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We live in very complex times. As much as we talk about integrated insights, it only seems to be getting worse.

If I sound a little bleak it’s because this statement has been shared ad nauseam: digital marketers are literally drowning in data.

Data sources range from anecdotal and trivial to scientifically precise, and span numerous systems both on premise, in the cloud, and property of third-party data providers. Using several approaches to arrive at a single truth (to within a reasonable variance, I might add) is extremely difficult. Continue reading The Pros and Cons of Big Data Democratization

Building a center of excellence analytics practice, whether it’s web analytics or data analytics, is bound to get you a lot of attention. The self-perpetuating cycle of asking business questions, diving deep into analytics data, providing actionable insights, and testing data-driven recommendations often scales by orders of magnitude quicker than the human resources and tools often allow.

Eventually, every practice runs into the problem of having to prioritize competing stakeholder demands, which is a great problem to have, but without the proper prioritization model in place, many shops can quickly fall victim to politics and worse yet, analysis paralysis. Continue reading How to Introduce a Politics-Free Prioritization Model for Analytics Reporting

One of the biggest challenges a marketer faces when trying to accurately attribute campaign success to different mediums is consistent use of campaign parameters to further segment and demystify the “Direct” or “Bookmarked” traffic sources in analytics software. Continue reading Demystifying Direct/Bookmarked Traffic in Analytics Reports

My last article provided the top five arguments for implementing a tag management solution. By now you might even be sold on implementing one in the near future, but inevitably every organization has to examine many of the same use cases and value assessments.

Let’s face it, the competition is stiff, and vendors are at each other’s throats to get your business, but the toughest-fought battle will be with your own organization.

Here are some of the biggest objections that you’re likely to face and how to squash all fears. Continue reading Top 5 reasons against implementing a tag management system and how to squash them

As I wrote in my web analytics 2012 year in review, tag management is primed for a blowout year in 2013.

Tag management systems have matured and now offer a wealth of new tracking capabilities beyond basic functionality of simply centralizing your tags.

If you’re contemplating the switch, you need to consider these five arguments for implementing a tag management solution (TMS). Continue reading Top 5 reasons to implement a tag management solution

Customization of data collection code is of paramount importance to web analysts because it constitutes the fundamental building blocks required for advanced visitor segmentation above and beyond what software provides out of the box.

Unfortunately, customization doesn’t come free.

There is an opportunity cost of developer or publisher time and sometimes third-party vendor involvement is required. Due to this tradeoff, businesses and web analysts are often faced to make tough compromises when faced with the task of implementing web analytics code, or enhancing it to support better insights.

Here are some tips to help you introduce processes to get your delicious analytics pie and eat it too! Continue reading How to define a web analytics process