Chinalytics Longmarch Blog

Yesterday I had the pleasure to host the July WAW here in Beijing with John Wang, Product Manager at Sinotech Group sharing Sinotech’s perspective on Web Analytics and Social Media Analytics. Thanks John for sharing.

While John had only a couple of slides, it was slide 8 (the SinoBuzz dashboard) that caught most attention and started a discussion that lasted almost half an hour. Thanks John for being a great sport answering all the questions in detail (especially the more pesky ones from Paul Denlinger )

Some take aways from the presentation and the discussion:

• The Social Media tracking field is getting crowded, with pioneer CIC, BBS aggregator Daqi, Ogilvy One’s OBuzz and now Sinotech’s SinoBuzz. That’s great news for advertisers and ad agencies. It keeps everyone on their toes
• Sinotech has been working of Sinobuzz for more than one year. Especially the natural language processor part had been tricky, but they are confident that it produces reliable results now.
  FP: Chinese is a very difficult language to interpret with software. None of the natural language processing tools I have seen for Chinese have worked at an acceptable level. I would love to see a more detailed demonstration of Sinotech’s system on a post and aggregated level to understand if they have cracked this particular nut.
• SinoBuzz is working with connectors to plug into BBS, Blog, Social Network, Video sharing and other conversations. The platform is flexible to add other connectors to any upcoming platform or network.
  FP: This flexibility is a clear competitive advantage, given the more static nature of most competitive products.
• SinoBuzz is trying to aggregate unique metrics from various platform
  • #of BBS post, BBS clicks, BBS replies, Post Sentiment
  • #of Blog post, Blog replies, estimates about Blog post PV’s, Blog post sentiment
  • SNS #of Friends, #of status message, #of posts, # of relies, post sentiment
  • etc

  into general metrics like “reputation” and “attitude”.
  FP: I am highly sceptical of this approach since is a) lack transparency b) ignores unique characteristics of different platforms, their audiences and their impact c) uses unreliable third party resources like Alexa to gauge the impact of sources that do not publish reach (PV) data.

• The Sinobuzz dashboard is well designed and provides a good overview of brand performance. Like most dashboards (see Avinash’s Action Dashboard post), it suffers from the lack of analysis and actionable insights.
  FP: A good rule of thumb for any Dashboard: Handle with care. Dashboards without analytics and recommendations usually end up as pretty charts without impact. The key resource is not the dashboard, but an analyst who understands these numbers and your business and can provide actionable insights and recommendations based on that data. John mentioned that there are more reports to dig deeper and it would be great to understand what these reports can do. The critical queastion remains: How does the tool enable brands to take action?

What are your thoughts? Did I miss anything important? Let me know in the comments section.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Defining Social with Usage Data (arnoldit.com)
• Semantic Search Getting Social (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Accidental Measurement And Why We Love Useless Metrics (rohitbhargava.typepad.com)

Avinash Tweet

After doing some research on my GA accounts, I can confirm Avinash’s statement. While the GA interface was not available, data collection was just fine.  I can live with reporting interface issues, but data collection issues would have been lethal.  This is good for Google Analytics and good for its clients, although I would like a bit more transparency on why it worked, so I can be more confident next time Google runs afoul with the authorities in China.

From what I can see, the tracking image call goes to google-analytics.com, not to analytics.google.com, which might have prevented the blocking (which focussed in google.com). Also many of my clients use local instances of the GA tracking code, to improve performance, which can provide some protection as well.

I am looking forward to hearing more details from Google.

Attention: Location Change: Now at Club Obiwan (Haidian), Next month back at Luga’s Villa.

Speaker: Mike Pereira, COO at Sinotech Media (TBC)

Topic: Web Analyics Getting Social in China

Please join me and 40 other web analytics enthusiasts to learn about web analytics, meet other web analytics enthusiasts and have an all around great time. Bring any friends who might be interested to join our community along as well to.

We will have a buffet dinner and soft drinks available for our guests. Be prepared to spend RMB 50 for the evening if you register in advance, and RMB 100 if you visit us without registration. As usual, the knowledge you get in exchange is invaluable.

Address:
Club Obiwan (Description and Map)
西城区西海西沿4号 离积水潭地铁站300米
Xihai Xiyan No.4, Xicheng district, 300m from Jishuitan subway station

Phone (for directions): 010 8322 1231

Schedule:
19:45 – Door open / Buffet open
20:15 – 20:45 Presentation
20:45 – 21:00 Q&A Session
21:00 – 22:00 Networking

I am looking forward to meeting you on Wednesday July 1st

Related articles by Zemanta

• Measuring Social Media at Web Analytics Wednesday (n0d3.org)

Yesterday I had the opportunity to share some of my thought on web analytics with the geeks on a plane guys.  The most impressive part? They had a specific section called “startup metrics” . This fact alone is prove enough that these guys get it.

If you need more prove, please check out Dave McClure’s Startup metrics for pirates presentation that he reanimated for this event.

I had only 15 minutes to speak, so I made it short and sweet. Check out the presentation below and let me know what you think about it. Of course I liberally borrow from Avinash and Stephane Hamel. Standing on the shoulders of giants.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stats are everyone’s business (startupcfo.ca)
• The Importance of Analytics in User Experience (90percentofeverything.com)
• Geeks On A Plane – This Is Great (alexwilhelm.com)
• Asia-Bound With GeeksOnAPlane (techcrunch.com)

Speaker: Dixon Dai 戴政, VP of Marketing at Qunar

Topic: Perspective on Vertical Search Engines – Travel Search Engines & ROI Performance
如何看垂直搜索和旅游搜索的模式及ROI

I have always believed that the application of web analytics is most advanced in industries and verticals that have a direct $$$ interest in the performance of their websites. The travel industry has been on of the first verticals to make e-commerce work in China and as a result travel sites are leading web analytics users as well. The first to share her perspective was Anya Zhao from Air China. This time we are going to hear from Qunar, China’s leading travel search engine. As most e-commerce sites they have to optimize the cost and quality of their traffic as well as the conversion of the traffic on their sites. It will be interesting to learn how they manage that. An additional challenge Qunar has to face is that the final transaction is happening on their partners site, so in order to track real conversions they need data across companies and sites. If you are interested to learn how Qunar solves these challenges…

Please join me and more than 30 other web analytics enthusiasts to learn about web analytics, meet other web analytics enthusiasts and have an all around great time. Bring any friends who might be interested to join our community along as well to:

We will have a buffet dinner and soft drinks available for our guests. Be prepared to spend RMB 50 for the evening if you register in advance, and RMB 100 if you visit us without registration. As usual the knowledge you get in exchange is invaluable.

Address:
Lugas Villa (Description and Map)
朝阳区三里屯北街41号同里后
7 Sanlitun North Street, (right behind ‘3.3 Plaza’ in Sanlitun)

Schedule:
19:45 – Door open
20:15 – 20:45 Presentation
20:45 – 21:00 Q&A Session
21:00 – 22:00 Networking

Please register here to join our event. Looking forward to meeting you on Wednesday June 10th.

During yesterday’s May Web Analytics Wednesday I had the chance to share my thoughts about Testing and why it has to be at the core of digital optimization and innovation.  Please see the deck I shared with the crowed on Slideshare.

In my post on “Landing Page Optimization” in early 2008 I have made a point that is still almost unanimously ignored in developing websites in China.

 The most effective way to an optimized landing page is testing,
but testing itself comes as one part of part of an
effective optimization process.”

I took  this opportunity to reprise this post in a presentation. My objective was to help all attendees to take a fresh look at their web analytics and optimization process and come away with new ideas on how to make it work better. Take a look at the slides and let me know how it worked. The comments are open. Let the fun begin.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Landing Page Optimizer (petpeeving.com)
• Stop bouncing: tips for website success (googleblog.blogspot.com)
• Web Analytics vs. Web Design: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? (cmswatch.com)

Daqi Logo

As a web analysts, we try to understand and optimize the performance of our or our clients’ websites and digital campaigns. For the most part that has included media optimization, creative opmtimization and site optimization. In a Web 2.0 world that is not enough anymore. As brands realize that they share the ownership of their brand image with their customers, prospects  and other interested parties online, (who influence each other by sharing their impressions, opinions and feedback trough ever increasing social media channels), brands are asking us to help them make sense of the discussion happening about their brand online a s well.

Zhou Lei will introduce Daqi’s tools and services that enable brands and agencies to keep track of the  ever proliferating online discussion. She will share some examples from auto/IT/FMCG case studies and describe  Daqi’s methodology. A quick intro to their service:

Daqi’s Buzz Radar system monitors 700,000+ BBS and 10 blog service providers in China. We capture av. 500,000+ data points from social media sites every day. From 2004 to now, our database has 8000+ million data entries. Based on the primary data from social media, we provide market intelligence, ads/campaign tracking, industry analysis, online behavior analysis, social media analysis,  IWOM analysis reports for our clients.

Please join Zhou Lei, me and more than 30 other web analytics enthusiasts to learn about web analytics, meet other web enthusiasts and have an all around great time. Bring any friends who might be interested to join our community along as well to:

Location: Luga’s Villa (right behind 3.3 in Sanlitun)

Time and date: Wednesday April 1st , 8PM

We will have a buffet dinner and soft drinks available for our guests. Be prepared to spend RMB 50 for the evening. As usual the knowledge you get in exchange is invaluable

Related articles by Zemanta

• March Web Analytics Wednesday Beijing with Google’s Stephanie Hsu (longmarch.chinalytics.com)
• Using Web Analytics to Meet Your Business Objectives (edocr.com)

One of interesting new features of Google Analytics, we didn’t have time to explore during the March WAW event, is Motion Charts.  Motion Charts are a fascinating visualization idea, displaying up to 5 dimensions of data in a very intuitive format. They were pioneered by Dr Hans Rosling in a famous TEDtalk discussing global health and are now available in Google Analytics to visualize web analytics data.

Motion chart or my blog traffic - click to animate

If you are interested to learn more about Motion Charts in GA, click on the image above to see my blog traffic visualized using motion charts and take a look at this training at the Google Conversion University.

The use of Motion Charts in not limited to Google Analytics however. They are also part of the visualization tools in Google Docs (see an example by the guys from Efficient Frontier) and can be accessed through an API. A good example for using the motion chart API is Eric Peterson’s Twitalyzer tool, that measures users influence on Twitter, and visualizes changes in influence over time. These interfaces open a wealth of interesting usage areas for data analysts, that can be integrated in dashboards and client presentations.

Now here in an idea: Use motion charts to visualize online buzz!

In China, product related discussions happen mainly BBS’s and sometimes on blogs. So these are the platforms we spent most of our time tracking and analyzing for our clients. to visualize user discussions on these two platforms, I propose the following motion chart setup:

The idea, of course, is to use this visualization to identify trending topics that need to acted upon. Those topics would clearly show in the top right corner (many posts, attracting many responses responses) of the chart with large bubble   sizes (many page views) and red color negative aggregate sentiment).

I you have any ideas on visualize social media tracking data? Let us know in the comments!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Video of March WAW with Google’s Stephanie Hsu (longmarch.chinalytics.com)

As a follow up to the March WAW video, here are a few more links to interesting Google Analytics resources.

Google Conversion Unversity Videos on Youtube

Google uploaded videos of 24 for presenations covering GA funtionality, Web Analytics skills and best practices to Youtube. These are very well done and insightful. You can find Stephanie Hsu’s presentation of AdWords integration there as well.

Google Conversion usiversity trainings and Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) test

A collection of short trainings, covering topics from ‘first steps in GA’ to ‘In-depth Analysis’, very useful for beginners up to more advanced users alike. They  explain all GA features and some analytics techniques.  The trainings also form the basis of the GA Individual Qualification test, that allows individual analysts to become certified in GA. That is a very powerful personal marketing tool right there. Would I prefer hiring a Google IQ certified applicant over one without any certification? You bet!

Regrettably, both videos and trainings are mainly available in English.  The Chinese version of the conversion university, while available, lacks the breath of content and the link to the IQ test. So the work the the GA China team is clearly cut out.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Video of March WAW with Google’s Stephanie Hsu (longmarch.chinalytics.com)
• GOOG Launches Analytics Qualification Program (marketingvox.com)
• REVIEW: Mastering Google Analytics – Contents of Their FREE eCourse (growmap.com)

For those of you who didn’t have the  March Web Analytics Wednesday Beijing with Google’s Stephanie Hsu take a look at the video posted above.  Its a full recording of the presentation and Q&A session. The presentation last for 32 minutes and then we have 23 minutes of Q&A. Make sure you don’t miss the insightful questions from our audience. For Song Xing’s video of the event take a look here. We understand that image and sound quality are still sub-optimal and are working on it.

For those of you who have never attended a WAW, this is also a great sneak peak, to see if joining us would add value to you. What is missing from the video of course is the great food and the networking. For that you really have to turn up in person.

During the presentation, in front of a record crowd of 60 attendees,  Stephanie focussed on Custom Reports and Advanced Segments. Both are very powerful tools and Stephanie does a great job demonstrating that power. She is showing actual screenshots from GA, which sometimes makes it diffucult to read what is on the slides. This is compoundend by the fact that I had to use an evluation version of a video conversion software to get the video uploaded.

The video was graciously provided by one of our attendees, but neither of us are experts at filming and editing video. Any recommendations and support in the filming and editing process you can provide is highliy appreachited.

What did you think of this month’s WAW? Like it? Hate it? Want better Chinese translation? Let me know in the comments.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Microsoft to shut down adCenter Analytics Beta (downloadsquad.com)
• March Web Analytics Wednesday Beijing with Google’s Stephanie Hsu (longmarch.chinalytics.com)
• New Google Analytics Guide Offers Help for Beginners (searchenginewatch.com)