Answers Beget Questions

Why Mint Won

2010-10-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

Interesting article on why Mint won out over Wesabe….who I, being a Mint user myself for 3+ years, have never heard of, but found the ‘digital’ rise and fall interesting nonetheless.

A few two things I took out of this:
• Leverage the stuff people are already doing, and don’t recreate the wheel
• Reduce the interaction the user has to take, instead of a bias toward teaching the user
• Accuracy only has to be ‘okay’ for the general public to like it
• User Experience matters

http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/04/technology/wesabe_vs_mint/index.htm

Live Mesh - the great promise of the cloud, realized

2010-05-19T22:17:00.000-07:00

For anyone who hasnt checked out Live Mesh yet, I highly recommend it. After a simple setup process, you can add folders direcly on your local PC or Mac that look and feel *just* like the folders on your computer. You can then files, photos, music, whatever and sync them to the cloud. I've used Windows Live SkyDrive and although it offers more space, I really think Live Mesh is the way to go- it just 'acts' like your computer and you dont have to learn a new website.

Whats even better, you can install the Live Mesh app on your Windows Phone add folders on your Windows Phone and have it sync to your PC folders over the air- it also works with Mac. Super

HP+Palm: its a tablet play

2010-04-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

I read this article recently that mentioned how the HP acquisition of Palm spells trouble for Microsoft & Windows Phone.

I have to disagree. The article focuses on Kin, which is basically a rev’d up Sidekick with no app store. Danger was purchased late in the game and MS’s exec team couldn’t pull Kin & WP7 together in time, once MS decided in early Jan 2008 to switch directions on WP7 and go with the Dorado client. Ballmer has even said they will merge over the next couple years when they get their shit together ;).

Windows Phone is also making a larger play in the app world, and I think more developers will be attracted to it once they have a familiar toolset and how good the OS is. The xbox/XNA game piece also gives it an edge over competition, including Palm who has a fledgling app store right now.

Overall I think HP is making a tablet, rather than a phone, play here. They’ve got to compete with Dell who is repositioning themselves in this market, adopting Android as their tablet OS.

The iPhone OS scaled very well to the iPad and I can see HP doing the same with the WebOS. The HP Slate is a good device although bulky, and Windows 7 doesn’t scale well on touch devices yet. Microsoft is already working on comparable OS’s and I think once they nail Windows 7 on tablets they’ll be a leader in the space (take Courier for example).

HP will still continue to produce PC’s with Windows 7 on them, but the future is tablets.

Think your browsing activity doesnt matter? Try $150MM

2008-09-12T09:18:00.001-07:00

Monday was a dismal day for United Airlines (UAL) as their stock slid 75% into the depths of despair. The sky was falling, as news was released they are going bankrupt (again!)...

Its not surprising, with oil prices, our economy, and this looming (will it ever really be one) recession. Too bad it was a mistake.

wait wait, what was that? no really, it was all just a mistake. Google's crawler picked up a news story from a Tribune news site, and posted it to their headlines. This spread through the internet, and then spilled over to Wall Street where their stock took a dive. The Wall Street Journal lays out the events in this article, its worth a read: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122109238502221651.html

NASDAQ eventually stopped trading and all was thwarted. Unfortunately, their stock is still off about 9% from where they were the Friday before. A single click on an old article cost the company (and its shareholders) nearly $150MM.

How can this happen? Much of the market is now driven based on automated trading, and things called ALGOS (algorithm's) which constantly scan the web, news, and other information and make automated decisions to buy or sell based on market news; so presumably you can get an edge on the other guy. In a tumble like this however, with such a big company, it was cavalcade of failure as all of these ALGOS started to sell, then more sold because the other ALGOS sold, and so on. A good explanation of it is here: http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN1039166420080910?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

This will become even more prevalent in the future as we automate our market to search articles like this, which could be disastrous for some people. The SEC is investigating the whole deal to see what can be done to prevent slides like this in the future. ALGOS are great to have but could end up biting us even more, not sure if I have an opinion yet on where we need to take this but I may end up re-posting with more later. Something to chew on for the day...

WAA Championship - winners without scorecards!

2008-07-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

I just spent some time reading a good post from Avinash about the WAA Championship (http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/wachampionship/) and the results are in. Sadly my comapny was not in the top 4, but this gives us a great opportunity to explore new things and see this in a different light.

Avinash brings up some good points I know we’re all striving for in our analysis: how to make it better and more actionable, without giving a data flood to our clients. He also gives 7 tips on how to improve the quality of analysis that I know we all think about but may struggle to put into action.

Here is a link to the article, I highly suggest reading it as well as the winning entries: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/07/consultants-analysts-present-impactful-analysis-insightful-reports.html

Notice a common theme among all of them… no scorecards! This might be a good approach if we’re looking to break out of the doldrums of scorecard data smog and really drive clients business forward. I often ask myself should we ditch Excel entirely for client facing documents. The more we allow excel to control our work, the more data-laden things can get. It’s the whole goldfish in a bowl thing…if we can start to change our own culture first, we can change our clients and push them forward!

Let me know what you think, I’m eager to hear your feedback.

Leaky Pages

2008-02-12T19:51:00.000-08:00

I was asked recently by a client to do a deep-dive on their Home Page click-through rates. As I was pulling the information I noticed that only about 20% of all site visits enter on the Homepage, and that only 25% of all visits ever see the Homepage. This was alarming as I know they were very concerned with optimizing and making changes to the Homepage, as they just did a refresh a few months ago and are finally grasping the idea (and power) optimization, supported by sound analytics, can have on click-through rates.

The project bubbled over into an Entry Page Deep-Dive where I discovered that 68% of the traffic entered on 20 pages. For these pages I then pulled in their total visits, exits, and single page visits. Based on these 4 data points, and using some simple standard deviation, and median averages, I was able to pinpoint what pages out of these 20 were the best candidates for improvement. I ended up calling these 'Leaky Pages' because they were the ones getting the most eyeballs first (thus giving the highest amount of 'first impressions') but at the same time, also losing a lot of the traffic via exits, or bounces. A lot of these pages were downloads that people are searching on, and of course the goal of SEO is to get people exactly what they are looking for so there is a win there. At the same time however, these pages werent a big enough draw to keep the visitors, basically a good chunk of traffic was coming to the site for a specific download, getting it, then leaving.

By paring the 20 pages down to just the critical few, it gave the client something to work on immediately, rather than making sweeping changes to the entire site. If they make a few optimizations on these pages, they can surely drive people into the site more often, and keep them on the site longer. It also took the attention away from making immediate optimization changes to the Homepage because, if I've done my job correctly, they will see there is less value in optimizing for an increase of 1,000 clicks, vs losing 100k visits in a month due to a Thank You page that isnt engaging.

Check these two charts out, the first identifies the top 20 entry pages, and the second identifies which pages have a bouunce rate 1 standard deviation above the median average page-bounce rate, and which have a lower click-through rate than 1 standard deviation below the median click-through rate. Its a pretty simple way to see exactly where to focus your efforts.

Page load time and page references

2008-01-18T17:31:00.000-08:00

Issues with your site or page loading? High Bounce Rates? Think you need better content? Maybe its the page itself.

This is a helpful tool when troubleshooting pages that load slowly. You can see if images are too big, or if certain css or script files are too big, etc. You can also see if a page is referencing images or script that are not in HTTPS format – which causes that annoying security alert.

And it's free!: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

I've tried it a few times on some of my sites, and have been able to cook it into some good analysis which leads to checking under the hood, rather than bringing in a copywriter. Check it out, see what you think...

Facebook: first impressions, Vol1

2007-12-27T18:20:00.001-08:00

So, I finally got a Facebook account yesterday. Instantly I had 15 friends, yay. Of course, these are people I know and are from work circles, and from my personal life, and a little of both. My partner has had a Facebook account for a few months now and he's been a great usability subject for the site. He is a BIG fan of the site and I can see why, he showed me different things to add, how to get around, how attack, and how to grow things. It all clicked that the reason its popular is because it reflects life, and prospers on what 'people are doing right now'. They're not looking for a log of a persons life (although this does give it), but people just want to know what Neil is doing today, for lunch, right now. Its fun, it works, and I only have it right now because a critical mass of my network has it right now, and I've succumed to the 'I cant-not have one' feeling. Its good though, a right of passage thing I guess...getting some 'net-cred if you will.

More to come on my first impressions with Facebook... stay tuned!

Ctrl+Enter: A quicker way to browse

2007-12-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

Tired of typing in w..w..w..dot.../...c..o..m? Or searching in your Google toolbar for a company, and then moving your mouse to click the site?

Just type in the domain name (e.g.: 'nytimes', 'aol', 'microsoft', etc...) directly into your URL bar and hit 'CTRL + Enter' on your keyboard at the same time. IE & Firefox will automatically fill in the syntax (http://www/. and the '.com')

Now, if your site isnt a typical '.com' it may end up redirecting anyway to the correct directory so dont worry about that, try it and see. It saves time from doing a Google search in your search bar, and then mousing to the site, or typing in the entire address in the oh-so-tedious URL bar. Enjoy =)

Technorati: infuse new ideas into your analysis

2007-12-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

I've heard of it for a while now, but never went to the site and for some reason thought it was like Engadget, or Gizmodo. I didn't realize that its a site that scours millions of blogs and can give a great pulse on whats new in the blogosphere regarding technology. It indexes some 27 million blogs and gives you the most relevant and recent postings. Check more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati

I thought it might be a great way for new (ok... and experienced) analysts to get ideas on what people are saying about the site they are performing analysis on, or the client they're working with. Chances are if folks are blogging about it, they've been to the site and are directing more people there as well, with the bloggers sentiments in mind. It may sound elementary but its a great way to correlate what is being said to what is actually happening on the site. Is the blogger really liking a new product, do they hate the new technology?

Think to yourself, by them blogging about something, are people going to take them seriously and if so how can we use this to our benefit and recommend actions taking what the the data, shows, and the qualitative audience is talking about it? Obviously there are a lot of tools that do this, and take much of the manual work out of it, but sites like Technorati are a quick gut-check to brainstorm new ideas.

Here are some other really great resources a peer forwarded to me that allows you to do the same thing:

Searching Blogs:
Google Blog Search
Ask.com is also a good source for searching blogs.
IceRocket (can track conversations over time and display trends in graphical format; good for monitoring buzz. Also indexes MySpace posts and images)
Feedster
BlogPulse (tracks conversations like IceRocket. Also profiles top bloggers with info on who they are and what they write about).
Opinmind.com (classifies results by bias, i.e., tone)
TalkDigger (blog search engine aggregator)
BlogBlusiness.com (directory of blogs about different business related topics)
Technorati also has watch lists, like google news does. Also has a top 100 blogs list to see most influential bloggers, based on hos many links they have from other bloggers. Let’s you narrow your search by authority of blogger too.
Sphere.com results based on influence also.
Another good source for finding good blog search engines and directories: http://masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

Searching Podcasts
Harder to do but not implossible.
Podscope.com and Podzinger.com
Enter search term and get taken to a list of podscasts that mention that term. You can click on a control button and listen to the exact segment in the program where the search for term is spoken. Pretty damn cool. However, they don’t cover every podcast out there, so that’s a limitation.
Podcast Alley (owned by PodShow Network; is a podcast directory)
Podcasting News (also a directory)
Podcast.net (directory)
iPodder.org (directory)
Another good source for finding podcasts: http://masternewmedia.org/news/2005/05/20/where_to_submit_your_podcasts.htm

Trust your Instincts - Adding UX hints in your analysis

2007-11-15T07:36:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting experience about a month ago when I partnered with a UX resource on my team and presented a heuristic review for one of our clients, looking at their product pages and what could be done to improve them. It was a quick project, about 40 hours in total, but my UX resource gave some very good insight to what could be fixed. A few of the suggestions he made were items I had thought of as well, but many I hadn’t. For the ones that I had thought of, because UX isn’t my background and I sometimes have an uneasy time telling what would work or not, I tend to not add them in my recommendations. A lot of what was said was very tactical and actionable, and items like that would be great to include in an analytics analysis.
I had the idea of creating a brown bag series with the Analytics and UX team where each session a member of the analytics group would partner with a UX person ahead of time and do a little prep-work on a current analytics-clients website, discussing goals, objectives etc… Then during the session, the pair would talk through the site, as a mini-review, giving advice on what could be done to help improve the goals. I believe this will be a great way for the analytics group to see what UX does, and vice-versa, because it applies to their specific-clients work. The analysts can then take the pointers from the session, apply it to the data, and make recommendations based on that because they will feel more confident in what they are suggesting.
I'm going to be setting up the first sessions in a few weeks, I'll let you know how they go...

Standard Deviation and Goal Setting

2007-05-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

It seems to be that time of year, a few of our clients are asking us to help set goals for the upcoming year. Typically my experience with goal setting has always been the edict of the management, and arbitrarily increasing goals by 5% or how ever much they wanted to grow. This has always seemed odd to me and I wanted a way to back up the goals to see if a) they were achievable b) if they made sense for the coming year and c) if they were too achievable and we'll always be going above the goal.

To do this, we've started using Standard Deviation based on prior months data to get this new goal. Ironically, its a pretty simple way to tell where you want to be next year, and back it up.

A little background..
Businesses today are all about six-sigma, a system originally created by Motorola to improve processes by eliminating defects. You'll hear the term mentioned in nearly every corporate boardroom about the nation. Standard Deviation is the core to this whole process because it shows what a 'significant change' actually is, in whatever youre measuring. Pretty cool stuff.

Avinash Kaushik had a great post on using Control Limits to judge swings in traffic. The method he discusses uses Six-sigma and standard deviation to work it all out. Its a great way to show clients if the change is indeed good, bad, or just doing what it normally does.

So how does this apply to goal setting ? Because based on prior performance, you can say with a certain amount of confidence that your can actually get to your goal.

I'll grab a sample on how to do this soon, but you basically find the average of your data points, find the standard devitation of the data points and add them together. This will give you one standard deviation above the mean. Add the average plus twice the standard deviation, you have two... and so on. The more data points you have the better but overall thought is to get an idea of where we want to be going forward. You can then present options of what a 'good', 'better', and 'best' goal is.

To go a little deeper into this, a goal in the 'Good' range will be hit 34.1% f the time, a goal hit in the 'Better' range will be hit 13.6% of the time, and a goal hit in the 'Best' range will be hit 2.1% of the time. This is based on the typical 'bell curve' . Ideally, everything would be 'Best' but 2.1% of the time isn't always realistic (and depending on your data, ever achievable). If the difference between the whole deviations is too large, you could pare it down to half of a deviation.

Overall- its a pretty neat way to show what a good goal for the upcoming year should actually be, and you can have a bigger drive to reach it if you know that it might actually happen.

Web Analytics Wednesday @ ZAAZ

2007-05-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

ZAAZ hosted Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) again last evening. It was the fifth or sixth time I hosted the event for the group, and they keep getting better. We had people attend from ZAAZ, Microsoft, Razorfish, Farecast, Neutrino, and Whitepages.com. Its interesting now that after having done this a few times, we are seeing recurring people which is great because you get the feeling of community now among the group instead of everyone not knowing each other and having to play the get-to-know-you dance. The main topic I heard going around a lot last night was Google, Google, & Google. Why the heck not? They're hot right now. Snapping up Doubleclick just to Microsoft couldn't have them and the latest release of Urchin there is a lot to talk about in the space. Mostly the talk is generally about the industry and whats going on, rather than best practices- which to some extent is okay. Best practices is what gives you a slight lead among the competition, which essentially is what all these people are anyway. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer I suppose right? Regardless of all of it- WAW is really panning out to be a good event for Web Analytics professionals to develop community among themselves and finally feel like they belong. Most companies right now just have one or two web analytic FTE's, and its hard to play in a game like that when you have all this creativity but no outlet. This definintely provides that.

ta-da

2007-05-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

finally thought of a fun name for my blog that represented a fun creative side, combined with the nuts and bolts of what I do for a living. Hmm, sounds an awful lot like my employer =)

More to come... stay tuned, we'll be covering a lot of thoughts on Web Analytics and how it applies to the ever expanding reach of the internet