Music is Math, Web Analytics is Music to my Ears

Gottfried Leibniz once wrote: “Music is an exercise in arithmetic secret, and who gives it ignores that handles numbers “

Are you a musician? Do you read music? As a musician you have a unique opportunity for understanding mathematical ideas such as symmetry, spatial relationships, distance, proportion, movement, and opposing side events, cause and effect, symbolic thought and more.

Music shows the repetition and variance, and enhances the concepts of division, addition, inclusion, resolution, gravity and motion. References about the interaction between mathematics and music can be found here, there, and everywhere.

The interaction between mathematics and Music from the time of the Pythagoreans to the 20th century are alive in the new field of web analytics.  Todays web analysts speak in bounce rates, exit pages, quality score, time on page, unique users, SERP’s and so on.

The relationship between music and math is clear. What amazes me most, the relationship between web analytics reports and musical scores.

Depending on the volume of information we want to process, the level of segmentation we need to study, the intersection of data with which we work, the availability of this information relative to time concerned, and obviously the metrics we need for decisions.

Well, that basically equals a firehouse of data to the face. The trick is not to let a dram of this goodly good information go to waste.

I import and export data,  reading my charts and formulas for ratios and signs the sands have shifted in some demonstrable way.

Reading the orchestral score and listening to 30 musicians all at once, pointing to the one violin out of tune or out of time, is like floating in the myriads of numbers and charts, living in the matrix and divining instant understanding of what keyword, landing page, bid amount or social media channel needs a tweak.

When processing volumes of information from websites with thousands of unique users, and companies that sell many products, to analyze the impact of your website in real time, is much harder, and to detect problems within the day after thousands of unique users that might involve thousands of dollars in losses, makes seeing the trends in the data all that more critical.

Every business has its vision and objectives, and analytics are the portal to the goals.

We are slowly creating a culture of analysis. Web analytic professionals believe they are advancing the needs of business and this is the way forward. Just like the poet, you need him and you know it. [thanks Bruce Cockburn, Stealing Fire]

Too many major corporations are not digging into the data and potential learnings that will propel their sales into the next stratosphere. Market immaturity is part of the reason more CMO’s are not communicating the need to invest in Web Analytics.

Displaying the next generation of web analytic tools and preparing companies to understand that web analytics is not vital, but essential in the life cycle of an online business. Measure, optimize and measure again to increase ROI though Web Analytics. Companies need professionals who know how to analyze and understand user behavior to optimize conversion rates and grow.

I suggest hiring a musician to help you with your web analytics

By Webmaster Magazine

AT Internet – A provider of both Web analytics and online intelligence solutions, AT Internet’s XiTi Analyzer II has key features that include optimized tagging methodology, ClickZone heatmaps and overlay, customizable dashboards, measurement of rich media, navigation optimization, qualitative analytics, mobile analytics and on-demand reporting.

Auriq Systems – AuriQ systems’s RTmetrics features several interesting website analysis features, including an intuitive visual path analysis, search engine optimization reports, clickstream analysis, mapping features, and flexible data collection methods. A 30-day trial is available at no cost.

BLVD Status – One of the more popular free analytics providers, BLVD Status offers a robust suite of features including RSS and form conversion tracking, outgoing link conversion tracking, real-time tracking and other commons analytics functionality and reports. WordPress bloggers can even use the BLVD Status WP Plugin.

Coremetrics – As one of the premier providers of analytics solutions, CoreMetrics Analytics features a robust content analysis, scenario analysis, profile mining, onsite search, multichannel and multi-site analytics. Suited especially for merchants, Coremetrics offers the ability to map product and promotional effectiveness based on site goals.

DC Storm – DC Storm provides an integrated Web analytics and PPC optimziation solution. Its analytics offering, Storm Analytics, offers users several standard features, but differentiates itself through the use of custom rules applicable to distinct traffic sources, helpful for tracking PPC and organic traffic.

etracker – The various analytics solutions provided by etracker (ranging in price from US$15-$215 based on page impressions) is a SaaS solution with decent features including overlay maps, tracking forecasting, and several other basic features. Advanced features are available only on advanced and unlimited plans.

eVisit Analyst – Offering a suite of reporting tools that focus on customer interaction and through advanced filtering and key data analysis can reveal individual customer behavior. eVisit Analyst offer specific solutions for mobile analytics, analytics for retail enterprises, governmental and education institutions, finance and media properties.

Facilitate Digital – More of a digital marketing system, the FaciliateOne system from Faciliate Digital brings together data from multiple digital marketing touchpoints. From online display and rich media to Web analytics to workfllow toolsets, the solution offers one view from one system for multi-channel marketers.

Intellitracker – Web analytics from Intellitracker are focused solutions to help online marketers understand their visitors with features such as deep profiling capabilities, Intellimap (which stores every click a visitor makes), the collaborative Desktop working environment, Applink which can stream data to third-party apps and a whole lot more.

Lyris (Clicktracks) – The Web analytics software solutions from Lyris are a powerful way to identify visitor-conversion performance data (even down to the keyword level). The software enables users to compare segments, understand visitor behavior, and develop landing pages populated with the correct tracking ocde. Merchants can even import shopping cart data.

MarketWave – A Web analytics solution for businesses, MarketWave provides tracking of key performance indicators through its online dashboard, offers a conversion manager and funnel reporting, automatic ROI calculations, DataLink functionality (which connects online and offline data) and quite a few more interesting features.

Omniture – More of an online business optimziation suite than a web analytics provider alone, Omniture’s SiteCatalyst touts an actionable offering with features such as pre-built reporting and analytics, mobile analytics, innovative work flow, video and social optimization reports, advanced segmentation and flexible data integration.

SmarterStats – This web log analytics tool is suited to either single websites or those across a distributed network. Features include smart reporting tools that understand real traffic (and note spider traffic), robust data mining tools, an architecture that allows for multiple installations methods to log files locally or remotely, and a reliable administration system.

VisiStat – Website tracking solution VisiStat provides all of the traditional analytics data, but differentiates itself through its more powerful features, such as user notes that can be included “sticky-style” into reports to indicate important events or reminders, a Stats API for advanced users to take raw data and create custom reports, page grouping and isolation, browser filtering, and much more.

WebTrends – Another of the leaders in Web analytics and marketing intelligence, WebTrends offers an solution that can be tailored to specific users or lines of business, provides detailed reporting, a subscription pricing model, automatic upgrades and flexible support options.

Woopra – One of the richest user interfaces of all providers, Woopra is a personal favorite that is unique as it provides live tracking and web statistics. Users can manage multiple blogs or websites, features searchable data, a click-to-chat feature and visitor and member tagging.

Yahoo! Web Analytics – Formerly IndexTools, the website reporting system – in addition to its real time analytics – offers a helpful exeutive dashboard to quickly set goals, custom reports, advanced path analytics, marketing workflow management, comparative reporting and advanced PPC campaign management to track and optimize PPC campaigns.

Myth #1: The Higher Your Google PageRank (PR), the Higher You’ll be in the Search Results Listing – PageRank has nothing to do with the ranking of web pages, it has to do with the level of authoritativeness the page has and how often it will be reindexed. Higher PageRank pages tend to be reindexed more often.

Myth #2: The Google Toolbar will List Your Actual PageRank – The toolbar displays PageRank and back link information that is generally 3-5 months old.

Myth # 3: PageRank is a Value Based on the Number of Incoming Links to Your Site – It is more to do with the QUALITY of the links coming into your site.

Myth # 4: Searching for Incoming Links on Google Using “link:” will Show you all Your BackLinks – Google only shows you a small number of the links they know about. They have publicly stated that the links they show you may not all be counted towards PageRank. Instead, use Yahoo! or MSN as a gauge to your link progress.

Myth #5: Being Listed in the Open Directory Project Gives you a Special PageRank Bonus – There is not a “special” bonus, you get PageRank from the ODP the same as you would from any other site. No special treatment is given.

Myth #6: Being Listed in Yahoo! Gives you a Special PageRank Bonus – See #5. There is no special bonus given.

Myth #7: Google Analytics is used to track your user behavior for future products with Google – The data is not used by Google per the terms of use. There is no real value for Google to analyze that information, unless Yahoo! or MSN decided to use Google Analytics.

Myth #8: Google Will Not Index Dynamic Pages – Google indexed dynamic content all the time, the issue is, does it index it correctly, and that is the responsibility of the web master, not Google.

Myth # 9: Google Will Not List Your Site, or Penalize it, if you use Pop-ups – Google does not view pop-ups as an indexing problem. However, if the pop-ups are abusive, you can be manually de-indexed.

Myth # 10: Google will Penalize you if You’re Linked to by a Link Farm – While Google has stated that you cannot be penalized because of something that is not in your direct control, they do have systems in place to determine if you are participating in programs which are against their terms of use.

I recently started using twitter and realized that setting up accounts with keywords was a brilliant way to lock out my competition in certain verticals. The next part of the equation was how to monetize the twitter account.

* Direct Advertisement – If a lot of people are following you in ‘twitter’ or in other words if you have a ‘wide reach’ to a large number of twitter users, you can look into direct advertisements for monetization.

* Recommendation – You can recommend a particular product or service on behalf of your advertisers & peruse your followers to take an ‘action’.

* Promotion – You can help your advertiser to promote a new product or service to your twitter followers. I have found a huge increase in my Google analytics where twitter is the referring site.

Twitter works like niche marketing, if you are an Internet Marketer, most of your followers in Twitter are probably from the same sphere of influence which is why they have ‘followed’ you in the first place.

# Affiliate Marketing – I was listening to Shoemoney’s podcast from webmasterradio.fm where he talked about how affiliate marketing can actually be blended within Twitter.

* Affiliate Links – If you are recommending a product or a service to your followers, you can always embed your affiliate link in your tweet. (e.g. Using a service like TinyUrl.com)

* Sales Pages – Instead of taking your followers to another website using your affiliate link, you might just want to promote your own product & services and sell them directly via your sales / landing page.

# Paid Review– This is pretty much like the direct advertisement, however the only difference would be, instead of blindly suggesting a product or a service to someone, you can actually do some ‘paid reviews’. Similar to Blogvertise and other paid inclusion sites.

* Product – Paid review about a particular product (e.g. Internet Marketing software)
* Services – Paid review on services that your advertiser offers. (E.g. Mortgage, Auto, pick any affiliate niche)
* People – Paid review about people. You can review someone’s web design skills, or you may promote someone’s ‘twitter’ account for instance.

# Sponsored Contest– An advertiser may want to run a contest via a popular twitter user to get feedback about his product & services or just to create some brand awareness. (gearing up to the buzz marketing campaign)

* Feedback – Example – “What New features would you like to see in Product A”?
* Brand Awareness– Example- “Describe product X in 140 Characters” or “Tell us why you like product X within 140 Characters”. The best answer can be given a cool prize sponsored by the advertiser.

Best practices in Internet marketing assume that Web analytics – the analysis of traffic to and through your Web site – is a core part of your decision-making process. At one time, companies felt compelled to have a Web site – good, bad or ugly; nowadays, companies also need to know how much value their Web sites actually generate.
As with any asset, value is a function of performance. Was it worth the dollars spent? Will it continue to generate a return? In the case of the Internet, this is all the more important as the Web site may now represent an opportunity cost: dollars you might have otherwise spent elsewhere. Increasingly, companies are pondering the question of marketing budget allocation. Typically, marketers debate how many dollars should be spent on outdoor signage versus print literature, print and broadcast advertising vs. direct mail. Ideally, the allocation is based on the most efficient spend: the one that brought the highest return for the dollars invested.
What happens when you throw the Internet into that mix? The first issue that crops up is that, unless the marketing budget is on the rise, spending on the Web generally assumes a reduction in spend in other channels. So, what gives and by how much?

To facilitate that discussion, you need to clearly understand the value of your Web site relative to other channels. To do that, let’s return to Web analytics. Officially, Web analytics refers to “the objective tracking, collection, measurement, reporting, and analysis of quantitative Internet data to optimize Web sites and Web marketing initiatives.”
Sounds great, but where is that data? And how can you get your hands on it?
By virtue of having a Web site, the computer that hosts your site (the Web server) generates the data. This is what makes the Internet unique from other channels: it’s highly measurable. When a visitor requests to see one of your Web pages, a stack of data is generated to record that transaction. It’s like visiting the bank; your teller will ensure you have a record of all information relating to each transaction, such as the date and time, the source or location where money was withdrawn from or deposited to, etc. The Web offers the same kind of data and, in fact, so much data that the bigger problem is acting on it.
There are a variety of Web analytics tools available to see the data your Web server generates. As always with marketing tools, they can be found for very little cost (if any, in some cases) to thousands of dollars per month. Ask your Webmaster which tool you use and how you can access the reports. If there is no such tool, you have a bigger concern to address first: You need to investigate why the Web server data is not being captured and processed for your use. As some old wise sage said, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
Assuming that all is well, however, the metrics you should focus on at first are visitors, visits (sometimes called sessions), sources of visitor traffic, and content consumed during visit. Each one of those metrics will tell you something about the value your site is generating. For example, how much use the site is getting, by how many people? You can also learn how those visitors found you. With that information, you can begin to compare the Internet to your other marketing channels: Is the Web generating more prospects than print? Or of a different quality? For more or less cost per lead? What does that imply about future marketing efforts?
As a final comment, notice that the list of metrics does not include “hits”. This is critical. Hits are not included because they are not an accurate measure of demand. It bears repeating: Hits are not an accurate measure of demand! Unfortunately, many Web site owners talk about “hits to my Web site” as if that represented the number of visitors arriving at their site. Instead, hits refer to the weight of a given Web page. That’s like measuring how many kilograms of prospects came to your sales center instead of the number and value of prospects who visited. Not particularly useful… and neither are hits.
Instead, think about value: What is my Web site doing for me today? Could it be doing more? The likely answer is “yes”, but you won’t know until you take a look at that data.
Next issue, we’ll look at what the numbers mean and what you should do about them.