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Dirty Diapers, Shame and Web Analytics
Kudos to Omniture for posting “Survey: Search Marketers Underutilizing Sophisticated Metrics.” It takes guts to stop applauding customers and share some tough love.
According to the Omniture survey:
- Marketers picked cost per click and click through rate as among their top metrics to optimize search campaigns instead of deeper metrics such as return on ad spend, cost per customer (or sale) or profit per order
- 43 percent of e-commerce respondents do not know how to accurately measure profit per customer (or order)
- 67 percent of respondents indicated not having enough time to effectively manage campaigns as their top issue in search marketing, while only 35 percent use an automated bidding solution
Are you surprised? We aren’t; check out the 7 Deadly Sins of Web Analytics.
Every day leading companies strut their James-Bond-cool stuff, showing off their sophisticated tools and fancy talk about ROI.
It’s hard to take them seriously knowing that underneath that James Bond tuxedo their diapers are soiled.
In 1998 we were frustrated because companies didn’t understand their conversion rates. In 2009 we remain frustrated.
Much less than 1% of the thousands of companies we’ve spoken with are the exception.
Do you have any insight as to why marketers remain enamored of the shiny new object but reject focusing on the fundamentals?
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P.S. Josh James, the CEO of Omniture, in January of 2005 said “Web analytics can pay for itself with a single business improvement — so the real question is how quickly can companies make data-driven decisions? This willingness to change will ultimately dictate time to ROI.”
About the author
Jeffrey is the co-author of New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling books Call to Action and Waiting For Your Cat to Bark. Jeffrey is available as a professional speaker. You can friend him on Facebook or LinkedIn.
More articles from Jeffrey Eisenberg
- Nobody wants to read your sh**!September 21st, 2009
- Redesign? Ask The Right Questions!September 18th, 2009
- Cross-post: How to Improve a Product Page, Part 1September 15th, 2009
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Oct 13-16, Googleplex California - eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Oct 19-23, Wash., DC
April 14th, 2009
9:44 am
[...] new “Survey: Search Marketers Underutilizing Sophisticated Metrics” report and likes what he sees. Why is it that so many don’t use the right metrics? And it’s not just for search [...]
April 14th, 2009
12:21 pm
My idea on the question is that Web Analytics tools are being used by web analysts and not online marketers. To optimize ROI, you need to watch over your KPI, yes, but you also need ask questions, get answers, and test new ideas. Marketers only receive reports with KPI. Great! I can see that I’m doing better by 1.4% than yesterday or last week. Great! What’s next! Unless Web Analytics tools get directly used by Online Marketers (Ad manager, editorial staff, merchandizers, search markerters, CMO, etc), conversion rates will still grow very slowly. That’s my 2 cents…
April 14th, 2009
2:40 pm
In my experience some CMOs have incredibly short attention spans. They will nod their heads and promise to get serious about making proper data driven marketing decisions using meaningful outcome KPIs. But often getting the data is slow, experiments can be interative and create small improvements. Making changes to ad text or landing page design is not very sexy and its much easier to boast about CPCs and CTRs. Doing things scientifically with tools such as Google Website Optimizer takes time and can get a little bit boring. And before you know it the marketers have switched attention to the next cool thing or product launch.
The key to this is to recruit somebody specifically responsible for delivering business insight. Not somebody whose job it is to create the KPIs and keep the scorecards up to date but somebody senior properly empowered to run marketing experiments on a daily basis and to report back at a senior level on lessons learned.
April 14th, 2009
10:00 pm
This is a great article!!!
April 15th, 2009
12:33 am
wow those stats are astounding, a successful business should have a way to measure ROI effectively.
April 15th, 2009
7:05 am
Good points Jeff. I think you’re touching on the problem all companies are facing now. The tools are ubiquitous, all businesses at least have access to GA and have the financial clout to open an adwords account to start testing. Those are no longer barriers.
The problem as addressed by Olivier and Jim is the lack of a role, or responsibility being taken by those that can drive change.
The urgency to change is not there and that is bad news, especially in a recession.
In companies that have identified a problem they have with their business that could literally see all their staff unemployed in 5 years there are key metrics and good analytics starting to take shape. They spot the challenge and have the urgency to do something about it. I’ve seen lots of evidence of this especially over the last few months.
So my advice would be without urgency and top management buy in you’re in a dangerous position. Create the urgency in your business to look at the core metrics and the advanced stuff to give you a competitive edge.
Before you go down.
April 17th, 2009
12:15 am
Great article Jeff. From the smaller site owner perspective, establishing an ongoing, data-driven improvement process is difficult. This is because it seems there are always 100 other things that need to be done at the same time. However, in my opinion, understanding and then improving your sales conversion rate is critical, since that has a direct impact on what matters most – life-giving revenue. To get there, I’ve had to give up my DIY mentality and find others to help pick up the slack. In doing so, I’ve found there are lots and lots of “gurus” and “partners” and “doctors” out there that are ready to make you a killer, mouthwatering offer. But very few that have the horsepower to deliver after you’ve forked over the cash. I don’t know that the problem is jumping from thing to thing, as much as it is being let down time after time by vendors that have great marketing pitches but cannot execute on their promises – or even come close – or even make it worse! I’m sorry to say I’ve given away more than my fair share to such empty promises!
I’m also glad to say that I have found a handful of providers that are the “real deal” and do deliver. I consider these people to be gold and I establish long-term relationships with them.
With all I’ve said, I’ll close with – I’m enjoying my OnTarget membership very much…!
Thanks, Ryan
April 20th, 2009
1:19 pm
IMHO there is a simple reason for this – marketers that like to do brand and messaging don’t like math! All of these numbers things feel like they are “in the weeds” for marketing execs that got their career promotions because they understood print advertising, logos, and “WOW” PR and events. There are certainly exceptions of course – especially in CPG that is very metrics driven. But it’s more typical for marketing execs to yawn when you pull out graphs then get very engaged when you talk about using red fonts or Hummer-limos.
April 26th, 2009
10:28 am
[...] While early and middle stage conversion points help a Web analyst/website optimizer get a better handle on a sites overall success in engaging early and middle stage buyers, it still leaves them guessing at the big picture, simply because they can’t track a lead generation or sale all the way back to that prospect’s first visit to the Website. This can be crucial for gauging the real success of a PPC campaign. Key words that might look unprofitable (because they target earlier stage buyers) might be spectacularly profitable – but only after the 8th (or 20th) visit to the site. Unfortunately, if you can’t track visitor behavior over multiple visits, it’s difficult to get a handle on real – vs. false- measures of keyword performance. [...]
April 29th, 2009
1:05 pm
The flip side of creativity is destruction so when marketers joined the cult of creativity in the era of the big TV spots they subscribed to a ‘blow-it-up’ and let’s start again vs. the culture of ‘results are king’ and continous improvement and learning that characterized advertising pioneers like Ogilvy and Burnett. So we have to change the incentive from shiny awards to riches from getting good results.
http://www.twitter.com/bobnunn
July 18th, 2009
10:32 pm
I agree with Bob Nunn.
Good article, I find this site is very useful. I can learn very much.
August 22nd, 2009
1:22 am
Isn’t this just amazing that 43 percent of e-commerce respondents do not know how to accurately measure profit per customer (or order). How is it possible to make sure you are doing something right if you can’t monitor it?
August 24th, 2009
10:35 am
Now is it part of a web analytics vendor’s job to help the user/client define this so there is ROI and continuation of the relationship?
October 17th, 2009
4:00 pm
I’m currently trying to think where threaded comments fit in the roadmap right now, but it is something that is definitely planned. We’re not going to say people *have* to use threaded comments, but the system shouldn’t restrict people who want to have that option. Plus for larger conversations I think threaded comments make everything easier to follow.
October 25th, 2009
8:57 am
Thank you very much for this great information. It is very useful to us.
October 27th, 2009
11:30 pm
Thanks for this great article.
October 29th, 2009
9:36 am
Very interesting post, I find this site is very useful
October 30th, 2009
5:00 pm
Clever name on the article, haha
October 30th, 2009
5:03 pm
Brilliant stuff, What’s next! Unless Web Analytics tools get directly used by Online Marketers (Ad manager, editorial staff, merchandizers, search markerters, CMO, etc), conversion rates will still grow very slowly.
November 1st, 2009
9:54 pm
Great, Nice posting, thanks for this information
I enjoyed reading your blog.
November 2nd, 2009
2:45 pm
I’d highly recommend the seven deadly sins of web design article to go along with this one.
November 2nd, 2009
2:48 pm
Loved it! Dunno that advertising dynamically interacts with social networks though.
November 4th, 2009
4:41 am
Great survey,
Omniture was acquired by Adobe Systems On september 2009.
November 4th, 2009
12:31 pm
Thanks for sharing this information. I believe that you need good analytics for your website to survive.
November 9th, 2009
5:00 pm
Google Analytic is the only tool I used. It works well, at least to me.
November 10th, 2009
12:56 am
Interesting article…keep up the good research!
November 10th, 2009
1:24 am
Would like to see a follow up article.
November 12th, 2009
2:35 pm
I believe that you need good analytics for your website to survive.
November 13th, 2009
7:31 am
I use analitics for many sites. It’s useful to collect all sites in one account by sharing access.
November 16th, 2009
12:39 am
This is really a great article!