How to Damage an Online Comminuty

So I was thinking the other day about how eBay has recently alienated it’s entire community. A few years ago, eBay was truely on the forefront of understanding what the next great thing on the Internet was going to be. That is, community.

Of late though, eBay has made some poor decsions that have significantly impacted their own community in profoundly negative ways. A few months ago, eBay first changed their rating and review system in a way that angered many loyal community members. Next, eBay started veering away from what used to be it’s real business advantage, creating a consumer-to-consumer community where we can interact with each other selling and buying our own inventories. eBay now seems to be favoring large retailers and their “power sellers” more so than the loyal community that put them on the map.

Instead of working to better understand the needs of the community that they created from the ground up, eBay is turning itself into a basic online retailer. “Buy It Now” was a good idea that they’ve let loose to kill their community.

Where eBay and many other companies have gone wrong is in understanding this new truth:

People that purchase your products and services are no longer customers, they’re community members!

Today, anyone can say anything about your company in seconds. And, when this is damaging, it’s like a snowball rolling down a hill, growing bigger and bigger, turning into an avalanche unless you hustle to stop it. Right now I see eBay and a lot of other companies sitting at the bottom of a mountain as they throw rocks, waiting for an avalanche.

Companies cannot treat thier community as faceless customers without an identity. Today, everyone has a voice and an identity online. And, we all want to be heard and respected. To fail to understand this is to doom yourself online.

As for eBay, it’s not too late to turn things around and to mend what they’ve done to their relationship with their community. They will have to make big decisions though. Only time will tell if they can repair the damage and save the community that they themselves forged.

More on Pages Not Being Worth Anything

Followup to “Pages Aren’t Worth Anything” from Jason Egan on Vimeo.

This is my first attempt at a video post here, so this might be a little rough. They should get better though!

Summary:

• Pages aren’t worth anything, but what you’re selling is.
• Testing and optimization should replace analytics in determining how effective a page is at conversion.
• You should me optimizing and measuring the worth of your marketing accumen as opposed to some HTML. Look at a page or site this way. It is a marketing and sales tool. How good is it at marketing and selling? How good are you and making the site better at marketing and selling.

Your Pages Aren’t Worth Anything

I’m sure that some of you will disagree with the title of this post as soon as you see it, but hear me out (read me out?). Wether you are in publishing/content or straight up e-commerce, your pages are not making money inherently. Many executives and busines owners always have one of the two following question:

1. “How much revenue has this page made?”
2. “How well is this page converting?”

To preface the rest of this post and explain the title of this post, I am going to say that pages do not make money, and they do not convert. Crazy, I know. But, what does make you money and convert are the changes that you make to your pages.

Answering, “How much revenue has this page made?“

I do not want to turn this into a debate about revenue attribution at the page view level, so I will leave that issue for another time. So let’s just assume that you have some kind of repor that has page names and dollar amounts next to those pages. The answer to the above question is:

“Does it matter what that revenue number is if you aren’t changing anything?”

So you can trend a page’s revenue over time. So what? Let’s say that you sell hair dryers (why was that the first thing that popped into my mind?). Your sales of hair dryers are what make you money, not the view of some page on your site. Afterall, you are selling hair dryers, not page views.

I also want to take this opportunity to address the publisher/content sites out there. News flash, you are selling something! Your selling ad views, and video ad plays, not page views or time spent (or “engagement” of all silly things).

You should not be asking how much a page makes for you. You need to be coming up with ideas that you think can make a page better, and testing those ideas to see if you can create lift! A page that just sits there and is never, or blindely changed isn’t doing you any good. Does it really matter how much you think a page makes over time if you’re not trying to make it better to begin with?

You changes, improvements and efforts make money and create lift. A page sitting there isn’t doing you any good.

Answering, “How well is this page converting?“

Again, I would say that a page just sitting there is never converting any different that it ever has, so tracking the conversion rate of a page is pointless. You should be tracking how good YOU are at making changes that improve conversion.

Lift is as Important as Revenue and Conversion

Just like I feel that “engagement” is an excuse on the part of publisher/content sites, I feel that tracking how much a page makes or how well it converts is an excuse for not testing your pages and working on creating lift. If you really care how much a page is making or how well it’s converting, then you should have a hypothesis as to how you can make it better, and you should test that hypothesis to create lift.

Building Your Personal Brand as an Expert

As I have said in a previous post on this blog, being successful and being good at your job are two different things. Some have said via comments and Twitter, that this is sad but true. However, I disagree. This is simply a fact, and it is up to everyone to just recognize that there is a difference and learn how to best take advantage of this and become good at your job and AND successful at the same time! Since I work in e-commerce and Web analytics specifically. I’d like to start an open discussion on how to be both. First there’s being good at your job.

In terms of Web analytics, being good at your job should at least include knowledge of the following:

• Segmenting your visitors, including knowing which are the best segments and how to find new ones
• A/B &multivariate testing and site optimization
• Understanding, in the most advanced way, how to implement your Web analytics solution (not just how to run reports)
• How to debug analytics implementations (WASP and Charles are great tools)
• Creating reports and dashboards that are of actionable use
• Understanding the difference between reporting and analysis and when each is appropriate
• Understanding how to track what is actionable as opposed to everything in the world
• Being able to setup a good system of dashboards and reporting so that you can spend energy on real analyses, as opposed to just reporting

Now, let’s say that you’ve nailed everything above and you are the master of analyses, testing and your analytics tool of choice. So how can you become successful as a Web analyst. First, let’s limit our definition of success to staying in Web analytics and becoming well known and respected within the field. The end goal being better job prospects and advancement opportunities at your current job. Here are some of the things that you can do:

• PRESENT to management, don’t just e-mail analyses
• Work regularly on presentation skills (Presentation Zen is a great resource with links to other resources)
• You should WOW management at least every other week. As a Web analyst, you’re probably sitting on a gold mine of info of which management is completely unaware. Make sure to show them things on a regular basis that gets you (not an email) in front of them and noticed!
• Get on the Yahoo! Web Analytics Board and start interacting with people
• Get on the Twitter and start interacting with Web analytics professionals
• Attend relevant conferences and industry events (at least 1 or two per year, and mingle/network)
• You can also think about starting your blog (again, anything to get your name out there as an expert). I’m thinking of switching to a video format to get myself out on the Internet even a little more.

In the end one of the keys to being successful is building responsible for you own personal brand and how it is perceived within your job as well as within the industry. In short, you need to get out there and make yourself known as an expert. To wrap things up, here’s a great video from Gary Vaynerchuck (host of Wine Library TV) on developing your personal brand, whatever the focus:

• The Personal Brand Gold Rush is going on, where are you?

Do you have any career or Web analytics success tips that you can share?

How does analysis become reporting?!

I’m not sure of others’ experiences, but ts has seemed to me that most of the time I provide a very insightful analysis to management and they are very pleased, the inevitable followup on their part is, “can we start getting this every week?” So while Web analysts want to provide analysis as opposed to becoming report monkeys, are we just creating more work for ourselves with our great analyses? More importantly, how do we get management to stop turning every analysis into a “regular report?” I think that the answer here is 3 fold:

1. Learn how to set management expectations
2. Have alternative (or more in-depth) anlayses planned at all times
3. Assert your expertise

I think that if you do all of the above with an already existing base of established reporting, you can have success as a true analyst and not a report monkey. First though, how do you set clear expectations to management?

Email is all about setting expectations

One of the most important parts of a successful e-mail marketing campaign is setting the expectation of how often the recipient can expect to be emailed and what they will be e-mailed. The same goes for analyses of Web data. First, inform management of the analysis that you will be performing. This can enable them to ask some questions up front so that “feature creep” doesn’t occur later in the analysis (or worse yet, afterwards). Also, you’ll want to make management aware that reporting on this information on a regular basis and simply trending it isn’t the end/best result. Inform them that you will be delivering actionable insights after which it is their responsibility to act (unless the necessary resources are within your sphere of influence should you be so lucky).

Alternatives and the next big thing

One of the best ways to convince management to not make an analysis a regular report is to have the next few things lined up and planned out. This way, you can then tell them what was planned next and that regularly reporting on what you just delivered will decrease the number of analyses that you can deliver that are actionable.

You Are an Expert in Web Analytics & Analysis

If you weren’t, you’ve done a good job in fooling people that are signing your paycheck. We all know that convincing the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) that you know more than them will usually fail. This is where it is your responsibility over time to build your own personal brand as an expert. This isn’t going to happen over night. You’ll have to prove yourself. My recommendation here is to plan EVERY week what you are going to deliver to management to wow them. If this means slowly delivering great things then so be it. Trust me the result is worth it. One of the most important things that I learned in grad school is the following, and it was sort of a career epiphany:

• Being good at your job and being successful are two TOTALLY different things.

These are just a few of the things that I try to keep in mind so that analyses don’t turn into boring reports that eventually and inevitably get ignored.

How do you ensure that your big ideas and analyses don’t get ignored? This also reminds me, if you haven’t read it, you should also check out the book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die…” You can get the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/1400064287

Omniture Data Sources

I’ve wanted to document what I’ve done with Omniture Data Sources for a while now. Data Sources is one of the most powerful features of Omniture, with very little practical documentation. Data Sources allows you to upload any data and integrate it into SiteCatalyst (and Discover) reporting. The real power lies in the fact that you can upload offline data about transactions that were completed online. For example, most e-commerce businesses have returns and cancels. With Data Sources you could upload your data for returns and cancels and see it in reporting for marketing channels as well as product reporting and any other reports in SiteCatayst. This all being said, Data Sources isn’t something to be taken lightly. These uploads require planning and preferably testing in a development version of your report suite. Once you upload the data, it’s there for good (trust me, I’ve messed it up before and all you do is loose variables and events).  Here, I’ll tell you what you need to do to get one of the most common things you might think of into SiteCatalyst, returned orders. First, let’s look at setting up SiteCatalyst and your online orders so that you can import offline data at the transactional level.

Transaction IDs
Anything can be uploaded into Data Sources. But, if you want the data to do anything other than be a flat number you’ll first need to implement Transaction IDs. Transaction IDs are basically unique identifiers for your orders. You could simply use your current order ID at the time of purchase if you like, but you do not have to (your choice). The Transaction ID is what enables SiteCatalyst to associate uploaded data with transactions placed online. Note that Omniture will only hold this Transaction ID on its end for 90 days (meaning you can only upload offline data for transactions made online in the last 90 days). You can pay Omniture to hold the Transaction IDs longer if you need to (maybe if you are in a business with a sales cycle longer than 90 days). Here are the steps to getting Transaction IDs in place:

1. Call your account manager and get them to enable Transaction IDs (easy enough).
2. Your account manager will give you an updated version of your JS file that has the requirements for the implementation of the Transaction IDs.
3. Have your developers implement the creation of the unique Transaction ID on your order completion page. The updated JS will pick that up and send it to Omniture.

That’s pretty much all you need to do to get the Transaction ID in place. Now let’s look at uploading data for returns/cancels at the transactional level.

Returns/Cancels Data Source for Omniture SiteCatalyst
First of all and most importantly, be sure that you test these things in a dev report suite before you upload the real stuff into you live report suite. I’m also going to assume here that you’ll want to see the 4 following metrics when you upload returns (cancels work exactly the same):

1. Returned Revenue (define as a currency event in SiteCatalyst admin)
2. Returned Orders (define as a numeric event in SiteCatalyst admin)
3. Returned Units (define as a numeric event in SiteCatalyst admin)
4. Cost of Returns (to add back to cost of goods sold when you start doing that too!) (define as currency event in SiteCatalyst admin)

So, this will take up 4 of your 80 events. You don’t have to import all four of these metrics, you can just bring in the revenue number if you like. However for our purposes here, these 4 make it the most complex and will make the best example.

You’ll want to use the “Product Returns” Data Source template:

The four events you’ll need to setup:

Mapping the four events to your SiteCatalyst custom events:

Setting up your dimension (required for any data source):

Mapping your dimension to products (a little obvious here):

After walking through the above wizard, the last screen will present you with a template to use as well as FTP information for the upload.

Next, you’ll need to get the return data from your team with the following columns:

• Order Date
• Product ID
• Revenue
• Orders
• Units
• Transaction ID

The challenge in getting this data is when you come across a transaction with more than one unique product. Not multiples of the same product, but two different products in the same order. Here’s an example of what two transactions would look like when one transaction has a single product and another transaction has 2 unique products:

http://snurl.com/2xvlk

Now move the returns data you received from your database into your data source template and upload this “.txt” file along with a blank file named exactly the same, but ending with a “.fin” extension to the FTP location provided at the end of the setup of the Data Source.

It could take some time to see the results of your upload depending upon the size of the upload itself. However after that, you will have the 4 return metrics available in any conversion-based report.

This covers only one of the types of uploads of Data Sources that you can accomplish with Omniture’s Data Sources functionality.  This is also not the only way you can upload returns data, but this is what I have found to work well. You can also upload cost of goods sold and any other data that you can link to the Transaction ID that you set on your site.

If you have any specific questions about this example or any other possibilities of data sources, please feel free to shoot me an email at jason [at] jasonegan.net, or you can follow me on Twitter and hit me up there for some info, http://www.twitter.com/jasonegan.

Apple Fail Whale

Looks like Apple has taken a page from Twitter’s playbook regarding the 2.0 update for the iPod Touch:

Twitter in case you didn’t know: