Internet Marketing Consultant Blog » Web Analytics

Summit Topic #1: Visitor Scoring in SiteCatalyst

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:32:34 +0000

Whew! Omniture Summit 2010 has come and gone, but hopefully you’re still deriving real value from some of the thoughts, tactics, and strategies that were discussed, both formally and informally, at the conference. As promised, I will be blogging about each of the three advanced SiteCatalyst solutions that my team and I covered in our breakout session. (It’s also worth noting that, while we discussed SiteCatalyst specifically in my session, these ideas become even more powerful when coupled with an advanced segmentation tool, such as Discover or ASI, or when used in the context of Test & Target.) Let’s get started with the first topic from our session.

Visitor Scoring—an overview

You probably have a number key activities on your site that constitute a highly engaged visitor. These are things that you want users to do, because they either constitute direct success (i.e., conversion), indicate the building of loyalty (e.g., social elements such as “Write a Review”), or suggest that the user is truly interacting with your site (e.g., internal searches, viewing photos, etc.). Visitor scoring in SiteCatalyst allows you to assign numerical “scores” to each of these key activities, and then aggregate these scores as visitors move through these different site elements.

The idea is that you can begin to see how varying visitor (and visit) scores affect conversion and customer loyalty. For example, you may notice that users with a score of 30 or higher spend twice as much money on each order when compared to users with score less than 30. You can also drill down to see which site elements are preferred by highly engaged visitors so that you can focus your efforts on those areas. Additionally, the solution allows you to see which visitor acquisition channels generate the highest levels of interaction with key site elements, and which campaigns are the stickiest in terms of leading users to these aspects of your site.

To do this, you will need three things:

A scoring system that assigns values to each of your top 5-10 key engagement points.
One “counter eVar,” which will be explained below.
One custom event, set to “numeric” as its type.

The Scoring System

This is the most complex aspect of the Visitor Scoring solution because you will need to lay out a relative points system for the 5-10 top site elements that you want users to engage. Some users may have access to advanced systems for scientifically assigning relative value to different site activities, but in the absence of such a system here is how we recommend doing this:

Identify the top several key “things” that you want users to do on your site (including, but not necessarily limited to, conversion). As described above, these should be activities that show engagement; the idea is to gauge how active a visitor’s experience is.
Isolate either the activity that you consider most valuable or the activity that you consider least valuable on your list.
Assign that value an arbitrary score, such as “5.” (This can be anything, and can be adjusted later.)
Assign other scores relative to that first score. For example, if we believe that “internal search” is our important, but is our least “valuable” activity of those on our list, we might give it a value of 4. Let’s say that subscribing to a newsletter is significantly more valuable; we might give it a value of 8. Reading a review may be even less valuable in our minds than performing a search; we’ll give it a value of 3.

This chart shows an example of how this system might be laid out:

This will be entirely unique to your business and, at the beginning, may involve a bit of educated estimation. Fortunately, as you work more closely with these reports, you’ll be able to see where scores are being inflated (or deflated) by user activities that have been overvalued or undervalued, and you can adjust your scoring appropriately.

The Counter eVar

A staple of almost any SiteCatalyst implementation is the “eVar” variable, which allows you to set a value (e.g., an internal search keyword) and persist it for a customizable period of time so that you can tie subsequent success metrics back to the values. (In the convenient “internal search keyword” example, an eVar allows you to view the amount of revenue, number of leads, etc. that occurred after the given keyword was searched.) These eVar variables accept text strings by default, but also have a nifty option for accepting numbers. Adam Greco defined counter eVars in outstanding detail in a previous blog post, which contains information on enabling counter eVars as well as a number of use cases.

In the case of Visitor Scoring, we’re going to take advantage of eVars’ persistence by setting the number of points for the key activities that were defined in the previous step into the eVar each time the activity occurs. For example, based on the chart above, we would set a value of “+3″ into the counter eVar immediately after the user rates a product, “+5″ every time the user e-mails an item to a friend, and so forth. Implementation-wise, using eVar1 as an example, it looks like this:

// after an internal search s.eVar1="+4"

// after writing a review s.eVar1="+5"

(Not that this has anything to do with Visitor Scoring, but it’s worth mentioning here—because we forgot to do it in one of our two chances to present this topic—that you CAN pass negative numbers into counter eVars to subtract from the overall visitor value.)

As the user moves through an experience on your site, interacting with the various key elements that you have defined, he/she will accrue points. If the user converts, you’ll be able to see their “score” at the time of conversion. If they don’t convert, you’ll be able to see that, too.

Pretty confusing, right? We can see that scores of 16-17 appears to be the “sweet spot,” but it’s hard to really understand what we’re looking at here. Fortunately, you can use SAINT to “group” visitor scores, and note that SAINT is flexible and allows you to rearrange/reallocate scores into different buckets depending on your changing needs and observations. After doing this, the report is much more digestible and actionable:

Now we’ve got something we can use. This makes it much easier to see how different engagement levels affect conversion. Again, how you divide up the different scores into groups is completely up to you, and you’ll probably want to adjust it as you dig into these reports. Also, note that you can do some really powerful things here with segmentation; using Discover, ASI, or Data Warehouse, you can focus in on the user experience both for users in the “Very High” group and in the “Low” group to see what they’re doing, and optimize your site around those findings.

The Numeric Event

The final piece of our Visitor Scoring system involves a numeric (a.k.a. “incrementor”) event, which you can enable using the Admin Console. (Mr. Greco documented numeric events as well in a previous post.) This might be my favorite part of the solution.

In addition to setting a counter eVar whenever a user does something that we’re scoring, this method also sets the value in an event so that you can view the score as a metric in various reports. This does involve using the s.products string, but don’t worry; we’re not going to mess with any actual product data. The implementation would look something like this (expanding on the examples given above and using event2 as our numeric event):

// after an internal search s.eVar1="+4" s.events="event2" s.products=";;;;event2=4"

// after writing a review s.eVar1="+5" s.events="event2" s.products=";;;;event2=5"

(Make sure to note that “event2″ exists both in s.events and in s.products in this case, and that there are exactly four semi-colons in s.products before event2 gets set.)

The great thing about this is that it allows you to see how various data dimensions affect engagement with key site elements. You’ll probably want to set up a calculated metric to divide this “score” metric by visits, because the raw score may be higher for different data dimensions simply due to varying levels of traffic; for example, when viewing this metric in the Campaigns report, a campaign that has 10,000 click-throughs will likely have a higher visitor score than a campaign that has 10 click-throughs simply because the overall traffic level is higher. When we view various marketing channels through the lens of this calculated metric, we immediately get a great report:

Social media sites, natural search, and partners are the clear winners in terms of bringing interested, engaged visitors to our site. Looks like we know where to focus our efforts—especially if we already know (from our experience with our counter eVar) how much more conversion a high-score visitor is likely to generate on our site. This gets even better when we focus on individual items within our top channels, breaking down this report by referring domain:

Not only do we know that social media brings eager visitors to our site, but we even know exactly which social media efforts/campaigns were most powerful (in this case, Fark.com, Delicious, LinkedIn, and Facebook).

Conclusion—and two bonus tips!

We didn’t mention this during the Advanced SiteCatalyst session at Summit, so be glad you read down this far. A really useful twist on this solution if you have two available eVars for use with visitor scoring is to configure one of them to expire at the end of the visit and another to a much longer expiration (such as “never”). The first eVar then gives a uniform view of individual visits, and how varying levels of interaction with key site elements affects conversion within the individual visit only. The second eVar would provide a view of “lifetime engagement” across multiple visits since the user last cleared his/her cookies. You can slice and dice both data sets to get some powerful views into how user behaviors may change over time.

Along these same lines, it’s possible that different teams or individuals may want to assign different scores to certain site activities. Don’t fight about it! Don’t let this scoring system destroy the harmony in your marketing department. Instead, similar to the tip just mentioned, if you’ve got an extra eVar, you can actually assign different scores to the same key site activities. Here’s a quick example using s.eVar1 and s.eVar2:

// this one is for the first team s.eVar1="+5" // this one is for the second team s.eVar2="+30"

So there you have it. One tactic down, two to go. Next time, we’ll cover perhaps the most popular of the topics that we covered—the brand-new getPercentPageViewed plug-in. If you have any questions about Visitor Scoring, either based on this blog post or on the content we shared at Omniture Summit, please let me know by leaving a comment here. You can also contact me via Twitter (@OmnitureCare).

Welcome to the Idea Exchange!

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:32:32 +0000

We love ideas. Always have. I spend most of my waking hours talking to Omniture users on Twitter, the Yahoo! Forum, blogs, etc., and many of these conversations center on ideas—how best to use our products, how to solve perplexing problems, and how to improve the Omniture Suite.

Because we love ideas—and because we especially love to use ideas—we recently launched the Idea Exchange, where any Omniture Suite user can log in and tell us exactly what ideas they have for any of our products. Then other users can “promote” the ideas that they feel would help them do their jobs most effectively, giving us a great sense of which features are most critical for our users.

(Speaking of critical ideas, enjoy this clip and just know that our building will not be demolished as we’re reviewing the ideas that you send us.)

In all seriousness, it’s a mutually beneficial situation. You have a quick and effective way of letting us know how we can improve your online business optimization efforts, and we have plenty of ideas and feedback that we can implement to make that happen. Our job then becomes to monitor your ideas, interact with you to understand the underlying business questions and your suggestions, and figure out how to get them to you. Various members of our organization spend a lot of time out there; one of the neatest things about last week’s Omniture Summit was hearing Brett Error (Vice President and General Manager, Products and Technology) speak with intimate knowledge about many of the ideas that have been submitted already. So, yeah. We’re listening intently.

You want more eVars? Submit an idea and watch others promote it. (Actually, that one has already been submitted, so you’d be best served by promoting the existing entry.)

Need rule-based SAINT classifications? Describe how you want it to work and follow the implementation process.

Want an entirely new product that does something cool? Yep, you guessed it; Idea Exchange FTW.

You can also use the Idea Exchange to get to know other users in the Omniture community. Everyone has a profile and can add information about himself or herself, upload an avatar, post contact info on several major instant messenger platforms, and more. It’s a great place to get to know how others are using Omniture tools, and it’s also a great place just to get to know others. You can even interface directly with various Omniture folks including developers, Product Managers, and more. You’ll definitely see me around. I’m one of the folks who makes sure things are running smoothly out there.

To begin using the Idea Exchange, just log in to the Omniture Suite as you normally would. Then go to Help > Idea Exchange. You will be prompted to choose a username. Once you have chosen a username, it will be paired up with your SiteCatalyst login info, and you can access the Idea Exchange thereafter either via the Help menu, or directly by logging in to ideas.omniture.com.

So have at it! We need your best ideas, and we need them now. And if you have any questions, please let me know. You can follow me on Twitter at @OmnitureCare, or just send me a message on the Idea Exchange. See you there!

Dynamic Ad Targeting & Optimization Using Omniture Test&Target

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:32:22 +0000

This morning, Omniture announced new solutions in Display Advertising to help advertisers increase their return on ad spend. The press release may be found here: Omniture Announces Display Advertising Solutions for Increased Return on Ad Spend

Today, I’d like to add color to a particularly exciting part of the release titled “Dynamic Ad Targeting & Optimization Using Omniture Test&Target“. This capability marks significant progress towards our ability to increase ad relevancy by providing a capability that matches a visitor that belongs to an advertiser segment (identified using Site Catalyst, Discover or Test&Target) with a dynamic ad (via Test&Target). The ad is dynamically assembled and may contain messaging relevant to the segment.

During the limited release phase for the solution, we have seen a significant increase in ad click through rates (CTR). Given that ad impressions may only be shown to visitors that fall in segments that have proven ROI for return conversions, advertisers reduce impression waste and increase conversion rates, increasing their return on ad spend. This is extremely exciting.

As the Product Manager for the solution, I wanted to outline two major capabilities as we push to bring this solution into the hands of some of the largest advertisers in the world.

Display Testing for Acqusition Campaigns: For Advertisers that are interested in optimizing their acquisition campaigns, Test&Target provides AB and Multivariate testing for elements within the ad. Agencies can purchase media through their current processes. Ad creative would be produced using a Test&Target ad template and would be trafficked across the media plan. Typically, the ad would be served by the agency ad server.

Display Targeting for Remarketing Campaigns: For Advertisers that are interested in optimizing their remarketing campaigns, Test&Target provides the capability to target visitor segments to ads. The creative may be generated dynamically for the relevant segment. For example if you had a visitor segment that was in market for travel between any origin and destination city, they could be shown a dynamic ad containing the origin and destination city. As prior, the ad creative would be produced using a Test&Target ad template and would be trafficked across the media plan and the ad would be served by the agency ad server.

Last but certainly not least, the vision is not limited to increasing the CTR on the ad. The solution includes connecting the messaging in the ad to the messaging on the landing page (via a unified Test&Target Experience) and through the funnel, i.e. the “long ad” to enable our advertisers to increase their conversion rates through reinforced messaging. Advertisers can view reports from “click to close” that allows advertisers to evaluate their ad spend against the metric they really care about, i.e. against conversions or revenue.

For those attending Omniture Summit 2010 , you can learn more at the keynote this morning. I would also suggest you attend a couple of breakout sessions. The first is Optimizing Display Advertising Campaigns The second session is How Data and Analytics Are Shifting the Display Advertising Landscape. Hope to see you there!

I’ll be using this blog to keep you posted on our developments in this space. I’d also love to hear about your thoughts so feel free to comment here or email me directly at schaudha at adobe.com.

Mobile Video, App Targeting, and Flash 10.1, Oh My!

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:32:12 +0000

At the mobile event of the year, Omniture and Adobe announced several advancements in mobile publishing and content optimization including measurement and analytics for mobile video, testing & targeting capabilities for mobile applications, and beta for Flash Player 10.1 (general availability expected in the first half of 2010). These announcements mark significant progress toward rich, measurable mobile experiences.

The press releases may be found here:
Omniture Announces Mobile Video Measurement Capability
Omniture Extends Real-Time Personalization and Optimization to iPhone Applications
Adobe Unveils AIR on Mobile Devices; Readies Flash Player 10.1 for Launch

Here’s a peek at a ESPN flash video running on a mobile device:

Omniture Summit 2010:
If you’re attending Omniture Summit 2010, be sure to come to the session I’ll be doing on mobile apps. I’ll be covering the announcements above, Dan Mason from ESPN Mobile will be sharing practical advice on optimizing mobile applications, and we’ll be providing a ton of resources for measuring, analyzing and optimizing mobile app experiences to drive value for your business. The session is part of the analytics track and starts tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. (3/3/2010).

Insight at Summit 2010 [Analysis with Insight]

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:31:51 +0000

(Cross-posted on the Omniture Summit 2010 Blog)

There’s an abundance of opportunity for an online marketer at Omniture Summit, and you certainly have to carefully choose what you’ll do to maximize your time at Summit.

I’m hoping that everyone at Summit will make some time to explore what Omniture Insight might be able to offer their business analysis and optimization efforts, or to learn more about how to further use and optimize your Insight configuration. Here’s a short list of Insight-specific events and opportunities at Summit next week.

Print it, bring it, and join us:

Tuesday, March 2

All day – Insight Analyst Training (Omniture University; Little America)

10:30-11:30 – Insight Customers Only
Omniture Insight: Performance Tuning Your Dataset (Belvedere Room 3rd floor, Grand America)

3:30 to 4:30 – Insight Customers Only
Integrating Offline Data with Clickstream to Enhance Customer Analysis and Optimization [Dollar Thrifty Case Study] (Belvedere Room 3rd floor, Grand America)

Wednesday, March 3

1:30-2:30 – Breakout Session: Transforming from Web Analytics to Online Marketing [Dollar Thrifty] (Ballroom A)

4:00-5:00 – Breakout Session: Integrating Offline Customer Data to Enhance Online Marketing Campaigns [Travelocity] (Wyoming)

All Day – Business Optimization Zone: Omniture Insight Consultants available

All Day – Insight Demo Booth: breakfast, morning break, evening partner reception

Thursday, March 4

11:00-12:00 – Breakout Session: Retargeting Strategies Based on Multichannel Customer Profiles [Citigroup] (Envoy)

1:15-2:15 – Breakout Session: How Microsoft Optimizes Online Advertising on Bing Using Omniture Insight [MSN/Bing] (Arizona)

2:30-3:30 – Breakout Session: Using Multichannel Analytics to Optimize Ad Spend to Click to Revenue [Experian] (Envoy)

All Day – Business Optimization Zone: Omniture Insight Consultants available

All Day – Insight Demo Booth: breakfast, morning break

Have a question about anything related to Omniture Insight? Do you have any tips or best practices related to Omniture Insight you want to share? If so, please leave a comment here or send me an e-mail at mhalbrook [at] omniture [dot] com and I will do my best to answer it here on the blog so everyone can learn. (If you prefer, I won’t use your name or company name.) You can also follow me on Twitter @MichaelHalbrook.

Learn more about Omniture Consulting

Learn more about Omniture University

The Secret Revealed – New Solution Give Away (Advanced Solutions)

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:31:44 +0000

I mention on twitter, I have an exciting announcement.

For the first time in Engineering Services history we are going to give away a new solution for a three week trial during my Summit 2010 break out session. During my break out session you will learn about the solution and how it will help your company.

If you are wondering why we never did this before the answer is fairly simple. All solutions that we build are custom solutions. So even though this is a complimentary trial you will need to work in an Engineering Services Consultant to set up the solution for your unique environment.

In addition to the complimentary trials we will be giving away a six month version of the solution. All you need to do is place your business card in a bucket when you walk into the session. I believe in full disclosure so I will tell you we will probably send you an email every once in a while (I would be surprised if you got more than 2 a year). However, we don’t want you to think we are doing the giveaway to buy your email address. We really want you to experience how a custom solution can help your business. So if you don’t want us to email you about how Engineering Services can help you and your business then simply put NO on the back of your business card.

Important Notes:

We only have 100 complimentary trials to give away during summit and there are over 2,000 summit attendees. So please don’t take one unless you will invest a little time to work with us to get the solution up and running and take the time to look at the reports and give us feedback on the value of the solution.
Each instance of the solution takes significant time to setup. Please be patient as it will take us a few days to set each company up.
If you really want a complimentary trial and we run out, then give us your email and we will put you on a waiting list.

As always, post your comments or email me at PearceA (at) adobe.com. It is your comments and emails that keep me posting and give me ideas for future posts.

You can read about my Summit 2010 breakout session here: http://summitblogs.omniture.com/218/

New In AdWords: Search Funnels

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:31:42 +0000

Yesterday, AdWords announced the launch of Search Funnels, a new set of reports available only in AdWords that describe the Google search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion. They are rolling out over the next few weeks and work if you are using AdWords Conversion Tracking or importing your Google Analytics goals into AdWords.

What are Search Funnels?

Currently, conversions in AdWords are attributed to the last ad clicked before the conversion happened. However, it’s likely that customers perform multiple searches prior to finally converting.

These reports provide data on how “upper-funnel” keywords behave on the conversion path prior to the last ad click. These funnels are not to be confused with funnels in Google Analytics, which are on-site funnels. These are the paths users take when seeing and clicking on your ads after doing a search on google.com, on the way to converting. They look back 30 days prior to the conversion.

In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consists of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last ClickAnalysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. Take a look at this video giving an overview of the new reports, and at the AdWords blog post to learn more.

How is this useful?
Search Funnels data gives you more data to help you gauge the true value of your keyword and ads in AdWords. By showing whether an ad was shown prior to a conversion and whether it was clicked or not, they help you analyze assist relationships. For instance, find out whether generic keywords actually contributed to conversions occurring from a branded keyword search, and vice versa. You’re no longer limited to a last-click perspective in AdWords.

Take a look at the AdWords help center for a complete description of the new reports and metrics. These reports are currently in beta, and again, they’ll be available in your AdWords account over the next few weeks. Bravo AdWords!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Web Analytics TV #7 with Avinash and Nick

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:31:32 +0000

This is the 7th edition of Web Analytics TV with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski! In this series you ask questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them!

Here is the list of last week’s questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

● Test your tracking implementation without waiting for the data to appear in reports.

● How GZip compression works for the tracking code.

● Retrieving the value for visitor level customer variables.

● Adding annotations via the API.

● Why do searches from Google Image Search appear as referrals in Google Analytics?

● Why do I see self-referrers to my site (my site referring to itself)?

● How to detect new search engines in Google Analytics?

● Fixing site overlay to not distinguish two links pointing to the same page.

● How to exclude internal users now that _setVar is deprecated.

● Why does (not set) appear as page titles in reports?

● What is the best way to begin with web analytics? How do you focus?

● Why do longer date ranges return different results?

● How can you use the Motion Chart bar graph?

● Best practises for setting up conversion goals for e-commerce sites.

Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:

● Validating and Troubleshooting your Google Analytics tracking code.

● Speed up your site, get better data, use asynchronous tracking.

● Use _getVisitorCustomVar() to retieve previously set visitor level custom variables.

● The open feature request to add annotations via our API; please vote and add use cases.

● Override the page referral using _setReferrerOverride().

● One possible solution to tracking Google Image Search.

● Use _addOrganic() to detect new search engines to in Google Analytics.

● Need help with Google Analytics? Have tough questions? Check out these 4 wonderful resources for help:

○ Hire a Google Analytics Authorized Consultants

○ Google Analytics Help Center

○ Google Analytics Code Site for developers

○ Google Analytics General Help Forum

● How sampling works in Google Analytics.

● Rock out with the Motion Charts Anthem (super cool!).

Special Notice: We also have a Custom Variables Webinar coming up on Wednesday, March 24th at 10:00 am PT. Space is limited, sign up before it’s too late!

If you found this post helpful, we’d love to hear your comments. If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

SES New York Is Next Week!

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:31:26 +0000

The Search Engine Strategies conference is next week in New York, and googlers from search, AdWords, AdSense, YouTube, Google Analytics and Website Optimizer will be there in force. We’ll have a large booth where we’ll be demoing the coolest new features from any and all of our products. Come by and say hello, and also be sure to attend some of the Google sessions.

Of special note, 4:45pm on Tuesday where Sissie Hsiao, a senior product manager on Google Analytics and AdWords, will be launching something really cool at the “Getting the Most Out of AdWords Features & Tools” session. We can’t say any more, but we think you’ll like it. I’ll also be talking at the same time at the “Deep Dive Into Analytics: When Bounce Rate No Longer Floats Your Boat”. Choose one of them and you can’t miss.

Also – a must-see is the keynote on Day 2, given by our very own Avinash Kaushik. Here’s the blurb about his keynote:

Be Awesome: Ideas for Approaching Search Analytics Differently
Click through rates, page rank, conversions, page views are all sweet. Yet they rarely scratch the surface of the true opportunity of search and subsequently quantifying the true impact of this massively data driven ecosystem. In his keynote Avinash will share specific ideas you can execute to find the audiences you crave online and use data to ensure that you are getting highest possible ROI. Keyword trees, yes. Attribution analysis, sure. Monetizing the long tail, got that. Micro conversions, yep. Bring an open mind.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

GRR — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:31:25 +0000

As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

Posted by Amy Chang, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics