Scorecards are a semi-standard structured type of report, supported by proven design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions (by Wikipedia), and looks like this: The problem I find in that type of scorecard is that there is no relation between the company strategy and the performed tactic activities, which are (if the scorecard is properly design) each one of the measured metrics. On the other hand, it’s not impossible to see either the cause and consequence relationship between the actions or how
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Dealing with overpromising vendors in an hyperbolic digital marketing world
We are living in a quite particular digital industry. Technology had invaded humanity so almost everyone today knows “something” about technology. In any case the “levels of knowledge” do actually make a big difference. The partial knowledge of technology produced a surprising effect. Right now, people believe that technology can solve everything. That’s why it is normal that when you talk about a technological advance with random people, those with lower knowledge are less surprised than those with higher knowledge. It seems like there is a inversely proportional relationship among tech knowledge and surprising capacity that is getting worse and
Continue readingSix habits of most successful analytics professionals
Whether you are an experience analytics professional, or you are just making your first steps in Analytics these are six habits that will definitely improve your performance. Planning vs implementation time distribution: The digital industry is definitely pragmatic and due its dynamism there’s normally no time for anything. However a common mistake is going from the idea to the implementation with no, or not enough planning. If I would have to put a number, I would say that it has to be 80% planning and 20% implementation. But why almost nobody invest 80% in planning and research? Because during planning
Continue readingAll you need to know about the Google Attribution Model which is not much by now
Well, remember that in my past post I was talking about trusting your main source of value to a third party that can have a different objective/s than yours? I also mentioned the example of using Google Attribution Model. Well, if I would be Google I would try with all my might to be the one that sets the standard of the attribution model the people use. Why? Because the attribution model is the one that tells you how and where you should invest your advertising budget. So, apparently Google is aligned with that idea, because has just launched their “free Google Attribution” model.
Continue readingAsking the right questions to the right sources
We already talked about how important is asking the right questions before sitting in front of a particular data source. It makes easier your work since you only need to fill the blanks with information instead of sitting in front of a data source for one, two or three hours looking for “something interesting or useful”. Understanding what questions can answer each data source, it is as important as the question itself. As we talked about five years ago in the Analytics 2.0 model, you have several information sources, each one measure a particular type of interaction between users and
Continue readingStandard and non-standard metrics
If you are reading this blog you probably know metrics like Unique Visitors, Visit, Pageview, etc. Those metrics are Standard metrics, which means that the way those metrics are being measured is based on a definition made by a recognized organization (the Web Analytics Association), allowing comparisons among different projects. Actually when someone tells you “I have 10.000 unique visitors” we all know the meaning of that (10.000 unique browsers being measured by a particular cookie). Standard metrics are very important, actually the Web Analytics Association have a committee that works very hard trying to define those standards (The standardization
Continue readingAnalytics Interview to Mercado Libre’s CTO Daniel Rabinovich
After the presentation I shared with you in my previous post I felt that I need more information from the CTO of Mercado Libre Daniel Rabinovich. So I invited him to an interview. A little background about Daniel: Daniel landed in Mercado Libre far in the year 2000 as Senior Developer. In just two years he was promoted to the Software Architect position to be promoted again in 2003 to the Software Developer Manager position. He worked in that position un till 2007 when he was promoted again, in this case to the Software Developer Director position, then to the Product Development
Continue readingThe value of an smile – Analytics allows you to counting the uncountable
If you only read the first sentences you will probably think that this post has nothing to do with Analytics (that may be good for some people, but let’s think that since this is an Analytics blog, that is something bad), so let me invite you to read the entire post. Ten days ago I was having vacations after two years. When you don’t have vacations for such a long time you have the expectations that everything goes perfect. The second day of vacations my kids asked me to visit a Dinosaurus thematic restaurant…. I went to a restaurant with
Continue readingFIVE TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL ONLINE PROJECTS
The Internet projects have a particular complexity, everything is changing constantly. In this kind of environment is very risky to base your decisions for new projects in previous ones since the possibility that the same formula works in this new very unique situation is almost null. Due to the above mentioned situation is normal that managers and analysts have to make decisions based on very unique and particular scenarios, that is why I highly recommend going beyond the conventional Analytics activities focusing on comprehend the human mind and understand the analyzed system: 1- Every new problem must be taken as that…a new problem. Never try to compare it to some previous one. 2- Defining the solution or
Continue readingAVERAGE TIME PER VISIT HANDLE WITH CARE
The average time per visit is one of the analysts favorites metrics. The objective of this metric is reporting how sticky the website for its visitors is. The way most people use it is taking it directly from the average time per visit report. One of the most important things for a good analyst is first of all having an in depth understanding of the analyzed data. In online, all the information require a technical understanding besides the statistical understanding. So, what does the average time per visit metric measures?. In most platforms average time per visit is calculated dividing
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