KB Seminars: Working with Technology - Metrics; 10/13

Development Metrics: Measuring Your Site for Improvement

9 – 10 October 2013Moscow, Russia

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IntroductionWhat is the one thing that you would like to know about your site and what would you do if you knew it?

Some Examples: What kinds of content does my online audience want?

Action: Provide more stories like the ones they like

What parts of my site are easy to use and what parts are difficult?Action: Make my site easier to use

Why is my site so slow?Action: Make the improvements to make the site faster

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Metrics OverviewAn online company relies on metrics to make decisions at three different levels, based on the metrics purpose and frequency of collection.

1. Foundation Metrics

2. Key Performance

Indicators

3. Tactical Metrics

Reported Regularly:• Visits• Unique Visitors• Page Views• Basic Demographics

Reported Regularly:• Engagement Metrics• Cost per Acquisition

Address a Specific Problem• A/B Testing• Heat Maps

Website Metrics Structure

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Foundation MetricsIn the past we have talked about the basic metrics provided by platforms like Google Analytics and Yandex Metrika.

Foundation Metrics:- Visits- Unique Visitors- Page Views

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Foundation MetricsA common Foundation Metric is a description of the audience – audience demographics.

In Russia, Yandex provides much better data on demographics than Google on age and gender as well as purchase intent.

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Foundation MetricsBut neither Google or Yandex provide in-depth and customized descriptions of your audience.

To create a deeper picture of your audience, there are syndicated services which will add you to their regular research for a fee or provide broader market information- Gemius Russia : www.gemius.ru- TNS (Gallup) : www.tns-global.ru- KissMetrics : www.kissmetrics.com- WhyAnalytics : www.visualdna.ru; why.visualdna.com/analytics/Among many others.

If you are using your audience description to answer the questions of advertisers, be aware that advertisers tend to prefer the data of certain companies.

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Foundation MetricsFor customized data about your audience or to fulfill on an advertiser’s request for a specific question, you may want to consider creating your own online survey.

Google Forms creates a simple, no-cost way to collect simple information on web users – YouTube Intro (English)

Survey Monkey (https://ru.surveymonkey.com/) provides a more sophisticated set of tools for online surveys but will require an annual payment (R10,000 to 35,000).

Main Features:- Multiple delivery platforms (online, email, text, social networks, …)- Integration with statistics software for analysis

Main Uses:- Customer Satisfaction- Special Demographics (Purchase Intent, …)- New Product Feedback

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Foundation MetricsFoundation metrics are a good first step, but are usually too general to help make decisions.

Foundation metrics only support very general observations:- How big is the audience?- How fast is it growing or declining?

Foundation metrics alone don’t help you understand the cause of what’s happening on your website?- Why is the site growing?- Who is the new traffic? Where do they come from?

By the time, you see that visits are declining or growing, it is too late to do anything about it.

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KPI’sKey Performance Indicators are metrics that are collected regularly that help you manage your online business.

1. Foundation Metrics

2. Key Performance

Indicators

3. Tactical Metrics

Reported Regularly:• Visits• Unique Visitors• Page Views• Basic Demographics

Reported Regularly:• Engagement Metrics• Cost per Acquisition

Address a Specific Problem• A/B Testing• Heat Maps

Website Metrics Structure

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KPI’sKey Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are regularly collected data that help you make decisions about your online business.

To create KPI’s for your business, you need to determine what actions are most important to the success of your website. For news sites, the most common types of measures are:

- Engagement (Bounce Rate, Time on Site,…) Data Source: Web Analytics Service - Yandex or Google

- Content Dynamics: (Most Read Category, Most Shared Story) Data Source: Web Analytics, Social Media Analytics, CMS Analytics

- Efficiency (Cost Per Acquisition – CPA, Revenue Per Thousand - RPM) Data Source: Ad Server/Ad Network + Web Analytics + Accounting

Classified Sites will have different actions which define success.

KPI’s will often involve bringing together data from many different sources.

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KPI – EngagementTo understand how engaged your audience is with your website, there are several industry standard measures.

Engagement Metrics

Session Length: Length of time set to record metrics. - Google default (30 minutes)

Bounce Rate: The percent of visits that result in only one page. - Calculated as total of single page visits to a page/total visits to a page.- Source: Web Analytics

Time on Page and Time on Site: The net time from the time you entered the first page of the site to the time you landed on the last page you visited before exiting. [Note: Bounced Pages are measured as 0 minutes.]Source: Web Analytics

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KPI - EngagementFor Google Analytics, the main engagement metrics can be found in three different locations.

Audience Overview Content Overview

Page Overview

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KPI - EngagementIn addition, Google provides histograms of the aggregate level of engagement.

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KPI - EngagementIn addition, Google provides histograms of the aggregate level of engagement.

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KPI - EngagementYandex also provides these standard engagement metrics.

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KPI – EngagementFor a news site, a common goal for web site improvements is increased engagement, which is reflected in these KPI’s.

Engagement Metrics - Tendency Bounce Rate: Decreasing over time.

- When a site is new, traffic is from search engines, bounce rates are high.- As search engine traffic declines as a percent, bounce rate declines.- Story page improvements can also create new page view opportunities.

+ Most commented story widgets+ Most read story widgets+ Polls, interactive graphics

Time on Page and Time on Site: Increasing over time. - As site becomes more familiar to audience, time on site should increase. - Bounce rate declines as time on site increases (mostly).- Story page improvements also increase time on site and time on page.

+ Video/Audio+ Polls and other interactive features.

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KPI – Content DynamicsIn order to understand what kind of content is most important to the success of the site, there are three standard content dynamic KPI’s.

Content Dynamic Metrics Most Visited Category: The category of content that receives the most

visits during a period. Level of detail dependent on URL structure. - Refine to focus on only direct and social traffic. - Source: Web Analytics

Revenue Per Thousand Pages (RPM): Total direct revenue resulting from a page’s advertising divided by the number of pages served in thousands>- Refine by page type: Home Page, Category Front, Story Page…- Source: Web Analytics (Page Views), Ad Serving/Ad Network (Revenue)

Social Media Engagement: Measure may vary by the social media tracked. Can refer to the number of “shares” a posting receives.

Ideally you want your audience’s most visited type of content to generate the the highest RPM and be the most shared content on the site.

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KPI – Content DynamicsMost Visited Category is the core data in the content section of most web analytics services.

Google Analytics

Yandex Metrika

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KPI – Content DynamicsLet’s try an example:

Depends on URL structure!

http://portalkbr.com/berita/olahraga/index.html

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KPI – RPMRevenue per thousand pages (RPM) requires information from both your ad system and your web analytics service.

PortalKBR.com Sports Example Revenue: What was total revenue to Sports Section of PortalKBR for August

2013? • AdSense Revenue = $10• Sold Advertising = $50• Affiliate Revenue = $5TOTAL = $65

Sources: - Finance/Ad Serving System- AdSense Dashboard- Affiliate Dashboard

$

$

$

ILLUSTATIVE

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KPI – RPMAfter creating the revenue total for the period (and the site or section of the site), then your web analytics service will provide you with the total page views.

PortalKBR.com Page Views (August 2013)- Sports = 10,750 or 10.75 (thousands)

RPM for Sports in August = $65/10.75 = $6.05

Average RPM for PortalKBR = $2.25

Sports Page Views = 3.5% of total

If you want to increase revenue, what actions would you suggest?

If you want to increase revenue for the sports section, what actions would you suggest? What data do you want to support your actions?

ILLUSTATIVE

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KPI – Social Media EngagementIf your site plans for social media sites (vK/FaceBook) to contribute to site traffic, then measuring what creates social media activity is also important.

Staying with the PortalKBR Example:

FaceBook Insights

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KPI – Social Media EngagementIn the PortalKBR example, what can we learn from the most “popular” posts on FaceBook?

Does content type make a difference?- The highlighted story is an opinion piece?

Does the wording of the post make a difference in whether your audience on FaceBook will engage with the post?- The highlighted post is written as a question to engage the audience.

Other things you can try to determine about how to post that will lead to more click through to the site and more sharing and “followers”.- Time of day/Day of week- Type of content (Link, Photo, Audio, Video, …)- Role of Promotion

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KPI – Cost Per AcquisitionUnderstanding the cost of acquisition for different segments of your audience can help you grow your audience without wasting money.

Case Study: CPA

Your site has invested in three marketing channels to bring audience to your website – an email newsletter, online advertising, and social media.

For next year, you need to develop a budget for how to invest your marketing spending to be the most efficient and generate the most audience.

CPA will help you answer this question.

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KPI – Cost Per AcquisitionTo answer this question, you will have to gather information from multiple systems – finance, social media, email server, …

Based on these results, where would you spend your online marketing budget?

Email Advertising Social MediaImpressions 1,000 10,000 2000Clicks 50 100 200Click through Rate (CTR) 5.0% 1.0% 10.0%Average Cost Per Click (CPC) $1 $1 $1 Cost $50 $100 $200

Conversion 10 10 10CPA $5 $10 $20

Online Marketing Channel CPA

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Tactical MetricsTactical Metrics are very specific to a particular website issue like improving navigation or advertising placement.

1. Foundation Metrics

2. Key Performance

Indicators

3. Tactical Metrics

Reported Regularly:• Visits• Unique Visitors• Page Views• Basic Demographics

Reported Regularly:• Engagement Metrics• Cost per Acquisition

Address a Specific Problem• A/B Testing• Heat Maps

Website Metrics Structure

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Tactical MetricsTactical metrics are the most sophisticated measurements used in developing a website.

What kind of questions might you try to answer?

Optimize advertising placement and inventory.

Sales has presented a new “floating” ad unit which will make us $100 each month. If we use the new ad unit, will we actually make more money or not?

Optimize the elements of navigation.

We have discovered that we will make more money, if we can create more page views in Sports. If we highlight Sports in the Navigation, will it get more clicks?

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Tactical Metrics – A/B TestingA/B Testing allows your audience to interact with two versions of a website to measure how their behavior will change.

For A/B Testing to be successful, there are some pre-conditions:

What measure are you optimizing the site for?- Bounce Rate?- Page Views- RPM- Ad Click Through Rate

Have you developed two (or more versions) of the changes that you believe will achieve the change?

Have you estimated the cost of implementing the versions you are testing?- For small changes, you can test in a live market environment.- For example, the cost of changing the ad placement or number is mostly small. - If you want to test a new ad plan, you might just try it and watch what happens to total RPM for those pages.

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Tactical Metrics – A/B TestingA/B Testing can be a costly and technically complicated tool, but there are services that can help manage the effort.

Common Features: • Real-time reporting tools and dashboards• Integration with Google Analytics• Customer segmentation (Regular Visitors vs New Visitors vs …)• Simple version creation

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Tactical Metrics – Heat MapsHeat Maps provide a visual model for where your audience clicks on individual pages.

Yandex Metrika Example:• Tells you where on the

page your audience is clicking- Red = High Clicks- Green = Fewer Clicks

• Helps you optimize for:- Ad Placement- Navigation Design- Copy Details

Other Services Include:- Google Analytics- CrazyEgg.com- MouseFlow.com

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SummaryMetrics should be designed to help you manage your website both the technology aspects of the site but also the business elements of the site.

1. Foundation Metrics

2. Key Performance

Indicators

3. Tactical Metrics

Reported Regularly:• Visits• Unique Visitors• Page Views• Basic Demographics

Reported Regularly:• Engagement Metrics• Cost per Acquisition

Address a Specific Problem• A/B Testing• Heat Maps

Website Metrics Structure