Interview with Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics Guru

Published June 29, 2009 by Garry Przyklenk Analytics Tools, Books, Google Analytics, New Technology, Omniture, SES Tour, Social Media, WebTrends

Avinash Kaushik Interview The honor of interviewing a world-renowned Web Analytics expert such as Avinash Kaushik doesn’t come along every day, so I’m pleased to present a little preview into what marketers can expect at SES San Jose in August. Avinash’s official title of “Web Analytics Evangelist” at Google really beguiles his true dedication to our industry: he’s author of a best-selling book Web Analytics an Hour a Day, his blog Occam’s Razor is a first-stop on my daily online reading list, he speaks at countless conferences across the globe, and manages to sustain a frantic pace on Twitter. Plus he’s a really approachable and helpful guy.

GP: First and foremost, I wanted to thank you for taking the time out of your extremely busy schedule to answer my questions today. Writing a best-selling book is probably the most rewarding achievement for any author. With “Web Analytics an Hour a Day” you offer some great advice, much of which is still valid today. If you were to go back in time, would you have changed anything in the book? You’ve since become very active on your blog and twitter, are you thinking about writing a follow-up?

AK: I have to admit I am personally surprised at how well the book has done, it is absolutely thrilling that so many people across the world have found it to be of value.

The book is still pretty current because it is not a Web Analytics book that focuses on how to use Omniture or Google Analytics or WebTrends. My focus is on how to think optimally about analytics, how to apply the right approaches and how to massively change organizations to be data driven. That stuff, as you can imagine, holds the test of time pretty well.

Things I would change? A few things. I think there have been huge improvements in the competitive intelligence space, tools like Insights for Search and AdPlanner and half of features in Compete did not exist. I remember writing about Alexa to do some benchmarking, there are so many more options now. In the book, I had covered parts of social media already like Blogs (and I would not change the six recommendations to measure success of your blog even with the passage of time). But Twitter was not quite there to any extent, neither was all this cool stuff about Facebook or iPhone apps. I would add things like that if I wrote it again today.

GP: To be fair (as you said), you future-proofed your book to overcome challenges relating to the rapid introduction of new technology with solid recommendations. For example, one of your top tips or tenants has always been to segment. Chop away at your analytics data and keep chopping until you are either left with a homogeneous pulp or something really insightful. The obvious segments of direct, organic search, paid search, and referred traffic are a great start, but with so many other segments emerging such as social and mobile, will marketers have a tough time or the tools to keep up?

AK: One of my most fundamental learnings is that pretty much all data in aggregate is useless. That’s because a monolith does not come to your website, it’s lots of different kinds of people from different sources with different intents consuming different content trying to solve different tasks. By segmenting your data, you are starting to focus on those types of people and their different purposes and drivers. That’s where insight comes from. Not from knowing you had a million visits to your site, but by knowing 250k were from Google and all wanted to buy something, or 100k wanted to just complain, or subscribe to your rss feed, or X thousands came by responding to your social media campaign. Each of those segments represents groups of people focusing on things that you can understand uniquely and react to.

The segments you mention are great, but it is important to know that it’s rare to have “God’s blessed list” of segments that everyone should use. Each business is unique, they are trying to accomplish different business goals and they are doing it differently.

Here are some suggestions for areas where you should start:

Segment people who “convert” on your site. By convert I don’t just mean buy. For me conversion is that someone signed up for a RSS feed. For Candidate Obama, conversion was a donation. For Tide.com it is that you downloaded a coupon. Segment out people who convert, then apply that segment to your content report (what’s the valuable content on our site) and to your traffic sources report (who are our most valuable sources) etc.
Segment by areas where you are spending money. If you only spend 10 bucks on Paid Search and ten thousand on Affiliates then create a segment for those campaigns and understand their efficiency and identify areas of improvement. If your life is subsumed by SEO then forget all other segments (for now) and create valuable segments for brand and category keywords and understand if you are actually improving.
I had created the free on exit 4Q survey with iPerceptions. It asks three simple questions relating to Primary Purpose (why people come to your site), Task Completion Rate (were they able to complete the task) and VOC (open text feedback). One of the most powerful ways to understand performance of your site is to segment Primary Purpose by Task Completion Rate (i.e. which tasks were people not able to complete) and for those segments read your customer’s suggestions on how to improve your site. Super actionable.

GP: Indeed, actionable data that is available to most tools on the market, and a great starting point. Come August, you’re going to be on a star-studded panel alongside Bryan Eisenberg and Jim Sterne entitled, “How to turn your web analytics into a money making machine” at SES San Jose. With two heavyweights of analytics on the same stage, I’d love to get a sneak peek at what you’re going to cover…

AK: Jim and Bryan are true super stars, I am honored to be on the same panel with them.

One of the wonderful things about Web Analytics is that we are blessed with data. Too much data.

The goal of the session is to help the audience get actionable tips. Take the too much data, filter it to take out the irrelevant and focus on getting actionable insights. Each of us is hoping to share three unique strategies and analytical approaches that will help you make sense of the data and improve profitability of your online business.

GP: Can’t wait, San Jose is always a blast on the tour.

And that draws yet another interview to a close, I want to thank Avinash once again for taking the time to sit down and answer my questions. If you’re interested in learning more about actionable analytics and you’re thinking about attending only one conference/show this year, make sure to attend Search Engine Strategies San Jose and sit in on Avinash’s session.

About Search Engine Strategies

Search Engine Strategies is the definitive digital event for marketers, corporate decision makers, webmasters and search engine marketers (SEMs), including pay per click (PPC) advertisers and search engine optimization (SEO) professionals. Attend SES San Jose, network with your peers, meet with industry experts, and learn the tips, tactics and strategies that will grow your business online.

About Avinash Kaushik

Avinash Kaushik is the author of the best-selling book Web Analytics an Hour a Day. He is also the analytics evangelist for Google. As a thought leader, Avinash puts a common sense framework around the often frenetic world of web research and analytics, and combines that with this philosophy that investing in talented analysts is the key to long-term success. He is also a staunch advocate of listening to the consumer and is committed to helping organizations unlock the value of web data. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences in the U.S. and Europe, such as eMetrics, Ad-Tech, iCitizen, and SES. You can find Avinash’s web analytics blog, Occam’s Razor, at www.kaushik.net/avinash.

Note: This post was sponsored by Search Engine Strategies San Jose. As such, it’s important to note that the opinions expressed in the preceding interview were not those of the organizers, Incisive Interactive Marketing.

Share and Enjoy: