Metric Misuse

Successful marketing starts with a strategy. @chrisgreen87 - chris@strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Metric Misuse
Chris Green - StrategiQ Marketing

What is metric misuse?

Over-reliance on the wrong numbers

Why does it happen?

Misunderstanding

Just because it's a number...

... doesn't mean it's true

Arguments should be supported by data

Not moulded to fit them

In this webinar we'll cover

Successful marketing starts with a strategy. @chrisgreen87 - chris@strategiqmarketing.co.ukSuccessful marketing starts with a strategy
10 frequently misused metrics
in digital marketing

1. Rankings

One of the most misunderstood
“SEO metrics”

What we're measuring
isn't so easy to measure

Put simply -
What's the weather like outside?

Now phone someone in a different timezone

It won't always be the same

It won't always be the same
(Okay, so maybe that is a bit simple)

Rankings aren't universal:
Personalisation, search location, etc

Rankings are a good benchmark

They can monitor progress
and trouble-shoot issues

Why are you tracking rankings?

Because they == traffic?

Because they == traffic?
Is traffic your goal?

It can be useful, but use the data wisely

Next, another "SEO Metric”

2. New/Lost links

An example...

"My rankings dropped on the 2nd"

"I've checked and saw we lost some links
around then"

"That’s why..."
*sulk*

Which tool did you use?

How does that tool discover backlinks?

Will it crawl the same links as Google at the
same time?

Probably not - and there's the problem

New/Lost links is a good(ish) benchmark if you
check the same source

It's not a good way at diagnosing rankings
changes over short periods

Look for trends over longer periods

Onto less "SEO" metrics

3. Ave monthly traffic (keyword)

From Google or Bing for example

Presents an approximate search volume as
reported

It can be very useful, with some caveats

It shows the past, but not the future

Very, very rough numbers, lots of rounding

Can be particularly hard to judge on lower
search-weight terms

(Remember - these figures are from tools which
help you spend your money)

“If I get into x position I'll get x traffic”

Sometimes...

But SERPs for different keywords are different

Click through rates are different

These search volumes show all the traffic, not
just those who click on ads or organic listings

On to my “favourite”

4. Bounce rate

Probably the most commonly misused stat - it
could almost have gone unsaid

Probably the most commonly misused stat - it
could almost have gone unsaid
Almost.

But it's important to understand why bounce
rate is misunderstood

Not just because a "bounce" isn't always bad

But because the method of measurement is
not fool-proof

"the percentage of visitors to a particular website
who navigate away from the site after viewing
only one page."
- Google

Google Analytics tracking loads
when a page loads
a bounce is when the code
is only loaded once

But there are other reasons this might happen

"Google Analytics doesn't register multiple
pageviews unless users reload that page"
- (also) Google

Bad news for one-page sites

The second pageview needs to be made within
the same "Session"

Sessions, as tracked by GA can expire

After 30 minutes of inactivity and/or at
midnight
30 mins 00:00
OR

Spend too long inactive - that's a bounce too

How to making bounce rate
more meaningful

Event tracking
on buttons/links, scroll depth or time on page

Bounce can be a useful metric, but it’s only the
start of a question, not an answer

This moves on nicely to...

5. Average time on site

Slightly less well known, but equally misused

Because of what it is
(or isn't) measuring

If a bounce is when you only hit one page

Time on site can only be measured (in GA)
when you view more than one page

80% bounce rate with average time on site of
5mins

That's 5 mins for the 20% of people who didn't
bounce

Spend 4 mins on page 1, 3 mins on page 2,
then exit - how long is that recorded?
Page 1
04:02
Page 2
03:18

4 mins
Because the time on the second page is "lost"
when you exited

This can be solved in the same way as a
bounce, you need to track engagement better

Or at minimum be aware how limited
this data can be

6. Pageviews

Not a massive misuse case, but worth noting
when it can go wrong

When do pageviews not measure pageviews?

When you have tracking setup problems

Common scenario I've seen...

GTM added without removing Universal
Analytics

Double pageviews - also very low bounce rate
too

But it could also be related to how you track
goals

Virtual pageviews - unsurprising really
just be aware

7. Impressions

A stat that leaves me conflicted, here's why...

"120,000 people saw your ad"

Great, but did they? What does it even mean?

That's not to say # of
impressions is a bad stat...

But buying impressions is cheap and pointless
if done for the sake of impressions.

Think about what an impression means to your
campaign goals - use wisely

8. Site Conversion rate

This is more as a caution to how conversions
are conveyed in GA

Any goal which triggers on your site (time on
site, contact submission, pageview) is a
conversion

But there's a crucial difference between
Macro/Micro conversions

A site conversion rate of 30% is great, but as
Avinash Says ...

A "site's success is bigger than just that one
number"
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-13-measure-macro-and-micro-conversions/

So a site-level conversion rate will be woefully
inadequate at telling your story

9. Referrals (ref spam)

Something that catches out a casual user

Ref Spam ruins data - it makes pageviews/users
more than they really are

It also pollutes user/engagement data too

Filter it out (using advanced segments)

Hope Google finds a better option soon!

10. Cost Per Click

An easy measurement to misuse

The wallet does most of the talking here

Ever compared cost per click of adwords
keywords, or Facebook and LinkedIN Ads?

Apples and oranges really - it comes down to...

What is an "expensive" click?

To answer that you first need to know what a
click is worth

"I'm not going to do LinkedIN ads because it
costs ten times more than Facebook"

I'd rather a fraction of the clicks if each one
was 10 times more likely to buy

An expensive click is one which doesn't give you
anything back

But to understand the value here, you need to
be able to measure what a click brings

Contact forms, phone leads, footfall… etc

So how do you pick the right metrics?

Understand what your objective is and work
backwards

We can measure a lot, success can be easy to
express

But it's also very easy to be over-confident

Or make big decisions on bad data

Be just as sure of what you don't know as what
you do.

Questions?

References:
StrategiQ Marketing - http://strategiqmarketing.co.uk
My Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/chrisgreen87
My Email - chris@strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Google Analytics Academy - https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course01
Ref Spam Segments - https://loganix.net/referral-spam-solved-give-your-analytics-an-anema/
Better data from GA - https://medium.com/google-analytics/hacking-google-analytics-24762924fbf8
Macro & Micro Conversions - http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-13-
measure-macro-and-micro-conversions/

Metric Misuse

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