to cart rate, product views or maybe average order value? There’s no real answer here, and starting a test without a hypothesis will result in a lot of debate over what success is when it comes time to evaluate the test.

Your hypothesis should make it clear what you are trying to improve, so that everyone can agree upon the success measure in advance of the test.

So if you start your testing and site optimization with an appropriate hypothesis, your goals and the eventual evaluation of your success should more easily fall into place.

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New Google Analytics Features - First Impressions

So I have access to the new updates to Google Analytics now. My first impressions of the updates are very positive. The two big additions (aside from the API) are the custom reports and segmentation.

The custom reporting actually went a little beyond my expectations. The big thing here that Google has done is that you can create reports that are very deep (4 levels or so) and that you can correlate across different report dimensions easily. Now Google just needs to implement more variables and events to take this to the next level.

The segmentation works well too, but it’s a little clunky in it’s setup. Here, I like the buckets that you start with in Omniture’s Discover. The creation of a segment seems a little more intuitive when starting from the idea of a visitor, visit or page view.

I do think that with the additions of the custom reporting and segmentation that Google has become more of a serious option for larger businesses. 

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Omniture Launches Developer Connection & Discover API

Okay, I’m not trying to make this an Omniture blog, but they keep releasing products/services and acquiring companies at startling rate the last few weeks. That being said, I received an e-mail from them this morning about launching a beta of something called the “Omniture Developer Connection.” At first glance, this appears to be just a repository for documentation on Omniture’s Web services. One BIG thing that I did notice, is that:

There is now a Discover API and accompanying documentation!

This is great to see, and I hope that Omniture gives some more attention to this new API. I would like to automate some Discover reporting, and an automated CSV file isn’t the most elegant way to accomplish it.

This site (that requires Omniture login credentials) also contains forums for developers as well as a library of code examples that can be contributed to by developers. Right now though, there are no posts in the forum (aside from the admin) and there’s only one code example.

Here’s the announcement e-mail from Omniture:

Announcing Omniture Developer Connection (BETA) 

The Omniture Developer Connection is here—a community Web site designed to help our customers build applications  that use their Omniture data. Found at http://developer.omniture.com, the Developer Connection allows our customers to:

• Use Omniture SiteCatalyst data across third-party applications, such as an intranet or a company-branded application
• Access SiteCatalyst reporting data to create calculated metrics, or format the data to meet specific internal needs
• Use the data collection API to facilitate the integration of SiteCatalyst with applications that cannot be easily tagged with JavaScript

In addition, Omniture Developer Connection contains:

• Documentation of Omniture’s application programming interfaces (APIs)
• Sample code showing reference  implementations to give developers a head-start in developing their own applications
• Discussion boards and blogs to provide peer-to-peer support among those building Omniture-driven applications

Please pass this along to the appropriate development team within your organization. For additional detail on the Developer Connection, a list of Frequently Asked Questions is provided below: 

1. When is the Developer Connection available?
Omniture will be releasing the Developer Connection in beta on October 17, 2008.

2. Who can access the Developer Connection?
The Developer Connection and Omniture APIs are accessible to Omniture customers with a SiteCatalyst login.

3. What are the Omniture APIs?
The Omniture Web Services API provides programmatic access to Omniture SiteCatalyst administration, data insertion, Omniture Data Warehouse and reporting functionality. The Web Services API is built using SOAP, which allows developers to use any SOAP development toolkit to start developing applications. The data insertion API is built on an XML-based schema, allowing developers to easily and quickly send data and begin testing integrations with the system.

4. How do I access the Developer Connection?
Customers can use their SiteCatalyst login information to access the Developer Connection at http://developer.omniture.com.
 
5. What is the best way to start using Developer Connection?
A Getting Started guide (for users with a SiteCatalyst login) is available to assist new users through the process of learning the prerequisites, enabling the Web services APIs, and testing and authenticating newly developed applications. The guide is available under the ‘Getting Started’ tab in the portal.

6. Does Developer Connection include API documentation for all products in the Omniture Online Business Optimization suite?
Currently, API documentation is available for SiteCatalyst, DataWarehouse, Discover reporting, and SearchCenter. Additional API’s will be added in the future. 

7. How should Beta participants provide feedback regarding the Developer Connection portal? 
We will be monitoring the community blogs and message boards and encourage customers to provide us feedback there. 

Sincerely,

Your Omniture Team

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Omniture Acquires Mercado

I received an e-mail this morning that Omniture has acquired Mercado, one of the largest players in on-site search. The funny thing here is that Omniture has only recently started selling the rebranded VisualScience product (which was formerly a WebSideStory product) for site search. I am guessing that Omniture will take the same direction here as they have with their Discover product, making the VisualScience product a “lite” version compared to their newly acquired product from Mercado. Here’s the e-mail Omniture sent this morning making the announcement:

Update:

I’m hearing on Twitter that this was a bit of a fire sale (http://twitter.com/jbillingsley/statuses/959067564). It also looks like Mercado wasn’t doing so well and that the software-as-a-service business model wasn’t helping the issue (http://www.startupisrael.com/mercado-shutting-down). I know that Omniture uses the same basic business model, but they also have the advantage of a huge customer base.

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Social Media in the Classroom

I was thinking today about the potential impact of social media on the traditional classroom environment. There were several thoughts that came to me about how social media is going to seriously change the education game for students that are utilizing it:

1. It can’t be stopped. Students are going to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. whether educators tell them to or not.
2. In the past, the sharing of information in the classroom was considered cheating. Now, the Information Age is all about sharing and collaboration. Should the idea of sharing knowledge in the classroom between students change? It seems a little foolish to not utilize every resource you have in the information age.
3. Most young students are into mobile communication and social networking much more so than older educators. As devices like the iPhone eventually become the free phones we get with cell phone contracts, it will become increasingly important to integrate this technology into our education.
4. Many students may not have the finances or regular access to social media and tools such as the iPhone. Our education system will need to work on making these technologies and capabilities available, and not just too the elite few.
5. Students will be sharing information and looking for answers with students well outside the classroom and sphere of influence of educators. Who’s going to stop a student from Twittering with someone across the country to get help on a complex essay or homework assignment?

Do you think that our education system is ready to tackle the implementation of social media in the classroom? What other challenges can you see out there for schools as social media becomes more prevalent?

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Creating an Action-Oriented Culture

Most experts in Web analytics dream of working for a business that makes data-driven decisions. Look at it as justification for our career choice. However, I think that this needs to be taken a step further:

We should be concerned with creating an action-oriented culture, not just a data-driven one.

Having access to advanced Web analytics tools, we can churn out meaningful analyses that management will most certainly use in making decisions. So, that means that we work for a data-driven company, which is a great thing indeed. The missing thing there is that the information isn’t nearly as useful if no action is ever taken. This can also be very defeating for people in Web analytics. No one wants to feel as though their hard work is never put to real, visible use.

So what can we do to help create an action-oriented culture when we don’t have direct control over resources and priorities?

Start A/B Testing

This is a slam-dunk, since action is one of the first steps here, and the payoff is pretty quick to see. Once you can get your company to buy into A/B testing (don’t worry about multivariate yet), more tests will follow as the return on investment becomes evident. Start easy with only A/B tests, where “B” is very different from A (to ensure meaningful results) and try out a tool like Google Website Optimizer (free) to help make ROI justification easier.

Focus on Change

Everyone delivers dashboards and standards reports. As I’m fond of pointing out, these eventually get ignored with all of the other noise that exists in inboxes. If you want people to stand up and take notice, and eventually act, then you’re going to need to get a little more manual and really dig into the “why” of your data and information. Like it or not, we Web analysts don’t know everything that marketing, Web design and the other teams on our site are doing. So, instead of just delivering dashboards on a regular basis, we need to start tracking significant changes in metrics, investigating with the necessary people, and finally delivering an intelligent analysis on the “why.” In addition, we need to make efforts to be more in the loop with all of our online efforts to understand and provide analysis on the efforts that are not making any significant changes on our site(s). After all, why waste effort on something that doesn’t even move the sales needle?

Understand Your Customer/Visitor

I just mentioned how important it is to understand the “why” in why things are changing or happening on your site. While traditional quantitative analytics is great, we must supplement our data with qualitative data. We must also do this at the visit level so that we can correlate the “why” to what visitors actually did (or did not do) on our site. If you can start to get survey input from your site visitors, then you can put some real, hard evidence that action needs to be taken and put it in front of the right people. These people might find it a little harder to not act on information from a person that has a proven purchase or visit history with your Web site. While there are a lot of survey solutions out there, you should at least start with something free like 4Q, which was created by Avinash Kaushik and iPerceptions. You may not be able to get the answers to the 4Q survey related to your transactional data (hey, it’s free!), but it’s a starting point in gaining qualitative knowledge about your visitors/customers.

Do you have any other ideas as to how data and information can spur action?

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