Brent Dykes is the Evangelist for Customer Analytics at Adobe and is responsible for guiding and evangelizing the vision of Adobe’s analytics solutions. He has been focused on enterprise-level web analytics consulting for eight years, working with many industry leaders, including Microsoft, Sony, Dell, Comcast, and Nike. Dykes is also an author and recently published his first book, Web Analytics Action Hero, which outlines how to become a successful analyst who drives action from digital data.
While at the Adobe Summit in London, I had the opportunity to interview him on Digital Analytics Evangelization.
Nicolas Malo: What are the key areas where there still needs evangelization regarding Digital Analytics?
Brent Dykes: To start answering your question, I’d like to share the 5 different stages of Digital Analytics that I’ve noticed with our customers :
- Basic Tagging: companies or organizations start collecting basic traffic and content information (visits, visitors, page views). Some companies never go beyond this stage, and really don’t get much value from digital analytics. Other companies start to ask more specific questions with requires more specific tagging.
- Customized Tagging: companies or organizations need specific metrics and dimensions in order to answer specific questions for their busines. Answering one question may lead to new questions (which leads to the iteration). More custom implementation will be required to capture a richer and richer set of data. However, at some point, companies or organizations won’t be able to answer the next round of questions unless they merge the two words of online and offline data.
- Enrichment with off-line data: by enriching the online data with offline data, we can see how digital initiatives are impacting the broader business. This is where not just the digital team within the business benefits from the digital data.
- Feeding analytics data into other systems: here we want to improve the customer experience and the intelligence of our marketing systems.
- Customer analytics: here the focus shifts from the channel to the customer. Digital analytics is just one of many channels or touch points with customers. When companies have a combined view of their customers, they will be able to better respond to their needs and interests. This is where your combined data can become a serious competitive advantage.
To go back to your question, there still needs to be evangelization regarding the need to build foundations and to learn from each stage. There is often the temptation to jump a stage but it may not be sustainable in the long run. Confidence and trust from executives will grow progressively from one stage to another.
Nicolas Malo: How do you envision the evolution of the Digital Analyst role within organizations?
Brent Dykes: The behavior of customers is changing dramatically and we can no longer look only at web data. We need to take into account already the mobile data as well as retail information with for instance iBeacon.
As the team of digital analysts grow within an organization, I really see the need for two different types for profiles:
- business analysts: they are in charge of the analysis and will still be required to be a little bit tech savvy,
- technical lead for Digital Analytics: these persons will usually stay within the IT organization and will have a specialization in Digital Analytics. Most of the time, these ressources are changing from one Digital Analytics project to another, which makes it very difficult to keep a consistent implementation in the long run.
With this in mind, Tag Management tools will help the business analysts to better manage and control the quality of the digital data collection, without being too hands on in Javascript. I've written a post on this subject on my Analytics Hero's blog: http://www.analyticshero.com/2014/02/19/how-big-should-your-digital-analytics-team-be/
Nicolas Malo: What are the coolest features of Adobe Analytics that most users don’t use ?
Brent Dykes: The mobile analytics application is a great new tool that we have launched last September. Digital experts need absolutely to look at it! The environnement has been designed entirely for app-centric measurement. Specific app-centric metrics are available like lifecycle metrics and cohort analysis. Sun burst visualization is also provided. This application is available as part of the Adobe Analyics package. To get started, you need to implement the SDK which is available on this page: https://marketing.adobe.com/developer/en_US/get-started/mobile/c-measuring-mobile-applications
They are a robust set of default app-centric metrics and dimensions that are enabled when someone leverages the new mobile app SDK (like for instance lifecycle metrics). Implementation work is also streamlined, so developers only need to focus on more custom aspects of their app (states, milestones, outcomes, etc.).
An other hidden gem is our Adobe Analytics iOS application which has been upgraded last year. This is a great way to share and democratize the information within the organization, especially if your company has a number of iPhone or iPad users.
Nicolas Malo: What are the main issues for Adobe Analytics adoption within organizations?
Brent Dykes: there are a number of issues for Adobe Analytics adoption (or any tool for that matter). Here are four that come to mind:
- Executive sponsor: If you don’t have an executive sponsor, your digital analytics program won’t go very far. You need support from above to get the budgets, resources, and tools you need to be successful. This is the foundation for increasing adoption.
- Training: You can’t expect people to dive into the tools on their own without some guidance and instruction. A cheat sheet of role-specific reports can be a valuable tool for users who are just trying to find their way. You’ll also want to build a community of users that can support one another with informal training and mentoring.
- Menu customization: All of the reporting options in Adobe Analytics can be overwhelming for end users. However, there are ways to customize the menu so that it is less intimidating for users. It may also be helpful to show how to use the powerful search features of Adobe Analytics to quickly find the information they need.
- Tag management: It can be challenging when users don’t have the right data they need. It can be difficult to implement new reports in a timely fashion when you have to battle IT to get simple updates made to your tags. Tag management tools such as Adobe’s DTM enable digital analysts to make more reactive changes to their implementation. Making the data more relevant and timely will help adoption.
Nicolas Malo: What are the top tips & tricks that your recommend with Adobe Analytics ?
Brent Dykes: On top of my mind, I think of these ones:
- Dedicated eVar for test cases: this is a tip I’ve showcased during the « Analytics Idol » session at the Adobe Summit in London. In order to verify your tests cases, I recommend using a dedicated parameter in the URL for each test case. Then, use the processing Query string parameter in processing rules to populate the value of your parameter directly into an eVar.
- Page load time measurement: the Navigation Timing API is a W3C standard for all modern browsers that clients can leverage to get accurate page load data. This tip was also shared in the SLC and London Summits.
- Paid search query data: targeted keyword in Adwords can be collected in Adobe Analytics by passing the value in a parameter on the landing page. Then, use the processing rules to pull the query and populate into an eVar (ValueTrack parameter in Adwords). Here’s a link to info on the ValueTrack parameters from Google: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375447?hl=en. I’ll be doing a blog post on this topic shortly
Nicolas Malo: Thank you very much Brent for this interview !
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