Reader Tai Te, posted an interesting comment on the "The third party online metrics controversy" post, that I used to argue that 3rd party metrics are unnecessary to plan online marketing campaigns and and to evaluate campaigns success. This post generated a lot of interest due to Kaiser Kuo's mention his the Digitalwatch blog.

Tai Te writes:


I highlight this comment because it echos common concerns about using web analytics metrics for campaigns planning and evaluation.
I can agree with this criticism for "one off" campaigns. It becomes mute though when you regularly or continuously run campaigns (which is the case for most online advertisers) since you can build on experience. It also leads to best practices that accommodate media testing and continuous media optimization.
Testing and ongoing optimizations are critical for other reasons too. While reliable 3rd party metrics will be able to tell you the number of impressions and clicks you can expect for your campaign given a dollar number and media, these metrics will not allow you to predict the results of the campaign.
Real campaign results (outcomes) depend on actions users take on your landing page (e.g. buy, register, play video, learn more etc.) I would argue that its these outcomes you should optimize your media buying for.

        

After returning from the May holiday, its time to talk web analytics again. This time I am going to take 15 min of your time to talk about "actionable web analytics". Or how to build a web analytics process that provides actionable insights. Of course I will be looking for your input and your insights as well.

Time: Wednesday May 7th/ 8PM - 10PM
Location: Club Camp (near Workers Stadium) www.dianping.com/shop/2341681

Please RSVP on the Web Analytics Wednesday Website or by replying to this post.

        

During the last WAW event we agreed to meet more regularly, on a monthly schedule. I recommend the first Wednesday each month. In May this would be May 7th. Right after the May holiday. Considering the increasing size of our group, I will follow Wu Yong guidance to keep the location stable. So with no further ado I give the stage to my readers. Where would you arrange a Web Analytics Wednesday in Beijing? We need

• A room for 15 to 20 people on 2 tables
• Good food at reasonable prices (<RMB 80 person incl. drinks) preferably lower
• Internet access
• Somewhere in Chaoyang

Comments are open and highly appreciated.

        

Many friends ask for a Chinese blog about Web Analytics for our community. And we got one at Sohu blog. But after several months, the experience was not as good as we expected because we can't use any analytics tool to track the traffic and optimize the content accordingly.
So, it seems a better way out is to have a place for our own and no need to depend on any BSP. That's what we do this time.
Now, after several days efforts, we got it - a new blog: 
http://www.chinawebanalytics.cn

Yes,  the web server space and domain name are brand new, but what we want to do hasn't changed -

• Introduce basic concepts of web analytics, (as China is still in its WA infancy)
• translate articles of this blog and other best oversea knowledge to Chinese practitioners, (you will see articles of Florian, Avinash, Eric T. Peterson and other good writers for web analytics.)
  
• make more friends, (please pay attention to the event notice, especially WAW notice)
  
• and build up our community.

So, please fovorite the URL above, visit the blog and give us comments. I will appreciate that.
Thanks Florian, and all our friends. See you there!

        

My colleague Song Xing (Sidney) is gearing up to translate not only my posts, but also posts of global web analytics thought leaders on his blog. If you prefer to read about analytics in Chinese, go there! Also tell your less English inclined friends about this great resources. Its a big step forward in our industry.
To take a look at what other thought leader write about analytics in English, take a look at my blogroll in the sidebar or subscribe to my shared items feed. Or as a comprehensive references, buy

• Avinash's book "Web Analytics: One hour a day", which provides much more than the title suggest
  
• and Eric T. Peterson's "The big Book of KPI's" which remains an amazing reference.
  

While both "guru's" are engaged in a vigorous debate about how "hard" or "easy" web analytics is, I recommend you to read them both. They offer amazing insights and have been my guide on this interesting ride since the beginning.

        

Kaiser Kuo at Digitalwatch has an interesting write up of the Metrics and Measurement Panel at Verge. While there focus is all of Asia, there is certainly a lot of meat there about China (did someone say red meat?) Take a look at check it out.

        

Thanks everyone for joining last week’s Web Analytics Wednesday. It was the largest and most diverse WAW in Beijing so far. The community is growing and you are the core. Rock on! Special thanks to Zhou Yang from Google for presenting on Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer and to Eric Peterson and the folks at Web Analytics Demystified for generously sponsoring  the event.

People

With 13 participants this was the largest WAW to date in Beijing (30% growth QoQ :)). The room was bursting at its seams, so we are looking for a larger location next time. In addition to the usual suspects (folks from MRM Worldwide, OgilvyOne and DMG: Thanks for your loyalty), new faces came from Ronghai Consulting and major Chinese SOE’s like Air China and China Netcom. It was also the first meeting to be conducted mainly in Chinese. I am particularly pleased with this development (while I can't understand every word being said). I see it as a evidence that we finally start to reach the local practitioners. Most of praise goes to Wu Yong, a leading local WebTrends expert, who has an amazing talent reaching local users.

Presentations (Google Analytics / Google Website Optimizer)

Google’s Zhou Yang shared two insightful presentations with a captivated audience and graciously agreed to share the decks with me. I have uploaded the files to a brand new WAW Beijing Google Group. Check it out.

 

Zhou Yang with captivated audience. (Next time we need Sidney to take pictures again)

Discussion

While the early discussion focused on experience sharing about these two Google tools, we also had a more far reaching discussion on communicating analytics findings and reconciling data from multiple tools.

• Google Analytics
• Pro’s
• Free of charge
• Easy to use interface. New users (and many web analysts in China are new) show a very steep landing curve with GA. After less than a week they are able to get all relevant report while packages like WebTrends’ and Omniture’s can take more than a month to feel comfortable in.
• Strong functionality, can cover 98% of all web analytics needs in China right now
• Data sharing setting allow complete privacy for the data.
  
• Con’s
• Tracking servers are hosted in the US, channeling server calls to the US might impact data quality. The extend of the problem is not clear, but Zhou Yang assured that it is not a major issue. Google will also work to set up a tracking server in China, to insure that users feel more confident.
• GA uses a JS bases tracking strategy and a hosted application (like most state of the art solutions). For many local users that is an issue, since they want to control their analytics data themselves. Many users therefore use server log bases tools (mainly Webtrends). Google log file solution (Urchin), can address this need, but is widely unknown.
  
• Use cases
• Most members of the audience are users of "corporate" web analytics tools like Omniture Sitecatalyst, WebTrends and IndexTools.
  
• GA only used in non standard cases, where the processes of implementing the corporate solution is too time consuming.
  
•  Website Optimizer
• There was strong interest in the capabilities of GWO.
• None of the audience members are active users of GWO or any other A/B or Multivariate testing tools. I attribute that to the early stage of web analytics in China. Clients often don't buy the value of testing and find it a waste of money. More advocacy and training is needed to get the ball rolling.
• Clickmaps provided by current analytics solutions are most often used to make decisions on landing page design
  
• Communicating Analytics
• Communicating what web analytics is, and what it can do for decision makers is an even larger challenge than implementing tools. We discussed some strategies to solve this problem, but none of use could say is as eloquently as Avinash in his recent post on the topic. Read it!
  
• Using multiple analytics solutions on one site
• One interesting question was about data discrepancies when using multiple tools on one site. I commented numbers from different tools are different and may never be exactly the same. The key question though is if both tools are showing the same trends. If so, you can take action. More the data consolidation from Avinash and Eric T. Peterson.
  

To learn more about these and other web analytics topics, please join the next event. I am confident we can get together again in early May.

Chinese version of this blog (中文的博客)

During the discussion it became clear that it the community is looking for a Chinese language platform to discuss about Web Analytics. That seems to be a good time to bring the Chinese version of this blog out of stealth mode. My colleague Song Xing has been so nice to translate my post into Chinese on his blog . Please go there for your fill of web analytics news and analysis in Chinese. I will also add a link to Song Xing’s blog directly at the top of my sidebar.

Have I missed anything, did I ignore the Chinese part of the discussion? Tell me in the comments section.

        

One of the questions that regularly comes up in my discussions with friends like Kaiser Kuo and Bill Bishop, is the lack of reliable 3rd party data for web traffic in China.  Their beef is that data from sources like Alexa and iResearch is unreliable and open to abuse.
My answer is usually quite simple: It really doesn't matter that much for advertisers. An effectively implemented web analytics program will provide all the data that is needed for a comprehensive online advertising optimization effort.

1. Your media plan will tell you how much you spend on each media and each banner.
2. Campaign tagging will tell you how many visits came form each banner and each media. It enables you to calculate cost per landing page visit (CPV).
3. Goal tracking and conversion tracking will tell you how many visit from what banner actually ended in the desired end action on your site. This enables you to calculate the cost per end action (CPA).
   

These data sets enable effective optimization of media spending, without relying on any data from the publisher or the ad tracking vendor. All data is owned by the advertiser.

• For campaigns that emphasize brand awareness, CPV  is a good key performance indicator (KPI). It tells you how many times your ad has been seen by a visitor to the publishers site that found it interesting enough to click on and interested enough in your content to actually wait until your landing page was loaded.
• I find optimizing for CPV more effective than optimizing for CPM (Cost per 1K impressions) or CPC (cost per click).
  
• CPM is sub optimal, because an ad impression just means the banner has been loaded from the ad server (or the tracking pixel has been loaded from the tracking server to be exact). It does not mean that the ad has actually been seen or that, if it was seen, had any impact on the observer.
• CPC is sub optimal because in China many clicks on banners seem to be accidental and users will abort the loading process once they notice that are actually leaving the publisher's site
• For campaigns with a specific end action (or a set of specific end actions) as campaign goal, CPA is the most relevant metric, since it allows you to directly link your ad spend with the desired return.

There are two drawbacks to this approach

1. It required continuous testing and regular optimization. (which you should do anyway)
2. It does not help investors or VC's, since their main interest in tracking publishers traffic is gauging revenue potential by projecting its revenue potential. Well, maybe it helps to talk to advertiser who actually spend money on the site. The advertisers ROI could be a metric to understand if a publisher has the potential to grow its ad revenue.
   

        

Those of you that cannot attend our Web Analytics Wednesday event next Thursday, do not despair. The folks from LexAd are running a Google Analytics workshop in Shanghai on April 22nd and May 27th. This is not the first time they do that, just the first time I notice Thanks Sidney for pointing this out! If any one of my readers has attended their workshop before, please let me know how it went. The comment section is the perfect place 

        

Given the great interest in the WebTrends drinks / dinner event, I am happy to announce the next Web Analytics Wednesday (on a Thursday) for Thursday April 3rd / 8PM - 10PM. Sponsored by Web Analytics Demystified Inc., I have invited Google's Zhou Yang to present a quick introduction to Google Analytics (15 min) to start off the discussion. Given the great interest in tools, I am planning future sessions for WebTrends, Omniture, SinoTechMedia and other vendors in upcoming months. Please do recommend other vendors you are aware of, I am happy to add more to the list.

Time: Thursday April 3rd / 8PM - 10PM
Location: South Beauty (Dong Zhi Men branch)

Please RSVP on the Web Analytics Wednesday website or by commenting to this post.