Occam's Razor

MAY 19, 2014

Our leaders (companies, agencies, teams) have to deal with an incredibly complex landscape, and they don't have enough time. The problem is that it does not provide any incentive to the marketing team to ensure the rest of the experience for the user is great. There is unlimited amount of data thrown off our digital existences. (Or

Metrics 159

Metrics Key Performance Indicator Analytics Marketing 159

Occam's Razor

APRIL 29, 2013

You end up paying substantial amounts of money to your analytics/big data vendor – for questionable value. Focus on incredible behavior metrics like Pages/Visit, focus on the Visitor Flow report, obsess about Checkout Abandonment Rate, make love to Average Order Size. Focus on that, and you'll get big 5. Page views.

Marketing 166

Marketing Metrics Advertising Measurement 166

Occam's Razor

MAY 14, 2012

A lot of digital analytics focuses on direct response (conversions, leads, etc.). But there is an additional valuable, and sexy, focus of our marketing we don't give enough analytical love: Branding! Bonus One: Read: Brand Measurement: Analytics & Metrics for Branding Campaigns ]. This is a lot more interesting.

Measurement 128

Measurement Analytics Advertising Marketing 128

Occam's Razor

APRIL 4, 2016

Here's something important I've observed in my experience in working with data, and changing organizations with ideas: Great Analysts are always skeptical. But, it has become mission critical over the last few years as the depth, breadth, quantity and every other dimension you could apply to data has simply exploded.

Marketing 93

Marketing Strategy Analytics Reporting 93

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

To win in business you need to follow this process: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act. We are far too enamored with data collection and reporting the standard metrics we love because others love them because someone else said they were nice so many years ago. Online, offline or nonline. But it is not routine.

Metrics 156

Metrics KPI Analytics Key Performance Indicator 156

Occam's Razor

MARCH 19, 2018

For our lessons today, I’m using an example that comes from analysis delivered by the collective efforts of a top American university, a top 5 global consulting company, and a major industry association. In an 11-year span, each data point is a lot less important than the trend. You can see it is up broadly over eleven years.

Visualization 130

Visualization B2B Dashboards Marketing 130

Occam's Razor

APRIL 2, 2012

A wise person said: "To guarantee success, spend 95% of your time defining the problem and 5% of the time solving it." It's 5 new accounts activated offline for every 1 activated online ! Two helpful blog posts on multi-channel analytics: 1. Attribution is driven by experiments. In case you were curious.

Modeling 152

Modeling Advertising Marketing Measurement 152

Occam's Razor

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

" In honor of that spirit, I'll take a step away from our mutual obsession with marketing and analytics and share with you the philosophies and values that guide me when I go to work every day. A majority of these people, in my experience, are entrepreneurs. It makes me incredibly happy. " -Will Rogers.

Finance 166

Finance Marketing Strategy IT 166

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 12, 2013

There are few things more complicated in analytics (all analytics, big data and huge data!) So, let's apply Occam's Razor to this complicated challenge. Here's the outline of our incredible multi-channel attribution modeling adventure: ~ Three Unique Attribution Challenges. ~ From a Venn -diagram.

Modeling 161

Modeling Optimization Marketing Interactive 161

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 28, 2017

Bonus: Remember, you can measure profit everyday in Google Analytics! ]. An incredibly complex story, with implications up and down the organization, with smarter tactical and strategic choices, and a long-term hard problem to solve, all wrapped into one simple slide. Hey, costs are lower this year! winning #not. Bounce Rate.

Key Performance Indicator 106

Key Performance Indicator Metrics Measurement Advertising 106

Occam's Razor

APRIL 21, 2014

about digital marketing and analytics. For some answers, What is Avinash's typical day like? We will cover questions in four areas: business/strategy challenges, analytics/technical challenges, career/self-development questions and rampant speculation. Six years go by. Hour-by-hour report please. :)? ,

Marketing Analytics 131

Marketing Analytics Marketing Analytics Measurement 131

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 28, 2013

We are surrounded by incredible digital experiences. Yet, it would be fair to say we are also drowning in awful digital experiences – or, at the very minimum, experiences that seem to be stuck in 1991. In this blog post I want to try and do something similar by sharing some of my favorite digital experiences with you.

Marketing 164

Marketing Insurance Visualization IT 164

Occam's Razor

APRIL 15, 2019

The average length of our video ads is 30 seconds, less than 10% of the audiences watches beyond 5 seconds and 90% is exposed to less than 1 second. Companies have also evolved to be significantly more complex beings, who have to do so much more than what they did 50 years ago. Negative data. Accurately collected. To provide context.

Measurement 79

Measurement Strategy Data Processing Uncertainty 79

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

YouTube Marketing and Analytics Framework for Success. On the other side of the spectrum, the only reason I think so well of Prudential Financial is because of their incredible YouTube content. Some have experimented with virality ( Pepsi Test Drive or Dove Beauty , etc.), YouTube is magnificent. YouTube is amazing.

Marketing 149

Marketing Analytics Advertising Measurement 149

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 7, 2014

Every indicator we have is that companies are investing more in every facet of analytics. There is an analytics ladder of awesomeness each company needs to climb, and it just takes time. 7: 25% of all analytical effort is dedicated to data visualization/enhancing data's communicative power. #6: Consulting.

Data-driven 140

Data-driven Consulting Reporting Marketing 140

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 21, 2013

Following revelations of NSA activities via Mr. Snowden, Google has now switched almost all users to secure search, resulting in even more user search queries showing up as not provided in all web analytics tools. No keyword data in analytics tools. For all 15 years of Google's existence!

Optimization 154

Optimization Reporting Experimentation Metrics 154

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 24, 2012

Facebook has an incredible audience, 950 million strong and counting. To rigorously prove value we could all work together to create purer controlled experiments. It is possible to get good test and control groups (type of population, existing brand awareness, market penetration, competitive structures) for our experiments.

Advertising 165

Advertising ROI Metrics Marketing 165

Occam's Razor

MAY 27, 2015

Who is going to ensure that the company moves away from years and years of legacy demographic and psychographic limited thinking and move to using your programmatic platform to leverage the hundreds of intent signals thrown off by your See-Think-Do-Care audiences? Programmatic platforms are a panacea. The web is dead.

Marketing Analytics 153

Marketing Analytics Marketing Analytics Advertising 153

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 9, 2012

Here's important context (before we get into the rules for revolutionaries)… The Fundamental Web Analytics Problem Is Not Data! A huge part of the last few years for me have been about bringing more data, better strategies, more powerful tools, ever more impactful keynotes to people around the world.

Marketing 140

Marketing B2B Measurement Risk 140

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Half-way through this post, you'll seriously wonder why you've spent so much time obsessing with Adobe/Google Analytics/Chartbeat or other web analytics tool. CIA also formed one of five foundational elements in my best-selling book Web Analytics 2.0. It is incredible to realize that you can spy on your competitors.

Metrics 155

Metrics Reporting IT Advertising 155

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 9, 2016

The outcome of book smart is rarely better for analytics practitioners then folks trying to learn how to fly an airplane from how-to books. This is all the way from Aug 2009: Web Analytics Career Advice: Play In The Real World! Or compressing my experience into custom reports and advanced segments I've shared.

Analytics 109

Analytics Metrics Reporting Strategy 109

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 31, 2017

Ten years, and the 944,357 words, are proof that I love purposeful data, collecting it, pouring smart strategies into analyzing it, and using the insights identified to transform organizations. Universal Truth #5: The only acceptable Animation on a slide is Fade. simplification and 2. pressing the right emotional buttons.

Visualization 148

Visualization IT Strategy Key Performance Indicator 148

Occam's Razor

JUNE 8, 2006

Here is my personal point of view, a check list if you will, on what makes a great Web Insights Analyst (it is important to caveat that this is not me, I only wish I were this good, this is something I aspire to be) : # 10 You have used more than one Web Analytics tool extensively. You don’t have to be limited to what you have at work.

KPI 94

KPI Measurement Statistics Metrics 94

Occam's Razor

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Ok, so perhaps as the author of two bestselling books on analytics I love it a little bit more! There is something magical about taking an incredible amount of complexity and presenting it as simply as we possibly can with the goal of letting the cogently presented insight drive action. Short story #5: Segmented Stacked Square Charts.

Visualization 143

Visualization Slice and Dice Predictive Modeling Metrics 143

Occam's Razor

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

I am absolutely thrilled that my book Web Analytics 2.0 I only had one job, at Intuit, when I wrote my first web analytics book. And there's absolutely nothing quite like hearing your five year old yell in a busy Borders bookstore: "I FOUND DADDY'S BOOK!" Chapter 5 The Key to Glory: Measuring Success.

Analytics 71

Analytics Metrics Measurement Testing 71

Occam's Razor

NOVEMBER 2, 2015

You know that of course because for your business, after five solid years of investment, this has not proven to be true. Is what you are saying so incredible and of value that I'll stamp my brand on it and forward it to everyone I know? Then, you withdraw that amount of money in $5 bills. Big mistake. It is not that hard.

B2B 167

B2B Metrics Testing Recreation/Entertainment 167

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 19, 2010

What is the first thing you want when you think about web analytics? I was reflecting on that recently and thought it was incredible that in all my years of writing this blog I have never written a blog post, not one single one (!!), recommending tools for the complete web analytics 2.0 Web Analytics 2.0.

Analytics 135

Analytics Testing Measurement Optimization 135

Occam's Razor

JULY 12, 2010

In this blog post I want to share four analytics tools that I have been playing with for a while… tools that solve an interesting problem… tools that point to what might be in terms of our near term analytical future… and in almost all cases they don't even know! First Some Context. " Love it!

Analytics 96

Analytics Measurement Metrics KPI 96

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 14, 2014

If you've read my first book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, you know that I've advocated this strategy since 2008! The most straightforward thing to do is to look at the trend for last year, and look for insights. Any big shifts in investment (marketing, customer experience, team sizes, tools). See Page 269. :).

Key Performance Indicator 133

Key Performance Indicator Metrics Reporting Marketing 133

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 30, 2012

It is painfully heartbreaking to realize that a very small tiny number of people who have access to web analytics tools actually use them. Here is a summary of the eight incredible recommendations in this post: #1. In-Page Analytics – Re-imagine Traveling Through Data. #5. I mean really use the tools. Ravage all the features.

Analytics 145

Analytics Dashboards Metrics Key Performance Indicator 145

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

We send out our multi-tab spreadsheets, our best Google Analytics custom reports , our great dashboards full of data , and more to the tactical layer of data clients. You are standing in front of a group of people, and your goal is to communicate your incredible brilliance (specifically the why behind the data, and the so whats ).

Visualization 160

Visualization Key Performance Indicator Slice and Dice Strategy 160

Occam's Razor

JULY 26, 2010

The data is easily available in the web analytics tool so why not. Here's what you are focusing on (and it is good): All my experience in these things suggests that it is dangerous to think that the Conversions column is representative of the final outcome. This rule actually comes from my second book, Web Analytics 2.0.

Metrics 96

Metrics Measurement Dashboards Reporting 96

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 11, 2008

It will soon be a year of working at Google and milestones are always a good time for introspection. This post shares that experience. I went into Google with my own filters and expectations on what the experience would be like and what I would end up doing. 5: Empowerment (The big small company). # 1: The brand. +.

Consulting 139

Consulting Visualization Recreation/Entertainment IT 139

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

Since you're reading a blog on advanced analytics, I'm going to assume that you have been exposed to the magical and amazing awesomeness of experimentation and testing. There are fat books to teach you how to experiment ( or die! ). It truly is the bee's knees. People have become Gurus hawking it. So delicious.

Experimentation 101

Experimentation Testing Optimization Marketing 101