Metric Misuse

Successful marketing starts with a strategy. @chrisgreen87 - [email protected]

Metric MisuseChris Green - StrategiQ Marketing


What is metric misuse?


Over-reliance on the wrong numbers


Why does it happen?


Misunderstanding


Just because it's a number...


... doesn't mean it's true


Arguments should be supported by data


Not moulded to fit them


In this webinar we'll cover

Successful marketing starts with a strategy. @chrisgreen87 - [email protected] marketing starts with a strategy

10 frequently misused metrics in digital marketing


1. Rankings


One of the most misunderstood “SEO metrics”


What we're measuring isn't so easy to measure


Put simply -What's the weather like outside?


Now phone someone in a different timezone


It won't always be the same


It won't always be the same(Okay, so maybe that is a bit simple)


Rankings aren't universal:Personalisation, search location, etc


Rankings are a good benchmark


They can monitor progressand trouble-shoot issues


Why are you tracking rankings?


Because they == traffic?


Because they == traffic?Is traffic your goal?


It can be useful, but use the data wisely


Next, another "SEO Metric”


2. New/Lost links


An example...


"My rankings dropped on the 2nd"


"I've checked and saw we lost some links around then"


"That’s why..."

*sulk*


Which tool did you use?


How does that tool discover backlinks?


Will it crawl the same links as Google at the same time?


Probably not - and there's the problem


New/Lost links is a good(ish) benchmark if you check the same source


It's not a good way at diagnosing rankings changes over short periods


Look for trends over longer periods


Onto less "SEO" metrics


3. Ave monthly traffic (keyword)


From Google or Bing for example


Presents an approximate search volume as reported


It can be very useful, with some caveats


It shows the past, but not the future


Very, very rough numbers, lots of rounding


Can be particularly hard to judge on lower search-weight terms


(Remember - these figures are from tools which help you spend your money)


“If I get into x position I'll get x traffic”


Sometimes...


But SERPs for different keywords are different


Click through rates are different


These search volumes show all the traffic, not just those who click on ads or organic listings


On to my “favourite”


4. Bounce rate


Probably the most commonly misused stat - it could almost have gone unsaid


Probably the most commonly misused stat - it could almost have gone unsaid

Almost.


But it's important to understand why bounce rate is misunderstood


Not just because a "bounce" isn't always bad


But because the method of measurement is not fool-proof


"the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing

only one page."- Google


Google Analytics tracking loads when a page loads

a bounce is when the code is only loaded once


But there are other reasons this might happen


"Google Analytics doesn't register multiple pageviews unless users reload that page"

- (also) Google


Bad news for one-page sites


The second pageview needs to be made within the same "Session"


Sessions, as tracked by GA can expire


After 30 minutes of inactivity and/or at midnight

30 mins 00:00

OR


Spend too long inactive - that's a bounce too


How to making bounce rate more meaningful


Event tracking on buttons/links, scroll depth or time on page


Bounce can be a useful metric, but it’s only the start of a question, not an answer


This moves on nicely to...


5. Average time on site


Slightly less well known, but equally misused


Because of what it is (or isn't) measuring


If a bounce is when you only hit one page


Time on site can only be measured (in GA) when you view more than one page


80% bounce rate with average time on site of 5mins


That's 5 mins for the 20% of people who didn't bounce


Spend 4 mins on page 1, 3 mins on page 2, then exit - how long is that recorded?

Page 104:02

Page 203:18


4 mins

Because the time on the second page is "lost" when you exited


This can be solved in the same way as a bounce, you need to track engagement better


Or at minimum be aware how limited this data can be


6. Pageviews


Not a massive misuse case, but worth noting when it can go wrong


When do pageviews not measure pageviews?


When you have tracking setup problems


Common scenario I've seen...


GTM added without removing Universal Analytics


Double pageviews - also very low bounce rate too


But it could also be related to how you track goals


Virtual pageviews - unsurprising reallyjust be aware


7. Impressions


A stat that leaves me conflicted, here's why...


"120,000 people saw your ad"


Great, but did they? What does it even mean?


That's not to say # of impressions is a bad stat...


But buying impressions is cheap and pointless if done for the sake of impressions.


Think about what an impression means to your campaign goals - use wisely


8. Site Conversion rate


This is more as a caution to how conversions are conveyed in GA


Any goal which triggers on your site (time on site, contact submission, pageview) is a

conversion


But there's a crucial difference between Macro/Micro conversions


A site conversion rate of 30% is great, but as Avinash Says ...


A "site's success is bigger than just that one number"

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-13-measure-macro-and-micro-conversions/




So a site-level conversion rate will be woefully inadequate at telling your story


9. Referrals (ref spam)


Something that catches out a casual user


Ref Spam ruins data - it makes pageviews/users more than they really are


It also pollutes user/engagement data too


Filter it out (using advanced segments)


Hope Google finds a better option soon!


10. Cost Per Click


An easy measurement to misuse


The wallet does most of the talking here


Ever compared cost per click of adwords keywords, or Facebook and LinkedIN Ads?


Apples and oranges really - it comes down to...


What is an "expensive" click?


To answer that you first need to know what a click is worth


"I'm not going to do LinkedIN ads because it costs ten times more than Facebook"


I'd rather a fraction of the clicks if each one was 10 times more likely to buy


An expensive click is one which doesn't give you anything back


But to understand the value here, you need to be able to measure what a click brings


Contact forms, phone leads, footfall… etc


So how do you pick the right metrics?


Understand what your objective is and work backwards


We can measure a lot, success can be easy to express


But it's also very easy to be over-confident


Or make big decisions on bad data


Be just as sure of what you don't know as what you do.


Questions?


References:StrategiQ Marketing - http://strategiqmarketing.co.uk My Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/chrisgreen87My Email - [email protected]

Google Analytics Academy - https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course01Ref Spam Segments - https://loganix.net/referral-spam-solved-give-your-analytics-an-anema/ Better data from GA - https://medium.com/google-analytics/hacking-google-analytics-24762924fbf8Macro & Micro Conversions - http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-13-measure-macro-and-micro-conversions/

http://strategiqmarketing.co.uk

https://www.twitter.com/chrisgreen87

mailto:[email protected]

https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course01

https://loganix.net/referral-spam-solved-give-your-analytics-an-anema/

https://medium.com/google-analytics/hacking-google-analytics-24762924fbf8




Metric Misuse

Data & Analytics

Transcript of Metric Misuse