Given that the team behind Tracking Tourism have recently become Scotland’s first Google Analytics Authorised Consultants (and are one of only six firms in the UK with this accolade to our name), it seemed natural enough that this week’s post would have something of a web measurement feel to it.  Because we’re jolly happy about our achievements.  Because we (quite literally) have the T Shirt – as modelled here so fetchingly by me.

And because while we’re finding that more and more businesses have the tools to allow them to undertake analysis, we have the sneaking suspicion that having the tools and using them for meaningful actions are two different things.

Imagine a tourism business networking event, not very far from you.  Two strangers strike up conversation:

Tourism Business: “So, what do you do?”

Stephen (or Vicky): “Well, we deliver customer insight and web analytics services”

Tourism Business: “We already have Google Analytics/Urchin/Nedstat thank you very much”

Stephen (or Vicky): “And what has your business done differently on account of the information that has given you?”

Tourism Business: “……”

OK, we do sometimes make better conversation than that – but the point remains.  Using a web analytics tool and simply owning a web analytics tool are not the same thing.

The answer to your unique business question doesn’t come just because you got Google Analytics, Omniture or any other measurement tool.  A basic report or a dashboard is not analysis – on its own it cannot give you the answers you need to take action to improve your business.  Sadly, (or happily if, like us, you really really love this kind of thing) – web analytics isn’t ’something you’ve got, thanks’, its something you do.

Getting buy-in to real web analytics

OK, it’s something that we’ve banged on about in the past.  The theme of measuring your website is something that we’re spent a lot of time writing about  on Tracking Tourism (click here for all previous stories).

But despite our humble efforts, you probably still know colleagues, companies and possible even bosses who don’t see the “what’s in it for me” of really using online data to drive the business.

So here are five reasons you can use to convince the unenlightened that job security, profits and heck, near-nirvana, are likely to flow when you take your data seriously – and then do something with it.

1. Show them the money (and the glory)

People that run organisations spend a lot of time caring about where money is being made, saved and lost.  They are typically less interested in page tags, page views and referrer strings.  Buy-in to real analytics comes when it is framed in terms that relate to revenue.

And this doesn’t just apply to big business – every website with a commercial objective makes a contribution to money earned, money saved and yes, it also involves money being spent, either literally or in terms of time.  Real web-analytics is used to drive improvements in the efficiency of those costs.

So at its very simplest, don’t stop at reporting that there were 500 brochure downloads from the site this month – follow it through to its revenue implications.  We posted 500 fewer mail packs, saving £5,000 and can anticipate an additional 50 calls to the booking line in the next 2 weeks.And glory?  Well that relates to performance against competitors.  Unsurprisingly, revealing insight about this will also generate more excitement and action than reports about page views.

2. Show them the customer

The online customer can be perceived as more mysterious – even sinister – compared to its offline counterpart, despite the fact that they are often one and the same.  All the little things you observe about real world visitors seem to vanish online.  You do not even know if the “right people” are even finding your website.

But smart web analytics can help build a picture of the customer online.  For example, it can inform you about the vocabulary and intent of visitors to your site.  You can see the language and words customers use when thinking about you – something that is significant in an intelligent marketing campaign and to search engine optimisation.

Building pictures of real people, real customers – who just happen to be in the online phase of what will often become a real world relationship – can be very useful in breaking down fear and resistance in businesses wary of further web investment.  It can also reveal the shocking implications of poor customer experience online.  Which leads us too….

3. Show them real people walking away

If 99% of your visitors fell out of the back of the bus en-route to your business, week after week, wouldn’t you be as mad as hell?  There may be choice words to be had with the bus operator.  Someone would probably declare that “something must be done.”

And if the same is happening online?  If 99% of visitors are “falling out of the site” without making an enquiry, day after day.  Shouldn’t something be done about that too?  Smart web analytics demonstrates where people are leaving on mass, which pages are under-performing – but it also informs the actions and tests to improve those pages.  And, of course, it informs the financial cost of inaction.

4. Show cause and effect

Basic analysis tells you how people are finding your website site.  Good analytics tells you whether the money you are spending on marketing, promotions and SEO campaigns is actually making you money.  It tells you whether your actions are creating the desired effects.On the flip side, it can also reveal how your actions (or inactions) are costing you business, impacting your search engine visibility or causing your marketing expenditure to be wasted.

5. Show them the future

The very best analytics doesn’t just look backwards, it looks forwards. It attempts to use visitor behaviour, customer satisfaction and search trends to inform advance decision about promotional expenditure, staffing and priorities.

For example, with one of our clients, we have found a direct correlation between visits to specific pages of their website and physical visits to their attraction 5 days later.  A big peak in visits to those website pages means they can expect more people than usual on Saturday – which means opening the overflow carpark and bringing in more staff.

At a more simplistic level, if you knew that the peak time of the year for Google searches for weddings in Gretna Green was July, would you wait until September to advertise these packages on your website?  By staying ahead of the customer activity cycle, you predict the future to your marketing advantage.

Getting to the big-wins

If your reluctant friend is now convinced of the value of data, how do they get started on the path to true enlightenment?  Well, first get the data set-up right – by ensuring every page is tagged correctly, that filters are in place etc.  All things we’ve written about before.  Not one of the sites I have checked in the last two weeks has had every page of their website correctly tagged – and what you get in that scenario is garbage in, garbage out as they say.

Then focus on measuring the right questions for your business – what really matters and what do you need to measure in order to track that. Who needs convincing and what is the best way to report to achieve that.  And don’t lose sight of people in the numbers.  Tourism and hospitality are people focussed industries – don’t lose the customer in a sea of reporting.  Use the data to get closer to the customer and how the business is delivering on their needs.

Buy-in help or training if you need it – you don’t delay fixing the hot water because no one on your team is a plumber.  You get one in, or someone gets packed off to night school to learn.  Fast.  The same has to apply to web analytics – it is simply too important to the business bottom line to languish for a few years until someone magically figures out how to do it.  There is expertise out there (hint, hint) – it probably makes financial sense to use it.

And that near-nirvana I mentioned?  That occurs when you create a business culture where analysis is in the DNA.   And for the unconvinced, these businesses do exist.  More importantly they exist in the travel, hospitality and tourism sector.  Travelocity is one, but they can be the very smallest of businesses as well as the very large. They’re probably those same guys eating into everyone else’s market share right now.

If analytics is something you do, not something you get, then how do you do it?

Funny you should ask….  Next week’s eMetrics Summit in San Jose, California, kicks off with an analysis symposium to tackle that very question.  I will be one of the presenters charged with distilling all my best thoughts and tips on “how to analyse” into just 10 minutes each!  For me, it really promises to be the analytics highlight of recent years as I believe we have focussed for far too long on smart tools, not smart thinking.

To quote my friend and eMetrics Summit guru Jim Sterne as he re-mixes the Wizard of Oz:

“Why, anybody can have data. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth, or slinks through slimy seas has data!  Back where I come from we have Summits – gatherings of great learning – where people go to learn how to analyze that data.

And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and leverage their marketing investment, and with no more data than you have.  But – they have one thing you haven’t got – a ticket to the eMetrics Analysis Symposium!”

Its not to late to get your analysis symposium ticket here.

And if sunny California (or eMetrics London in a few weeks time) or the thinking great thoughts can’t tempt you, those of you in Scotland are welcome to attend a free Web Analytics Wednesday networking event in Glasgow for some drinking and chatting instead.  It take places this Wednesday 29th April and you can register to attend here.  Stephen and I hope to see some of you there!

Posted by Vicky

The eMetrics Summit is always a chance to learn directly from the best web analysts and emarketers in the world. But at this week’s Toronto eMetrics I really felt Travelocity took it to another level. Shankar Mishra, Travelocity’s Director of Enterprise Business Intelligence presented on developing an enterprise web analytics strategy.  Not reporting.  Not doing cool stuff because it is interesting.  But building a framework that relates all web metrics to business outcomes.

A framework prompted, he reckons, by a question from Travelocity’s Chief Financial Officer John Mills, of: “Where is all the money you claim to be generating?”

Travelocity and the brands they own – such as Lastminute.com and World Choice Holidays – are naturally sitting on vast quantities of data.  The web is their business, so there is a critical imperative that they are continually optimizing not just websites, but web businesses.

Shankar expressed a refreshingly strategic view of the importance of true analysis, not simply data and measurement.  Too often organizations struggle to simply measure what they have, reporting on what their tool has to offer them, not on the business essentials.  He explains:

“You need to come up with independent metrics based on the business objectives and outcomes, not the tool’s data….and a framework which relates all web metrics to business outcomes”

“Socialization” of business critical insight

Travelocity’s focus is not on what can be done with the data they have, but what they want out of that data.  The framing of the right questions, focus and clarity of goals, strategic optimization of the business – not simply the website.

I have always felt that web analytics is a subset of a wider intelligence strategy – which is perhaps why I found Shankar’s session so valuable.  My own presentation in Toronto was about moving from clues in web analytics data, through to surveying and conducting user testing with real customers, in order to understand motive and real context.

But context, insight and causality are not sitting within your analytics tool – they’re with the people inside the organisation and the cutomers you engage with.  Why Shankar blew my mind so thoroughly is he presented an enterpise level analytics strategy that factors in human nature and politics, as well as actionable measurement.

They go through a circular analytics process whereby they:

• monitor
• analyze
• prescribe
• act

It is the prescribe stage that leaps out for me.  It includes the usual testing and prototyping – but it is the “socialization” aspect that in my mind is the critical one.  It is the step almost invariably missing – the people bit.

Through “socialization” – or “the people bit” if socialization sounds a little too George Orwell for you -  they know what is and isn’t compelling to the internal folks that are affected.  They create checkpoints of who needs to be convinced and what people will really find useful.

“don’t even think about data – just figure out the question. Then start talking to people who are stakeholders, the people down the line who’ll be impacted”

Before they think about data, they examine needs, usefulness and what compromises may be required to achieve traction.  This isn’t proclaimed from above (or as is even more common, unsuccessfully attempted from the bottom up) – socialization appears to be an essential consensus building process for the success of their strategic analytics.

This is a lesson that I believe businesses of all sizes can take on board.  People typically take actions based on what other people tell them about data – not because you have the best tool set on the planet.  People take actions because other analysts and marketers tell them stories about data – in language they understand.  And because those stories have a meaning that resonates to their specific role, they will be invested in making decisions that ultimately improve the business.

Too often we look at what is interesting, or we report about web data in vocabulary that means something to us – not to finance or operations.  Shankar makes the point at the heart of their socialization process, which is that “it has to be compelling to someone else as well – and it will be more compelling if the person impacted has been involved.”

I thank Jim Sterne and the eMetrics team for an excellent conference – and I also thank Shankar at Travelocity.  It’s a great return on your time and energy to have your brain so thoroughly stimulated!  Roll on eMetrics San Jose when we get to wrestle with “how to analyse” – because, you know what, I just happen to have a few theories on that

Post by Vicky