But inside Affiliate Marketing are layers within layers of decision-making. Merchants constantly want to get ahead of each other; getting the top affiliates in the industry and luring them with the best affiliate deals. On the other hand, affiliates keep on pushing the competitive boundaries to remain within the loop of the affiliate arena.

This is where the relevance of Web Analytics comes in.

As a merchant, you want to offer your affiliates the best campaigns. Put a Labor Day Sale for example. Coming up with this idea is pretty simple, as most retailers would do the same. Your affiliates will welcome this, open arms. It is the aftermath of your Labor Day Sale that is more tedious. How much did you gain? How much of what you gained came from what affiliate? How much of your traffic did not successfully convert? Why?

Simply put, Web Analytics answers these questions. This will determine not only the success rate of your campaign, but your current and future relationships with your affiliates, which of them you would like to terminate and which of them you would like to focus on the next campaign.

When Web Analytics was still starting, the main data source of analysts which they use to analyze their sites with are from the website’s log files. They use a log file analyzer, an example of which is AWStats or Advanced Statistics, to which they derive metrics such as:

• Hits
• Page Views
• Visits
• Clicks
• Visits Duration
• Top Pages
• Bandwidth Usage
• File Types
• Visitors’ Browsers
• Errors

From these, they were able to measure a bit of the visitor’s activity but as this is a log file analyzer, web analysts benefit more in knowing website performance rather than visitor conversions. But pretty soon, more advanced Web Analytics tools surfaced to aid analysts seeking to get deeper into web data. The advent of these tools, such as Omniture SiteCatalyst and Google Analytics, brought in more defined and meaningful metrics. These newly-found metrics are of such high importance that web analysts started to disregard the metrics offered by log file analyzers such as those mentioned above.

They may have mattered before but web analysts knew that these only count numbers, the tip of the iceberg. These do not tell how much of these Hits and page Views were converted to buyers (in case of e-commerce sites) or were triggered to do a certain activity the sites aims for its visitors to accomplish. These conversions are some of the many metrics which advanced Web Analytics tools offered to produce and then web analysts have been empowered once more. They can now focus on what web analysts should be doing:

• Compute for different conversions
• Do Path Analysis
• Dive into A/B and Multi-Variate Testing
• Perform Keyword Analysis
• Compute for step-by-step purchase conversion
• Know the Average Order Value
• Check for site-wide conversion rate
• Understand visitor behavior and traffic trends
• Create other actionable reports

Here’s a perfect example of the process Web Analysts should take when doing their analysis, perfectly illustrated by none other than the Google Analytics Evangelist himself, Avinash Kaushik.

They can just then leave the log file analyzer to the development and programming teams who can really benefit from knowing bandwidth usage, visitors’ browsers, file types, and errors. This way, getting dirty with web data for the purpose of creating actionable analysis will really be worth the while of a web analyst.

Promotion of the Web Analytics field and collaboration of the WAA members were two of the main objectives as to why WAA decided to hold such contest. The Web Analytics Championship commenced during the second quarter of 2008 and over the course of two weeks, twenty analytics reports with insights and observations of the WAA site were submitted. ClickThinking was able to extract value from the information given in order to outline a clear description of the problem at hand and offer recommendations based on the data reviewed. ClikThinking also focused on solving the critical problems of the site head on.

Avinash Kaushik , author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and analytics evangelist at Google , Neil Mason , Managing Director of Applied Insights, and June Dershewitz , Vice President of analytics for Semphonic were the judges of this event. ClickThinking was successful in impressing them with their ability to convey solutions in clear language which is usually the frustration of Web Analytics and marketers.

“While it is important for marketers to understand and recognize the value of site analysis, and how analytics is essential for improvement, it is the responsibility of the Web analyst to convey their findings and solutions in a language their audience understands,” said Kaushik. “ClickThinking presented an insightful and creative report, without getting mired in technical recommendations. Their report is a prime example of beneficial analysis as it relates to Web site messaging, clarity and ultimately, conversion. And they made analytics engaging.”

Source: Market Watch

Reporting and Analysis are some of the important elements in Web Analytics. There is no sense in having tons and tons of data if the web analysts do not know how to present these data effectively. With reporting and analysis, you will be able to disseminate useful information that can lead to the success of the marketing campaigns.

An article from the Web Analytics Association talks about a reporting outline that I find really helpful.

• Purpose
• Test Conditions
• Results
• Analysis
• Lessons Learned
• Recommendations

PURPOSE

This portion helps the web analyst to convey the goals and objective of the report you are doing.

TEST CONDITIONS

A summary of how a test was conducted (example: A/B testing or Multivariate testing) or how the tracking of the data was conducted (example: comparison of Google vs. Yahoo data, month to month comparison of metrics).

RESULTS

Presenting the data gathered through testing, survey, metric tracking, etc with the use of different charts, graphs, etc.

ANALYSIS

This section provides us information on what is the meaning of the numbers from the results. The first three parts of the outline help us to have an insightful analysis that could contribute to the success of the campaign or to see areas of improvement in the website.

LESSONS LEARNED

It is good to be familiar with the industry’s standards and best practices to be able to see if the company is in line with the industry’s results.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the insights gathered on the first part of the reporting outline, create recommendations that can help boost up the company’s marketing campaigns.

These are the 6 points highlighted in the WAA article that can greatly help to achieve the goal of web analytics which is to provide accurate data, actionable insights and useful recommendations.

]]> http://www.webanalyticsphilippines.com/effective-reporting-and-analysis-for-web-analytics/feed/ 0 http://www.webanalyticsphilippines.com/four-essential-tasks-of-a-web-analyst/ http://www.webanalyticsphilippines.com/four-essential-tasks-of-a-web-analyst/#comments Tue, 27 May 2008 10:53:53 +0000 Aimee http://www.webanalyticsphilippines.com/?p=56 Web Analytics is a blossoming career here in the country and as that’s the case, Web Analysts’ tasks may still be blurry to some who are just starting and we here at Web Analytics Philippines experienced the same thing when we were at that point. We’ve experienced growing pains which put us in an identity crisis on how we are different from other marketing and business analysts in the company we’re working for. It was a rough path to walk on, and at some point, we were blindly walking it, not sure if we’re doing the right thing as Web Analysts. But thanks to the guidance of Web Analytics icons such as Jim Sterne, Eric Peterson, and Avinash Kaushik, we’re able to come up and define the Four Essential Tasks of a Web Analyst:

• Produce routine and ad hoc reports through different Web Analytics tools and platforms and using visual analysis tools such as Tableau
• Implement testing programs and other initiatives to improve website traffic, success events, different conversions, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Generate relevant and actionable insights and analysis based on reports found in Web Analytics tools and tests implemented to promote the increase of KPIs
• Collaborate closely and provide service to other Marketing teams to help with data-driven marketing initiatives and strategies

These are basically the tasks that we have been accomplishing for the past months. It was a tough battle, yes, but we’re grateful to have emerged, not really victorious, but with more understanding of how Web Analytics is done. Being a Web Analyst is no piece of cake but do not take this as a warning, rather, a challenge to take and be successful on. With this said, let us provide you with lessons that you must diligently study whole-heartedly:

• Master the art of accuracy in reporting
• Understand the flow of your website data enough to tell anything wrong with it with just a look
• Dig deep into the data, you never know when you’ll find something which could bring great returns to the company
• Immerse yourself in projects targeting site optimization, landing pages, website processes and other web-specific experimentations
• Build good rapport with other marketing teams, know their plans and always be ready to serve them with whatever web data they might need for their campaign strategies
• Keep on learning and keep on reading about Web Analytics as it’s an evolving field
• Lastly, have passion and love Web Analytics, it’s a career which could help you start building your great future now