Daily archive

When looking at behavior, it’s mostly the last 6 months that are of interest. So what can you do with data older than 6 months?… Continue reading Look at trends when older than 6 months

Data from the last 6 months is the most interesting when looking at behavior. When looking at customer journeys, these are the months that… Continue reading Look at behavior in the last 6 months

Most analytics data becomes stale after 6 months. If you have a steady amount of visitors to your site all year-round, anything before the… Continue reading How long history do you need in your analytics?

To know the achievability of a target, we need to move towards it. In the beginning we expect larger target to be achievable, such… Continue reading Can KPI targets be unrealistic?

Yesterday, I wrote about how to select a team KPI target. Two of the suggestions depended on having a history. Either analytics history or an… Continue reading How to set a KPI target if there’s no history

Selecting KPI to set as a team goal is tricky. You want a KPI that gives the team freedom to experiment. But at the… Continue reading Aligning KPIs with company goals

When you set a KPI goal for a team, you need to take into consideration two things: The KPI aligns with company goals The target goal… Continue reading Considerations when setting KPI goals

When a company sets goals for their teams, they have multiple ways of doing it. A lot of companies set what I call Execution… Continue reading Enabling product teams to improve using KPIs

When reporting to the rest of the company, you have to take into consideration statistical significance. The reader may not always take it into… Continue reading Statistical significance in reports

As analysts, you have a good idea of what the numbers may mean and what is significant. From time to time, it can be… Continue reading Report notes

​Good reports are automatable. Which also allows you to create dashboards instead of reporting. Creating dashboards saves a lot of analysts time. The product team… Continue reading Report dashboards

Reports are the main tool for the analytics team to communicate within the company. These reports influence decisions made in the company, both major and… Continue reading Good reports

Before I jump into the reports themselves, I wanted to write about access to reports. Reports are the distillation of knowledge from the analytics… Continue reading Why everybody in the company should have access to product reports

Reports is a crucial communication tool in an organization. For most employees, it’s their only insight into the performance of the site. In the… Continue reading Reporting

A lot of analytics suites allows you to define customer journeys using funnels. This helps you find out where your customers are dropping. There… Continue reading The problem with defining funnels

Over time, after doing changes to the site the customer journeys will increase and decrease in conversion. This is not a bad thing, it… Continue reading Updating Customer Journeys

Having identified the most common customer journeys, you can leverage that knowledge to optimize the site. Going through each step in the conversion, you… Continue reading Following up on Customer Journeys

When analyzing customers, it’s good to follow the customer journeys that lead to conversion. Conversion in and of itself isn’t as interesting as what made the… Continue reading Creating Customer Journeys

I’ve written a lot about customer journeys as part of other posts. I wanted to dedicate some posts specifically to the topic. In the… Continue reading Customer Journeys

As I wrote before, most issues encountered will be small issues. However, what we want to achieve with resolving small issues is Compound Conversion. Just… Continue reading Compound Conversion

As I wrote about yesterday, the ease if deploying feedback tools dictates wether they’re used. So take time to make them easier to deploy.… Continue reading Invest in your feedback tools

Most problems you identify on the site will be small issues that have simple solutions. Resulting in small bumps in conversion for each issue… Continue reading Continuously improving the site

Another good feedback tool is asking your users directly. This can be done by email if they’ve ordered. Or having a popup when they’re… Continue reading Solving an identified problem – Asking for feedback

When the designers have a proposed solution, it can be A/B tested. A/B testing is a method where you have two versions of a… Continue reading Solving an identified problem – A/B testing

After a problem has been identified, you may need more information from users. Usability testing is a great tool here. In a usability testing… Continue reading Solving an identified problem – Usability testing

There are many feedback tools that can be leveraged during product development. The goal is to ensure that a proposed solution solves the actual… Continue reading Solving an identified problem – Feedback tools

When the impact has been considered, it’s time to talk to the designers. A collaboration between analysts and designers is crucial. The collaboration can… Continue reading Solving an identified problem – Analysts and Design

There are many ways to tackle a solution to an identified problem on your site. But before doing any problem solving, you should first… Continue reading Solving an identified problem – consider the impact

Let’s say, you’ve identified a problem on your site. Or more likely, the symptoms of a problem. You find that customers that visit a certain… Continue reading You have identified a problem on your site, what now?

As I wrote yesterday, Analytics shows you the symptoms of an issue. Those symptoms lead you to ask better questions. Instead of asking “Why aren’t… Continue reading Analytics help you ask better questions

Analytics is a measuring tool. And as a measuring tool, it shows you symptoms of an existing problem. However, identifying the underlying problem requires… Continue reading Analytics shows you symptoms rather than giving answers

Yesterday, I wrote about annotating your analytics timeline with events. So what events should be on the timeline? Here are some examples: New Features/Products: When you… Continue reading What events should be included in the timeline?

Instead of relying on your analysts to remember important events, annotate your analytics. This is helpful in two scenarios: Sharing knowledge: You analysts can’t… Continue reading Annotate your analytics timeline

In the last part in the your analytics data should resemble usage series, I want to point out how manually tagging forces your analysts to compensate.… Continue reading Do not rely on the memory of your analysts

Incongruent Data is when your analytics data does not resemble the way your site is used. It occurs when the tagging is different from how… Continue reading How having Incongruent Data affects your analysis

Yesterday I wrote about tying your interaction data to navigation, and why it’s a bad idea. Another reason it’s bad practice is that it doesn’t… Continue reading Your analytics data should resemble the way your site is used

A practice on some sites that use Navigation Tagging is including interaction metadata in the navigation. The most common case is including data about which link… Continue reading Tying Interaction data to navigation – What it is and why you should avoid it

The simplest form of tagging you can do is Navigation Tagging. Navigation Tagging only reports when a user navigates to a new page on… Continue reading Navigation Tagging – Why it’s not enough

You may wonder, why I created the three implementation criteria at all. It’s really about one thing, consistency. In the end, what Component Analytics sets… Continue reading Consistency is the reason, Predictability is the experience, Speed is the result.

The third criteria to consider before implementing Component Analytics is Component Reuse. Is your site development efficient? Modern frontend libraries rely on the reuse of… Continue reading Implementation Criteria – Component Reuse

The simplest analytics implementation is to only track pageviews. You check when the url changes and report it to the analytics suite. This approach… Continue reading A note on changing urls on Same Page Interactions

The second criteria I look for when deciding Component Analytics fitness is Same Page Interactions. Same Page Interactions are interactions that do not navigate… Continue reading Implementation Criteria – Same page Interactions

Complexity of navigation is the first criteria when deciding if a site is a good fit for Component Analytics. I define the navigation as… Continue reading Implementation Criteria – Navigation Complexity

Last week, I focused on Component Analytics and if it’s a good fit for different site types. When I was doing that, I had… Continue reading Implementation Criteria – Introduction

Yesterday, I argued that you should use Component Analytics on your SaaS. Here are some of the benefits: Understand your customers: Being an online-only business,… Continue reading Benefits of implementing Component Analytics on a SaaS

SaaS products are the products that depend the most on the user experience. New SaaS competitors are arriving at a steady pace. Meaning, any… Continue reading Should you implement Component Analytics on a SaaS?

Nowadays, a lot of local businesses such as restaurants, barbers and bars have their own sites. A lot of these sites have very few… Continue reading Should you implement Component Analytics on a local business site?

Yesterday I told you about how most banking sites leave a lot of interactions untagged. The interactions believed to be important are tagged, i.e.… Continue reading The current state of analytics on banking sites

Compared to e-commerce, banking sites have very low repeatability*. They provide a lot of unique services for the customer. Most services have their own page.… Continue reading Should you implement Component Analytics on a banking site?

Yesterday, I argued that you should use Component Analytics on your e-commerce site. But, I didn’t focus much on the benefits of doing so.… Continue reading Benefits of Component Analytics on e-commerce sites

E-commerce sites are very popular. More and more e-commerce sites are popping up with specific niches. On e-commerce sites, the customer converts by buying… Continue reading Should you implement Component Analytics on an e-commerce site?

First site type we explore in the series, blogs. Most blogs have simple navigation, there’s usually only one way to get to a blog… Continue reading Should you implement Component Analytics on a blog?

In the coming days, I will be going through different types of organizations and their sites. Listing if and how they stand to benefit… Continue reading Does Component Analytics fit your site?

To implement Component Analytics, it’s easiest the more repeatable structure you have. It doesn’t matter how many pages you have, as long as they… Continue reading Component Analytics is all about templates

Yesterday, I wrote about reverse engineering the customers. The best way to do that is to reverse engineer the customer journey. Meaning you start with… Continue reading Reverse engineering customer journeys

Using Component Analytics on your site, the sheer amount of data allows you to do something you couldn’t otherwise. Reverse engineer the customer. Reverse… Continue reading Reverse engineering the customer

The biggest feature you get with high data quality is aggregation. The best measure of data quality is the ability to analyze customers at… Continue reading High data quality enables aggregation

Yesterday, I said that you can lower costs by decreasing the amount of data you gather. A note on that, you should not compromise… Continue reading A note on gathering less data

There’s a lot of things you can compromise on within data science. Speed of data retrieval (slow server), the amount of data, the number… Continue reading No compromising on data quality

The structure of the data determines how good your analysis can be. The less consistent structure you have, the more time you have to… Continue reading Data quality – Structure

You can’t achieve high data quality without consistency. Consistency here refers to gathering data from every interaction. The alternative is having gaps in your data, where… Continue reading Data quality – Consistency

Customer knowledge is only useful if the underlying data has high quality. The first criteria to fulfill for data to have high quality is… Continue reading Data Quality – Understandability

Lately, I’ve been focusing on the impact of sharing customer knowledge in your organization. That all implies that the customer knowledge is not misleading.… Continue reading Data quality and Customer Knowledge

Product Owners need to understand their customer’s as part of their jobs. They have the most contact with customers, and if it’s a consumer… Continue reading Customer Knowledge and Product Owners

The group with the least access to customer knowledge are engineers. They’re not expected to understand the customer, or the business, as well as… Continue reading Customer knowledge and Engineers

We’ve discussed customer knowledge impact on Management and Design. Your effort may all go to waste if your customers don’t know about the new feature that was… Continue reading Customer Knowledge and Marketing

While management makes key-decisions, they’re usually in the form of product prioritization. The next step is actually designing the business use case. This is… Continue reading Customer knowledge and Design

Another typical Interaction Components are radio buttons and checkboxes.​ Interaction Component name: checkbox Interaction Component action: uncheck Interaction Component content: Acting Component Section (optional):… Continue reading Reference – Radio Buttons and Checkboxes

Key decision are being made daily in a company. Every company has key decision-makers. Usually, those key decision-makers are in management. A lot of… Continue reading Customer Knowledge and Management

Yesterday, I wrote about how SQL knowledge let your analysts produce better reports. Which in turn leads to a better understanding of your customer… Continue reading Customer Knowledge and your organization

Component Analytics scales with your site. Most interactions by your customers will be recorded in your analytics platform. This quickly produces large volumes of… Continue reading A note on the amount of data you’ll collect

Like the button, the link Component is also a very common Interaction Component on your site. How a link click is reported: Interaction Component name:… Continue reading Reference – Link Component

The first Analytics reference will be the button component. It’s one of the most common interaction on your site. A button is an Interaction… Continue reading Reference – Button Component

Starting tomorrow, I will start showing how to tag typical modules and components. The idea is to act as a reference point when adding… Continue reading Component/Module reference

Component Analytics simplifies the reporting model for interactions for one reason. To enable tagging automation at scale. If you do your tagging by hand,… Continue reading Let customers reveal themselves

There’s the required data that you collect on every interaction, but there’s also metadata you should collect depending on the Module. Here are some examples of… Continue reading Examples of metadata to collect with interactions

The idea behind Modules came to me while writing about the naming conventions. The problem is the word technical, in Technical based naming. The word… Continue reading Reconsidering the naming conventions

In the past, I have referred to Layout Components in places I from now on will refer to Modules. I wanted to write about… Continue reading Differences between Modules and Layout Components

I know, I know, the favorite subject you had in school was anatomy. Seeing the body pump blood through it’s organs was exciting! Did… Continue reading The anatomy of a Module

The easiest way to understand Modules would be to think of them as rectangles of functionality. Modern websites are built using rectangles*. If you look at… Continue reading Visualizing Modules

While writing this newsletter, I’ve struggled with naming things. I’ve struggled with calling something a Layout Component while it may not be. Layout Components… Continue reading Introducing Modules

Choosing a convention comes down to your site and your access to resources. It’s easier to understand the guide below after reading some examples. Choose Technical… Continue reading Layout Component naming – Guide to the naming conventions

As the name suggests, the content convention sets the name of the Layout Component depending on the content inside. The content convention is best… Continue reading Layout Component Naming – Content naming convention

The technical naming convention names the Layout Component the same as the technical name of the component. Ignoring the contents of the component. It works… Continue reading Layout Component naming – Technical naming convention

Before I list the pros and cons of the naming conventions, I wanted to show examples of how they work in practice. Let’s take… Continue reading Layout Component naming dilemma – Name examples

When setting the name for the Layout Component, there are two ways to name it. You can use a technical name, i.e. “card”, “table”.… Continue reading Layout Component naming dilemma

I’ve introduced two approaches for anonymization, the Component Approach, and the Inline Approach. They diverge significantly in implementation. Choose Inline approach if: You want to minimize… Continue reading Picking an anonymization approach

Yesterday, I showed you the Inline Approach to anonymization. Today, I’m discussing the benefits and drawbacks of the approach. Mostly comparing it to the Components Approach. Benefits… Continue reading Component Analytics Anonymization – Inline Approach benefits & drawbacks

The second approach to anonymization in Component Analytics is called the Inline Approach. Compared to the Components Approach, the Inline Approach uses a blacklist. The blacklist contains… Continue reading Component Analytics Anonymization – Inline Approach

Yesterday, I showed you how to setup anonymization using a components approach. There are benefits and drawbacks to this approach that you have to consider.… Continue reading Component Analytics Anonymization – Components Approach benefits & drawbacks

When setting up anonymization, take an inventory of your Layout Components. Check if they contain any Interaction Components that contain PII* in their content.… Continue reading Component Analytics Anonymization – Components Approach

In Component Analytics, the PII resides in the content of the Interaction Component. When looking for sensitive information on your site, it’s easiest to… Continue reading Anonymization in Component Analytics – Examples

When all your components are tagged, you may need to anonymize the customers’ personal information. So how do you go about anonymizing in Component… Continue reading Anonymization in Component Analytics – What needs to be anonymized

The simplest way to implement Component Analytics is to tag an existing collection of reusable components. A collection of reusable components is usually called… Continue reading Considerations when using Component Analytics – Component library

Earlier, I wrote about your analytics suite introducing sampling due to the large amounts of data in Component Analytics. Another issue with your choice of analytics… Continue reading Considerations when doing Component Analytics – Analytics Suite

When you tag every interaction, the interaction may contain sensitive data. The content of the Interaction Component may include PII*. This is less of an issue when… Continue reading Considerations when doing Component Analytics – Sensitive Data

In Component Analytics, you tag all interactions that happen on your site. Depending on the number of visitors to your site, you end up with a… Continue reading Considerations when doing Component Analytics – Sampling

The Component Analytics framework gives you structured data for every customer interaction. There are a couple of considerations that come with this approach. The… Continue reading Considerations when doing Component Analytics – Getting an overview

Most of our metrics are focused on the destination The destination in this case being conversion. Differentiating between converting customers and non-converting customers is… Continue reading The customer journey is more important than the destination

Component Analytics framework will get you a large volume of high-quality data. Yet, analyzing it is a bit different from the typical approach. The… Continue reading What to do with all the data that Component Analytics gives you