On Friday I attended Online Marketing Summit 2010 in Minneapolis. It was a very informative day and I highly recommend that you consider attending when it comes to your city. Aaaron Kahlow and team offers up great speakers (both local and national) and the opportunity to network with them.

Adam Proehl of NordicCllck Interactive talked about Why Web Analytics Fail Marketers (And How to Stop Failing)

Here are the highlights from his presentation:

Marketing IS Sales

Web –based leads are like printing money. What’s happening with the leads? Are they getting followed up on & converted? What are sales’ view of web leads?

There is a need to close the loop.

There are some challenges. Facts & truths aren’t always right – numbers don’t always tell the truth. Fuzzy numbers are a reality.

And many have multiple platforms trying to measure the same thing

• Do we know the real number?
• Can we explain the why?
• How sound is the measurement methodology?

Sometimes things just don’t work – tagging nightmares, site architecture issues, etc

Things that need to be considered:

• High Level Corporate Initiatives

• Company Objectives – you are touching many areas

• Revenue, Operations, Stakeholders (customer service, sales, marketing, communications, etc)

Do you know where you fit into this? If not, then you’re setting yourself up to fail

We need to understand two things:

• Know what your business objectives are.
• What are your customers/prospects’ objectives (what point are they at in the buying cycle?)

Understand your corporate goals – here are some examples

• 15% increase in revenue
• 10% decrease in customer service

The Rules in setting biz objectives

Be Specific – Be Measurable – Be Realistic (achievable) – Be Relevant – Set Timeframe

They need to fit into the strategic corporate goals

• We want more leads. – not a goal
• This is a goal:   We want to see a 20% increase in new site registrations by the end of 2010

Don’t forget your customer’s objectives!

• Why did they visit your site?
• What are they doing on the site?
• How did they get here?
• What state of the buying cycle are they in?
• What signals are they giving?

Define Success early – before the project goes live

• Metrics? how will we know if this is successful
• Methodology? where will the data come from?
• Benchmarks?
• Get buy-in

Acknowledge the Fuzz – (things aren’t black/white anymore – yes!)

• Open for interpretation?
• Know why it’s fuzzy
• Assumptions?
• Site / Tracking “quirks”
• “You’re never as good as bad numbers”

What web analytics is

• trending data
• directional gauge
• ‘a’ measurement

What web analytics isn’t

• perfect
• spot on accurate

Some goals

• Fail fast  (do it early & learn from it)
• Close the loop
• get the value of the conversion
• “Stack rank” – prioritize initiatives

Methodology matters a lot

Reporting

• Your boss & exec’s – provide a one page report
• Finance – provide the bottom line
• Sales exec – one page – sales leads – have a continual conversation

Some useful & free tools

• ‘ Share this (free & integrates with Google analytics)
• Snip-n-Tag (Firefox Add On) – URL shortener that creates campaigns works w/ Google Analytics
• Better Google Analytics (Firefox Add on)
• Enhanced Google Analytics (Firefox Add on)
• Twitalyzer – integrates with Google Analytics – can see who is influencing
• Bit.ly site – nice stats
• Outbound Link Tracking – Google Analytics
• Excellent Analytics (Excel Plug-In) – if you’re running the same queries (log into Google Analytics from Excel)  — (that sounds kind of scary!
• Rank Checker (Firefox plug in)

Key Takeaways

• Understand reasons for failure
• Involve the key stakeholders
• No one tool can measure everything – understand limitations
• Fundamentals matter the most (biz objectives, methodology)

———————–

It was an excellent session and underlines how Alterian’s Web Journey fills a gap in providing information to marketers beyond traditional web analytics about the interaction that consumers are having with their web pages.

What are your challenges with web analytics?

About Connie Bensen

Connie Bensen has written 27 post in this blog.

Connie Bensen is the Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian. She has authored a series of ten white papers on the ROI of Social Media. Forbes.com recognized her blog, Community Strategist, as one of the top 20 best marketing and social media blogs by women. 451 Marketing has noted her as one of the top social media strategists to watch in 2011, and she was a 2009 Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research.

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