Analytics Avenue

Raise your hand if you are an analyst and you've run into one of these issues before: Data Discrepancies:  Your stakeholder approaches you and says, "I noticed the data in your report doesn't match the data in this other report.  Which one is correct?" No Data:   Your stakeholder asks for some data but after some further research, you realize that product team never implemented the proper tracking.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada. Blocked Access:   Your stakeholder asks for a dashboard that requires integration from multiple data sources.  You go to query the data but realize you don't even have access to one of the databases.   Ad Hoc Request Madness:   Multiple stakeholders ask for data, dashboards, and insights all at the same time.  And they want it yesterday. Groundhog Day Questioning:   Your stakeholders ask the same questions over and over and over again. Below I've laid out some of the Top Analyst Struggles along with the impacts ...

I recently read a post from a founder of a consulting company about customer excellence.  He quoted a business leader who said, "Our clients know they will get all the attention and time from us that they need because we set aside enough time to serve them well." The consulting company founder believed that this concept aligned perfectly with where he wanted to take his own consulting practice.  He went on to ask himself, "How many clients can I serve at once without sacrificing excellence?"  This got me thinking about 'analytics excellence' and how much work a single analyst should take on before the customer service excellence gets sacrificed. During an interview for a company I once worked for, I asked the Director, "How many Google Analytics analysts currently support your organization?"  She responded, "One."  I said, "Just one doing the reporting and analysis?"  She responded, "No, one doing it all.  Gathering KPIs.  ...

Has it really been 12 years since my last blog post??  What happened?  Life & work, I suppose.  Before I start a new chapter on diving back into analytics topics on my freshly titled 'Analytics Avenue' blog, here's a rundown of my work experience and insights from the past 12 years...   Yahoo: Yahoo Web Analytics After 8 years at Yahoo, where the company had battled a hostile takeover attempt (Microsoft), fended off activist investors, tested multiple revenue generating strategies (thanks to five CEOs in 7 years), reimagined search (project Panama), struggled to unload its huge stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan (worth an estimated $30B), and on and on and on....they finally started closing down offices to cut costs.  Unfortunately, our small satellite office in Carlsbad, CA was one of the victims.   Yahoo Web Analytics (the rebranded IndexTools platform), was no more.  It would be packaged up in the search deal with Microsoft and I never h...

Hate to be the bearer of bad news retailers but I can't find your coupons online.  I've run countless coupon related searches (on all of the major search engines) for some of your largest brands such as Staples, Target, McDonalds, Home Depot, and CVS to name a few. To be quite honest, it's a lousy consumer experience. All I see are countless affiliate sites that claim to offer me coupons from the retailer but RARELY deliver.  Sites like Techbargains.com serve up links which you think will provide you with a coupon but all they do is redirect you to the retailer's home page.  I invite you to try it.  Click on one of the green 'Activate Coupon' buttons to access the particular coupon: http://www.techbargains.com/staplescoupons.cfm .  It tells you to 'Please wait while we activate your deal' as it downloads who knows what to your system.  Just when you get excited about being presented with a coupon that you can print out and take into the ret...

There's been a lot of talk/press already around Yahoo's new CEO, Scott Thompson, and his thoughts on big data at Yahoo.  Here are a few examples that have already been written since yesterday: Yahoo's New CEO Has Data Focus Can Yahoo's New CEO Thompson Harness Big Data Analytics? The Key To Yahoo's Long Term Health? Data, Says New CEO Rest assured though, Yahoo has some of the best big data geniuses around.  A company like Yahoo has to have some smart data guys when you're bringing in over 700 million monthly unique visitors to your properties each month.  Ever heard of Hadoop?  "The most well known technology used for Big Data is Hadoop. Hadoop is used by Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn and Facebook. Google uses a proprietary version of Hadoop" And Hortonworks, a big data company that  spun out from Yahoo this past summer expects that "Half the worlds data will be on Hadoop in 5 years" So if Mr Thompson is looking to monetize "big d...

Visit the Yahoo! Advertising Blog to read about how effective online search is at driving offline sales revenue. In a nutshell: For every $1 of revenue generated through online search, $6 of revenue is generated offline! For all of you fans of cross-channel attribution, this is a must read! Click here for the study.

Not sure if you've had a chance to check out Yahoo! Clues yet, but if you haven't, I would take a look if you're responsible for managing search advertising at your company.  There is some powerful and insightful keyword data available in the Trend Analysis section. Yahoo! Clues (beta) is a search keyword trending tool.  While it gives you a peek inside what's trending for searches on Yahoo! (sports, people, places, etc), it also gives you a peek into how your business stacks up against your competition when it comes to keyword searches. One of my favorite reports under Trend Analysis tab is called Search Flow.  What Search Flow provides is "a list of the most probable previous and following user searches from an analysis of aggregated search patterns across Yahoo! Search. The top item under Previous Queries represents the most probable search term people tried before this search query. Similarly, the top item under Next Queries represents the most prob...

"Leveraging Audience Insights to Improve Digital Marketing ROI"

Simply go to our new Yahoo Web Analytics page on Facebook and tell us why you'd want a Yahoo! Web Analytics account. The answer/comment with the most 'Like' votes wins! So get your entry in and get your friends to vote for you!!! https://www.facebook.com/yahoowebanalytics/posts/180543512005959 Cheers!

Yahoo! Web Analytics gets a spotlight in CRM Magazine's online version... http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/Web-Analytics-Whats-Worth-Paying-For-74702.aspx

It happens way too often and it's painful to watch.  Extra revenue being flushed down the toilet because online marketers aren't taking a close enough look at what their web analytics reports are telling them.  They've spent the time to properly implement their tracking solutions but they aren't spending enough time in their solution looking for insights.  For online marketers, there could be a whole slew of reasons as to why they're not paying closer attention to their web analytics data: - Perhaps a new rep was hired and he/she didn't realize they had the data available - Perhaps they have a 3rd party agency managing their data for them - Perhaps they don't know how to analyze the data and need a consultant - Perhaps they're just lazy and don't care While there's always reasons why one hasn't looked closely enough, the bottom line is that you have to pay close attention to what your data is telling you so that you can capitalize on...

I'm super excited about what 2011 has in store for Yahoo! Web Analytics. Get ready to see more of Y!WA in 2011! More conferences, more blogs, more webinars, more collateral, more product development, more integration, more of everything! Stay tuned.....

Very cool data insights on search usage!  The look and feel of these reports is very user friendly!!  

Interested in learning the secret to starting a successful web analytics program within your company?  Go read Avinash Kaushik's (a leader in the field of web analytics) post on the Yahoo! Web Analytics blog: http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/2010/11/secret-to-winning-with-web-analytics-starting-right/

Similar to what Yahoo! search advertisers were able to use within the analytics tools (Full Analytics and Conversion Only) on the Yahoo! Search Marketing platform, the Assist metric is now available within Yahoo! Web Analytics. The assist* metric reveals which campaigns (of any type) most often indirectly contribute to the conversions you value in order to better evaluate marketing opportunities. The metric is calculated based on the number of times a campaign drives a visitor to your website prior to the source credited with a conversion. Assists are a campaign-based metric available in the Custom Report Wizard and are treated as any other campaign-based metric. They can be aggregated at higher level categories or viewed for each individual campaign being tracked. All assists occurring within 45 days of the conversion event will be recorded. Note that a single marketing activity can assist multiple conversions. Please also note that individual keywords or other organic traffic sources...

Check out the new Yahoo! Web Analytics upgrades.... http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/documentation/prod_updates/3615784.html I'm especially excited about the Assist feature.  :)

Join us for a Web Analytics Wednesday networking event on September 29th. I'll be speaking about emerging trends in Web Analytics. You are also invited to a happy hour at the Daily Grill ( http://www.dailygrill.com/ ) after the presentation. This free event will be held at the Grand Conference room at RPA and will start at 6:30PM. Please note that RPA is located in the east wing of Yahoo Center. Also, RPA will not be able to validate parking. More information can be found here: http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/wednesday/list.asp?event_id=3142 Looking forward to meeting you!

Great overview on how to use Yahoo! Web Analytics to track the performance of theYouTube videos that you embed within your web site. http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/?p=396

Let me give you a tip. If you want to run a successful web site, then get to know your visitors better. The companies that really understand who their visitors are tend to be the most successful because they're able to get the greatest return out their visitors. They get more engagement from their visitors, their visitors click on more links and pages, and their visitors tend to convert more. Part of understanding your visiting audience comes down to figuring out which segments of your audience perform the best. Once you figure that out, life gets much easier because now you know who you should be developing and targeting your web site content for. In Yahoo! Web Analytics, it's easy to figure out who your audience is with its demographic, geographic, and interest group data. For example, by visiting the 'Age and Gender' report you'll quickly see what age range and gender group visits your web site the most. By visiting the 'Interest Group' report you...

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