This is Part 1 in a series of guides about Site Analytics
Part 1 (Why Metrics) | Part 2 (Making Insights) | Part 3 (Driving Change) | Part 4 (Testing)

When it comes to running and building a site, behind-the-scenes work is usually approached with a sigh and a groan. Let’s face it, between designing a beautiful layout, posting interesting content, and engaging with users on social media platform, the front-end work on a site is the sexy part of running a site. But of course, without your SQL databases, PHP coding, and CSS styling your site would be no where. In a similar vein, analytics is an oftentimes glossed over but critical component of running a successful site. Both brands and blogs rely on analytics to drive insights and turn them into actionable digital strategy.

But despite how important analytics are, it’s a science that is oftentimes underutilized. Analytics shouldn’t be a dreaded task or  buried deep within your site’s code and then forgotten. Driving actionable insights from analytics data is a key component to brands and bloggers. 

Top Level Metrics

First – let’s look at the top level types of metrics you’ll want to pay attention to. It doesn’t matter what analytics platform you’re using (I use Google Analytics primarily) as long as it tracks most of these data points.

Source: Givenchy

1. Traffic: How are people coming to your site?

• Number of visitors
• Number of views
• Unique vs repeat
• Sources of traffic (How are readers finding your site? Search, referrals, direct linking, etc)
• Device type

2. Audience: Who are the people coming to your site?

• Location
• Language
• Frequency (How often do repeat users come back to site)

3. Content: What are people reading on your site?

• Number of pageviews
• Average time spent on site
• Views by post
• Site Search (What are users searching in your site)
• Bounce rate (Percent of users who leave after just viewing one page on site)

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How Metrics Can Help You

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Source: Think PR

Just using the basic metrics provided to you is not enough to drive deep analysis of your site. Being able to manipulate and create additional metrics is critical to being able to understanding site performance. For example, if you were to divide the number of visits over page views, you can get the average number of views per visit, which is a good metric to understanding how engaged your users are. But this still too vague for us.

Now, let’s take that figure and find the average page view per visit for repeat visitors and then the average page view for first time visitors and you  can find the value of converting readers to subscribers is. Let’s say they are the same, this could mean that you should not focus your energy on getting users to subscribe to your blog, because repeat users don’t engage with your content more than first time users. This could be because your content is so good that even a first time user will be engaged right away – this would mean you need to focus on acquiring more unique traffic from new sources. Conversely, if you have a higher page views per visit for repeat readers, then you should focus your energy on creating ways to have subscribers come back to your site and focus more on maintaining your current reader base than expanding it.

This simple example is a powerful reminder of how useful data analysis can be for brands and bloggers. Using only the top-level metrics found on your Google Analytics dashboard, you would only be able to understand to know how many visitors and page views you have in a given time. We then combined the two to get another metric, average page views per visit – but this can only tell us how engaged users are in general. But not all users are created equal. Just like how brands must segment their market to understand how to target different groups of people, we must also become more granular in how we use metrics. By comparing engagement between returning users versus first time users, we can understand where we should focus on energies.

Another example – we can easily find where our readers are located when they view our site. This is a top level metric that is extremely helpful (and it also comes in a nice map of the world on Google Analytics, which eases those of us who dislike numbers and statistics). Suppose we have 100 monthly visitors from New York and only 30 from San Francisco. If we wanted to spend money promoting your blog locally, most of us would say NY is the obvious answer. But think about how much more information we could gain if we combined this information with another metric such as average time spent on site. If your NY readers spend 1 minutes on average on your site, while SF readers spend on average 5 minutes on your site, then the picture changes. While you have more readers from NY, SF readers spent a total of 150 minutes on your site monthly whereas NY readers spend only 100 minutes on your site. It might make sense to focus on acquiring more SF readers if they tend to spend more time on your site.

Metrics can help you make decisions about how to grow your site effectively from marketing to content to site layout. Empirical evidence can be an incredibly powerful tool to help you understand how readers interact with your site, and it can also act as validation or refutation of ideas you may have…

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What Metrics Can’t Help You Solve

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Source: Morgan O’Donovan

But metrics is not a golden ticket to success. A successful site, whether as a brand or a blogger is not just a science. It’s also an art. Analytics is often called a decision support tool because it helps us make decisions. But it cannot tell us what to do. The greatest strength of data is also its greatest weakness – it tells you what is happening without bias or an agenda. It does not usually tell you why or how it is happening.

Let’s go back to the example of our 100 NY monthly readers and 30 monthly SF readers. We must take care about making decisions based on the fact that SF readers spent a total of 150 minutes on our site while NY readers only spent 100 minutes on our site in a given month. These figures do not tell us the underlying reason why users in SF spent more time on your site for that month. Maybe in the month you are tracking, you wrote a piece about SF style bloggers and therefore wrote something more relevant to SF readers. But if you don’t continue to write content geared towards SF readers, then you will lose that level of engagement. If in other months your NY readers tend to spend more time on your site, then it might be smarter to focus your marketing dollars on NY-based advertising.

Even if SF readers consistently spend more time on your site than NY readers, new SF users you acquire from advertising might not be as engaged as your current SF reader base, therefore lowering the average amount of time SF readers spend on your site.

Data cannot tell you why users act the way they do, only what they do. This is why we use data as a support tool, but ultimately our understanding of underlying dynamics is key to successfully using analytics to make changes. In order to test our hypothesis about such matters and to validate the effectiveness of changes we make to our sites, tests are critical (we’ll cover this in Part 4).

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How We Should Use Analytics

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 The problem for some people is that they are unsure of what metrics to use and how to calculate them. This guide does not aim to be a comprehensive guide to learning about every type of metric you can use – nor would that be very helpful. Most of us are not data analysts by training, and trying to teach you to be one would not be an effective use of our time. But furthermore…

… for other users, the problem is the exact opposite – they are so immersed in data and metrics that they become inundated with numbers and figures. Buried in so many metrics, they become unable to see the bigger changes and drive actionable insights (this was my problem when I started my career doing business intelligence analysis work for Google).

One problem is not having enough analysis to make an informed decisions and the other is having so much analysis that you are paralyzed by data overload.

Both of these problems can be solved with a simple philosophy I have about using data analytics for digital brand managers and bloggers.

1. Minimalism is beautiful, both in a Helmut Lang dress and in data analysis. Less is more. Only do what’s needed to solve the problem. If you don’t need to run another piece of analysis, then don’t do it. Excess data only complicate things.
2. Always know what you’re trying to solve before you dig deep. Top level data helps us diagnose problems and see the big picture, use it help you flag potential problems or identify opportunities. If you try to collect data before you have a problem you’re trying to solve, you’ll never stop collecting data because you’ll never know when you have enough. (Recall the first rule) 
3. Data doesn’t know your site visitors, you do. Don’t forget to always rely on your intuition and experiences, because they help you understand your metrics and drive insights.
4. But don’t become so biased by your beliefs that you forget that you may only be seeing a small part of the picture, and data analysis is helping you see the whole picture.
5. Everyone makes mistakes – you might have an amazing idea to grow your site and the data supports it. It still might not work. Testing is a critical component to validating your ideas before you commit to it.

In Part 2 (Making Insights), we’ll talk about how to make insights from data from a hypothesis driven mindset. Instead of telling you about all the different kinds of metrics you can use, this guide will teach you how to identify situations in which using data metrics can be useful and how to make insights that will let you make smart decisions.

In Part 3 (Driving Change), we will talk about how to drive changes on the site from your insights. We’ll focus on how to interpret your insights and how to easily translate them into actions that will allow you to make changes on the site. We’ll discuss the limitations of your insights as well so that you don’t let data control you.

Finally, in Part 4 (Testing), we’ll go over the importance of testing your changes as well well how to do some basic tests.

Winning “Best Application Award” at the Hackathon

Some of the greatest products are made from the unlikely combination of two seemingly disparate fields. Velcro and dynamite, though they might be considered more “accidental discoveries” than anything, highlight how innovation can come about when cross-pollinating ideas. When I was at IDEO, considered one of the world’s most innovative design companies in the world, I came to acribe to their “human-centered design” method to solving problems. Applying this philosophy to how I approach business, design, and even academics has been one of my most empowering ideologies.

Last week I had the opportunity to be part of an amazing experience – the 2012 PennApps Hackathon, self-proclaimed as the largest student-run hackathon in the nation, and with over 140 entrants and news outlets like TechCrunch and Wired covering the event, just being able to witness the event unfold was really inspiring (though mostly filled with sleep-deprived face-palming and non-stop working).

What is a hackathon? If you’re not a programmer, you might be inclined to recall that scene from The Social Network where a bunch of nerds engineers drink booze and code all night long for glory and honor! Well, not totally off the mark. At its most basic level, a hackathon is an event where programmers collaboratively build programs or application within a specific period of time to encourage innovation, fun, and networking. The PennApps Hackathon is a 48-hour hackathon (meaning we only had a paltry two days to make something from scratch) done in teams of up to four people to make an application (not a program).

Ok but first, pause a bit. You might be thinking why I would be involved in a hackathon. Sure, I can do minimal front-end work with PHP, CSS, and HTML. But start asking me to incorporate more advanced coding like jScript and jQuery and you’ve lost me. Admittedly, when I was approached by a friend to be involved in the process I was wondering why ask me to join. In a 48-hour time frame, in which every second counts (and trust me, every second did count, we submitted our code 5 minutes before the deadline), you’d want as much coding resource and expertise as possible.

There is a danger to that mindset though, as my friend reminded me. From his experience, when four programmers get together to make an application, they think the same way, their strengths are multiplied but so are their weaknesses. And oftentimes they just mash functions and APIs to make what they think is interesting from a technical standpoint, but from a user point of view is a Frankenstein-like product with poor user experience and design. Why I was asked to participate in a hackathon was not to be a programmer, but to give a unique design direction and shape product development from a user experience perspective. (Which harkens us back to the philosophy of “human-centered design” and the need for cross-pollination of fields.)

Ultimately, we created a drink discovery application for the Android phone that lets you discover mixed drinks through fun experimentation. You can check out the site we made (it’s on Tumblr since Tumblr was a sponsor for the competition) here and hopefully it will be available to download one day! The application won the Best Mobile Application Award, which was amazingly humbling and exciting for our team. Everything from the user interface (UI), graphics, mock ads, site, and even wording are part of a cohesive aesthetic direction (I opted for a more playful 1960′s cocktail era feel). This is important because the application’s front-end design is critical to user perception of the application and even a small inconsistency in this can absolutely ruin everything (branding operates in a similar way). The user experience was designed around optimizing ease of use and intuitive functionality that doesn’t require any explanation to use while still offering a robust and powerful experience for users. In other words, we took a cue from Apple and tried to make the application as simple to use as possible – minimal user pathways while still providing powerful functionality. For us, this meant the user being able to consistently discover new drinks and being able to share new recipes and ideas with friends.

Fashion & Digital: A Rocky Marriage

Creating a mobile application for this hackathon made me wonder why we didn’t see more mobile applications in the fashion arena. It isn’t all too surprising though, fashion has been notoriously bad at integrating technology. Social media and fashion makes so much sense from a content distribution perspective and even from a sales perspective, yet brands have been woefully slow at capitalizing on the trend. Even worse were brands trying to fight against the digital transformation and magazines seeing social media as an “us vs. them” situation when in reality it should have been a question of how to integrate the digital into the analog world of print.

Mobile (smartphone) is one of the fastest growing sub-sectors of the digital era. The mobile market is one of the fastest in the world, with its growth even surprising Google, with 42% of consumers already owning smartphones and 84% of those users actively use their phone while shopping in-store (Deloitte’s 2011 Holiday Survey). The Mobile World Congress provides these additional statistics that should give us all pause:

1. Smart phone sales are projected to exceed global PC sales by 2014
2. Mobile search and web use is growing 8x faster than the equivalent point 10 yrs ago for computers
3. Half of new online connections are from mobile devices

Questioning the recent L2 report published on Mobile IQ for prestige brands, Marketing VOX noted that despite the celebration of successful case examples in the industry, there is an overall underinvestment in the mobile sphere from luxury/fashion brands:

The IQ distribution reveals a significant, widespread underinvestment in mobile, as nearly half the brands were designated as feeble. The report found that only two-thirds of prestige brands maintain a mobile-optimized site, and one-third of these mobile development efforts do not yet support commerce. Also, while 70% of brands have mobile apps, fewer than 20% of brands have created unique app content for tablet devices such as the iPad, which register high usage among affluent consumers.

There is a huge market opportunity in digital for fashion, and within digital, the lowest hanging fruit is clearly mobile. Especially with the boom in tablet devices, fashion brands should be strongly considering how to integrate their marketing and even sales operations with their mobile strategy. But of course, you need a mobile strategy to begin with (something I fear some brands don’t even have yet).

Remember my philosophy of cross-pollination innovation? Fashion and mobile is an area ripe for this kind of innovation. Human-centered design in fashion might seem strange, given that fashion has historically been a form of art-centered design; but in the right context, an anthropological approach to fashion lets us think critically about how people can interact with fashion through the mobile and digital medium. This mindset will enable designers and retailers to create powerful new ways for fashion brands to create a new revenue stream, gain brand exposure, and engage with consumers in a fundamentally new and powerful way.

If fashion were a novel, 2012 marks the start of a new chapter for designers, bloggers, and industry members alike. Whether you’re in Florence at Pitti or back in New York planning for Fashion Week (don’t forget, the schedule for IMG is officially up) there’s excitement in the air. Here’s a list of ideas and stories you should be tracking as 2012 unfolds:

1. High-End Designers Move Downmarket

Designer collaborations with the likes of Uniqlo, H&M, and Macy’s made big news last year and it seems over the past couple of seasons more and more designers are trying to get a piece of the collaboration scene. Last year’s big names were Missoni for Target and Versace for H&M collections but let’s not forget Karl Lagerfeld for Macy’s and Giambattista Valli for Macy’s. Up and coming is Marni at H&M, another Versace collaboration at H&M, and Jason Wu for Target.

From a business perspective, a collaboration makes sense for smaller designers who may not have the manufacturing and distribution resources of a larger retailer like H&M or Target. As designers increasingly favor the use of collaboration lines and as more and more retailers offer to work with designers (would love to see AllSaints come in here), I’m both excited and scared to hear about what new lines await us as matchmaking intensifies between retailers and designers.

3. Entertainment Tries To Move Somewhere with Fashion

Well, while fashion is moving all over the place this year, entertainment is trying to also cash in on fashion. From Project Runway’s All Stars  to Joe Zee’s All on the Line, Americans are loving the rise of “fashion entertainment”. This is a lovely trend indeed for most fashion icons, because trying to get more popular exposure seems to be second nature (present company not necessarily excluded). Designers and fashion icons seeking ways to get involved in Hollywood fret not. Already we have or will soon be watching Lifetime’s 24 Hour Catwalk (hosted by Derek Blasberg and Cynthia Rowley), NBC’s Fashion Star, ABC’s Jane by Design, and Bravo’s It’s a Brad, Brad World. 

Maybe it will be the evolution of fashion’s street style. Could you imagine reality TV around the lives of fashion bloggers?

4. Stealth Wealth & Subdued Product Design

Occupy Wall Street reminded us of issues facing our society vis-a-vis income inequality and wealth distribution. In politically sensitive times, consumers are more conscientious of how they present themselves in the face of their social circles and the public. In an era of online shopping where many consumers already indicate that they prefer shopping from the privacy of their homes and as American markets become increasingly sophisticated in their fashion taste (moving away from branded replenishment accessories to actual fashion pieces) the fashion world will need to pay increasingly attention to shopper preferences for product design. Consumers will turn away from ostentatious display of wealth, instead opting for more unbranded items and pieces that to the untrained eye will not appear to come from any designer.

5. Continuing Expansion in China

China continues to represent one of the fastest growing markets in world across industries but especially for fashion. As China’s wealth grows, so does demand for access to luxury. And when Chinese cultural norms make it acceptable and even important for both men and women to carry bags as a status symbol, fashion labels are completely enamored with the China market. Of course, rapid expansion has its own problems and as brands venture to a new country, poor planing, miscommunication, and cultural misunderstandings are common obstacles.

Brands are still trying to perfect their China strategy but in the meantime we can learn from the mistakes of other brands – some more obvious than others. 

6. While Thinking More about Brazil

Brazil, while not getting as much attention in the global market as China, is also part of the Big Four. While fashion media has focused its attention primarily on China, we should not forget the huge market opportunities in Brazil as well. Indeed, over 30 brands are already set to open news stores in Brazil including Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Fendi.

Of course, just like in China, expanding to a new country has great upside but also has its own pitfalls. Among other potential problems, brands must be cognizant of the dangers of licensing as a means to expand to new markets, localization issues, and cultural differences.

7. Private Sales Model Evolution

While Gilt Groupe’s success continues to enthrall business professional across industries as an amazing success story, they are still not profitable. And with more and more start ups going the private sales route, the increasing saturation of Gilt Groupe copycats does not necessarily bode well for anyone with a similar business model. Even more problematic is that brands are tightening inventory thanks to better supply chain planning. As the economy improves and overstock decreases even more, private sales sites will need to evolve their model to accomodate changing market conditions.

8. Fashion Bloggers & SOPA

SOPA, the bill that will definitely censor and restrict the way you can access the internet, will have a very real impact on fashion bloggers and social media if it passes. Hopefully, we will be able to update this list in the future with a giant cross-out on this item, but for now SOPA threatens to force fashion bloggers to be more cognizant of where their images and content comes from as they now risk an entire site shutdown if a copyright holder complains.

Even barring passing of the bill, SOPA has reminded the industry of the increasingly difficult nature to track copyright and protect it. Fashion digital content is no different. As the blogging phenomenon is made more accessible with sites like Pinterest and Tubmlr, fashion copyright seems like an extinct creature in the 21st Century. However, bills like SOPA are attempts to address copyright violations. How will the fashion industry follow suit? Will sites that make money by publishing fashion images like Style.com and spend money buying rights to the images try to restrict content being taken from its site?
9. Traditional Media Integrating With Social & Digital Media

As traditional print media continues to decline in both readers and ad revenues, fashion magazines must continue to innovate their business model in order to stay relevant. Fashion magazines reluctantly inserted themselves into the digital world, but now appear to be embracing the trend. Last year, we saw more and more magazines establishing a presence in social media, creating a digital version of their magazine (with online-only content), and even introducing iPad applications for their publication. More creative ideas include 3-D content, fashion films, and moving fashion images.

This year will be no exception to the trend, as more magazines strengthen their digital position, but also be on the lookout for continued business innovation. Magazines are looking to collaborate with the entertainment industry as well as incorporate an element of e-commerce to boost their revenue through new streams.

10. Will Dior Ever Make a Choice?

But seriously… will they?