Jan
15
Many of you probably saw the same email I received yesterday about a whitepaper produced by Tealeaf and semphonic, discussing the virtues of both engaging with and measuring the behavior of mobile web users.
I find myself reflecting on this piece with mixed emotions. Lines like, “the recent entrance of Apple … into the mobile arena,” sting a little bit, since the entrance of Apple into the mobile arena was the entrance of the viable mobile arena itself (in the US), and it really wasn’t “recent”, in industry years (the Internet ages like a dog). On the other hand, this piece is a good reminder of the importance of publishing to mobile users, identifying their unique situation vs. traditional web users, and of course, measuring their behavior to inform the optimization of the mobile site’s performance.
In making its case for the mobile web’s importance to businesses, the whitepaper references an October 2008 study by IBM, a piece I didn’t find particularly compelling. For example, the study cites that 50% of people would either substantially or completely replace their desktop PC with a mobile device. It goes on to say that by 2011, 39% of respondents expected to increase their mobile device use by 40%. To me, these figures seem a little arbitrary - how would your mom respond to the question, “Do you intend to increase your usage of mobile Internet by 2011? If so, by what percentage?”
Mine would probably say, “2011? Sure! I’ll be using it all the time while my new space car is on autopilot!”
It’s important to remember that there are huge differences between the standard and mobile versions of the web, particularly as it pertains to how and when people use each. I don’t think we’re going to hear, “Honey, get the kids and gather around my Treo. I want to show everyone the Wilsons’ pictures from their trip to Hawaii.”
It seems to me that Apple got it dead right in their assessment of the mobile market. In their own documentation to developers, Apple explains that users aren’t using a mobile device like they would use a desktop PC:
Almost by definition, users use iPhone while they are mobile. Whether they’re in a car or a train, sitting in a cafe or on a park bench, taking a walk, shopping, or waiting for an appointment, users use iPhone in environments that are likely to be filled with distractions. This does not mean that your iPhone solution can’t or shouldn’t perform important tasks that require users to concentrate. But it does mean that you must be prepared for the probability that users will not be giving their undivided attention to your content, at least not for long.
Above all, therefore, your iPhone content must be quick and extremely easy to use. You need to grab the user’s attention immediately and help them access the most valuable parts of your content quickly.
But a comScore study quoted in the whitepaper argues the opposite:
Consumption is quickly evolving from brief transactions, such as checking the weather or flight status, to time intensive interaction with mobile Web sites - even without an iPhone.
This conclusion is based on the fact that mobile usage has increased 127% YoY - page views from the 3,500 Windows Mobile, Symbian, and PalmOS devices comScore has in their panel, notably devoid of iPhones. This growth is also a little misleading: the interaction is not getting more sophisticated: it’s getting simpler. Users are spending more time on sites like Craigslist, where one search can render multiple results that a user can quickly duck into and out of. Users are not entering into more complex browsing habits like multi-page drilldowns and shopping carts. The interactions are still light and quick; there are just more of them.
This isn’t surprising, and is probably a result of the proliferation of instant-on data (as opposed to the days of GPRS having to connect), the improvement of device interfaces, and the fact that the average male spends 40 minutes a day in the bathroom*, likely busying themselves with their eBay auctions and Super Monkey Ball (* UK Daily Mirror).
It’s probably true that saying we need to develop product for the present, not the future, is a little shortsighted. But if you’re trying to anticipate and develop for a demand that will exist 12 or 18 months into the future, I can virtually guarantee you that you’re going to miss the entire dartboard.
Toward the end, the whitepaper moves on to discuss the virtues of a customer experience management platform, notably Tealeaf’s. Unfortunately, the piece does so by undermining the virtues of a traditional web analytics system, which arguably is more important in the infant phases of a mobile web site. Not to say that a CEM isn’t important, but it’s not going to help answer any questions like, “Is our mobile site successful?” and justifying the value of a CEM at the expense of a more traditional analytics solution is unfortunate. Truly, a CEM builds on a foundation of understanding brought about through other tools. With a CEM alone, businesses may not have enough context to get the best information the tool has to offer.
Have a look at the whitepaper and let me know what you think, too.
Jan
8
What is web analytics?
Filed Under About Web Analytics | 2 Comments
So it’s always one of those unanswerable questions: “You’re a web analytics person? What exactly does that mean?”
Well, I did my best, and it only took me a few hours. Take a moment to read through the web analytics page, where we discuss what web analytics “is”, or what it really should be. It’s long, but I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback,so we can come up with a short version to tell our friends and families who say, “Evan does Internet stuff…I don’t get it.”
The important thing to remember is that we’re generalists. Web analytics people simply cannot be specialists: it clouds the analyst’s judgment. But being a generalist doesn’t mean that you can’t be good at many things. In fact, it means you have to be good at a lot of things. Think what would happen if your doctor wasn’t good enough to recognize the difference between a bruise and a tumor. He has to know enough to point you in the right direction, and being a web analytics practitioner places a lot of burden on you to know a great many things about usability, design, information architecture, marketing, search engine optimization, the financial fundamentals of your business, and more. Sometimes you might not be able to solve the problems on your own, but without you, the company may have never even known there was a problem.
So please have a read through it and let me know what you think. We’ll get started soon on more of the juicy “make you an analytics ninja” content, but I’d love to lay out a good footing for what we’re hoping to do here, so please contribute if you think anything could be better. There is very little content out there about the fundamentals of what we do, and that’s exactly what businesses need right now: without a basic and fundamental understanding of the value of web analytics, we can never hope to execute on all of the cool things we’ve learned.
Jan
7
Laying the groundwork . . .
Filed Under About the blog | 2 Comments
So, let’s not go by statistics here and just assume that this blog isn’t going to get off the ground. A facebook group has just been created (click it!), so please join the group. I know this is all called “Atlanta Analytics”, but it’s really a web-wide community, so please go ahead and join, even if it’s not 72 degrees in January where you are.
So here is some of what’s to come over the next few days and weeks:
- The blog, of course. It’s time that we got this started, right?
- A glossary - somewhere you can go if you’re wondering what the difference is between ‘visitors’, ‘visitors by session’, ‘unique visitors’, ‘absolute unique visitors’, ‘weekly unique visitors by month’, and all of that mess! It’s probably more of a wiki than a glossary, so please comment if you’d like to contribute. I’ll take all the help (and give all the credit) that I can
- A how-to section. This is where I’m going to rip off Avinash the most. OK, just kidding. I’ll just link to everything he’s brilliantly put together already, but if there are any good ideas about how to figure things out, this will be the place
- Interviews! Let’s talk to people in the industry! Please twitter DM me @evanlapointe if you’re an analyst with something to say. Also, we’ll be talking to people in the industry in…you guessed it…Atlanta. To start.
- Q&A - the blog might take care of some of this, but let’s start a place where people can ask questions and others can help out.
- Reviews/instructions for using the various tools. Are we getting tired of this yet? Somehow, I feel like this might be useful, especially for those who are switching or thinking of switching tools.
- Good ideas and bad ideas. Ever heard that radio ad that says you wouldn’t put a cabinet together with a carrot peeler? Well, we probably won’t resort to that level of metaphorical desperation, but let’s talk about some of the do’s and don’t’s of web analytics. There are a lot of both.
I’m looking forward to hearing from any and everyone who takes the time to visit. Please stay tuned and add this to your RSS reader!
Thanks for stopping by.
Nov
25
Another web analytics blog?
Filed Under About the blog | Leave a Comment
Welcome to Atlanta Analytics, a blog about web analytics. But this isn’t another blog about how to do web analytics. I could never hope to compete with Avinash Kaushik on that. This blog, instead, is about how to get web analytics happening at your workplace. It’s about how to prioritize analytics. It’s about engaging stakeholders on a level that allows them not only to track their progress (reporting), but improve their products through the types of analytics projects and findings Avinash is so gifted at teaching us.
The purpose of this blog is not to make you a better analyst, per se, as much as it is to give already talented analysts a few ideas about how to increase the visibility of a department (or your own visibility, if you’re alone) that can change the future of an entire business. Nobody that works on a web site has greater power to improve the bottom line than a good analyst. And I mean nobody.
We’ll discuss a multitude of things around a handful of topics, notably:
- How to hire good analytics people
- Why implementation is the most important thing you’ve got going
- Why it should be against the law for people to “specialize”
- Some tips and tricks on the big tools out there
- And more!