Search Analytics Recap from SES Chicago 2009
“You can’t make money in web analytics just by looking at reports.” With that, SES Advisor and New York Times bestselling author Bryan Eisenberg set the stage for the state of analysis in search marketing.
As budgets flow from offline to online, they’re moving disproportionately to search. Search has always excelled at accountability, but as the spend increases the bar is being raised.
We all have and know what web analytics are. Data quantity isn’t the issue, action quantity is.
Matt Bailey (SiteLogic) summed it up perfectly with the word “velleity”. It means “the desire to do something, but not enough of a desire to take action.” It describes the feeling of marketers who have been burnt by reporting that isn’t actionable.
Over the course of the Analytics, Conversion and Attribution sessions during the first day at SES Chicago, the speakers each addressed three of the core challenges in fighting velleity and taking action on your data:
1. Prioritization
Web analytics has come a long way from the days of log file analyzers used by the IT department. Naturally, people tend to want to make tools bigger, faster and more complicated, however “if you have a tool, everything looks like a nail,” says Jim Sterne of eMetrics and the Web Analytics Association.
The problem is “what should I look at?” and “what do you actually analyze?”
Jim suggests you bucket and prioritize 4 ways
Your job is to find a specific process and optimize that, for example a shopping cart, experience from a search campaign or lead generation page. Go to your data and ask “How can you help me optimize the process?”
In another session, Jim reminded us that traditional web analytics tools tell you “where the problem is and which one is most significant at the moment.” To really understand why, you have to augment those tools with usability testing and surveys.
In a nod to his upcoming book, Jim also shared a framework for prioritizing analysis for one of the most discussed topics at the conference–social media:
2. Segmentation
Of course, even if you prioritize your analysis, there is no such thing as an average user. People who come to your website aren’t looking for the exact same thing. They all have different needs and wants. We can’t treat visitors the same. Unique visitors aren’t all the same. Segmentation matters. We have to look at what people wanted when they came to the site.
But, as Matt Bailey (SiteLogic) says “analytics dashboards tend to be as usable as Ikea furniture instructions.” The cure for dashboards that suffer from average-itis is to segment.
Matt shared his 7 favorite tips:
In his 21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites (which he will deliver as the keynote of SES London), Bryan emphasized how important it is to also analyze trends by segments in search. For example, focus on “what’s changed” reports of keywords that are rising and falling the fastest by CPC or Revenue, instead of just analyzing the top 10.
3. Process
Of course, prioritization and segmentation are both part of a larger web analytics process. As Bryan reminded us, “to do web analytics correctly, you have to make a to do list regularly.” An actionable list addresses:
The core of an actionable web analytics process is data driven decision making. Nothing does that better than testing, using the tools that fit your questions and budget:
Part of a successful process is optimizing for your conversion rate, which often hovers around 2%. Dr. Phil Mui challenged us to expand by process by asking “How do you measure success for the rest of the 98%?”
First, map out the micro-conversions that fall into that 98% for you business type, for example:
It’s also important that you optimize holistically in your process. Don’t just test elements on your landing page; also test which landing page choice makes sense, for example: a category page vs. a product page.
You can’t forget to test what people see before they get to your site. Optimize search creatives for conversion. Test multiple ads and measure which one drove conversion.
Regardless of the tools and process you use, the message every speaker conveyed is that more action is better than more data, so measure, focus, optimize and repeat.
This guest post was written by Alex Cohen (aka DigitalAlex) is the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.