Category Archives: Web Analytics

All Talk, No #Measure

Analytical Culture, Analytics Education, Web Analytics

Hypocrisy in Web Analytics?

Before every eMetrics (I’ll be in San Fran teaching Basecamp, at the Gala, etc.), I try to ask myself, what is the most critical issue facing the web analyst community right now?  Then, at the show, I ask everyone I run into what they think about this issue.

There’s lots of issues to choose from.  Career path I think is a big area of discussion, given the mergers in the space and trend towards outsourcing.  Then there’s the “we don’t get no respect” thing; senior management doesn’t seem to listen / understand / act on the information provided.  And one of my favorites from the past is still out there, data torture – people being pressured to manipulate data to reach a predetermined analytical outcome.

But seems to me, more important at this juncture is trying to resolve why there is so much written about the importance of “the customer” but very little measurement at the customer level.  Think about it.  Customer experience, customer centricity, the entire social thing, it’s all about customers.

But when folks wants to trot out “proof” that this or that approach is the road to the promised land, they analyze impressions, visits, clicks, etc.  Visitor-level stuff.  Does that seem like the correct approach to you?  Seems to me, if you want to provide knowledge about customers, you should measure customers.

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But What is an Impression Worth?

Analytical Culture, Web Analytics

Seems like coming up with a value for social media has become a cottage industry, for example, $3.60 Facebook Fan Valuation Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg.  These values are often derived from what is paid for online media.  So you have to ask, if someone is basing the value of a Facebook fan on the value of impressions generated, what is the real value of those impressions?  Because unless this is known, the whole framework is faulty.

Just because you pay $5 / CPM for impressions, does not mean they are worth $5 / CPM, does it?  Do people really still have that kind of mentality?  Is the price of the media equivalent to its value?

For example, I’m sure you have heard of multi-million dollar campaigns that generate very little lift in sales.  Happens frequently in fast food, for example.  What is the value of that media?  Is it the millions paid?

What really blows my mind about this approach is it’s so offline, so old school PR. Do the folks who put forth these kinds of models believe nothing has changed in 50 years?  What happened to the whole rap of online being “different”, that you can’t measure it like offline, blah blah.

Except when it’s convenient to do so?

If you want to know the value of a Facebook fan, why not measure the value of a Facebook fan?  Because it’s hard, and would require organizational discipline?  Too bad.   Substituting the kind of models used in the example above for actually measuring the value of a Facebook fan is misleading at the very best.

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Optimizing for Customer Value

DataBase Marketing, Driller Q & A, Newsletters, Web Analytics

Jim answers questions from fellow Drillers
(More questions with answers here, Work Overview here, Index of concepts here)

Q: Thank you for creating this useful website!

A: You’re welcome!

Q: When figuring out retention rate for an annual or a 8 months life time cycle period, how do I pick the starting period?  Do I look at their first orders on a date?  Or I pick a time frame such as one month?

A: It depends on:

1. What kind of “retention” you are talking about, the definition, which is probably impacted by the audience for the data

2.  What you will do with the retention data, what kind of decisions will be made and actions be taken because of the data

You should always ask these questions above  when someone requests “retention data” – or any other kind of analysis, for that matter!  For example, there probably is a huge difference in what you would provide to the Board of Directors for an annual benchmark and what you would provide to Marketing people for executing campaigns.

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