Analytics

How to use Tableau to analyze Google Search Console data

By Kris on February 25, 2017

In this video post, I have covered integrating how I have automatically pull Google Search Console data into Google Sheets, and then how I set up Tableau to analyze the Search console data.

I have been using Tableau for a long time now. One of the great features of the latest version allows you to connect Tableau Desktop to Google Sheets. But not only that, in the latest version you can create Data Source using Union while joining various sheets with wildcard rule.

This is a great way to analyze your website’s effectiveness for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Google Search Console covers many data points that would be very insightful for marketers. Those data are Geo data, device category (desktop, mobile, and tablet), search query terms, and the page URL that showed up in Google Search Results Page, Impressions, # of Clicks, and avg position by page URL/Search Terms.

This is a very powerful way to look at how your site and content are visible to the people who are searching on Google.

Check out the video and let me know your thoughts! Also if you want to download the steps and get the links to the things I covered in this video, please subscribe to receive that PDF.

Enjoy analyzing folks!!

How I used HotJar Recording feature to improve my conversion rate

By Kris on February 7, 2017

As I was building out my site and adjusting the email sign up form, I didn’t realize my lightbox email sign up form code was still active and was executed through Google Tag Manager.

What happened is, once you’re cookied the form is designed not to serve to returning visitors. Given that I’m the owner of the site, the form did not recognize my sessions as a new visitor to the site.

One of my favorite marketing technology tool is HotJar.

HotJar provides analytics capabilities ranging from Heatmap, visitor recording, poll, survey, etc. Given that my site’s sign up volume was low, I was pretty concerned.

After analyzing multiple recordings of my blog pages, I’ve noticed a pattern of behavior where my site visitors were going toward the top right of the screen to click off something. After going through my site in another browser after clearing my cookies/history, I noticed the pop-up came up, and the close button (represented by “X”) is what the users were clicking.

It is probably not surprising to understand (at least for most people) that pop up newsletter sign up form are pretty annoying. I immediate removed the code and switched to standard embedded forms.

That resulted in near 0 conversion rate to the newsletter sign up to almost a 3x lift in newsletter sign up conversion rate.

I have successfully used HotJar recording capabilities to improve my blog’s conversion rate!!

I will not cover all the features of HotJar, but it is certainly one of those tools you may want to try on your site. You can gain tons of valuable insights from your customer behavior that you may not be able to read from the quantitative data.

Here is an example mouse movement of the describe problematic behavior I mentioned above.

Conversions are down. Data you need to analyze to avoid it.

By Kris on November 25, 2016

Are you panicking because your website is driving fewer sales or conversions? The first thing you’ll need to do is open up your analytics tool and start digging into the issue. This article will talk about some of the key things to look for when your website stops performing.

What to consider when you look at your web data is the fundamental of the web performance equation. The equation is:

[Traffic x Conversion Rate] x [AOV] = Revenue
Traffic x Conversion Rate = Orders
Orders x AOV = Revenue

This is a pretty universal equation for digital marketing and e-commerce.

If your problem is that the revenue is declining, then you’ll need to take into account of the AOV (average order value) impact.

Let’s start looking at the impact of the key metrics, and see how we can diagnose the issue breaking it down by ‘traffic’ and ‘conversion rate’.

Conversion drops because of lower web traffic

One main reason your orders are down is due to the fact that the site’s traffic is down. Traffic of your website could be impacted by many things, but if you’re in Google Analytics or similar tool, the first thing to look for is what traffic source you’re seeing the decline is coming from.

Look into channel report and see which bucket of traffic is declining. Then Look into which source and medium are causing the traffic to decline. If you’re paying for advertising, look into if there is any issues with your ads or campaign set up.

ga-sourcemedium-112016 — Google Analytics traffic source report.

There will be times where traffic sources aren’t an issue as overall traffic is not down at all. In that case, you’ll need to look at the traffic from the perspective of user behavior. If you have a marketing funnel, then look at the funnel and see if there are any major changes in traffic within the funnel.

In Google Analytics you can use the reports within Behaviors and Conversions section. Start looking at the traffic pattern and see if you have any traffic drop off that could be impacting the traffic going into your cart. That would definitely lower your conversion rate and a number of orders.

Conversion drops because of lower conversion rate

In your web analytics tools like Google Analytics, you would usually set up goals that you want to track. When you set that up, usually the tools is able to start reporting on conversion rate (# of goals occurred divided by the traffic). Using this conversion rate metrics, you can use that to see if particular sources of traffic are causing a lower conversion rate. Usually, you’ll compare the data from different date ranges, like a month over month, or current week vs. last week and such.

Some the key reports to dig into where the conversion rates are dropping is.

Funnel report
Goal flow
Channel and source/medium report

These are the basic reports, but sometimes you make changes to websites (i.e. adding a link that may take away users to another page away from shopping cart or flow). In such case, you need to dig into if people are going from certain page to another page. In such case, you can use the Behavior > Site Content > All Pages, and chose a page and look into Navigation Summary. If you see that more people are going away to another page that doesn’t matter than you may have an impact and explanation to why your conversion rate is dropping.

ga-funnel-112016

Average order value (AOV) is declining

When you’re looking at the revenue decline, and realize traffic is not declining, and conversion rate hasn’t changed, then you may have a decreasing AOV. When you’re AOV is declining, the number of orders is decreasing, and that could mean few things.

People are ordering items at a lower price point
People are using promo/discount codes more so than prior weeks
People are buying fewer number of items within a transaction

More people are visiting a product page with a product at a price point fewer than the average price sold
In many cases, this issue is less about your website unless the traffic is lead to a page with the product at a lower price than average.

So hopefully, this gives you a basic understanding of how you could approach analyzing data once you start seeing the conversions go down. Don’t panic, just go into your web analytics tool like Google Analytics and follow the steps I mentioned above. More advanced users will look into more strategic and tactical things, but this is probably a start.

Mobile marketing – Only few marketers have strategies set

By Kris on August 21, 2016

I wanted to share some of these stats around mobile, to get marketers thinking and improve mobile moment. Very few marketers are investing in mobile marketing while the whole world has moved on to mobile as every data indicates. It has already surpassed desktop in terms of time spent, being the key first touch point in shopper’s journey, etc. Here are some basic stats:

1) 50-60% of emails are now opened on a mobile device. source

2) United State’s mobile time spent on in-app is growing and expect to grow while mobile web is flat. source

3) 84% of smartphone users who used the device while watching television did so on a daily basis. source

4) 65% of online searches begin on a mobile device, yet only 16% of marketers have developed a mobile strategy. source

Since what’s going on on the internet as well as what we do in digital marketing, things move fast and change a lot, I chose these stats given that they reflect data including 2015 onwards.

These stats signifies a lot of things, and what we all know for sure is mobile is real and marketers aren’t doing enough to win mobile moments.
I wonder why… We already know from our own behaviors that when we turn on TV, 100% of our attention or eyeballs are really not focused on TV, yet marketers still spend tons of money on TV ads.

We also know customer journey already begins before desktop, even maybe before people are searching online for a mobile device. What are smart brands doing to win that moment?

A bit of an old data from Think w/ Google, but already in 2012 they noticed how mobile played a key role in early part of the path to purchase. Earlier HubSpot data indicates more percentage of shoppers are starting from mobile.

: Source: 2012 Think with Google Path to Purchase

For example, in this Google’s customer journey tool, you can see that for this specific segment of the industry in Japan, Social plays a key channel in the first touchpoint before making a purchase. I’m guessing the channels on the earlier stage of the funnel are likely going to be on mobile. Hence marketers need to plan to win those moments by getting in front of the target audience.

: Source: Mobile Customer Journey Path to Purchase

These are my own thoughts, but maybe we all can share some learnings or thoughts, but definitely I see these as some rudimentary areas where marketers can win the mobile moment.

Facebook, both messenger apps, and mobile ads are winning, and marketers should not ignore it
Where are the conversations taking place? Brands got to be there.
Don’t just acquire, but also engage after you acquire beyond e-mail, and take into consideration of how your target users are using mobile in their daily routine.
Videos and syndicate it. How many of you click the video play button on FB and just watch those content your friends shared? If you do that on a mobile device, then I see that as a moment to get in front of your target audience.
Champion the timing. If you look at your analytics and user access to your site by device type, I bet you, you may see some interesting differences like mobile users are accessing your site more after work, at night, or in morning during a commute. Check your data, and make your ad dollars more effective by targeting at the right timing.

Also, it is important to understand the macro issues if there are any, given you may have no full control of it, but you may be able to be part of the change. Meaning, a lot of the reason why marketers don’t have mobile marketing strategy could be:

Due to organizational issues. You may be too busy getting your major project out and it is all due the needs and desire of the highest paid person’s opinion and their priorities.
Systematic issues. Project kick off, insights, media planning, all the way through to tracking are structured from how we do marketing from 10 years ago. Hence how you operate is basically designed and aligns to how content/product/services are launched through the desktop web.
Fear of its complexity
No management visions that connects the dots. HiPPOs…
Don’t know what to track and what to measure and report on. Tracking marketing outcome on the mobile app or mobile web? Don’t know and don’t get the right tools in place to track attribution.

Take a hard look at your mobile strategy or even why there are no plans if nothing is really going on. It is time to start asking marketers wtf they’re doing to win mobile moments.

Top 5 Things to Consider When Building Marketing Analytics Stack for Marketing

By Kris on August 2, 2016

How you manage data on the website and its analytics stack is super critical to your marketing success. More data are leveraged in marketing to better improve various digital marketing strategies, including but not limited to the user experience on the site, test user behavior, improve conversion rate, optimize ad targeting to your key audience, etc.

One of the challenges I’m realizing is that data are all over the place. If you have tons of data, then that is a pretty nice problem to have as we live in a world where data is never enough. However, as we track many ads and obtain all the behavioral activities through the tag on your website, unorganized and siloed data will cause more issues for analysts. You may also have web analytics tag independent from the media ad pixels, such as Google Analytics, Mixpanel, KissMetrics, etc. Multiple trackers collecting different data and having it sit on various environments or databases are not going make analyst lives easier.

Marketing automation tools allow further tracking and segmentation on its own platform enables a marketer to be robust on how they reach their users without web analytics tool. That said, it’s important to understand where your marketing data sits and managed, especially when various stakeholders are accessing data and acting on it from siloed sources.

Data could be either centralized or decentralized. Data could be even owned by different departments and even owned by media agencies. So my first top consideration point is:

#1 Know your marketing technology stack end to end.

I really love this mobile analytics stack framework because it shows you different areas of marketing efforts, and how various marketing tactics and analytics stack co-exists in the marketing ecosystem.

#2 Align marketing technology tools to your business priorities

One of the rookie mistakes you can do as analytics expert is to invest in a tool that doesn’t meet business needs. People over rely on tools to solve their problem and what could be worse is you end up buying a solution to a temporary problem marketers have at the time. First thing first, understands your business priorities and plan for the year, and look ahead beyond the first year as well. Some tools require some good amount of time to onboard and calibrate before you start taking advantage of its features.

If you do plan to run A/B testing, and conversion rate optimization is your priority, then you might want to assess what’s needed beyond tools. Keep in mind, tools aren’t the only thing. It’s also people, process, and technology. That said, need to assess if you got the right people and process in place to drive marketing, and not to rely on tools too much.

#3 Plan for near future and help solve problems

A lot of the analytics tools that go on the website require certain amount time for it to collect data and report on. So when you commit on a certain availability of data for analysis and reporting, keep in mind that it will not be another month to start using those new capabilities. That means you have to set the right expectation on the analytics stack you manage.

Many businesses rely on year-over-year analysis to take into consideration of seasonality, or capture growth in general. So the analytics tools and tech stack you chose, make sure you’re planning ahead, so you know exactly what you’ll be looking at on a year-over-year basis.

In my recent experience with the marketing attribution tracking tool that I implemented, marketers were dying to know how digital touchpoints were contributing to lead generation, pipeline, and the deal closed. Immediately the desire to know how it worked month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter emerged, but the data collection was only available from when it was implemented.

Google Analytics is another great example, understand your business needs well and make sure you got great profiles, filters, customer dimensions, and other possible data structures are in place. This is to assure great data quality for reporting and insights.

Another important point would like to make is, turn your challenges into something you want to solve as a project for next year, and the key is to ask for the budget or do plan for the requests. In many cases, it takes some time to build a case, because everything should be based on data right?

#4 Communicate your plan

One of my favorite thing my prior manager told me, “People, Process, and Technology” are key elements in the successful organization. Applying this thought to digital marketing, I think “People” piece really defines how every marketing analytics analysts and managers really need to step up and communicate the marketing stack clearly. It’s background on what, how, why, and who it was designed to solve the problem for can build a sense of trust in between analytics and marketing folks.

I never like tools to dictate the conversation, but it never hurts for people know context around the data collection and reporting sources.

Also if marketing has a roadmap, then analytics should have a plan as well. Example, mobile app marketing is going to be key in upcoming quarters, then analytics needs to be ready to track and report on it. Same goes for any other marketing strategy and tactics. Get you plan out and communicate your plan.

#5 Use it or lose it

Marketing analytics tools usually don’t come by cheap. Enterprise-grade tools could cost you a great amount of money and time starting from evaluation all the way through to completing the contract. It involves a lot of people and their time. We should respect everyone’s time and make sure these tools are leveraged and answering important business questions.

A lot of the major software vendors who are doing well in their space has great community and training programs. Also, it’s important to leverage their documentations and really read through to learn it. Sooner or later those knowledge gained will become part of your expertise. As an analytics person, you should take every opportunity to learn the tool you’re exposed to.

Multi-device attribution analysis and how it works

By Kris on December 20, 2015

Several years ago, the topic of mobile was huge. If you look at this data, it may indicate that marketers are not excited about mobile as an opportunity area, when compared to last year. I wonder why. Is it because the data is so bad, marketers and analytics folks couldn’t accomplish getting the mobile marketing right?

eMarketer Exciting Opportunity 2014

This research by Google (a while back in 2012) shows that in eCommerce purchase journey, multi-device touch points play a key role in how consumers navigate digital content to get to that final decision point to buy. “90% of customers use three different devices to complete a single task”.

Sequential Screening Between Devices

What does your analytics say about your users? It is very likely that your mobile traffic has grown from prior years, but how significant is that traffic volume?

I also find it interesting that if you look at different acquisition channels, you might see a different mobile traffic distribution. This particular image shows, overall site traffic from mobile and tablet is X%, but when you look it by Google CPC (paid search ads), mobile and tablet visitors accounted for X% of its traffic.

20151220-mobile-traffic-cpc

Some of the key questions we need to be asking from this data are:

Is your landing page optimized for mobile visitors or desktop visitors
What does it mean to see different traffic volume in desktop Vs? mobile. Are mobile visitors exploring the product and desktop visitors are existing customers? Customers are in different part of their moments/journey so content should be optimized for that different moments.
What kind of mobile ads is resonating with your users? Is it any different from the desktop ads? Mobile has a very small screen for users to view and recall the content within the banners. Are your users responding to the text or actual creative, are few key things to check if you want to optimize for the mobile visitors.

In order to attribute conversion of a user to its original touch point, you’re going to need to plan it well to capture the right data. A common tactic to do this is to make sure you’re able to stitch back your converted customer ID back to its original source or touch points, which could be either a campaign id, content viewed, etc. This visitor stitching technology is probably unique to various analytics vendors you work with, but you would want to make sure you have a strategy to do this right.

Tealium said this right in one of their product description:

“Typical analytics data often shows multidevice visitor interaction as coming from three visits and three different people, but, in reality, it is likely that those visits are from just one visitor using different devices.”

Once you’re able to normalize your data to be able to track your customer level data and stitch to user’s historical touch point data, then you apply whatever model you please to allocate conversion credits. First click, last click, linear, U shape, W shape, etc.

Would like to hear what you guys are doing to make multi-device attribution analysis better.

Analytics

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