Big Picture Analytics and A/B Testing

Editor's Notes

1. OK, Vancouver Unbounce Meetup... are you ready to rumble?My name is Roy McClean and I am the Founder & Managing Director of Custom Fit Online... a digital consultancy operating out of Whistler and Pemberton. We build web sites, we market them, we play in the digital space utilizing inbound marketing, and such. And do a lot of stuff that so many of you in this room also do.But before I go on any further with that I need to tell you of my beginnings..... with a little help from a small, green friend of mine.
2. My story begins in a decade far, far away.Back in 1995, when some of you were likely still in diapers I founded a company called Custom Fit Communications Group. That was back in the day.Remember dial up? AOL? Windows 95? We wrote marketing plans. We developed branding campaigns. We designed logos. But the force was not always with us as we worked away. So we turned to the World Wide Web. And we began, as we can clearly see today, building some of the most hideous websites ever leashed on mankind.Shadows. Image based navigation. Microsoft Front Page. The good things is many of our competition weren't much better. Yet, a tugging at our hearts remained.Why was this you may ask? Our marketing planning and research design backgrounds had us yearning for quantitate data. How could we prove that are online offerings were actually impacting our clients' business in a positive way.
3. "All for nothing, if measure is not" That pretty much says it all.We decided that we would use for the force of digital analytics for the common good of our clients and Custom Fit Online.And our digital analytics journey officially began!
4. "Learn to track, we must, hrm?"Looking for solutions, I scoured the web researching some answer to this problem. And after turning over many stones, the force led us to CLICKTRACKS!OH YES... analytics. The sound of that word alone made the birds sing a little sweeter, the stars shone brighter and our light sabers were just a little lighter and more manageable.
5. For a few years we plied our trade using Click Tracks and a other tools to slice and dice our visitors' website traffic in almost every way possible.And yet we still yearned for more.The earth shook under my feet the day I learned about the first Digital Analytics course being offered at UBC.A well respected institution of higher learning actually offers a course about ... Analytics?I enrolled and jumped in with both feet!
6. We came to know of a Jedi analyst called Avinashwho spoke of wise things such as segmentation, click stream data, voice of the customer. He spoke of his journey from being a Padawan / Newbie to a Master Digital Analyst.Avinashand other colleagues such as Dr Stephane Hamel, Eric Petersen and others taught us the way of analytics.This being of one of a process... one that involves the process of continual improvementwhether it be tools, company culture, corporate buy inusing a metric model central to a businesses' core strategy.
7. As course materials rolled out I came to know... this was Jedi Training for the web analyst!
8. We first began applying our digital analytics training at companies such as Whistler.com our mission?show tracking for visits from campaigns such as pay per click and email marketing did people get to their website from such campaignswhat did they do when they got theredid they search for vacations?did they get to the booking funnel?did they book online or leave a request on a form?looking back these was simple tracking but far, far beyond what had been done before!
9. Working with clients, even our "larger" ones taught us a value lessonjumping into digital analytics, even at what we perceived as a basic level, was often a bigger jump to our clients that we thought it mightour studies at UBC brought us in touch with the work of Dr. Stephane Hamel and his maturity model of analyticsthis brought us peace knowing that what we were going through was a natural process of the "force"
10. So what are the first steps of analytics maturity?clickstream analytics tools became our first "light sabre"we use Abobe Marketing Cloud with corporate clients that have budget like Whistler Blackcombwe love KISSmetrics for applications such as member sites where you can track people's behavior that "sign in" to a websiteand the FREE light saber for everyone... Google Analytics
11. using such clickstream tools along with Google AdWords at a basic level provides you with the WORTHY designation of a "Padawan"or what AvinashKaushik calls the "toddler" analytics stagetrackingtotal clickaverage CPCand a key performance indicator like cost per acquisition gets you well on the way to utilizing the power of analytics
12. as your light sabre / click stream analytics skills increase you can quickly move to the next phase of analytics maturitythe apprentice phasehere you can add in more lofty tracking such as leads, sales, and revenuethese may be referred to as MACRO or higher level conversionsgenerating a KPI such as revenue per acquisition put you firmly at another level in your analytics maturation
13. as your progress through level of analytics maturity you then add in what AvanishKaushik refers to a the "VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER"clickstream analytics tools allow you to track the WHAT HAPPENEDnow you jump the chasm of the analytics realm to determine WHY things happenyour challenge moving to the next level is figure out the WHY!
14. you are then ready to move into the MASTER level on the maturity model of analyticsnot only tracking MACRO CONVERSIONS such as sales, leads and revenueyou also have the AUDACITY to recognize that MICRO CONVERSIONS such as social media engagement, email marketing subscriptions, blog commenting, recency and repeat visits all have meaning and an impact on the your overall LIFTIME success in the online worldgetting to the point of tracking KPIs such as value per acquisition firmly puts in you on a MASTER's level
15. Another IMPORTANT tactic to be mastered for other level of Digital Analytics?ALWAYS BE TESTING!
16. while you may have the urge at this stage to run multi-variate tests we suggest you refrain from thisuse awesome tools like Unbounce and Visual Website Optimizer to A/B test test web page headlines - one black, one bluetest featured photos - one with a person, another withouttest price points - one with bundled pricing, the other notthe world is your OysterVisual Website Optimizer and other tools allow this testing on your websiteand of courseUNBOUNCE and it's amazing drag and drop interface allows you to build, deploy and test landing pages so so easily!
17. By using the power of clickstreamdata to determine what's happening including goals and objectivesby determining the VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER using qualitative toolsand by TESTING using Unbounce and other awesome toolsyou too can experienceTHE ENLIGHTENMENT OF ANALYTICS
18. It’s helped us maintain relationships with clients for decades!
19. By using the power ofClickstream data to determine what’s happening including goals and objectivesBy determine the voice of the customer using qualitative toolsAnd by testing using UNBOUNCE and other awesome toolsYOU can hardness the FORCE of Digital Analytics
20. take in the way of the Analytics Forceand you took can achieve the Master's levelit is not always the easy waybut it is a noble and successful wayMAY THE FORCE OF DIGITAL ANALYTYCS ALWAYS BE WITH YOU
21. THANK YOU!