Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Make love? Direct Traffic? Really? I am not kidding. Direct traffic contains visitors that proactively seek you out, everyone else you have to "beg" to show up on your site! Yet this question seems to bedevil a lot of people: What the heck is Direct Traffic? As if that was not sad enough, even people who do know what the definition of Direct traffic is rarely focus on it or work hard to tease out the opportunity that exists in Direct traffic.

Analytics 122

Analytics Metrics Data-driven Reporting 122

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Try this. Ask a famous blogger, a published author, a random twitterer or your mom how to succeed in web analytics, or how not to be a Reporting Squirrel. The answer will invariably be: Before you provide the data, ask the requestor what is the business question they are trying to answer. Then fulfill that need. It is a good answer. Most of the time they, Marketers /bosses /HiPPO's, ask and we puke data out.

Reporting 119

Reporting Metrics Sales Strategy 119

Occam's Razor

DECEMBER 20, 2010

The last blog post shared custom analytics reports that you can use to find amazing insights faster, enabling you to create a focused, truly data driven organization. In this blog post I want to continue the let's help make your day-to-day life better path. I'll share three advanced segments that I personally find to be of value in the process of moving from data to actionable insights.

Analytics 118

Analytics Reporting Measurement Data-driven 118

Occam's Razor

MARCH 8, 2010

Data, data everywhere yet nary an insight in sight. Is that your web analytics existence? Don't feel too bad, you share that plight with most citizens of the Web Analytics universe. The problem? The absolutely astonishing ease with which you can get access to data! Not to mention the near limitless potential of that data to be added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided to satiate every weird need in the world.

Metrics 117

Metrics Testing Key Performance Indicator KPI 117

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Visualization

Occam's Razor

MAY 4, 2010

The hardest kind of "analysis" to provide is in response to open ended questions. That is why I love asking open ended questions! They expose a person's critical thinking ability (something I highly recommend you test when you hire web analysts: Interviewing Tip: Stress Test Critical Thinking. Please ). They also help you understand if someone really grasps key concepts.

Testing 112

Testing Advertising Marketing Measurement 112

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 6, 2010

The new year is such a wonderful time. Wonderful smells in the air. The world is full of hope. Unachievable things seem achievable and are being polished into shiny resolutions. World peace seems within grasp. As we spring to action full of passion I wanted to share with you all a short list of things that will expand your little world of online marketing & web analytics.

Analytics 99

Analytics IT Statistics Metrics 99

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 20, 2010

How do you measure success of a online webinar? I recently did a webinar for the Search Engine Strategies conference (I am doing the opening conference keynote at SES London and SES New York ) and my Market Motive co-faculty member Greg Jarboe sent me this KPI via email: "Your webcast was a big success. Your KPI questions per attendee was off the chart!

Metrics 90

Metrics B2B Analytics Measurement 90

Occam's Razor

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

The goal of my recent post on the Yahoo! Web Analytics blog was to pull us up 10,000 feet to do something we do less than 1% of the time in the web analytics world – look at the bigger business picture. It was called: Secret To Winning With Web Analytics? Starting Right! While that was a very strategic post, it got me thinking at a tactical level.

Reporting 139

Reporting Metrics Strategy Measurement 139

Occam's Razor

DECEMBER 6, 2010

In a world where we are overwhelmed with data and metrics and key performance indicators and reports and dashboards and. sometimes all it takes to make some sense of all this "mess" is someone stepping up to share a tiny slice of wisdom from their experience. That's my plan for this blog post. To share with you three custom reports that I find to be super valuable when I am doing web data analysis.

Reporting 125

Reporting Analytics Metrics Cost-Benefit 125

Occam's Razor

APRIL 19, 2010

It is surprising how often these "simple" things come up. "What is the difference between a metric and a key performance indicator (KPI)?" "What is a dimension in analytics?" "What is segmentation?" "Are goals metrics?" And many more. There seems to be genuine confusion about the simplest, most foundational, parts of web metrics / analytics.

Metrics 138

Metrics Key Performance Indicator KPI Business Objectives 138

Speaker: Scott Sehlhorst

We know we want to create products which our customers find to be valuable. Whether we label it as customer-centric or product-led depends on how long we've been doing product management. There are three challenges we face when doing this. The obvious challenge is figuring out what our users need; the non-obvious challenges are in creating a shared understanding of those needs and in sensing if what we're doing is meeting those needs.

Management

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Arthur C. Clarke said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That quote comes to mind when I think of a new feature in Google Analytics that carries the unassuming name of Weighted Sort. It is an advanced implementation of technology (mathematical algorithms in this case) and when used it very much feels like magic!

Analytics 109

Analytics Metrics Reporting ROI 109

Occam's Razor

JUNE 15, 2010

Most of the time spent by Marketers & Analysts tends to be spend looking for "known knowns" Things we know and expect to see in the data, we look to see if they are there. " Oh look Google is still our Number 1 referrer and we are selling lots of product x as we always do. Yea! " Some of our time is spent reacting to the "known unknowns" Looking for things we know might be happening but don't know when they happen. " I would like to know when conversio

Analytics 105

Analytics Metrics Measurement Marketing 105

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 23, 2010

Every believer in Web Analytics 2.0 knows that awesomeness comes not from answering just the "What" question but from also answering the "Why" question. What comes from Google Analytics, Adobe Site Catalyst, WebTrends, CoreInsight / NetMetrics and more. Why comes from lab usability studies , website surveys , "follow me home" exercises, experimentation & testing , and other such delightful endeavors.

Analytics 116

Analytics Cost-Benefit Testing Optimization 116

Occam's Razor

APRIL 5, 2010

Some Marketers / Analysts use Click-thru Rate (CTR) to measure success of their acquisition campaigns. Nothing much to write home about, but certainly better than executing faith based initiatives. A smaller percent of those Marketers / Web Analysts will move beyond clicks and measure Visits / Visitors and Bounce Rates to measure success. Lovely, warm hugs and smiles for them.

Analytics 135

Analytics Marketing Measurement Metrics 135

Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science

Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.

Experimentation

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Competitive intelligence, the "what else", is one of the core tenets of Web Analytics 2.0. The reason is simple: The ecosystem within which you function on the web contains mind blowing data you can use to become better. Your traffic grew by 6% last year, what was your competitor's growth rate? 15%. Feel better? : ) When should you start doing paid search advertising for tours to Italy for 2011?

Metrics 123

Metrics Advertising Reporting Software 123

Occam's Razor

MAY 18, 2010

My love for segmentation as the primary (only?) way of identify actionable insights is on display in pretty much every single blog post I write. I have said: All data in aggregate is "crap" Because it is. One of my earliest blog posts extolled the glorious virtues of segmentation: Excellent Analytics Tip#2: Segment Absolutely Everything. Many paid web analytics clickstream analytics tools, even today (!

Analytics 123

Analytics Key Performance Indicator Metrics Measurement 123

Occam's Razor

JULY 26, 2010

We lovingly craft reports every day. We try to make sense of what they are saying. When we hear nothing we try to bludgeon them, hoping for the best. My hope in this post is to share some simple tips with you that might make your reports and analysis speak to you a bit more. Suggestions that might increase the probability that you'll bump into things that might be insightful, and communicate data more effectively.

Metrics 96

Metrics Measurement Dashboards Reporting 96

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 9, 2010

The hardest nut to crack in any type of analytics is getting our decision makers (bosses, leaders, marketers) to take action based on data. The hard nut is not that we all are doing basic reporting about Visits and Bounces. Ok doing just that is lame. But still that's not all of it. It might shock you that the hard nut is not even that we, the people who "play" with data, the Analysis Ninjas if you will, are not leveraging custom reports and advanced segmentation and activity aler

Analytics 85

Analytics Dashboards Data-driven Metrics 85

Speaker: Kevin Kai Wong, President of Emergent Energy Solutions

In today's industrial landscape, the pursuit of sustainable energy optimization and decarbonization has become paramount. Manufacturing corporations across the U.S. are facing the urgent need to align with decarbonization goals while enhancing efficiency and productivity. Unfortunately, the lack of comprehensive energy data poses a significant challenge for manufacturing managers striving to meet their targets.

Manufacturing

Occam's Razor

JUNE 1, 2010

The world of the intertubes should be a lot more data driven and awe-sexy than it really is. Yet for all our collective efforts at writing and tweeting and kvetching online marketing is still based mostly on faith. Not data. Surprising at so many levels right? Last week I had the privilege of being invited to deliver the keynote at the annual CMA President's Dinner.

Marketing 92

Marketing Measurement Advertising Metrics 92

Occam's Razor

MARCH 23, 2010

There are more mistruths and F U D about Web analytics out there than I think is reasonable. Part of it fueled by Vendors. What a competitive bunch! Part of it fueled by some Consultants. I suppose the rational is: self preservation before all else. Part of it is fueled by a vocal minority genuinely upset that 10 years on we are still not a statistically powered bunch doing complicated analysis that is shifting paradigms.

Analytics 118

Analytics Consulting Metrics Experimentation 118

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Here is a key difference between Reporting Squirrels and Analysis Ninjas: The latter almost exclusively leverage custom reports (powered by advanced segmentation) and the former flirt with one standard report and then another and then other and in the best case scenario pull only half of their hair out. There is nothing particularly wrong with the standard 19,000 reports in your web analytics tool.

Reporting 98

Reporting Metrics Measurement Analytics 98

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 19, 2010

What is the first thing you want when you think about web analytics? Tools! Of course tools. What to do, where to start, what's cool. 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 spectrum.

Analytics 135

Analytics Testing Measurement Optimization 135

Speaker: Aarushi Kansal, AI Leader & Author and Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO at Aggregage

Software leaders who are building applications based on Large Language Models (LLMs) often find it a challenge to achieve reliability. It’s no surprise given the non-deterministic nature of LLMs. To effectively create reliable LLM-based (often with RAG) applications, extensive testing and evaluation processes are crucial. This often ends up involving meticulous adjustments to prompts.

Testing

Occam's Razor

JUNE 28, 2010

We have more web metrics and data than there are stars in the universe (slight exaggeration!). Yet we stink at informing decisions. Our reports are ignored. Sites & online marketing continue to suck. A large part of the reason is that a large part of our job seems to consist of glorified data puking, hoping someone will be impressed. After all there is so much data in those reports!!

Metrics 111

Metrics Key Performance Indicator Data-driven Marketing 111