Thoughts From The Cake Scraps

In my previous post on participation metrics I got a great question about how participation works across multiple visits.  And as long as I was going to write about that question, I thought it would be a great time to also state the single best reason to use participation metrics.

First, I will address the question about multiple visits.  It is a great question, and I would expect nothing less from a guy who is crunching Milwaukee Brewers stats dating back to pre-1900 over at Brewer Leaders.  Hell, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe wasn’t even playing yet (bonus points if you tell me why he was famous in the comments).

Getting back to the subject at hand.  Participation metrics are generally only good for a single visit and a visit is arbitrarily defined by ‘the industry’ as you leaving the page or being idle for 30 min.  A full dictionary (pops a PDF) can be found here.  Therefore if you added a bunch of stuff to your cart and ended your visit the next time you came only the pages that you then touched would be counted.  This is the same for the non-participation metrics as well.  Therefore it would be possible to have a visit that only has one page and has an order and revenue associated with it.  Just think of a person sitting on the order confirm page, going idle for 31 min, then checking out.

There are metrics that will track across multiple visits, but because this is all based on cookies, to say they are reliable would just be wrong.  They are only as right as cookie deletion rates allow them to be.  Anyway, that is a whole post in and of it self.  But now you know about participation metrics (or most other metrics) across visits.

The other things I wanted to touch on – and the title of the post – relates to when to use participation.  The single biggest reason, in my opinion, is ease of communication.  People like to see big round numbers.  If you can say that a promotion page was viewed by 50% of your visitors by participated in 60% of your revenue that is easy.  There are less moving levers.  With revenue distributed, when page views go up for some reason (say you are doing a lot of liquidations and people have to click around to find something is a size or color they want) it is going to give an odd looking number compared to what people might be used to seeing.

Giving a nice number or % of total revenue just makes communication much easier.  And sometimes, when you’re working on something that you don’t really want to work on, finding the answer and communicating it out and being done with it is all you want.

These metrics discussions sure are fun, no?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

I have not had a post on some basic elements of Web Analytics in quite some time.  Previously I have talked about how a person is tracked on a web site both with internal campaigns and e-mails.  I think that stuff is great to know for anybody surfing the internet.  It gives you an idea of what all that stuff in the URL is.  Check it out if you haven’t.

Once question that comes up quite a bit centers around what a report or analysis means when it talks about Revenue Participation or Order Participation or other ‘Participation’ branded metrics.  The first thing you need to know is that it is not the same thing as non-participation branded terms (i.e. revenue <> revenue participation).  The second is that participation metrics are related to single pages within a website.

Simply put, when a metric has “participation” attached to it, the metric changes from being a distributed metric to a non-distributed metric.

Lets just concentrate on revenue, but know that the example is not specific to revenue.

Lets assume that I came to a site and purchased $100 worth of stuff.  Let us also assume that I saw 20 pages in that time, including checkout pages.  When an analyst is looking at reoprts on a page basis there are 2 ways to look at that $100 I spent.

The first way is to attribute (or distribute – however you want to think about it) that $100 across all 20 pages.  This means that each page gets $4 worth of demand.  This would include any page that I viewed, including the checkout pages.  This is nice because no matter how many pages I am looking at I am not double counting revenue.  It makes it simple.  You can just add up whatever pages you are interested in and you have your revenue number.

The second way is participation.  this would give each page that I saw $100 worth of revenue attributed to it.  You probaly don’t need me to tell you – but I will anyway – you cannot add up multiple pages with this method.  If you did that for my hypothetical purchase you would get $2,000 worth of revenue participation.

It seems a bit odd, but there are definite uses for each way of looking at revenue.  The first way – distributed – seems logical at first, but then you are giving revenue away from an index or homepage and giving it to a checkout page.  There is not $4 worth of demand on each checkout page.  With participation, each page gets full credit, but then you cannot add up multiple pages.  Each has its place.

I hope that that clears up the difference between participation metrics and non-participation metrics, at least as far as it relates to those metrics from a page within a website standpoint.

Do you have a preference between these metrics?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

In any field it is easy to look at day over day comparisons, week over week, month over month, and even year over year.  If you are diligent you might even go so far as to trend your data over time.  Perhaps you will include a trend for the current time period as well as a trend for the historical time period.  The graph will be very pretty I’m sure.  That is all great stuff.

The problem with all of this is that it is far too easy to get caught looking at the micro picture without ever taking the time to step back to look at the macro picture.  Where were you at the pinnacle of your stats?  Where were you at the depths?  And not just in the time period you are comparing.  I am talking about ever.

These are the things that you need to be aware of.  Not with every project you do, but just in general.  This gives you perspective.  Have your sales been increasing each year?  Great, maybe they have even been increasing for the last 4 years.  Even better.  But what if you are still at half of your sales from your peak 15 years ago?  The company was capable of doing it then.  Ask yourself “why are we not at that now?” and then try and figure out how to get there.

Don’t be satisfied with being close to the industry average.  While it is great to know where and how you tack up against others, it should only be a component of your overall picture.  Who cares if you are far above average on conversion?  Someone has to shoot for the stars.  Somebody has to be the new benchmark.  It can be you.

The point is that as an analyst, and we are all analysts to greater and lesser extents – in your job or not, you need to be aware of the overall picture.  Don’t just be a reporting monkey.  Know your stuff.  Know what potential there is.

And if you are setting a new benchmark, then pat yourself on the back.  You deserve it.  But then ask, how can I (or we) push that even further.

How have you pushed a benchmark in your life?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.

You don’t have to look very far or for very long to find a slew of people doing predictions for 2009.  If you look around, many of those same people made predictions for 2008.  And just before they posted their new 2009 predictions they reviewed the 2008 predictions.

The interesting thing to look for here is what story are they trying to tell.  How many predictions did they get right?  Or, more imporantly, how many did they get wrong?  It is not about laughing at the wrong answers but rather evaluating why they got them wrong. 

If they are right on all accounts then where is the vision?  Where is the reach in the predictions?  This is not to say that a person needs to make outlandish predictions, but a key element is stretch.  And if you have sufficient stretch in your goals then you will get some wrong and that is a good thing.

With all of that said here are my predictions that I am coming up with as I write this.  I have no idea what is going to come next.

1. There is going to be a massive, and unexpected, rise in coffee consumption which will be the indication that the economy is on the uptick.
2. A 62″ TV will be priced under $1,000 and a Blu-ray player under $100.
3. Microsoft will be sucessful in rebranding itself while Apple will stagnate.
4. Some new type of TV show will compete with reality TV and crime shows.  This will not be on a major network.
5. Clothing companies will start putting buttons on boxers – or put them on again since they took them off.
6. Netbooks become not only a status symbol – but significanly impact laptop sales.
7. I will win.  Not sure at what, but some large victory will be mine.

So there you have it, 7 baseless precitions for 2009.  Have a great year all.

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps

If you do any sort of marketing, for your blog, business, or otherwise, the question that you should always have in the back of your head is “How will this be perceived by my customers?”

You can have variations such as “How am I presenting my brand to the customer?” or “How am I enriching the customer experience?” or countless others but the bottom line is what is your customer going to perceive.  It doesn’t matter what your intent is.  It doesn’t matter what you think you are saying or how you think you are presenting; only what is perceived matters.

I was purchasing a plane ticket recently with NWA – which had some really great fares by the way – and was all set to pay when I saw this:

Protect yourself against loss of non-refundable fares and change fees (up to $3,000) by purchasing Trip Protector. Trip Protector offers coverage for you and your traveling companions in the event you have to cancel or interrupt your trip due to unforeseen injury, medical emergencies, accidents or other covered reasons. See price details and terms and conditions

Now I can see the intent behind this note.  I can see that they are trying to be helpful (as well as make more money).  For me this just doesn’t do it.  Let me explain why.

First of all, my ticket was just over $200.  I am not really worried that fees could be $3,000.  That just doesn’t make sense.  I would be better off just not flying and buying a ticket from a different airline.  But lets pretend for a moment that NWA is the only one that flys to where I am going.  And lets say that I do have to make a change to my flight.  And lets say that my fees are $3,000 (in case you didn’t catch on, all of this happening at once is not very likely).  I am going to be really upset at NWA.  I won’t care that I could have purchased this protection.  I am just going to be upset.

My real problem with this is that NWA is choosing to use a hard-sell scare tactic.  “You could be charged $3,000 if you don’t buy this.”   Interesting.  Who exactly is going to charge me this fee?  Oh, that’s right, NWA is.  They are trying to scare the customer into paying for this service or else they are really going to get your money later.  It is just like insurance except that at least with regular insurance you don’t pay the insurance company if you get hurt with out insurance, you pay hospitals.  Here NWA gets money either way.

I understand that it does cost an airline money when you want to switch tickets.  I understand that there can and should be fees for changing.  I just don’t think they should try and scare a customer with $3,000 of fees on a $200 ticket.  It just seems odd that a company sells a service to avoid their own fees when they could change the pricing on their fees at any time.

For NWA it is probably simple.  This probably works.  People probably buy it more often.  But I just don’t feel as good when buying the ticket.  Can you really love the enforcer who comes around asking for money or else you may really pay extra for it later?  And if I don’t love the company, why come back?  The race to the bottom on price only gets you so far.

Do you ever buy “Trip Protection”?

This has been a Thought From The Cake Scraps.