It all starts with a measurement framework

Editor's Notes

• #3: I founded Humix from my believe in the fact that Human behaviour is the driving force behind every success, so knowledge about the behaviour of your visitors/users will bring you closer to online success. Humix is a team of web analysts (data freaks), User Experience architects (critical puzzlers) and Digital Marketers (online attention seekers). Together we optimize websites, webshops and software applications based on user behaviour and the business goals
• #4: Reporting setup to follow up on the results of our changes and input for optimisations. Too much time spend on standard reporting – automation in dashboards. This meant more time/budget to spend on gathering insights and take action. This is how we gradually emerged into a new role for our customers.
• #5: Your house does what it was made to do: give you shelter and a nice place to live. Only after an energy audit you realize that you might be saving a lot of money when you would isolate your house better. But isolation costs money and time, prioritizing which of all options would give you the most profit for your budget. This is what measuring and working with your data could do for your business. Only when you start with a plan and gain insight in what you could improve and prioritize your actions you will be able to get a nice result.
• #6: To measure is to know, but how do you know what you need to measure? This isn’t the right question, it all starts by knowing what you want to know, which questions do you want answers to? Which answers will bring you closer to your goals and objectives? This are typically difficult questions to answer. Defining your online goals and objectives is often a difficult exercise, especially because need to be more specific as “make money”. So before you can define what you need to measure you will need to define the answers you are looking for.
• #7: The end goal for every business is “make money” but the how is different for every business and thus the underlying goals as well. Defining your most important goal, also called a macro conversion, is often easy. A conversion is defined as the action or result you need to get to that goal. For an e-commerce business this will be selling products. Other examples are quote requests or specific forms filled out. Although this should always be your focus when taking decisions or judging results there will be smaller steps that contribute directly or indirectly to reaching this goal, also called micro-conversions. This could be things like blog reads, support page visits or product research. Users who are happy with your other services are more likely to come back when they are ready for the real business or a second purchase. A good blog post on choosing a dishwasher will be a big incentive for people to come back to actually buy that dish washer. Insights in micro conversions helps you get more insights in what’s important for your visitors. Happy users become happy customers.
• #8: When we are asked to help customers to make more sense from their data or start a dashboarding project we start by defining the business goals. These difficult questions typically trigger internal discussions on the definition of success for the business or what attributes to this success. A marketer might define success as reactions to a certain action, sales only looks at the hard sales etc. We often start with a small group of believers and see the interaction grow. We often start with the definition of goals from 1 or 2 points of view. When the internal discussion gets started these might need to be reviewed, but only this internal discussion is already a success because different departments start to discuss. As with the home isolation you will become smarter as you get along the process and start to ask new and different questions. Working with data and setting op dashboarding is a iterative process of progressive learning.
• #9: When starting with a dashboarding project a typical objection is ”But we already have reports” If you want to find out if your precious reports you send out are read you can do 2 things, either don’t send them for a week or so and see who comes to ask for the reports or put in a big obvious error and wait for the reaction. Reporting takes time which means you are often taking decisions on “old data” in the “online world” this is often to slow. When you need several days to do the monthly reporting this means once a month decisions are made based on data of at least 1 week old.
• #10: So you want to get more out of your data – How do you start? We use a measurement framework to define what your goals are and thus what you should measure.
• #11: Get knowledge out of the heads and on paper will mean that you have something to fall back on when in the future you get ideas for new measures or insights. It will also help you to keep an overview of what is measured why and how. And last but not least it will keep the knowledge in your company when ”the analytics guy” leaves.
• #12: Define your goals excercise weighted goal matrix Translate your goals in “Human questions” Goals translated in “human questions” Goals + human question matrix Turn the answer to your questions into “Measurable Items” Human questions translated into measurable items Goals + human questions+ measurables matrix Create Data triggers that provide data to Measurable items Create Dashboards and/or Reporting
• #16: Insights allow them to get more grip on what’s happening in the check-out funnel and thus looking for ways to improve. We worked with a small group mainly involved in the online business. On going next steps are defined and will be taken soon such as starting with online advertising and possibly A/B testing Also more detailed dashboards that give different insights.
• #17: In coop with Adobe Consulting who were implementing Adobe Analytics. In this case we only did the definition of the measurement framework, once we got them on the road they persued internally with the next steps and follow up.
• #18: A high level measurement framework was defined that could be used in all different libraries and regions. The insights that would come out will be different for all the subsites and allow them to adjust their offering and content to their specific audience. E.g. the library of Amsterdam will probably have a very broad range of interests and possibly languages to serve where the library in for instance Lemmer will have to serve a more specific range of interests and probably a smaller range of languages.
• #24: It shouldn’t cost money but make you money just as the isolation of your house should. Take the guessing and gut feeling out of your decisions. Less risky to experiment because you have better control over the results and can act faster.
• #25: Insights should feed your actions, optimisations and new initiatives. The data and reports alone will not change anything.
• #26: Data is easily miss understood. Notorious Frequency & Recency report in GA doesn’t show how often some one came to your site within a period of time. It tells you how many visitors came for the 1st, 2nd or 10th time since their first visit. Make sure your data tells a story that will be correctly interpreted is key. Second a good story sticks and gets attention. We test dashboards by showing them to non involved people with the organisation.
• #27: Not all users are the same, different role is different interests and needs. CEO vs marketing, e-commerce manager or online content editor. All sales figures but not in the same manner or related to different actions. The next step is personalised dashboards that adjust the layout and possibly content to the behaviour of the specific user. This is a next challenge we see.
• #28: Dashboards should allow you to act fast based on your data. To much alerts will lower your reaction. It is like your mother in law who contacts you for every tiny question she has about her laptop, the internet, her powerpoints and her phone. The more questions you get in a short period of time the longer your reaction time will be. So use alerts wisely and make sure alerts are accompanied by the data needed for the required actions.
• #29: If your strategy is not driven by data, you might as well pray. It’s cheaper & does the same.