Putting analytics into action.

1. Doing Stuff
With Data or
Putting analytics into action

2. What kinds of stuff
do people do on
publishers' sites?
• They find out more • They sign up for the
about books. publisher E-letter.
• They buy books • They find out about
(Sometimes through authors and author
Amazon or Chapters). readings/events.
• They click on the • They read the blog.
Publisher’s Facebook
• They leave feedback
or Twitter page.
for the publisher.
• They read excerpts.
• They get the catalogue.

3. Let’s look at an
example.
• http://www.chroniclebooks.com/

4. And guess what?
All of these actions
are measurable.

5. With tools like Google
Analytics, we can
track:
• How many visits we get • Whether they stayed
to our website. on the site, or fled in
terror.
• Where they came from
(search engines, google • Who signed up for our
ads, referrals from e-letter, liked us on
other websites, or when twitter, or followed us
your mom types the url on facebook.
right into the browser).
• Whether it was their
• Whether they bought first visit or their
anything. fifth.

6. But on its own, this info
is kind of useless.
• Avinash Kaushik • Analyzing is dividing
notes the important those figures up,
difference between comparing them
reporting and to other figures,
analyzing. considering
important contextual
• Reporting is what
information, and
dashboard does. it gives
then making some
you a bunch of figures.
suggestions for action.

7. Reporting vs. Analyzing
• Usually just numbers, • Considers the business’
raw data. targets.
• The number of people • Breaks the data down
doing this, the amount into segments (ie. new
people spent on that, visitors, mobile traffic)
the growth we’ve seen in
• compares certain
this quarter, etc.
numbers against others.
• Discusses probable
contextual reasons for
these numbers.
• Interprets what this
means for the company.
• Suggests action to take
in order to improve.

8. Why do we care?
• Analyzing the data • But you’ve still gotta
shows us where we’re do a lot of work to
doing something wrong. figure that out. (And
some guessing.)
• Looking at the data
for correlations (with
other sets of data or
with external factors
that we’re aware of)
can give us clues for
how to fix it.

9. How does this apply to
publishing?
• Let’s look at Kaushik’s Four best
Web Metrics for small business
and apply them to some specific
publishing examples.

10. 1. Cost Per acquisition
• Let’s say you’ve spent a facebook link) actually
chunk of your meager made a purchase (which
marketing budget on a was your goal).
facebook ad campaign -
• Each of those
one where you pay per
purchases, or
click.
acquisitions, cost you
• 300 people clicked on $4. That’s your CPA.
your ad.
• Compare that to the CPA
• You paid $1 per click. of a different initiative,
and see which one costs
• This campaign cost you
more.
$300.
• Note: CPA can measure
• 75 people (of those
things other than
who came from this
sales.

11. 2. Bounce Rate
• You work for a fantasy • This tells you that
fiction publishing the people who read
house. this site don’t want to
read your books. You’re
• You always send new
wasting your efforts
titles to be reviewed by
here.
nerdblog.com, because
they always write a • The Bounce rate can
nice review. also tell you when
a certain page just
• Yet when you look at
isn’t working, or is
the bounce rate for
downright offensive.
people visiting your
(If, for instance,
site from this one, you
everyone is leaving it
see it’s 98%.
immediately.)

12. 3. Checkout
abandonment rate
• You sell your books • Are they balking at
directly from your the shipping price?
website. Consider a discount.
• However, you find • Make the process
too many people are better. Make it nicer.
beginning the checkout Make it simpler. (Maybe
process, but not just go with paypal.)
actually going through
with the sale.
• Take a look at which
step in the process
they’re leaving from.

13. 4. Macro conversion
rate
• You Look at the people • You stop spending so
who actually make much money on google
purchases on your site. ads.
• You see that 50% come • You can also look at
to you from organic who buys, say, 3 books
searches, 25% come at once. What kind of
from facebook, 20% books are they buying
come from blogs, and together? Should you
only 2% come from consider marketing
Google ads. those books as a
bundle?

14. Your web traffic
numbers are telling
you things.
• They’re telling you
what’s going right and
what’s going wrong.
• It’s up to you to try to
fix the things that are
going wrong.

15. Start with your goals.
1. Sell a certain 2. Provide enough 3. Let your
number of books. info for them to customer stay in
buy . touch.

16. Then your actions.
1. Sell a certain 2. Provide enough 3. Let your
number of books. info for them to customer stay in
buy . touch.
Buy button is
clear, buying Reviews, excerpts, E-letter is clear
method is easy, images, and blurbs and attractive,
payment method is on book pages. facebook and
secure. Popular titles on twitter links,
home page. contact info is
obvious, FB &
Twitter run well.

17. And now your KPI’s.
1. Sell a certain 2. Provide enough 3. Let your
number of books. info for them to customer stay in
buy . touch.
Buy button is
clear, buying Reviews, excerpts, E-letter is clear
method is easy, images, and blurbs and attractive,
payment method is on book pages. facebook and
secure. Popular titles on twitter links,
home page. contact info is
Sales (and
obvious, FB &
sales growth), Visits to title
Twitter run well.
shopping cart pages, catalogue
abandonment, downloads, on-site Traffic to
traffic on book searches, clicks Facebook/twitter,
pages. on author bios. increase in likes,
new e-letter
subscribers.

18. What’s The moral of
the story?
Use the information from
google analytics to see
what’s not working. Try to
fix it, then look back to G.A.
to see if those solutions
worked. Try and try again.