What is it?
Digital Analytics or to quote Avinash Kaushik:
The analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your business and the competition to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers and potential customers have which translates to your desired outcomes (online and offline)
With massive growth in connected devices (smart phones, tablets etc) the standard purchasing funnel: Awareness > Acquisition > Engagement >Conversion>Retention has become all but obsolete. Customers can now begin their buying journey at any stage in the funnel model. What digital analytics provides is the means to understand customer trends, behaviours etc and use that data for qualitative and quantitative analysis, to best define how to drive customers towards an end goal or "Conversion" i.e in an ecommerce website this would be a purchase.
It's A Continuous Cycle
To build a solid analytics infrastructure, one needs to understand that "Good data" is the governing foundation behind smart decisions. To effectively build this infrastructure we need time, effort, people, processes and technology. We need an analytics team that is comprised of people who understand the business objectives, understand what analytics is and finally the technical competency to implement an analytics tool.
The following processes have been defined to help establish this infrastructure
Let's take a look at each process more closely.
Define A Measurement Plan
It's A Continuous Cycle
To build a solid analytics infrastructure, one needs to understand that "Good data" is the governing foundation behind smart decisions. To effectively build this infrastructure we need time, effort, people, processes and technology. We need an analytics team that is comprised of people who understand the business objectives, understand what analytics is and finally the technical competency to implement an analytics tool.
The following processes have been defined to help establish this infrastructure
Let's take a look at each process more closely.
Define A Measurement Plan
A five stage model was devised by Google Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik, it provides digital analysts a framework that can be used to create a business specific measurement plan. Let's take a closer look at the five stages:
1. Document business objectives - Why do we exist? What is our purpose?
2. Identify strategies and tactics - With the business objective clearly defined, what strategies and tactics can you utilise to fully leverage the business objectives.
3. Key performance indicators (KPI) - How is my business performing based on the criteria obtained at stage 2. KPI's are numbers that obtained through measurement of strategies and tactics that you the business owner needs to look at day-to-day to understand how your business is performing
4. Segments - With your KPIs defined you need to decide which segments of data are important to measure - For example in a travel agency website we can segment our KPI's by Sales: Number of sales daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, by Customer: Returning vs old which can help you identify potential customers that maybe eligible for special offers. The segments one chooses is entirely dependent on the nature of your business and what strategies and tactics you are using.
5.Targets - The final stage of the measurement plan, what are the targets defined for each of your KPIs. This helps anyone who looks at the data understand whether the business is successful or unsuccessful
Document Technical Infrastructure
With the measurement plan clearly defined the next stage in the cycle is to understand your current technical environment by documenting your technical infrastructure. Some questions that might be asked are:
What are our server technologies - can they cope with the demands of our measurement plan?
Are we leveraging mobile technology?
Are we using responsive web design?
Can we track everything we need to track with the technology we are using?
Create Implementation plan
At this stage, based on the business needs and the technical infrastructure of your business you can now begin to create an implementation plan specific to the analytics tool that you have chosen to use. For example with Google analytics you would need to define the custom code snippets and specific product features required to track the data as defined in the measurement plan.
Implement The Plan
Here, the web development team and mobile team (if required) will bring into fruition your implementation plan.
Maintain And Refine
Due to the ever changing digital world, your measurement plan needs to be constantly maintained and refined, to ensure that your data evolves with the business. Thus, the measurement planning process becomes a continuous cycle.
In the next post, we shall look closely at one of the industry leaders in digital analytics tools: Google Analytics.
Acknowledgements: Google Analytics Academy and Avinash Kaushik ( http://www.kaushik.net/avinash)
2. Identify strategies and tactics - With the business objective clearly defined, what strategies and tactics can you utilise to fully leverage the business objectives.
3. Key performance indicators (KPI) - How is my business performing based on the criteria obtained at stage 2. KPI's are numbers that obtained through measurement of strategies and tactics that you the business owner needs to look at day-to-day to understand how your business is performing
4. Segments - With your KPIs defined you need to decide which segments of data are important to measure - For example in a travel agency website we can segment our KPI's by Sales: Number of sales daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, by Customer: Returning vs old which can help you identify potential customers that maybe eligible for special offers. The segments one chooses is entirely dependent on the nature of your business and what strategies and tactics you are using.
5.Targets - The final stage of the measurement plan, what are the targets defined for each of your KPIs. This helps anyone who looks at the data understand whether the business is successful or unsuccessful
Document Technical Infrastructure
With the measurement plan clearly defined the next stage in the cycle is to understand your current technical environment by documenting your technical infrastructure. Some questions that might be asked are:
What are our server technologies - can they cope with the demands of our measurement plan?
Are we leveraging mobile technology?
Are we using responsive web design?
Can we track everything we need to track with the technology we are using?
Create Implementation plan
At this stage, based on the business needs and the technical infrastructure of your business you can now begin to create an implementation plan specific to the analytics tool that you have chosen to use. For example with Google analytics you would need to define the custom code snippets and specific product features required to track the data as defined in the measurement plan.
Implement The Plan
Here, the web development team and mobile team (if required) will bring into fruition your implementation plan.
Maintain And Refine
Due to the ever changing digital world, your measurement plan needs to be constantly maintained and refined, to ensure that your data evolves with the business. Thus, the measurement planning process becomes a continuous cycle.
In the next post, we shall look closely at one of the industry leaders in digital analytics tools: Google Analytics.
Acknowledgements: Google Analytics Academy and Avinash Kaushik ( http://www.kaushik.net/avinash)
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