Tinggi rendahnya kunjungan tamu ke toko/etalase/tempat jualan yang kita miliki menentukan laku/tidaknya barang yang sedang kita jual. Lalu, apa hubungannya konsep marketing dengan posisi kita sebagai publisher yang ingin memasang iklan?

Jangan pindah window dulu, karena jawabannya sebenarnya sangat sederhana. Semakin banyak traffic/visitor yang kita miliki, yang datang ke etalase online (blog) kita, maka secara teori management kita memiliki kesempatan yang lebih besar dalam mendapatkan konversi/pembeli, atau dalam kasus sebagai publisher, orang yang melihat dan melakukan klik pada iklan kita.

Permasalahan paling umum adalah, bagaimana memastikan bahwa etalase kita didatangi banyak orang? Etalase bisa ramai, tapi berapakah yang beneran masuk ke dalam toko? Jawabannya cuma satu: pantau etalase kita! Pernah kan masuk ke sebuah toko, dan sebuah bel kecil berbunyi “klinting…klinting…klinting”? Logika yang sama sebenarnya berlaku juga bagi etalase online kita. Yang perlu kita lakukan adalah memasang/mempergunakan traffic tracking code. Sehingga setiap kali ada orang yang masuk ke blog kita, bel kecil berbunyi dan mencatat kunjungan yang terjadi.

Gampang kan? Semakin sering bel kita berbunyi, semakin besar kesempatan jualan kita laris manis. Tapi bila bel kecil kita tiba-tiba memutuskan untuk “mute”, kita bisa berjaga-jaga dan mengusahakan agar bel kecil tersebut tetap berdenting. Bagaimanapun, Kita tetap butuh traffic agar barang jualan Kita “dilirik” atau bahkan “dibeli” orang.

Tugas yang sedikit lebih berat setelah pemasangan bel kecil tadi sebenarnya adalah melihat sejauh mana orang yang berkunjung pada akhirnya melakukan pembelian terhadap apapun yang ditawarkan dalam etalase kita. Penasaran? Sabar, dalam pembahasan selanjutnya kita akan masuk ke bagaimana serunya analogi kamera cctv atau barcode dalam pengukuran analytics untuk etalase online kita.

Tapi sebelum melangkah lebih jauh, pastikan etalase kita sudah memiliki bel kecil penghitung traffic. Klinting… klinting… klinting… Selamat! Satu orang tercatat melakukan visit ke etalase kita!

Untuk mengerti apakah si mahluk ruang angkasa berujar “we came in peace” atau “we intend to distroy your planet, sepertinya ada baiknya Anda buka kamus mengenai analytics metrics berikut ini.

Visits vs. Visitors

Mari bedakan visits dan visitor. Secara gamblang, visitor adalah “si orang” dan visit adalah “tindakannya”.  Kalau penjelasan agak njelimentnya:  Visits represent the number of per sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site. Biasanya sebuah session dibatasi oleh ukuran waktu in-active (biasanya 30 menit). Jadi ketika user membuka site, kemudian makan siang dan tidak balik lagi selama 30 menit, ketika orang tersebut balik kembali maka ia akan dihitung melakukan visit baru. Namun ketika ia makan cuma dalam waktu 10 menit dan kemudian kembali lagi, ia tidak akan dihitung sebagai new visit.

Pageviews

Pageview pada dasarnya adalah perhitngan berapa banyak sebuah halaman dibuka oleh user. Ini termasuk dengan; refresh, kembali lagi ke halaman setelah masuk ke halaman lain dan back button. Dalam bahasa yang lebih njelimet: defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code.

Absolute Unique Visitors

Dihitung dalam batasan waktu tertentu yang diatur oleh analyst. Absolut visitor menghitung visitor hanya sekali dalam jangka waktu tertentu (misalnya dipilih tanggal 1 – 30 per bulan, maka data akan menghitung masing-masing visitor hanya 1x). Bila 1 orang masuk ke sebuah website selama 4 kali dalam jangka satu bulan, maka absolut unique visitor dalam jangka 1 bulan tersebut akan tetap 1.

New vs. Returning

Metrics ini menghitung jenis visit  (baru atau returning).  So when somebody visits your site for the first time, the visit is categorized as ‘Visit from a new visitor.’ If this user has browsed your website before, the visit is categorized as ‘Visit from a returning visitor’, dalam jangka waktu tertentu (yang ditetapkan analyst)

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate adalah persentase dari perhitungan mereka yang masuk dan hanya membuka satu halaman dan tidak melakukan browse terhadap halaman lain.  Metrics ini dipergunakan untuk mengukur visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run.

Kamus metrics ini akan terus bertambah. So have fun speaking analytics language!!!

Measuring how they affecting the overall site performance is a piece of cake, but really dwelling into Social Media performance and see how the user habit towards it is still a mind boggling, time consuming and snooze-fest activity to do.

Sure enough two of Indonesia’s highest use Social Media has it’s own analytics. One within the channel, and the other one scattered like a bread crumb that Gretel left like you can see here. But those two type of analytics is not on top of their game yet.

Facebook for example. Yes, the sought after Social Media is smart enough to prepare a simple analytics for Page owner and Apps developer. But is it user friendly enough, is it accurate enough, is it cover all the important stuff? To regular joe perhaps all that single metrics being displayed are sufficient enough.

But when you talk to they who accustomed with analytics for more than a year, single metrics is just not enough. People would start wondering and ask: WHAT IF.

What if “i cross the daily active user with gender/age and cities”
What if “i cross new fans with specific post”
What if “i wanted to know the demographic of the abandoned fans”
and on and on and on…

Not to mention the need to make a tailored analytics based on our very own or our client needs. To make a good fitted dress a.k.a good online campaign report we need a comprehensive tools. I don’t want to have to hand-sewn all of my custom dresses

PS: Dear Analytics God, let Facebook, Twitter and other aspiring new social media out there hear that i need a comprehensive tools to sewn a good report. Amin.

Aside from the long path that Facebook team have to ride, their effort on gradually upgrading their service needs a big salute. One of the progress is they are willingly to share more single metrics and start to cross it with several metrics. You can enjoy them at http://www.facebook.com/insights/. Yet, I still have that: WHAT IF moment in my head.

As an analyst I was dying to have a sufficient tools to expand my analytics mojo, and to spot the exact behavior of my user. I truly wish that Facebook and other Social Media channel out there would gives analytics part a good focus and gradually improve them. Until then, i guess it’s back to the long hour and snooze-fest data collecting method.

PS: Dear Analytics God, let Facebook, Twitter and other aspiring new social media out there hear this whole prayer. Amin.

- Photos taken from here -

This is why, my friend, from this very moment, analytic will be your best friend forever. For those who are familiar with analytic, perhaps the problem is easy enough to solve. One thing that come to attention is to gives tag or label to each visitor. It’s like giving a name label or tag bracelet to your party guest.

But are those really your VIP visitor? Because as it turns out by doing so, you are just monitoring they who are invited to your party, and not particularly your VIP’s.  Another simple way that also comes to mind is to establish a goal and value of visit within your analytic [simpler words; picture a red carpet line, where your VIP visitor should walk upon]. This step could then detect how much of your visitors turn out to be a VIP, and what’s more important is what are those VIP visitor do on your site.

The keys to these simple steps are:

• Know your site or online marketing goal. And then set that goal on your analytic system
• Determine the value of your achieved goal
• See inside your dashboard and analyze the Per Visit Goal Value

By setting goals and also value per visit, you would easily spot that flock of VIP visitor, which door are they coming from, what they actually do and are they qualitatively important to your overall online campaign. The information that we posses of these VIP visitors could then help us treat that visitor with more care.

For example, if you measure the average value of visit and also break your goal based on entry points, you can easily spot which door is the most lucrative to gather up VIP visitor whether it is the AdWords ads or they who come directly to your site or they who come via other payable referrer.  By doing this, you can focus your attention to the door that is beneficial to gather up VIP visitor.  What you can track down and act upon from your VIP visitors is limited only to your needs and imagination.

Interesting isn’t it? By keeping in check with goals and visit value, you can keep track on your VIP visitor. Knowing what your VIP visitor behavior (by digging deeper on your analytics data) would then be beneficial for your digital campaign on the long run.

images: freevegasclubpasses.com

Within one of my favorite analytic tools, we were able to measure ROI. Within this tools, ROI is explained as (Revenue – Cost)/Cost and is expressed in percentage. Am I starting to get you frowning? [Don’t! or I was the one you should blame when you need a botox injection in your mid 30’s]. Revenue usually taken from the value you set for your online goal (non e-commerce site) or your e-commerce revenue. Whereas cost is the number of money you spent on that particular campaign.  This ROI can be tracked manually at the end of certain period or you can also have it automated within your analytic tools (depends on your tools ability).

Although perhaps you’ll go down a different ways on measuring your online ROI, several things would maintain the same. For example, an ROI of 0% means that your revenue earned in specific period of time is the same as the amount you spend while trying to achieve your revenue [this translated as: you don’t gain any profit, but at least you are not suffering any lost] 100% ROI means you get double what you spent [huraaa…peeps, it’s time to ask for those performance bonus] and thus (-)% means that you somehow lost and probably still owed someone in the process.

This 0%, 100% or even (-) 10% is where the lemonade tycoon game kicks in. It’s basically the same principle. If you wanted to sell lemonade, you have to calculate all the operating expenses; promotion plus ingredients and then you can calculate how much you will be receiving in the end of the day. Simple isn’t it?  And the online world will or might I say can, provide you with that kind of calculation. Back to the numbers, if you think 100% of ROI good, then you’d probably mistaken, because in several cases the ROI can reach up to 1000%! And that is just to gain a break-even point.

Dig deeper on the analytic subject. By calculating how much lemonade you sell, you can also track down which online activity is the most beneficial for you [but first, do yourself a justice and choose yourself a fairly good analytic tools]. Make sure you measure your ROI, or at least your goal value. When you do measure it, you can actually improve your online campaign ability to generate more or higher income. For example you can monitor which keyword perform better than the other, or perhaps which banner contribute to the best selling product, or which product is actually your greatest hero.

Use ROI in analytic not solely based on real ROI measurement, but use it to improve! This is peeps, the best thing about analytic, not the result, not the present ROI but the opportunity for you to really improve your online campaign. So yes, please let’s all play lemonade tycoon the analytic style.

image: christinas-home-remedies.com

“Brain is a speed racer”

Kalau otak kita boleh ikut balap formula satu, sepertinya pasti akan menang.  Salah satunya adalah karena adanya jalur Myelinated.  Jalur ini memungkinkan impulse (rangsang) untuk bergerak 10-100 meter per detiknya.  Ini berarti jarak tempuhnya kurang lebih  22.356 mph untuk 10 meter per detik dan  223.561 mph untuk 100 meter per detik. Masih dibawah jarak tempuh cahaya, but still our brain know how to race.

Sedemikian cepatnya kemampuan proses otak, sampai-sampai saya masih berpendapat bahwa kemampuan seorang analyst yang baik masih jauh lebih bernilai daripada tools yang digunakan untuk melakukan analisa.

Bicara soal analisa online, sampai sejauh ini, otak manusia masih lebih prima daripada kemampuan mesin dalam menandai dan mengolah data. Itu kenapa, menurut saya, semua mesin atau perangkat online yang ada hanya berfungsi sebagai alat bantu. Secanggih apapun solusi yang ditawarkan atau digunakan, pada akhirnya keberadaan seorang analyst (human brain) tetap diperlukan.

Dan ternyata pemikiran saya ini tidak sendiri. Konsep pentingnya keberadan analyst dalam sebuah riset online juga dikemukakan oleh beberapa orang. Salah satunya adalah Katie Paine, pemilik sebuah measurement company online di Amerika.  Dalam salah satu rekaman video youtube, Katie berbagi soal pentingnya faktor manusia dan kemampuan menganalisa. Dan beberapa tips nyata yang berhasil saya rekam adalah bahwa untuk jadi seorang analyst yang baik pastikan melakukan 2 hal dibawah ini:

• Banyak baca buku! Dalam hal analisa mungkin tidak harus baku membaca buku, cukup ambil kata kunci: membaca. Ini berarti bahan bacaannya bisa saja berupa blog, newsletter, email dan apapun yang ada di dunia online.
• Jadi pendengar yang baik! Ini berarti coba “nguping” pembicaraan yang terjadi di dunia online. Bukan cuma seputar brand yang dihandle, tapi juga sepak terjang kompetitor dan mapping keseluruhan aktivitas.

Yang tertarik denger langsung Katie ideas soal analisa kampanye online, silahkan simak penggalan youtubenya. And at the end if you think that tools is everthing, it’s not! You’ve got to have a good analyst to really improve your online campaign. So yes, invest on analyst or cooperate with a company that could help you to analyze.

Image source: screenrant.com