It’s already been a year since Dennis announced the launch of Yahoo! Web Analytics 9.5 on this blog. And one of the shiny feature announcements then, was the addition of demographic data, such as gender and age. Dennis, being such an awesome analytics expert he is, went on to suggest a few exciting ways of using these data in his screen cast overview of Yahoo! Web Analytics, which I recommend you watch before you read on if you are not familiar with the tool.

With the announcement, however, a few analysts from European countries questioned Yahoo‘s ability to deliver this kind of data in markets where Yahoo search market share in particular is almost non-existent. The Czech Republic like many other small European countries may well serve as a case in point. Take this purely as a rough indication, but my experience tells me that for Czech websites with as little as a couple thousand visitors, Yahoo! indeed is able to provide demographic data with a confidence level of about 80 % and for websites with more than 50 000 visitors you easily get the highest confidence level of 95 %.

Yahoo’s ability to collect this demographics data is down to the fact that it comes from the Yahoo! ID / Yahoo Cookie which you need in order to use the vast array of Yahoo! web properties, most notably Yahoo! Mail and the photo sharing website Flickr, which is popular in about every country in the world – and so seems to account for a bulk of the visitors to Czech websites with Yahoo! ID / Yahoo Cookie.

So for me, and I hope for many of you as well, no matter if you’re a fellow YWACN member or Yahoo! customer, the question is no longer about whether Yahoo! can provide demographic data about visitors to your website, because the answer is resounding yes. The question really is if you can trust the data, use it to analyze behavior and business outcome of different demographic segments and make decisions informed by such analysis.

I therefore set out to examine the demographic data, gender to be specific, provided by Yahoo! Web Analytics and compare them with data from NetMonitor, the official audience measurement platform in the Czech Republic which provides authoritative data that drive demand in the local online advertising industry.

Okoun.cz, the website in question that the data come from, is a traditional kind of message board that has been around since 2001. All data published below come from a period of 4 months from November 2009 through to February 2010.

Data are worth a thousand words

First and foremost, before we take a deep dive into the numbers, let’s be clear that all kinds of demographic measurement (maybe except for official census) are based on some kind of approximation. The idea is that if we determine a large enough sample, which exhibits the same qualities as the total population it suffices to analyze data from the sample and assert that any analysis outcomes are likely to be true of the whole population as well. It follows from there that the margin of error from such measurement approximations depends heavily on the sample quality and the confidence level is decreased with bigger total population and smaller sample dataset.

So much for theory, here’s the gender split reported by Yahoo! Web Analytics compared to NetMonitor.

From the chart above, it’s pretty clear that while Yahoo’s data show about 70 % of male visitors across the timeframe, NetMonitor’s data for male visitors fluctuate in the range of 55 % – 65 % so the difference between the two measurement systems is up to 15 percentage points.

The metrics are different though. While Yahoo! Web Analytics works with Unique Visitors (which really means cookies), NetMonitor operates with Real Users.

NetMonitor – methodology

I don’t want to go into much detail here, so just in a nutshell: NetMonitor is deployed on something like 95% of the Czech internet (in terms of traffic, not number of websites) and so they can differentiate between good cookies (cookies with a defined minimum lifespan) and bad cookies (below the lifespan threshold) and they approximate the number of Real Users from the good cookies, the number of pageviews generated by the good cookies and the total number of pageviews. This calculation is designed to accommodate the cookie deletion phenomenon.

Demographics data are collected from panel members using two methods: user-centric software based measurement (backbone of the panel, validated data, 1/3 of the panel) and site-centric pop-up surveys (less reliable data that are hard to validate, 2/3 of the panel).

Full methodology description.

Okay, now let’s take a look at the overall Unique Visitors and Real Users data in order to be able to examine the difference in gender split shown above and draw some conclusions.

Traffic differences aside, they’re different metrics after all. What is more important here is the relative sample size. It is quite evident that Yahoo! indeed has a considerable amount of data. In fact it is three times as much as the local audience measurement panel in this particular case. Websites with primarily international traffic may have this sample even bigger – I’ve seen up to 10 % of all website traffic identified with demographics data!

So can you trust the story they tell?

No data are 100% correct, but I believe it is safe to assume that with NetMonitor, more effort has gone into development of sound methodology for the local market – and so its data on overall gender split should be closer to truth. Therefore for top level reporting and in order to attract advertising suitors, website owners are better off using local audience measurement tools that provide rich validated demographics data, that can be easily compared with other websites.

Where Yahoo! Web Analytics demographics data are not very close in terms of overall numbers, the difference is most likely due to the fact that Yahoo! doesn’t have their websites localized in Czech. In effect, this skews the dataset in favour of more advanced users and away from the general population of internet users in the Czech Republic. Not everybody speaks English after all.

The screenshot below bears a lot of evidence to this fact. The Czech Republic are among the very few countries in the world where Google is not the #1 search engine. It is a local player called Seznam but the more advanced users, usually prefer Google as their first choice. From the Search Engines report you can see that the visitors identified through their Yahoo! ID and Cookie are indeed heavy Google users.

However, Yahoo’s demographics data still represent a lot of value to website owners seeking to better understand and communicate with their customers. It is possible to use this data within Yahoo! Web Analytics to isolate segments and analyze their behaviour in contrast with other segments on a very detailed level.

The chart below attests that the gender data are very, very close to reality. Okoun.cz has a ton of different topics you can discuss and of course, some of them are pure male interests and some on the contrary. The chart illustrates individual message board’s relative popularity measured by content consumption in pageviews for both male and female visitors.

If you speak a little Czech I will let you explore on your own from the following table of top 10 “female” boards what topics are relatively more popular with female audience. If you can’t speak any Czech though, just believe me, that reports like this are a lots of fun and insights at the same time.

Conclusion

Demographics data as a dimension,  has been absent among traditional web analytics reporting efforts for years, but now it enables us to talk to our marketing colleagues in their language, because in traditional marketing, demographics segmentation has always played a huge part. It is just about time we discovered its value in web analytics as well.

Demographics data in Yahoo! Web Analytics do not represent precisely the overall traffic for Czech websites, but they do seem to be very precise for the many visitors identified through a Yahoo! ID / Cookie. Therefore my conclusion is that, these valuable demographic data points, can indeed be utilized in segmentation and analysis of your website visitors – even if they primarily come from small countries such as the Czech Republic and especially when combined with dimensions and metrics not available in the audience measurement tool such as campaigns, custom visitor data, conversions and sales.

I’d like to invite you – from whatever part of the world you are – to share your experience on using demographics data in web analytics AND optimization.

Jiri

We have spent the last 18 months integrating YWA (IndexTools) into the Yahoo Network and whilst our Account Management team has worked tirelessly to ensure that our client base (both YWACN members and Direct Customers) are well supported, we have also managed to find time to run some projects in the background!

Our onus has been on serving our customer base more effectively, tackling this in a variety of ways: Dedicated Account Management for YWACN members, an expansive list of FAQs available to all on help.yahoo.com as well as the recently announced YWA Status Blog keeping our customers informed in real-time (RSS, Email, Phone and Messenger Alerts).

I’m pleased to announce that today we add a considerable resource to our existing support and self-serve channels!

Yahoo Web Analytics Product Training on-Demand

We have spent the last few months converting our original on-site product training that we use to deliver to clients and partners at IndexTools, into short, easily digestible, on-demand webinars. These webinars are accessible by all and aim to give new and existing users a complete overview of the product allowing them to concentrate on what’s important: analysis. The webinars are collated using a combination of PowerPoint Slides and in Product Demo’s.

Further to this we have also added an Interactive Q&A section (Adobe Captivate) for each of the training sections. This will enable users to check their knowledge at each stage of the training, or go back and check it further down the line. N.B. We don’t capture any personal data or results :)

So where do YOU go to get access to these?

We have created a section within help.yahoo.com and you can access the individual sessions here. We’ve created a page for each session and you’ll currently have access to the following sessions and sections:

• Session 1: Deploying and Customizing the Tracking Code
• Session 2: Sales and Merchandising – Deployment and Reporting
• Session 3: Basic Reporting: Traffic, Demographics, Techno-graphics, Content, Navigation, and Path Analysis
• Session 4: Conversion Analysis, Scenario Analysis

Still to come over the next month or so are the remaining sessions these include:

Session 5: Reporting Interface Features
Session 6: Manual Campaign Setup
Session 7: Automated Campaign Setup
Session 8: Campaign Reporting
Session 9: Dashboards
Session 10: Settings

We hope you find these informative and useful! Stay tuned for the remaining 6 Sessions. If you’ve not had a chance to view the product yet checkout Dennis’ 30 min Yahoo Web Analytics Demo.

My thanks to Miha Popa who worked so hard to get these recorded and to the rest of my team for drawing up all the questions and answers!

Cheers,

Charlie

• Mobile Device Maker
• Mobile Device Model
• Mobile Device Screen size
• Carrier name

The numbers themselves are rather exciting actually, even though my point is, just to show you some of the Dimensions you can use, when doing your mobile analysis with Yahoo Web Analytics. Enjoy! :-)

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)

Join Stratigent and Yahoo! Analytics for an evening of insights, cocktails and networking at the Yahoo offices in New York City. Learn how enterprise organizations are gaining new customer insights by leveraging Yahoo! Web Analytics as a highly customizable web analytics tool. Uncover hidden ROI as Bill Bruno of Stratigent shares best practices for deriving maximum value from your analytics program. This exclusive event is hosted by Stratigent, an official Yahoo! Web Analytics Consulting Network member in conjunction with Yahoo! Web Analytics.

Highlights include:

• The Future of Analytics: Discover how online marking measurement and optimization is evolving and learn what it takes to keep your business ahead of the curve
• Best Practices for Deriving Value from Analytics: Bill Bruno, VP of Business Development and Technology at Stratigent.
• Yahoo! Web Analytics Product Demo: Presented by Dennis R. Mortensen, Director of Data Insights at Yahoo! and author of Data-Driven Insights with Yahoo! Web Analytics
  
• Networking and Cocktails: Connect with analytics professionals in the area and speak with the Analytics experts of Stratigent and Yahoo!

Registration to this invite-only event is complimentary. To request an invitation (while seats remain) contact Jenny Kimbley via email: jenny.kimbley@stratigent.com.

Anywho..

Happy Thanksgiving. :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)

That’s a first, and not that I am surprised, but James found a mistake on page 90 in my Yahoo! Web Analytics Book – minor and repeated on the next page in correct form, BUT I still owe him a free Diet Coke in New York for pointing it out. Here is the section from the Book – I highlighted the error and added in the correct deployment syntax.

Tracking Products Viewed

I have been very focused on the nirvana of e-commerce actions, the sale, but I am sure you agree with me that there are many steps and many actions before getting to this point. You can track any number of steps and any number of activities with Yahoo! Web Analytics. The tool has a few hard-coded events, however, that come right out of the box—one of them is the unique action value called PRODUCT_VIEW. The Product View variable provides you with the opportunity to expand your merchandising knowledge to activities, very close to the top of the sales funnel. In this way, you can see how often potential customers view your products, which products are the most popular, and whether a positive connection exists between product campaigns and product views.

Remember that selling only provides you with successful customer behavior, whereas events before the sale occurs can provide you with very powerful insights on unsuccessful customer outcomes. The product view can be used in a number of ways, and you will even see some use of it as a proxy for products added to cart or sales (if they do not have volume enough to perform signifi cant campaign analysis on that parameter). To enable this type of tracking, you apply the value PRODUCT_VIEW to the ACTION variable on all the pages where you display products:

Version 4

var ACTION=’PRODUCT_VIEW’;
var _S_SKU=’DM112899’;

Version 5

YWATracker.setAmount(“PRODUCT_VIEW“); //Correct: YWATracker.setAction(“PRODUCT_VIEW“);
YWATracker.setSKU(“DM112899“);

The pages where this code is applied do not have to be unique and in fact rarely are. Products are displayed on product marketing pages, technical specification pages, in search results, in recommendation boxes—and I am sure you have even more suggestions. I recommend you enhance your document-naming and -grouping skills to create opportunities to split different product views over the site.

Which leads to our next topic: forwarding to pages where we display multiple products at the same time. A product search result is likely to do this, as shown in Figure 4.3

Figure 4.3.  -  Standard product search result page

There are other scenarios where this is bound to happen. In order to track several product views at the same time, continue using the same syntax we’ve discussed in previous chapters, separating variable values by a semicolon. Tracking two product views at the same time looks like this:

Version 4

var ACTION=’PRODUCT_VIEW’;
var _S_SKU=’DM112899;DM113834’;

Version 5

YWATracker.setAction(“PRODUCT_VIEW“);
YWATracker.setSKU(“DM112899;DM113834“);

If you are not sure which product views to track together, the default merchandising report, shown in Figure 4.4, is a good starting point for you to play around with the various dimensions and metrics.

Figure 4.4  –   Default merchandising summary report

Note that the report in Figure 4.4 and those from earlier include product naming and product categorization, which we are yet to talk about, and thus your reports will look different. However, you can view merchandising reporting and products on a SKU level, as shown in Figure 4.5. You only have this option, though, if you have not uploaded any merchandising information. If you proceed to the summary report, you will see the screen shown in Figure 4.5.

Figure 4.5   -  Viewing products by SKU

As I mentioned earlier, you can choose to view products by SKU to begin with and then associate product names and categorization later. Now, let’s move on to tracking products added to your cart.

…

Well, error corrected! :-)

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)

As I am sure most of you recall we (Yahoo!) launched Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN) at the beginning of August 2009. Since then we have been literally inundated with applications (apply here) from all corners of the globe from smart, enthusiastic and extremely analytics savvy consulting firms. These companies excel in their various regions around the world and provide an invaluable analytics service to their customers in areas such as:

• Vendor Selection
• Training
• Tracking code Audits
• Tracking code Deployment from scratch
• Universal Tagging solutions
• And of course Consulting and Optimization!!

Expanding YWACN

So today sees further expansion to YWACN and I’m extremely pleased to announce an additional 20 Consulting firms have been accepted into the network – taking the total YWACN membership to 71! We have focused primarily on expanding members in markets where, until today, we lacked representation and are very happy to have a fantastic group of experienced companies onboard. We are also welcoming a number of folks from existing markets who, based on their experience, we simply couldn’t say no to!

All these consultants are a substantial compliment to the Network, have a breadth and depth of insight into their various regions that is an invaluable resource to YWA users and are, most importantly, charismatic and passionate analytics individuals! If a 60 second ‘get me pumped about web analytics’ pitch were a pre-requisite to joining YWACN these guys would nail it!

So without further ado, our new consultants are:

www.resultrix.com, www.pop.us, www.vml.com, www.bell.ca, www.techwyse.com, www.purevisibility.com, www.cadastra.com.br, www.interactivo.cl, www.mvconsultoria.com, www.neoogilvy.com, www.sqliagency.com, www.clicmetrics.com, www.overalia.com, www.hub-sales.com, www.optimics.cz, www.queromedia.be, www.freshegg.com, www.iihnordic.dk, www.wattproject.com and www.orangevalley.nl

Full contact details for all of our Consultants are located on the YWA website. Welcome all of you, we’re looking forward to an exciting 2010!

Here’s a snapshot from our YWACN Homepage:

Yes, there are still areas of green remaining :-) But seriously, we’ll be expanding the network further in 2010 and are always looking for Consultants in Cities and Countries not yet covered. Located in a ‘green’ area (or white if you happen to be in Greenland!) and want to become a YWACN member, apply here.

Cheers,
Charlie

Not convinced it’s worth your time; here’s the abstract and the introduction:

Abstract

Measuring and reporting on the impact of a Microsite without taking into consideration how it uniquely differs from the expected and somewhat associated parent website is an error! This white paper points to a number of analysis items which will facilitate the right mindset for Microsite analysis and reporting – if this type of thinking is not applied, you will at best provide flawed reporting to your customers and at worst suggest actions that will negatively impact the Microsite.

Introduction

Any online endeavor such as a Microsite is created with a business objective in mind, and for this business objective, one must have a set of measurable KPIs and very likely a set of associated metrics that can be used to optimize the KPIs. This is a given and, with this assumption in mind, as I take you through this white paper, you must understand that this is not meant to provide you with an exhaustive list of Microsite specific KPIs.

Measuring and reporting on the impact of a Microsite without taking into consideration how it uniquely differs from the expected and somewhat associated parent website is an error! This white paper points to a number of analysis items which will facilitate the right mindset for Microsite analysis and reporting – if this thinking is not applied, you will at best provide flawed reporting to your customers and at worst suggest actions that will negatively impact the Microsite. That being said, this is neither a complete reporting and analysis guide nor a template for you to replicate to your next customer – it is a way of thinking which you must apply to your own Microsite reporting. For every three suggestions I provide with regard to reporting or insight on Microsites, there should be another three as obvious recommendations from you, based upon the introduced mindset.

A Microsite (and it goes by many different names) is an autonomous website, focused on a smaller subject matter. It is usually detached from the parent website and the only combined experience is a set of gateways into the parent site. It is unusual and in most cases not recommended to replicate the navigation structure and general layout of the parent site as you lose the advantages of the Microsite – and honestly, aren’t you then just building a new subsection to the parent site? There are ways to analyze whether you have been successful in your casual parent site attachment and we will come to that later. Finally, have in mind that a Microsite is designed to have a limited lifespan – if nothing else, in its current form. You can also think of it as a range of purposes like; specific product offerings, whether that is a feature film, car or a burger for that matter, small branded communities, portal integrated and sponsored content sites, branded entertainment used as a promotion vehicle – and with that in mind, you should have a fair view of what I warrant a Microsite.

It is important that you do not misplace the meaning of a landing page or set of landing pages as a result of your Microsite endeavors. A landing page is a logical extension of your advertisement of your parent site. The landing page serves, for the most part, as either a gateway into the parent site or directly as an optimized transaction page. You can, of course, have a unique landing page on your Microsite, should you want to, but for the most part this will be the home page or a page that plays the role of the homepage. See Figure 1 for an illustration of how Microsite content and traffic overlaps with parent website and landing pages.

As an Agency you must create a mindset in your analysis and reporting that intelligently takes into account the content split and overlap of the three constituents (as shown in Figure 1) and their traffic flows. To put it clearly, we agree that the Microsite is indeed independent, but we also expect integration and overlap with the parent website. Do have in mind that a Microsite can function as a bridge and path between two parent websites as well, such as having the Microsite partly injected into a foster parent. As an example, in describing the idea of a foster parent, envision a scenario where you have the Microsite created as part of a portal channel. In this particular scenario, I both view and treat the initiating foster parent as a campaign source throughout this white paper – and I suggest you do the same in general. The thinking about a foster parent expands the Microsite definition to include elements like the fan-page and branded apps.

I am not debating or concluding on the potential success in deploying a Microsite and/or the overall strategic righteousness in using a Microsite as a marketing vehicle. This white paper assumes you’ve used a different set of metrics for such a debate and positively concluded that branching out from the parent website and using a Microsite is what’s needed for success.

So who is this white paper for then? The Agency Analyst, Account Manager and anybody who is responsible for communicating the effectiveness of a Microsite.

First. I am a huge Kindle fan and seeing the DX optimization is just absolutely fantastic! But wait, oh no, I don’t actually own a Kindle myself. Anyone out there who own a Kindle or even better actually owns a Kindle DX? .. or perhaps this is just a sign from God (or whomever) that I must go buy the device! :-)

Amazon Kindle link:
Yahoo! Web Analytics: Tracking, Reporting, and Analyzing for Data-Driven Insights (Kindle Edition).

n.b. Optimized for means: “This title has complex layouts and has been optimized for reading on Kindle DX’s larger screen, but can still be viewed on other Kindle devices.”

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis R. Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

I don’t know about you, but I personally think this is beyond exciting, and I am thrilled to see us take this (almost) final step towards full integration into Yahoo!

What is YWACN?

This is a network of third party companies with expertise in deriving insight from Web Analytics AND deploying Yahoo! Web Analytics in particular. The purpose of this network is amongst other things to help our clients get the best out of the tool – and hopefully also help us spread the gospel of YWA. It might even alleviate the stress on my personal in-box!

You are more than welcome to compare this in idea to the GAAC network – there, I’ve said it! :-)

Who are the Consultants?

A lot of the consultants are legacy IndexTools partners – and thus a bunch of folks who have years and years of experience in the actual technology, from before we turned purple. They are… drum roll please:

countquest.se, tribal-im.com, nordicemarketing.com, receptional.com, naviatech.fi, netvantagemarketing.com, e-dialog.at, Leads2Business.nl, milesbennett.co.uk, tricomb2b.com, sems.it, explido.de, booming.de, latitudegroup.com, emerite.cz, astrups.com, snowvalley.com, b-found.no, epsilonium.com, netprofiler.nl, acronym.com, networkintellect.com, coloradowebsolutions.com, contentmetrics.de, deducta.dk, eformation.de, e-interactive.es, eurorscg-riley.co.uk, engineready.com, inflow.dk, intellignos.com, onetomarket.nl, lbigroup.be, positive-thinking.co.uk, stonetemple.com, sundancemedia.ca, webcertain.com, studiocappello.it, zunch.com and creuna.dk.

We even added a few additional rock stars to that:

webanalyticsdemystified.com, semphonic.com, stratigent.com, sapient.com, purpleclick.com, thesedays.com, bitbang.it and insightr.com.

48 YWACN partners all in all – and you should be able to see a full list of YWACN partners on the YWA site. CALL them today, email them, tweet them .. heck, invite them out for dinner, they deserve it! (if you haven’t noticed, they are your new best friends)

Can I join?

Perhaps ;-) If you really excel in the field of web analytics and truly are one of those consultancies that help derive actionable insights from web analytics for your customers – we would love to hear from you.  In return and as a Member of this exclusive, global professional network of Yahoo! Web Analytics consultants you will receive a number of benefits, this including:

• Yahoo! Web Analytics FREE account creation rights (This is sexy eh?)
  
• Listing on Yahoo!’s Consultant Network web page
• Potential client referrals from the Yahoo! Sales team
• Exclusive “Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network” icon for display on your website
• Premium levels of technical support and access to a partner portal
• Access to an exclusive YWACN forum to share ideas and technical tips with other top analysts worldwide
• Unique opportunities to work with Yahoo! to provide trainings, books and speaking engagements

Go have a look at the criteria for becoming a member of the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network on the web site.

YWACN Links: (..and partners; send me your blog posts if I didn’t catch’em)

- Netvantage – now a member of the Yahoo Web Analytics Consultant Network
- Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network, Nordic eMarketing accepted
- Receptional. Yahoo Web Analytics Consultant Network
- Insightr joins the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN)
- Tribal is nu ook Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant
- Onetomarket toegelaten tot Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network
- ..

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis R. Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

Thanks for your interest in Yahoo! Web Analytics. We’re excited to inform you about the launch of our Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN)

YWACN is a network of independent third-party analytics specialists who can help provide analytics consulting services. The specialists in the network have been approved by Yahoo! to help our valued customers. The breadth of experience of YWACN members, and their knowledge of Yahoo! Web Analytics, makes them uniquely qualified to provide expert assistance in analytics planning, implementation and usage.

Whether you’re a large organization or a small ecommerce merchant, you can expect to benefit from a more intelligent leveraging of analytics with YWACN. The consultants in the network can help increase your qualified website traffic, achieve more conversions and sales, and see a better overall ROI.

To learn more about YWACN members, click here. Also, you can look for consultants with the YWACN member emblem.

I believe the video is a great appetizer for how we approach web analytics from a feature point of view – and if you are not yet fully comfortable with YWA, I am most confident this video will shine some light on the product. Enjoy :-)

The above screencast is reduced in size, simply to fit this blog page, but you can click through to the original sized (990*938) screenscast, should you want the full experience. :-)

Yahoo Web Analytics in 30 minutes (VIDEO – HD)

If you made it through the video, and were pleased, you might be happy to hear that we plan to do a number of 3 min. videos focused on insight – not features.

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis Mortensen (@dennismortensen)