Natasha West

How Amazon Uses Web Analytics for E-Commerce

10:00 PM

According to the Web Analytics Association (2008), Web analytics can be defined as, “…the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.” Web analytics provide specific insights that are beneficial for a company such as, how many consumers visit a website, what do they do when they get there, and are they finding what they need while on the website. The information provided by web analytics is particularly important for e-commerce sites. According to Kissmetrics (2016), understanding trends and audience behaviors allows businesses to see what marketing channels are no longer worth the time and money and will also help businesses decide how to shift their strategy before any permanent damage is done to their bottom line.

There are many benefits to analyzing web metrics for e-commerce sites no matter the size of the business. One could argue that smaller businesses should invest more in analyzing web analytics as resources may be more limiting than they would be for larger businesses. However, I want to talk about one of the largest e-commerce sites – Amazon.

Amazon

Amazon, an international e-commerce company offering online retail, computing services, consumer electronics, digital content as well as other local services such as daily deals and groceries, is the leading e-retailer in the United States (Statista, 2016). In 2015, Amazon had more than 107 billion dollars in net sales with the majority of revenue generated through the sale of electronics and other products, followed by media and other activities (Statista, 2016).

According to Smart Data Collective (2014), Amazon primarily used the user-to-user collaborative filtering algorithm to provide customers with recommendations based off of other customers’ purchasing behaviors, which Amazon still uses today, to an extent. To put it simply, user-to-user filtering means that Amazon would find users with similar purchasing behaviors and then suggest items that they have bought but the current consumer has not. This type of algorithm includes the, “Customers who bought this item, also bought this one…” section at the bottom of the item page. Although this sort of algorithm was useful when Amazon was just a book retailer, Amazon has since grown exponentially in size since 1995 when the e-commerce site was founded.

According to the same article by Smart Data Collective, Amazon currently uses an item-to-item collaborative filtering algorithm, which takes into account a users’ previous purchases, what they have put into their shopping cart or wish list, items they have previously reviewed or rated, as well as what other similar users have bought (2014). All of this information allows Amazon create a highly customized experience for consumers, which helps keep the customers coming back to Amazon for future purchases.

How Amazon Uses Web Analytics

Although Amazon has done a fantastic job at creating a customized experience for consumers, the company has also done a fantastic job in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). Although most people may immediately think of Google when discussing SEO, many forget that Amazon also is a search engine and is actually quite powerful. Unlink Google, the majority of consumers that visit Amazon are looking to buy something, not just find information.

According to Hubspot (2015), 44% of people go directly to Amazon to start their product searches, compared to 34% who use search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to search for products. According to SEMrush (2015), Amazon’s page rankings and SEO tactics are very similar to Google’s, including headers, text ration, keywords, etc.; however, there are some important differences since there is less control over a product page than there is for a website or blog. SEMrush (2015) suggests utilizing the page title, subtitle, product description, editorial review, product picture file name, and Amazon’s “special” keywords to boost the page ranking of a product. The special keywords are for Amazon’s internal use to know where to display products; Amazon will ask for these keywords when a product is uploaded (SEMrush, 2015).

Conclusion

It’s not a surprise that Amazon is a powerful e-commerce website. Consumers are already in the mindset to buy something when visiting the website and Amazon has over 200 million customer accounts (DZone, 2016), 80 million of which are Amazon Prime members. Amazon is utilizing big data on the 200 million customer accounts by hosting their one billion gigabyte of data on more than 1,400,000 servers to increase sales through predictive analytics, according to Ann of DZone (2016). Amazon has created what seems like an unstoppable e-commerce site, but there are a few concerns that may bother some consumers. Unlike Google and other sites, Amazon is not as transparent with their data collection and algorithms. Amazon also seems more involved with my search history and online behavior than other sites that I visit, at least in my personal opinion and experience with Amazon.

Today I browsed Amazon for a new desk, later today I found Amazon ads in the middle of my Facebook feed for the exact desks I had browsed through earlier in the day. Although this can be helpful, there is a point where it does become a little too intrusive. However, as a marketer, I do understand that Amazon is hoping to get me back to their website to complete the sale, but the advertisement almost lead me to a physical store because I thought it was a little too much targeting. Then again, I have since looked on Amazon at those desks again, just not through the Facebook advertisement. Maybe the data segmenting is working on me and I don’t even know it. However, according to Ad Exchanger, people are now more aware than ever that advertisers are targeting them and they’re openly talking about it (2014), so when does target marketing become too intrusive or even unethical? Amazon should be cautious of how much they target their consumers or it may end up having a reverse effect like it almost did on me.

References

Ann. (2016). How Amazon uses its own cloud to process vast, multidimensional datasets. DZone. Retrieved from https://dzone.com/articles/big-data-analytics-delivering-business-value-at-am

Butlion, J. (2015). An introduction to analytics for ecommerce websites. Kissmetrics. Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/intro-to-ecommerce-analytics/

Chesson, D. (2015). Amazon SEO: Because Amazon is a search engine too. SEMrush. Retrieved from https://www.semrush.com/blog/amazon-seo-tactics-because-amazon-is-a-search-engine-too/

Hubspot. (2015). The ultimate list of marketing statistics. Hubspot. Retrieved from http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

Marr, B. (2014). Amazon: Using big data analytics to read your mind. Smart Data Collective. Retrieved from http://www.smartdatacollective.com/bernardmarr/182796/amazon-using-big-data-analytics-read-your-mind

Statista (2016). Statistics and facts about Amazon. Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/topics/846/amazon/

Swanson, S. (2014). Is there such a thing as too much targeting? Ad Exchanger. Retrieved from https://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/is-there-such-a-thing-as-too-much-targeting/

Web Analytics Association. (2008). Web analytics definitions. Retrieved from http://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/Files/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitions.pdf

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Whatagraph: Making Understanding Analytics Easier

10:00 PM

Last week I discussed an alternative to Google Analytics, which you can read about in my last blog. Although Piwik was a great program with open-sourced capabilities, Google had more variety and offered more details about the data that was collected. However, Piwik did have one thing on Google Analytics, which is the ability to export data in a simple, easy, and visually pleasing way.

Google Analytics does offer users the ability to create customized reports with features made available to them by Google, but they are unable to export data on stylesheets that are relevant to them and their business. For example, if a marketing team wanted to showcase specific data such as website referrals, bounce rate, user behavior, and goal conversions, each report would have to be exported individually and merged together another way. Piwik offers users to create reports to only show the data they want to export, making it easier to export and showcase the collected data. Luckily, there are applications available to easily integrate with Google Analytics that will allow users to export data in a visually pleasing way without having to switch analytic services entirely.

Whatagraph

According to New Startups (2016), Whatagraph was founded in 2015, and has been named as one of the eight most ambitious startups from Lithuania by Forbes. Since then, Whatagraph has generates over 2,000 reports every month for marketing agencies, corporates, and well-known brands (New Startups, 2016). Whatagraph automatically converts Google Analytics and social media data into visually appealing and easy to read infographic reports. “With a simple dashboard, [users] can generate a quick overview of a website, e-commerce and digital campaigns performance in seconds and instantly share the report with clients and colleagues (Google, 2016). There are currently four different price tiers ranging from Pro 3 at $29.00/month, which allows three different Google Analytic profiles to be connected in addition to social accounts, and Agency 100 at $699.00/month, which allows up to 100 different Google Analytic accounts as well as multiple social accounts (Whatagraph, 2016).

Whatagraph can connect to Google accounts, including Google Analytics and Google+, and Facebook. Unfortunately Facebook and Google+ are the only social accounts available at this time, but there has been talk about integrating Instagram and Twitter soon. As you can see in the image below, the infographic are professionally laid out and easy to read.

Capterra, 2016

Businesses and Whatagraph

Although this service may seem basic and unnecessary for businesses, there are plenty of benefits to using a service such as Whatagraph. Google Analytics is a fantastic tool, but there are plenty of people out there that do not know how to properly use the service or how to read the data correctly. Whatagraph can fill the gap between marketing and clients. By simplifying the process of sharing analytic data between departments and to clients (Davis, 2016), Whatagraph is making it easier for all parties involved to take the next steps towards their marketing goals.

Whatagraph may not be best suited for smaller businesses or bloggers, but larger agencies and businesses with multiple clients who need data analyzed and laid out in a simple, easy-to-read format. According to Laura Inamedinova (2014), some of Whatagraph’s biggest clients have more than 400 active customers every month. These businesses are able to utilize their time towards content curation, image creation, strategic development, etc. instead of spending hours analyzing the necessary data and developing reports for clients (ArticStartup, 2014). Although Whatagraph gives great insights and shows trends in website and social data, analyzing the data through Google Analytics should not be ignored. However, for those who do not understand Google Analytics and do not have the time to take month’s to learn the ins and outs of the service, such as a client, Whatagraph is a great way to show how successful (or unsuccessful) a business’ website may be doing.

Whatagraph offers six pages worth of insights for websites and three pages for Facebook and Google+ accounts. However, the reports can be adjusting to fit the needs of the clients. These reports include metrics from total visitor count, by day, including new versus returning visitor data, total sessions, average session time and bounce rate, total page views, page views per session, and session by browser, to total completed goals, value, and conversion rate, and trending pages that are rising and declining in views (Karr, 2016). Any metric listed in Google Analytics will be listed on these reports since Whatagraph pulls data directly from Google Analytics.

Conclusion

Whatagraph may not seem necessary for the success of a business or agency, but this application will help save time and money for both the business and the client. Businesses will be able to use this tool to save hours gathering data and instead use that time to help the client reach their marketing goals. There is also a possibility that clients will be saving money, assuming that the agency or business that was hired to analyze the data is being paid hourly instead of a flat rate.

The goal of Whatagraph, according to CEO Justas Malinauskas, is to “…help marketing agencies and independent website owners work smarter, faster and easier, by converting complicated data into simple and understandable infographic reports” (2016). In my personal opinion, Whatagraph seems to do a great job at making this part of a marketing team’s job a little easier, which is always great. One thing that would make Whatagraph even better would be the ability to integrate more social media accounts such as Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

If someone has had to take the time to create data reports for clients, such as myself, they will understand the benefits of using a service such as Whatagraph.

References

Davis, B. (2016). Start me up! Whatagraph turns analytic data into infographs. Econsultancy. Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/blog/68439-start-me-up-whatagraph-turns-analytics-data-into-infographics/

Karr, D. (2016). Whatagraph: Create beautiful infographics from google analytics. Marketing Tech Blog. Retrieved from https://marketingtechblog.com/whatagraph-google-analytics-infographics/

Inamedinova, L. (2014). Whatagraph – a family startup developing google analytics. ArticStartup. Retrieved from http://arcticstartup.com/article/whatagraph-a-family-startup-developing-google-analytics/

Malinauskas, J. (2016). Whatagraph. New Startups. Retrieved from http://www.new-startups.com/whatagraph/

Whatagraph. (2016). Google partners: Whatagraph. Google. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/analytics/partners/company/5167495824539648/gadp/5629499534213120/app/5066549580791808/listing/5757334940811264

Whatagraph. (2016). Pricing. Whatagraph. Retrieved from http://whatagraph.com/pricing

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Google Analytics vs Piwik: Why Details Matter

google analytics 10:00 PM

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Make Social Media Social Again: Why Conversations Matter

11:00 PM

“Social media isn’t a fad or trend. It’s an enduring reality of online existence.” – Neil Patel, Kissmetrics

I have often asked myself if it’s necessary for a business to be on every social media platform or if it’s better to only use the ones that they’re able to actively engage on. There are benefits to both options. For example, if a business were to be on every platform, they could lock down a good handle relating to their brand and it would seem as though they would be able to reach a wider audience. If a brand decides not to take on every social media platform, they could risk losing groups of people that may not be on the platform they’re using, but more time could be spent creating quality content and conversations. I found that it is better to not be on every platform that you can possibly think of as a marketer and only be on the ones you can put the time and effort into. There are several reasons for this. Two of the more important reasons for me are allocating resources and being where your customers are online.

Make Social Media Social Again

Even though it may seem like being on every platform would open up a business to more people that is not always the case. A wider audience does not always mean a more engaged audience. The Next Web (2015) has actually reported that anywhere between 67.65 and 137.76 million Facebook accounts are fake, so some of the content may not even be seen by actual people. Although a business may be posting content every single day and the platform’s analytics are showing that the content is being seen, it is more important that the content is being shared and engaged with. Through metrics such as reach and impressions, businesses can see that their content is being viewed; however, these numbers are sometimes inflated and can be easily misconstrued. According to Social Media Today (2010), “Content without conversation is just broadcasting, or just advertising. It goes to the listener/reader/viewer/visitor… and stops there.” Responding to users is essential to social media success and if a business is not spending the time and effort to monitor each social media platform they are on, they might end up missing a consumer’s comments which could end up costing the business negative reviews.

Engagement such as comments and shares can show a more accurate depiction of how successful content can be on social media platforms. Besides likes and followers, engagement can show more than just how many people see your content; it can show how potential consumers are interacting with your content online. It is great to see that people are viewing your content, but if visitors are not engaging with your content, it does not help convert visitors into potential customers. Through engagement metrics such as a share, marketers can find out how to turn that behavior into a potential lead.

Finding the Digital Footprint

It is also important that businesses focus their marketing efforts on the social networks that their customers are actually using. Allocating the marketing budget to cover even three different social media platforms could be difficult if the resources are not readily available. Even if the business does have enough people to analyze and manage more than two or three social media platforms, it is not always the best option. To determine the best social media platforms to be on, it really depends on the goals of a business. Questions to consider are:

Where is my target audience actively engaged on?
How much time can be spent on each platform to produce quality content?
What are we, as a business, trying to achieve through social (i.e. brand awareness or sales)?

According to Kissmetrics (2015), the most important factors that go into determine what platforms to be on is simply depend on where your target audience is and what the company goals are for social media. For example, if a real estate company such as Gillespie Group located in Lansing, Michigan decided to start utilizing social media, maybe a more image-based platform like Instagram or Pinterest would be better suited for that type of work. Gillespie Group could then post apartment hacks or tips and also images of their vacant apartments to find their niche online. According to Adweek (2016), Instagram is often ignored, but it should not be since there are over 65.3 million users actively posting and interacting on Instagram. Another platform that would be beneficial for a company such as Gillespie Group would be Facebook. According to Regan of Social Media Today, brands utilizing Facebook can reach 1.94 billion potential consumers and when combining all of Facebook’s acquisitions, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, the overall reach climbs to 2.94 billion (2015).

With Facebook’s most recent algorithm update to highlight more content that is being shared by friends and family, it is important to find a conversational tone online and share content that people care about. Advertisements are everywhere in 2016 and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down, so businesses should find ways to create engaging content that leaves people wanting to find out more about a business or brand. Catherine Novak (2016) said it best, “Our world is shaped by the relationships and conversations we have with other people – by the emotions we feel as well as the information we receive.”

References

Adweek (2015). Infographic: Who's really using Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram in 2015. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/new-social-stratosphere-who-using-facebook-twitter-pinterest-tumblr-and-instagram-2015-and-beyond-1622

Barker, A. (2015). Why entrepreneurs shouldn’t be on ever social media platform. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245632

Neil, P. (2016). Which social media accounts really matter and why. Kissmetrics. Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/which-social-accounts-matter/

Novak, C. (2010). Why conversation, not content, is king. Social Media Today. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/why-conversation-not-content-king

Protalinski, E. (2014). Facebook estimates that between 5.5% and 11.2% of accounts are fake. The Next Web. Retrieved from http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2014/02/03/facebook-estimates-5-5-11-2-accounts-fake/

Regan, K. (2015). 5 reasons why your business still needs Facebook. Social Media Today. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/kadie-regan/2015-08-06/5-reasons-why-your-business-still-needs-facebook

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Returning Visitors: Why It's Important To Analyze

6:58 PM

Web analytics can provide a substantial amount of information for both businesses and personal use. Creating a user-friendly website, using the right keywords, and optimizing for different mediums like mobile, tablet, and desktop are all very important, but to really know whether a site is successful or not the website traffic and engagement must be analyzed. Two metrics that are critical for success are returning visitors and bounce rate.

Returning Visitors

Returning visitors, which falls under the visitor characterization category, can be defined as the, “…number of unique visitors with activity consisting of a visit to a site during a reporting period and where the unique visitor also visited the site prior to the reporting period.” (WVU, 2016). This metric can be beneficial for businesses for several reasons, including brand loyalty. According to the Digital Analytics Association (2007), “The return visitor metric, when compared with the new visitor metric, is helpful in determining the overall loyalty and affinity of visitors to the site being analyzed.”

Before diving into new versus returning visitors, it’s important to know how the information is tracked. On Google Analytics, each visitor is given a tracking code or unique ID called the client ID, which is sent to the Google Analytics server (Sharma, 2015). This means that every time someone visits the website without an existing client ID they are counted as a new visitor. This ID is then used to track how the users’ interactions with the website. However, it’s important to note that if someone visits a website, leaves, decides to delete their ‘cookies’ which includes the client ID, and then returns to the website, this will then count as a new visitor rather than a returning visitor even though they were just on your site. It is also important to note that if a user leaves the website, but returns to the website within the same reporting period, they will not be counted as a new visitor (Digital Analytics Association, 2007).

Search Engine Watch, 2013

The image above shows just how important returning visitors can be for a website. In the graphic above, the returning visitors stayed on the website for an average of 30 minutes longer. Although the number of returning visitors was substantially less than the new visitors, the returning visitors had much better interaction data (Lewis, 2010). According to the Cam Foundation (2015), it generally costs at least five times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. If a business is able to find users that have returned to their website, it will be easier to isolate them and find out why they returned and what their engagement was on the website through the audience behavior metric. Once the metrics have been analyzed, businesses can take it even further by properly segmented visitors. For example, when a returning visitors are arriving to the website directly (without referrals from other sites), a business can see which pages they are most likely to arrive on and what pages they have bookmarked. This information can then be used to create similar content, market or share that content more, or maybe even use that data to attract new visitors.

References

Reed College of Media (2016). Week 1 lesson: Intro to web analytics and the basics of web analytics. West Virginia University. Retrieved from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/

Sharma, H. (2015). Understanding users in google analytics. Optimize Smart. Retrieved from https://www.optimizesmart.com/understanding-users-in-google-analytics/

Kissmetrics. (2015). The 8 most important conversion metrics you should be tracking. Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-8-most-important-conversion-metrics-you-should-be-tracking/

Digital Analytics Association. (2007). Web analytics definitions. Retrieved from http://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/Files/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitionsVol1.pdf

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Why Measuring Bounce Rate Is Essential For Your Website

6:00 PM

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate, which falls under the engagement category, is defined as, “single page visits divided by entry pages” (WVU, 2016) or the rate at which new visitors visit your site and immediately click away without doing anything (Kissmetrics, 2010). Bounce rate is often confused with the page exit metric, which is number of exits from a page divided by total number of page views of that page (WVU, 2016). The main difference is that page exit ratio applies to all visits regardless of length whereas bounce rate is determined based off of time spent on a single page, group of pages, or site-wide (Digital Analytics Association, 2007). Avinash Kaushik said it best, bounce rate should be defined as, “I came; I puked, and I left.”

To know if the bounce rate on a website is good, it should be low. A lower bounce rate indicates that visitors are spending a longer amount of time the page(s). According to Kissmetrics (2010), a high bounce rate can mean several things, including weak or irrelevant sources of traffic and landing pages that aren’t optimized for conversion (have a poor design, low usability or high load times). However, a high bounce rate may also mean that users have found the information that they are looking for and left the site. Also, if a website consists of only one page, this may be the reason for a high bounce rate as most analytic services do not register multiple pageviews unless users reload that page (Google, 2016). Blogs also see a higher bounce rate since visitors generally come to read the single article and then leave the website as there is no need to browse any further (Sharma, 2015).

Yes, this is the same graphic as above, but it is important to see how analytics can sort of tell a story and integrate with each other to develop and help guide the customer journey. As seen above, the returning visitors have a substantially lower bounce rate. However, the new visitors have a pretty high bounce rate of 66.44% and only spend about six and a half minutes on the pages on average. If a business wanted to gain new customers, one way they could do this is to see how the returning visitors are engaging on the website. For example, what are they landing on when visiting the site? Is this something that should be the landing page for the new visitors? Segmenting the data to determine why specific audiences have a high bounce rate would be very beneficial for a business. For example, maybe the new visitors are using other mediums such as mobile whereas returning visitors are more likely to visit on desktop. This sort of information could mean that maybe the mobile website is not user-friendly or optimized for mobile.

Analytics tell a story about how customers engage with the business. It’s essential to analyze all important data based on pre-determined goals to have a successful website.

References

Reed College of Media (2016). Week 1 lesson: Intro to web analytics and the basics of web analytics. West Virginia University. Retrieved from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/

Cheng, R. (2015). How loyal are your customers? This metric has the answer. Contently. Retrieved from https://contently.com/strategist/2015/08/18/how-loyal-are-your-customers-this-metric-has-the-answer/

Mostyn, S. (2015). Google analytics: 7 important audience metrics to track. Practical eCommerce. Retrieved from http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/116726-google-analytics-7-important-audience-metrics-to-track

Sharma, H. (2015). Understanding users in google analytics. Optimize Smart. Retrieved from https://www.optimizesmart.com/understanding-users-in-google-analytics/

Kissmetrics. (2015). The 8 most important conversion metrics you should be tracking. Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-8-most-important-conversion-metrics-you-should-be-tracking/

Digital Analytics Association. (2007). Web analytics definitions. Retrieved from http://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/Files/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitionsVol1.pdf

Google. (2016). Bounce rate. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en

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Pages

Natasha West

How Amazon Uses Web Analytics for E-Commerce

Amazon

How Amazon Uses Web Analytics

Conclusion

References

Whatagraph: Making Understanding Analytics Easier

Whatagraph

Businesses and Whatagraph

Conclusion

References

Google Analytics vs Piwik: Why Details Matter

Make Social Media Social Again: Why Conversations Matter

Make Social Media Social Again

Finding the Digital Footprint

References

Returning Visitors: Why It's Important To Analyze

Returning Visitors

Why Measuring Bounce Rate Is Essential For Your Website

Bounce Rate

References

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