Big Fish, Small Fish: Who will rule the pond in the UK?

A recent survey of office workers in the UK suggests they cost the country’s economy roughly £1.38 billion each year because they spend time on the clock surfing social media networking sites such as Twitter. A consultant for the company that commissioned the report said, “When it comes to an office environment the use of these sites is clearly becoming a productivity black hole.”

Sound familiar? Maybe reminiscent of the fears people had about email in the work place in 1994? It also sounds eerily like the concern that Internet access in the workplace gave rise to Cyberslacking in 1996. These days, it’s hard to imagine a day at the office without either email or Internet. Yet the fear of new communication technology in the Enterprise has surfaced again in the UK around Twitter. But why?

It certainly is not because of a lack of broadband Internet access. Data published at Internet World Stats shows that a high percentage of both US and UK citizens enjoy Internet connectivity (74.1% and 79.8%, respectively). So, with broadband Internet and tasty low-cost social media marketing dangling within reach, why aren’t UK businesses hungry for the bait?

One contributing factor could be that European businesses are slower to utilize social media applications such as Twitter to promote their companies than US businesses. According to Forrester Research’s Consumer Profile Tool, 82% of US citizens use social networks, compared to 63% of their UK brothers and sisters across the pond. US participants are more actively participating on social networks at every rung in Forrester’s ladder of participation.

Maybe less experience contributed to why a study conducted by Webtrends found that the rate of adopting low-cost social media marketing strategies, specifically Twitter, by Enterprise businesses in the UK was only 2%. These companies know about Twitter, but they might not know what to make of it.  “Many are simply not sure how to use it, and even if they could they wouldn’t be sure of what to say, and who exactly they would be saying it to,” said Webtrends’ marketing director Colette Wade.

The same cannot be said for the small fish competing with the big fish Enterprises. O2 recently did a study that found 17% of small businesses were utilizing Twitter. As bizreport.com put it “Cost-cutting was cited as the biggest benefit of tweeting by two-thirds of those surveyed, with 16% claiming they had saved up to £5,000 (US$7,300) since signing up.”

The 15% gap between Enterprise businesses and small businesses in the UK in their adoption of Twitter to market their companies is substantial! Enterprise “big fish” companies who are slow to see the benefits of social media might find themselves “Amazoned” when their “small fish” competition out-positions them in the marketplace by embracing social media marketing before they do.

It may be the same old pond, but the ecosystem is different. Will the small fish dominate the UK food chain with new media marketing strategies?

There are three things you will see very little of when using the new Insight interface. Navigation, color, and data visualization. In fact, their absence or minimal use is integral to the Insight design. The key was to stay focused on our goal of providing an innovative new view to powerful data.

A phrase from Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain captures the heart of this methodology:

“That which you manifest is before you.”

That is, if you see a spoon, there is a spoon. If you focus on the left navigation, your design will center around the left nav. If you start with color, your design will hinge on color. If you see flash as the solution, your design will rely heavily on it.

Realizing this we set about designing the Insight user experience deliberately leaving out large pieces of the puzzle.

Color

The absence or presence of color can drastically effect the feel of a design. In general, the world of infographics and analytics is filled with color. By deliberately leaving out color we were able to ensure that what color we did have made an impact. In the Insight interface color has very specific meaning

Even in this very small image of the Account Dashboard you can see areas that need attention because of their red color. The red stands out because there are no other colors to compete with it. We also use blue through out the interface to indicate interactivity. Of course, this doesn’t mean the Insight interface will always remain devoid of color. It just means we will be judicious about when and where we add it.

Left Navigation

Now, the left navigation or “left-nav” as we call it in the biz, has been around since the inception of the internet. Early web sites were almost uniformly L-shaped and it became somewhat of a standard. I can remember regarding the L-shape as a usability enhancement because people knew how to use it and would easily recognize it as the place they needed to go for navigation. After all, inertia is a powerful thing and there is tremendous advantage in using standards and patterns that are widely adopted. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel.

However, in our case we wanted the data to be navigation. We knew that we would probably have to include some sort of global navigation at some point but we knew that leaving it out would force us to find other ways to guide the user through the interface. The very interesting thing is that in the end we discovered we didn’t need navigation at all, at least in the form of a left navigation element.

Instead, elements like the breadcrumb style navigation allow users to quickly pivot between profiles and reports. It also acts as a title for each report. The report list at the bottom of the Profile Dashboard allows the user to see all their reports easily. The search field allows them to filter the list in order to find a report by name.

Data Visualization

There are many great examples of great visualizations that can really wow your users. 3D Spinning Scatterplots, gauges, and pie charts can be really impressive. Historically, dashboards are littered with a myriad of data visualizations, but if you really understand the data you realize that many of the visualizations actually obscure the insight. Inspired by Steven Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think we sought to minimize any need to interpret data.

Technology can also heavily influence the design. With Flash, Canvas, Processing, and even Corda the possibilities are endless. Because we remained agnostic to the technology we were able to focus on the RIGHT visualizations for the data. In the end, we chose Canvas because it allowed us to use web standards and did not limit the devices we could work on.

In the future, we may use Processing or Flash or whatever new data visualization technology is available. The important thing is that we will use them to create visualizations that provide instant insight in to the meaning of the data.

By approaching design in this way you get a clear focus on the core concept of your design. If you can remain committed and brave the slings and arrows of those who insist on navigation or poke fun at your monochromatic color palette, the end result is a much more compelling user experience that is focused on what your audience needs. It may even have a strong navigational element and every color in the rainbow but instead of dominating the user interface they will exist only to support the key focus of the design.

Jeff Katz recently sent me a link to a post from a blogger complaining about the state of technology in social media monitoring. While I agree with many of the points in the post about the challenges of the industry, I was very put off by the insulting manner the blogger used. I was also surprised to see how many start ups in the social media monitoring space seemed to just learn the challenges of the market.

In a comment string on that post, Ari Herzog asked me to elaborate on this point: “If you think the amount of person hours spent using the current systems is a lot now, just wait for what is coming.” So, this is that elaboration.

Staffing up

Jeremiah Owyang will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t think social media scales. He’ll also point you to Best Buy as an example of a company to watch. Have you seen their Twitter background for their @Twelpforce account? It’s an army of people. Best Buy is doing something unique: they’re solving the volume of conversation with, gasp, people!

Most of the business interest in social media has been around marketing. As a social media marketer, I know it’s only a part of the long term business value of social media. The truth is social media is a communication channel, which plugs into every business department just like email and phone. Speaking of phones, former CEO of Zappos.com now acquired by Amazon.com, Tony Hsieh said, “We don’t really think of social media as a marketing channel; that would be kind of like asking about ROI on answering phones.”

Having started by building social media programs with systems that I rolled myself to building out a global social media program for Webtrends; I can say that a big realization has emerged from what Jeremiah and Tony have been talking about. Businesses need to think about social media as a communication channel. They should be planning for it and evaluating it using similar KPIs as they do their phones. It’s not a question of if they should talk to customers, prospects, partners, etc. The question is how efficiently they’re doing it.

However, that’s not what businesses are currently thinking or doing. Most businesses are still sticking their toe in the water of social media and as a result have seriously under invested in the space. Large Fortune 1000 companies are gripping about spending $30K on software and handing it over to super small teams–sometimes a single person. Can you imagine if they tried to answer their phone lines with a 3 person team? Or a single intern?!! How can they expect to evaluate performance when the team is so under water that they can’t even think?

The reality is that if businesses want to be successful in participating in social media, they’ll need to allocate resources in proportion to the volume that exists for their brand. Small companies can get away with small teams. Large corporations will need large departments. They will be structured like call centers with IVRs, scripts, answer trees, etc. It will take a substantial investment in staff training, infrastructure, and rolling out business processes. Everyone in the company will have to know how to use the tools and different departments will be responsible for different pieces of the conversation.

There is wide spread confusion about how much to invest and how to measure value. To help, Forrester or someone should do a study comparing the amount of conversation hours large brands have on phones, email, and social media. That would help businesses understand the relative investment to make. It would also help them determine which channels are most efficient so they can push conversations to their most efficient channels. We’re deploying a cross-departmental, multi-channel, global social media program here and we plan to share the details for our customers’ reference.

During the previous four parts of this series( intro, paper prototyping, design, and web standards), I focused on the redesign of Tag Builder that we completed in the spring. While authoring these posts, I didn’t have the liberty to disclose the application we launched just last week, Webtrends Analytics 9 Insight. However, these posts were not unrelated as the methodologies and principles that guided the redesign of Tag Builder were also core to the genesis of Analytics 9 Insight. In the final post in this series, I’ll introduce Analytics 9 Insight features that were inspired by working directly with our users as we progressed through designing, building and testing.

Stories

For the past year, we have been collecting stories from our customers. While listening to what is currently working for them, we paid special attention to what isn’t. We found that our pro users spent a majority of their time creating dashboards and reports for other users in the organization, from executives to marketers. These other users greatly outnumbered the pro users and found that the Webtrends interface was difficult to navigate and had too many options. We incorporated this feedback into stories that guided our design and development.

Some of the stories that guided Analytics 9 Insight

Prototyping and User Testing

Working from these stories, we prototyped the new application completely on paper, using a process called paper prototyping. A cross-departmental team made up of designers, developers, writers, testers, and others “built” the application with markers, paper, scissors, and tape. We then took the paper prototype on the road to our customer conference in Las Vegas. There, we had multiple sessions where our customers attempted to accomplish tasks derived from our stories. When they succeeded, we knew we got it right. When they didn’t, we broke out the markers and paper and designed new solutions. In the end, the paper prototype became a blueprint for our design and development efforts.

David working on some paper prototypes before testing with users

Beta

We developed the application in just nine weeks. We wanted to get it in the hands of users as soon as possible, initially releasing it into a private beta so we could gather feedback and address issues before releasing it publicly. It was a great thing to do because it gave us the opportunity to fine tune the performance and remove many issues before launching the application to the entire On Demand user base.

White board used to track key issues during the private beta

Launch

We were all a bit nervous as we launched the product. It was exciting to see the activity on Twitter and the early reviews pour in. Our goal was to make the most intuitive, useful analytics application in the industry, but because the stories that guided our design efforts came directly from our customers, we were also confident. To keep the dialog going, we included a Get Satisfaction link right in the product. We want to continue to hear from our users.

Get Satisfaction feedback built into the product

New Features

The main features of Analytics 9 Insight have been fairly well documented by now. Web Services URLs ready to embed in Excel, Story View, and RSS overlay among others. The following are features that you may not have heard about that come directly from listening to our users.

1. Shareable URLs

The original version of share included an email option. Then we thought about how people communicate in the office today and realized with corporate IM, intranets, message boards, etc, email was just one way in which users would like to share reports. We took a step back, removed the email option, and created a URL system that would allow anyone to copy and send the link to any other user. This makes sharing reports extremely easy.

URLs reflect choices in interface. Great for sharing.

2. Dimension and Measure Auto Suggest and Search

Creating custom reports in Webtrends allows for endless possibilities. Unfortunately, it can also create endless reports. When considering many different options in which a user could categorize reports, we discovered that most users could remember which reports they were looking for by identifying which dimensions and measures that the report is made of. In the profile dashboard, below the fold, is a list of all reports available to you for that profile. If you start typing a measure or dimension in the search box, the auto complete will kick in at three letters. Choosing one of the measures or dimensions will filter the list to only include reports with that measure or dimension.

Auto-suggest for dimensions and measures across reports

Filter by measure or dimension

3. Copy and Pasteable Content

Sometimes, when scanning through analytics data, you run across a bit of data here or there that you need to copy and paste into a spreadsheet or report. We prioritized this ability over almost everything else. Whether you are in the profile dashboard and click on table view or are in a report, you are able to select the data directly from the interface. Very handy.

Trend view

Switch to table view for easy copy and paste

4. Weekend Indicators

Insight uses 7-day, 28-day, and 91-day date range shortcuts. The first is typical but the second two are a bit peculiar. There is a reason why we chose them instead of the standard 30 and 90 day range options—weekends. You see, both 28 and 91 are divisible by 7. This allows us to display data ranges in compare mode where the weekdays align. Interesting patterns emerge when you show one date range compared to another and the days of the week align perfectly. This is extremely useful as most businesses see a difference between weekdays and weekends.

28 day compare view with weekend indicators

91 day compare view with weekend indicators

5. Date Range Options

The default date range options, as mentioned, are 7-day, 28-day, and 91-day ranges. However, if you click on Custom, you are able to select any range of days you want. After you make a selection, the compare default is to choose the same number of days just before the selection. To change your compare range, all you have to do is select the starting day and the application will automatically select the range equal to the same number of days as the main range. There are also other shortcuts available in the custom option. The year, quarter, and month are all selectable as shortcuts. You can also use one of the numbered week selectors, just to the left of each week.

Custom date range allows for day, week (shown), month, quarter, year, and custom ranges

6. True Visitor Metric

If you select one of the calendar shortcuts mentioned above (year, quarter, month, week, or day), the Visitors key metric will appear in the profile dashboard. Because Analytics is tuned to scan across these standard date ranges and produce a true visitor count, we added this when those ranges are selected.

True visitor count when date selection is set at standard report period

7. Pivot

When you drill into a report and have a specific date range selected, the last thing you want to do when switching reports or profiles is set up the date range all over again. We know that many users switch profiles when viewing similar reports. We added a dropdown to the right of the profile and report selection that makes this extremely easy to jump from profile to profile or report to report. This saves quite a bit of time.

Click on pivot dropdowns to change account, profile, or report

8. Adaptive Account Dashboard

Every customer is different. Some have many profiles. Some have just a few. And some just have one. We wanted to make sure that each customer/user had an interface optimized for them. If a user only has one profile, then they never see the account dashboard and jump right into the profile dashboard. This eliminates unnecessary steps after login. If the user has less than 25 profiles, they see the standard view which features a single table of profiles that can be sorted by any of the available measures and embeds a sparkline of page views. If the user has more than 25 profiles available, they are presented with the compact view which features four columns and reduces the visible metric down to one. In this view, the user can choose a different metric to display by clicking on the metric dropdown at the top of the screen. They can also hover over any profile to get a multi metric and sparkline view. Interesting tip. A user can force the standard or compact view by adding a query parameter to the URL. ?mode=standard or ?mode=compact will change the views.

Account dashboard in standard mode

Account dashboard in compact mode

Inspiration

There are many more customer-inspired features in Webtrends Analytics 9 Insight. If you are a current user, we hope you enjoy Analytics 9 Insight. After all, you helped create it. If you are a customer and haven’t been an active user, we encourage you to login and give it a try. When you do, don’t be shy about sending us feedback through the Get Satisfaction widget in the product (hover over Help and click Feedback). We will also be conducting some user testing next week, August 17 – 21. If you are in the Portland area and would like to test some prototypes of what we are designing next, let me know in the comments.

Okay, so – thus far, we’ve looked at two things on the scenario analysis report:  the fall-out (all that stuff on the right of the funnel), and the numbers in and of themselves.  If you haven’t perused those posts, they can be found in our archive here (just click on me as an author and you’ll get them).

So now, I want to talk about everything on the left – or what we call inflow.  Once more, I present you with the scenario entry/exit pages view:

So, 38,176 visits entered the first step of the scenario (that’s 99.28% of all the visits that entered the scenario at any step).  Of those, 931 visits literally started on this step – the first thing the visitor saw on your site was a product page.  If you’re running email campaigns that include links to specific products, this is a good sign!

We also see, here, the pages from which visits entered the scenario.  On step one, there are a lot of them – for some, it’s the video recorders page, others the search results page, etc.

The thing to keep in mind here is that the visits listed in the inflow are, very specifically, only the place from which a visit actually entered the scenario the first time.  So, if I started my visit to your site by doing a search, then clicked on a product page from there, I’d be part of the “search results” number (5,736) on step 1 above.  If I then leave the scenario for a bit, peruse elsewhere, and then come back at the “Started Checkout” step, I will not be a part of the numbers to the left of that step (so, in this case, I’m not one of the 5 visits that come in on that step).

Now, let’s shift to the Step Transitions view to peruse inflow there:

Here, remember, we’re looking at how visits moved through the scenario itself.  Here’s a sampling of what inflow tells us in this case:

• • 845 visits returned to at least one product page after adding something to the cart.  That’s good news – people are shopping for more than one thing!  Are you driving that?  Can you guide them to specific products they might want or need?
• • 203 visits, after checking out, went back to viewing product pages.  These people are still shopping, and it’s a solid 2.5% of those who bought something from you.  Excellent!  Find ways to reward them for their continued presence on your site.
• • Likewise, 317 visits, after starting checkout, went back to looking at another product page.  Are you driving that by offering related products?  If so – great!  If not – well, there’s an opportunity here for distraction, a possibility that you could lose those 317 visits because the person behind them forgot they were checking out.  See what you can do to keep them moving through the funnel to actually complete checkout before they shop more.
• • 40 visits started checkout, then started checkout again.  I wouldn’t worry too much about that; it’s likely that this small percentage simply idled for 30 minutes on their visit (which then timed out), then returned to finish what they started.

Again, these opportunities may seem fairly obvious, since we’re all familiar with the shopping cart scenario.  But if we can apply that same insight to our loan applications or our six-step “send me a quote” process, we can start seeing which steps are giving people problems, or seem redundant, or distract people from what you really want them to do (finish the process!).

So – I think that about covers the scenario analysis report.  Coming up next – path analysis.  Stay tuned!

Webtrends has the following comments on the OMB’s proposal:

1. Webtrends supports privacy guidelines focused on transparency and control. Under the OMB’s proposed framework any federal agency using web tracking technologies on its Web site would be required to adhere to the following basic privacy principles:

• Adhere to all existing laws and policies (including those designed to protect privacy) governing the collection, use, retention, and safeguarding of any data gathered from users;
• Post clear and conspicuous notice on the Web site of the use of web tracking technologies;
• Provide a clear and understandable means for a user to opt-out of being tracked; and
• Not discriminate against those users who decide to opt-out, in terms of their access to information.

Webtrends recently stated its support for broad privacy principles such as these in the context of government Websites. In applying these principles, we respectfully recommend that the OMB focus on principles of transparency and control applied proportionately to the privacy risks. The OMB should also avoid being overly prescriptive about how agencies are expected to comply. Specifying technological methods that should be utilized can be overly burdensome and could even prevent the use of more protective privacy solutions that are constantly being developed. Instead, agencies should have flexibility to find effective solutions that work best for their Web sites and citizens’ needs, while taking into account the privacy impact of the level of tracking being conducted and the type of information being tracked.

2. Webtrends recommends additional tracking levels based on additional factors. The OMB has offered for consideration a three-tiered approach to the use of web tracking technologies on federal government Web sites:

• 1st – Single-session technologies, which track users over a single session and do not maintain tracking data over multiple sessions or visits;
• 2nd – Multi-session technologies for use in analytics, which track users over multiple sessions purely to gather data to analyze web traffic statistics; and
• 3rd – Multi-session technologies for use as persistent identifiers, which track users over multiple visits with the intent of remembering data, settings, or preferences unique to that visitor for purposes beyond what is needed for web analytics

In addition to these three tiers, we respectfully recommend that the OMB consider other levels based on the following factors:

• Whether First Party Cookies Are Implemented. Federal web administrators that choose to serve first party cookies should have less stringent privacy requirements than those that use third party cookies. Third party cookies are served up by, and data collected using, applications on third party servers. In contrast, first party cookies are served up, and data collected, using applications on the agency’s own servers. By storing their own cookie data, federal agencies can better control access and use of the data collected from visitors to government Web sites. Further, because first party cookies are only delivered by the sites they are visiting, privacy issues are minimized. With first party cookies, citizens know who is collecting their data and who they can contact if they have a problem with a cookie.
• Whether Web Analytics Data is Anonymized. A distinction should also be made based on whether personal information is tied to cookies or if visitors remain anonymous. Processes have been developed that obscure or eliminate IP address and other potential identifiers. Such techniques further enhance privacy, while still allowing for meaningful analytics. Whether these processes are used should be taken into account as additional factors in determining what levels of privacy protections should be applied.

Webtrends encourages the OMB to take its comments into consideration as it continues to develop its policy. We also urge our federal government clients to submit input to the OMB Proposed Revision of the Policy on Web Tracking Technologies for Federal Web sites to make sure their concerns are addressed. Comments can be posted until August 10th on the Office for Science and Technology blog, in response to the Federal Register Notice using methods described in the notice, or emailed to: oira_submission@omb.eop.gov.

Social media is changing the way businesses connect with markets. Conversations take place where the participants choose and are often spread across multiple sources. Pulling the conversation together in order to make informed, engagement decisions is at the heart of marketing’s challenge in this new media landscape. To demonstrate how Webtrends Social Measurement helps with a social media campaign, we advertised on the outside of Portland’s light rail, MAX, to monitor Twitter for responses to our ad. The idea is to publish the results on another MAX ad in October. We forecasted it would take 3 months to get a volume of results that would tell a compelling story, but a compelling story emerged in less than a week and spanned Twitter, blogs, and mainstream news. This is an update on that campaign.

Campaign results

The following are results from our measure of conversation on social media driven by our marketing campaign.

If a source had two or more posts, we combined the results. KATU had the most comments. BikePortland had the most commenters. Also worth noting, after we filtered for duplicates we discovered that the number of comments that KATU reports on their site are nearly double the actual amount. Unique commenters are considered unique usernames.

Sentiment is a hot aspect of social media. We recently wrote a post challenging the use of algorithms to determine sentiment, and this campaign is a great example of how NLP falls short. Sentiment is a complex tapestry of human emotions, not just positive, negative, or neutral. In this case our criteria was:

• Yes answers: People that only said yes.
• No answers: People that only said no.
• Same answers: People that said the amount paid now is fine.
• More answers: People that said pay more; including answers about licensing and registration.
• Less answers: People that said pay less; including answers about rebates or tax credits.
• Other answers: Comments that didn’t explicit state a position; including answers that were sarcastic or answered with a question as we can’t be sure of their inference.

As our results are human scored and could be interpreted differently by other people, we are providing our data so that it can be reinterpreted by anyone who is interested. We showed the top four sources broken out to show what impact sources had on the overall sentiment. Overall, the sentiment was that people favored either the same or less taxes than cyclists currently contribute. The strongest opposition came from Twitter, our original target source for monitoring conversation for this campaign.

Tag cloud for all conversation

Tag cloud for KATU

Tag cloud for BikePortland

Tag cloud for OregonLive

Tag cloud for all Twitter

Reflecting the salient points

In today’s media landscape, it’s challenging to track many viewpoints from many stakeholders. Making sense of a high volume of conversation from disparate sources isn’t easy for anyone. After tracking this conversation with our tools, here are some of the main points we learned:

1.) There is a lot of confusion on the facts about who pays for what currently

The most quoted source was the Federal Highway Administration (FWHA), which reported that 92% of the funds for local roads come from property, income, and sales taxes. It was the lack of general awareness of this fact that we believe causes a lack of empathy with cyclists as it pertains to taxation/registration. We did notice that the mainstream news sites that had the most “yes” answers to our question, many of which were accompanied by messages that indicated people didn’t think cyclists paid taxes currently. Others pointed out that cars, boats, motorcycles, airplanes and more have additional taxes including licensing, registration, and fuel taxes. Respondents pointed out that many cyclists are also motorists and therefore not only pay the unique motor vehicle taxes, but that it would be double taxation. To which people replied that the additional taxes are paid for per vehicle regardless of use, which therefore doesn’t constitute double taxation.

What is clear to us is that more conversation around this point could help clarify for everyone where contribution currently comes from, which is key to having a discussion about where obligations should be moving forward. While the information is out there, it doesn’t appear to be widely distributed, nor agreed upon. We see this as the greatest opportunity for constituents involved in public policy development around transportation.

2.) More taxes on cycling could be bad for everyone

There were two reasons for arguing this point. First is that people pointed out that less traffic, less damage to the environment, and more benefits were good for everyone. Participants reasoned that anything that discouraged cycling, such as taxes, prevents the community from reaping those rewards. As bikes do not use fuel, the only additional per vehicle costs that could apply would be licensing and registration. The only argument we saw against this point was the feeling of it being unfair that road faring cyclists didn’t have to pay these costs as well. Contenders pointed to the fact that state governments and municipalities who have adopted bike registration programs have later abandoned them due to the loss of the revenue to overhead.

3.) Some cyclists want more taxes, but under specific conditions

When people said they’d be willing to pay more taxes, they were only willing to pay more if the money went to bike specific infrastructure (we’ll include numbers in our final report). Nearly every answer for more taxes included the word “if”, often in all caps, and ended with extra exclamation points–indicating that people felt strongly that paying more was critically tied to the conditions that the money went to bike specific infrastructure. People expressed interest in better maintenance of existing bike lanes, more and better bike lanes, new bike-only paths, theft recovery, and more.

Other themes that came up were: Motorists are rude and sometimes dangerous about sharing the road; Road laws are not enforced equally on cyclists; Cyclists aren’t required to have liability insurance; Some people consider “cyclist” a loaded word.

Transparency

As part of our campaign, we are being transparent. That means we share openly about all details of the campaign. It also means our employees are free to discuss their thoughts publicly, even if they are critical. So, let’s talk about how we make money with this campaign. As I mentioned earlier, this campaign is part of a larger campaign called The Open Campaign. The Open Campaign will have it’s own microsite that will openly display the methods and results from various campaigns we’ve run using our tools. The concept is to provide a reference to businesses for what running campaigns with our tools looks like. It is that site that we’ll use to build leads for our sales team. While we do have a landing page for the MAX ad with a form on it, that form is to enter to win a free TriMet pass. Information from that form is *not* given to our sales team. It is strictly a promotional offer to encourage participation.

Want to see the results and make your own reports? Download our data »

Next Steps

Our question surfaced a diversity of viewpoints in much less time than we expected. As a result, we have an opportunity to progress the conversation by asking another question. If you have a suggestion for a follow up question, please share it as us a comment below.

Brian Agranoff, founder and principal analyst for ACR Analytics joins us this week as a guest blogger. ACR is one of Webtrends solutions partners and prides itself in doing the analytics “heavy lifting,” so marketers who don’t possess web analytics experience can focus on strategy, messaging and customer experience and other areas.

I recently embarked on a personal journey to shed some of the extra pounds that I’ve picked up over the past 20 years. After successfully losing 35 pounds in 90 days, I’ve chosen to share my experience because so many people have asked for the secret sauce. And given the countless hours I’ve spent on the treadmill (hint), I’ve had a bit of extra time to think. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that what I had done to successfully get in shape may help others improve their health and oddly enough their analytics.

My name is Brian Agranoff and I founded ACR Analytics 1 year ago after serving as a Solutions Engineer for Webtrends, a position I held for nearly 10 years. As I went out on my own I was hopeful that I could use this change in my work life to also make a change in my personal life. I was quickly approaching my 39th birthday and realized that getting back in shape was only going to get more difficult with each day that passed. And after another 180 of them had passed, I was finally inspired to take some action.

I had just returned from an annual Thanksgiving trip to California and attended one last turkey dinner with friends. Fortunately, the first thing we did when we arrived was had our picture taken.

I studied it carefully and came to the conclusion that now was the time, although I really had no idea what that meant or how I would go about doing it.

When it comes to analytics, there are some organizations that are in great shape! They have an analytics solution in place, have very specific goals, and always know how they are measuring up against those goals. They are engaged in a continuous cycle of action which could be anything from simple changes on their website, to remarketing through email, to A/B testing, to an investment in Behavioral Targeting or Site Optimization.

There are also many organizations that are a little out of shape when it comes to analytics. They usually fit into one of the following groups:

1. No analytics solution in place.
2. Analytics Solution in place, poorly implemented.
3. Analytics Solution in place, properly implemented.

If you think you need to get in shape, the good news here is that it doesn’t really matter which category you fall into. It’s not the solution that you have in place or even how well it’s implemented that will determine your level of fitness. Analytics is like your scale. You need to have something in place so you know how much you weigh. But, the scale alone will not help get you shape. Until you take some action, don’t expect to see any big changes when you weigh in.

A Little Inspiration Doesn’t Hurt

The picture put me over the edge, but the inspiration for change had been brewing for some time. Inspiration is all around you. It’s really not hard to find. You may just need to take a moment, as I did, to appreciate it.

I was inspired by the success of others. I had come to look forward to Tuesday nights on NBC, where I would grab a bowl of ice cream and watch the Biggest Loser. It is truly amazing how much weight some of the contestants lose and how consistently they are successful, at least during the show. Keeping in mind the unrealistic situation that these contestants are subjected to, I was struck by the fact that losing weight is really nothing more than a numbers game, very much like analytics. Yes, there are many factors that come into play such as competitive spirit, motivation, health factors, and emotional struggles. And yes, they all make for good TV, but at the end of the day, it’s “calories in” and “calories out”, a very simple formula that allows these contestants to consistently lose amazing amounts of weight in such a short amount of time. Calories are the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that has helped to unravel the mystery of weight loss for me. I realize this may be completely obvious to many of you, it wasn’t for me. Another parallel when it comes to analytics. When I work with customers, I’ll insist that they set their list of requirements aside for a moment and just tell me the top 3 drivers of their business. If the answer requires much thought, it’s usually a sign that we need to do some work around identifying the proper KPI’s to measure.

I was inspired by friends. During the turkey dinner, I got into a conversation with my brother-in-law Sean (who had just lost 10 pounds) and friend Ken (who always looks slim) about a “short term cleansing diet” that had worked for them. I’ve never been crazy about “diets”, but figured it couldn’t really hurt to try. It was only for 7 days and I was hopeful I might even learn something from it. Both of them encouraged me to give it a shot.

I’d also watch nearly every morning as my 70+ year old neighbors drove past my office on their way to the YMCA to work out. They started their regiment about 12 months ago and I now look forward to seeing them several times a week in the gym.

I was inspired by family. My greatest source of inspiration has come from that which is most important to me, my health and my family. Again, I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by very healthy, caring, and fun loving family and I’d like to be around to spend my days with them. Of course, there are no guarantees, but being a numbers guy, I figured I’d like to do what I can to increase my chances. Every time I start to succumb to my old ways, family quickly enters my mind and makes it easy to reverse course. It’s a no brainer.

Where will your inspiration come from? In my experience, organizations that are in shape when it comes to analytics have a passionate force leading their efforts. They are often led by an individual who has a strong technical background and has an excellent handle on the direction and goals of the organization. But, most importantly, they are driven with a level of passion for improving results each and every day. It’s not an easy resource to find!

During my journey, I’ve come to realize that passion is fueled by inspiration. It’s something that can easily dissipate if not properly nurtured. I now pay much closer attention to the inspiration that is all around me. In fact attending the Webtrends Engage User Conference was a great opportunity to learn first hand about the success of others. For those attending who also attended, there was no shortage of inspiration!

I was ready for action! So, the analyst in me took over and I came up with the beginnings of a dashboard – a simple chart to measure my progress.

It was the first in a series of actions that have led to success for me and that I’ll continue to share in a series of posts over the next few months.

Webtrends applauds President Barack Obama’s Administration and its use of Web 2.0 technology to promote the democratic ideals of this nation.  More can be done, however, to help citizens better understand the technology that drives Web 2.0 and the privacy controls that can and should be used to protect or limit use of personal information by that technology. 

In particular, there is much misunderstood about Web analytics tools such as cookies.  Because cookies work behind the scenes, many of the benefits enabled by cookies including enhancing and improving Internet experiences are not fully appreciated.  Further, the notion that cookies cannot be used in a manner that respects privacy is no longer valid given the privacy controls that have been developed in recent years.  The Obama Administration and the Office of Management and Budget should consider the increased value of these benefits and the privacy advancements made from the time when cookie policies were first drafted as it reevaluates and develops a new policy position on cookies that best enhances the Web 2.0 citizen participation experience.

One of the benefits cookies can deliver in the Web 2.0 environment is increased transparency.  Federal sites can now provide a window into site statistics by dynamically displaying to visitors a visual representation of aggregated data generated by even anonymous cookie data.  This window into site statistics can act as a very powerful social media tool.  By gaining visibility to traffic patterns, for example, visitors to a government site can engage in a process of discovering information such as the states from which other site visitors tend to come and the issues that are top of mind to others in the nation.  Through this dynamic learning process facilitated by cookie data, citizens can feel more connected to other visitors of the site, the trends affecting the nation and the governmental process.  Federal sites could also use these statistics as illustrations of what cookie technology can be used for and to help visitors have a better concrete understanding of how cookies can be used in a privacy-respectful way. 

There are many other traditional ways cookies can be used to benefit citizens in the Web 2.0 environment such as:

• Driving site improvements to save visitors time and frustration in finding the information they need.
• Saving costs to taxpayers by reducing follow-up calls to telephone support or in-person requests at government offices.
• Helping more precisely meet the unique needs of different citizen groups, for example by identifying different online services or assistance sought by people in different districts, counties or states.
• Providing better ways to view and navigate federal sites by identifying the browsers, devices, media formats, and applications visitors prefer to use.

Despite these benefits, the OMB should continue to recognize the potential privacy implications of this technology if not properly used and controlled.  In implementing these tools, the Federal government should be held accountable to properly balance the potential privacy impact of use of certain types of cookies versus the potential citizen benefits to determine what type of cookies to use and the type of information tracked.  The OMB should also be aware of the many privacy enhancing choices offered by web analytics service providers that help government web administrators greatly reduce these privacy concerns:

• First Party Cookies Although cookies historically have been served by third party services, Federal web administrators can now choose to serve first party cookies using applications residing on their own servers and thereby better control access and use of the data collected from government sites.  Citizens benefit because first party cookies will only be delivered by the sites they visit and they will know exactly whom they can contact if they have a problem with a cookie.
• Transparency in Naming and Technology -Avoiding obfuscating naming conventions for cookies and providing clear, concise privacy statements along with readable cookie names and values will provide citizens transparency on the technologies in use and explain how cookies can improve their interaction with the web site. 
• Use of Session Cookies Session cookies or temporary cookies that last only as long as a browser session or other set period of time can be used when appropriate and adequate to serve the needs of citizens.
• Anonymization Avoiding use of personal information tied to cookies can help visitors be anonymous.  Processes have also been developed that obscure or eliminate IP address and other potential identifiers to further enhance privacy while still allowing for meaningful analytics. 

Further, Internet users have many other privacy enhancing controls at their disposal.  Now more than ever privacy-concerned individuals can avoid unwanted tracking through widely available browsers, applications and operating system controls that allow blocking and removal of cookies and even blocking of transmission of IP address.

We note that use of persistent cookies and even cookies in the context of identifying information can be appropriate at times.  As pointed out by the Center for Democracy and Technology  in its PolicyBeta blog the key is user control of the data collected by persistent cookies not banning of the technology altogether. 

While others might unreasonably see use of technology as at odds with promoting open dialogue and an open government, this Administration has taken a bold step forward using new media and social networking tools to promote transparency and create a two-way flow of information that is essential to citizen participation needed to create an even stronger democracy.  In revisiting its cookie policy, the Administration and the OMB should take similar steps to allow Federal sites to realize the full benefits that cookies can facilitate to deploy a fully modernized Web 2.0 while respecting the privacy of citizens who use and visit those sites.

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As I type this, I am getting ready to attend Radian6’s Rock Stars of Social CRM event. I’m excited for this event because they are announcing an integration with Webtrends and Salesforce. This is a big moment because it is the first vendor driven integration of social media monitoring, analytics, and a CRM, which are the core apps that drive the value chain of modern Enterprises. Yes I know this first paragraph is loaded with buzz words, so let’s take a closer look at what has me giddy like a school boy.

First let’s talk about Salesforce because it’s pretty straightforward. Radian6 has added the ability to create and browse contacts, leads, and cases in Salesforce from within their dashboard. That means you can now take what you find from monitoring the web and pass it onto Sales and Support. In and of itself, that is a cool feature. While the built in workflow tool within the app is handy, let’s be honest, Sales and Support run off of CRMs. No longer does Sales and Support need to manually update Salesforce from email notifications. In fact, Radian6 has made sure that the data from the River of News is auto-populated in the form that updates contacts, leads, and cases.

Ok, now let’s talk about the Webtrends integration. Radian6 is now able to pull in our Analytics reports using Webtrends Open Exchange API. So, let’s say you got a referring URL on your report that shows a site sent you a flood of traffic, but that traffic didn’t convert into one of your goals. Figuring out why is a time intensive manual job. Using these new integrations, you could be browsing your referrers as a River of News and discover that the site was a customer complaint and then enter it as a case for Support to follow up with all from within the Social Measurement environment. Total time saver.

And we’re just getting started.

You can also do things like keyword analysis of the referrers because Radian6 sucks in the text of the referring URL page. You can then look at how those keywords performed on conversion goals and then use that knowledge to update your SEO/PPC efforts. We’ve been able to do this before with search traffic, by mapping their search terms to conversion goals. But we haven’t been able to analyze the full text of referrers to learn what keywords they are using to describe us. Using that same keyword analysis, Enterprises will also be able to update language used in other marketing efforts to speak in more familiar words. Pretty cool, huh?

We are just beginning to play with these newly integrated tools to discover optimization. And, the truth is, we’ve mostly had our marketing glasses on. Keyword analysis can also help Support and Sales in their interactions. Having all of these systems integrated opens new collaboration possibilities between value chain critical departments like Marketing, Sales, and Support. What has me most excited is that I’ve only known about this for about a week. I can’t wait to see what we’ll learn together as well get our hands on these integrated tools!

It was exciting for us to see Radian6 leverage our Open Exchange API. Our product team is working on the important details for our customers: pricing, support, training, etc. Over the next several weeks we will roll out the details for our Social Measurement customers and prospects. If you have any questions now, please leave us a comment!