Measure, Rinse, Repeat! Choosing the Right Metrics to Better Understand & Reach Your Audience

#musedata
Measure, Rinse, Repeat!
Choosing the Right Metrics to Better
Understand & Reach Your Audience

#musedata 2
What digital analytics is often about

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“So What?”
Digital analytics is often about:

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What digital analytics is really about:

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Your goal: use data to tell a story
 What was happening.
 What it meant.
 What you did.
 What’s happening now.
forbes.com

There is a systematic, step-by-step process
 Articulate your program’s goals.
 Decide strategies to achieve those
goals.
 Decide tactics to pursue the
strategies.
 Decide what and how to measure
to validate the tactics.
 Benchmark to get a sense of
what’s normal. homedit.com

Articulate specific goals
 Express what you’re trying to
accomplish.
 Make high-level goals more
specific:
 “Increase influence” - too broad.
 “Become the definitive source on
Smithsonian history” - more specific.
 Specificity makes it easier to
identify strategies and tactics.
 Not too many!
It’s a Wonderful Life
Start the conversation! Articulate goals
and next steps on your own; work with
management to finalize.

#musedata#musedata
Determine strategies & tactics
 Strategies – the plans you make to achieve the goals.
 Employing social media is a strategy.
 Tactics – the things you do to advance the strategy.
 Producing a specific type of content is a tactic.
 Individual channels (facebook, twitter) are tactics.
 Per the example:
 Goal: “Become the definitive source on Smithsonian history.”
 Strategy: Increase engagement with history of the Smithsonian content.
 Tactic: Make SI-history content more findable and measureable.
8

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Decide how to measure your tactics
 Choose measurements to learn if
your tactics are succeeding.
 Choose a few measurements.
 Trend them over time.
 Per the example:
 Strategy: increase engagement with SI
history website content.
 Tactic: make website history content more
findable / measureable.
 Make a “history-content” segment and
measure for engagement:
 Visit frequency
 Visit depth
 Bounce rate
History-related
visits
All visits
“Deep history visits” were 94% higher!

#musedata
Decide how to measure your tactics (cont’d)
 Acquisition-related goals
 Sessions
 Users
 Campaigns
 New vs Returning
 Entrances
 Referrals
 Engagement-related goals
 Session frequency
 Page depth
 Time on site
 Bounce rate
 Events
 Content-related goals
 Pageviews
 Page depth
 Bounce rate
 Issue-related goals
 Event-based conversions (exits from on-site
search results, etc.)
 Contact form submissions
 Funnel abandonment
 Design-related goals
 Users / Events flow
 Page depth
 Time on site
 Funnel abandonment
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 The measurements you choose depends on your goals:

#musedata
Examples!
 Measureable Goal: Increase
social media followers in the 5 key
regions by 20%
 Tactic: Facebook and Twitter Ads
targeted to the five regions
 Measurement: Twitter and
Facebook followers by geography
 Measureable Goal: Increase
website sessions and engagement from 5
key regions by 20%
 Tactic: Google AdWords targeted to
the five regions
 Measurement: sessions,
pageviews, page depth, time on site
11
 Broad goal
 Raise national visibility, especially in five key regions
 Strategy
 Digital advertising in the five key regions

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"I got 20 retweets! Wait – is that good?"
 You can’t set targets w/o benchmarks.
 You need at least six months of data.
 Data is seasonal.
 Depends on how much traffic your site gets.
 Pull data regularly!
 Some APIs limit 3rd party tools to 28 days of data.
 Balance targets with factors beyond your
control:
 Are improvements you’re seeking difficult to achieve?
 How much resources will you have to implement tactics?
news.com.au

#musedata 13
CBS News
Choosing social media metrics

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“Quantity of Stuff” metrics
 No actionable data
 Establish scope / context
 Measure growth / acquisition
 Number of Followers
• FB
• TW
• Instagram
• Pinterest
 Number of ‘Likes’
• FB Pages
• FB Content
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• FB post views
http://janicesyearinsunderland.blogspot.com

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“Quantity-Plus” metrics
 Still about quantity, but more meaningful.
 Show the type of content your audience responds to.
 Basic
 Reach (FB)
 Post-Clicks (FB)
 Website visits referred by social properties
 Better - “mini-conversions”
 Retweets (TW)
 Favorites (TW)
 Comments (FB)
 Shares (FB)
http://socialmediatoday.com

#musedata
A classic blog post…
 Avinash Kaushik’s Best Social Media Metrics
 Conversation Rate
 # of Audience Comments (or Replies) Per Post
 Amplification Rate
 # of Retweets Per Tweet
 # of Shares Per Post
 # of “Share Clicks” Per Post (or Video)
 Applause Rate
 # of Favorite Clicks Per Post (TW)
 # of Likes Per Post (FB)
 # of #1s Per Post (Goog+)
 # of +1s and Likes Per Post (or video) (Blog / YouTube)
 Economic Value
 Primarily intended for revenue-driven businesses
 Sum of Short and Long Term Revenue and Cost Savings
 Goal is to identify macro and micro conversions and then compute economic value.
 A manual spreadsheet is available, here, or…
Kaushik’s blog Occam's
Razor is a great resource
for making web analytics
fun and understandable.

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Trendable social metrics – YAY!
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 TrueSocialMetrics offers an automated solution.
 http://www.truesocialmetrics.com/
 Free / $30 per month / $100 per month / $350/month plans

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Here is the bottom line!
 Your measurements validate your
tactics (or not).
 On a campaign by campaign
basis, you can use “quantity-plus”
metrics to tell your story.
 “Here was the goal. We did this.
That happened. It was the best
EVER!
 But to improve your overall
program, you need more refined,
trendable metrics.
NY Daily News

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LifewithDogs.tv
Choosing website metrics

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Dimensions and Metrics
 Dimensions describe the data, or an
attribute of the user (“what”):
 Traffic source
 City
 Page
 Metrics measure the data (“how
many,” “how long”):
 Sessions
 Bounce rate
 Time on page
 Lunametrics
 Optimizesmart
 Dimensions & Metrics Explorer (Google)
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Optimizesmart
Dimensions Metrics
GA’s familiar
color-coding
helps you
keep track of
Dimensions
and Metrics.

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The inevitability of “Quantity of Stuff”
 No actionable data
 Sessions (previously Visits)
 Users (previously Visitors)
 Pages (a.k.a. Pageviews)
 Establish scope / context.
 Measure growth / acquisition.
 You can’t improve your site by measuring these.
 Reporting them out of context can be misleading.
“All data in aggregate is crap.”
-- Avinash Kaushik

#musedata 22
Engagement metrics are more meaningful
 “Quantity-Plus” for websites.
 Proxies for user engagement.
 Under Audience >> Behavior
 Frequency & Recency
 Page Depth (“Engagement”)
 “New vs. Returning” (e-nor post)
 Use with segments:
 Traffic from search engines
 Traffic from mobile devices
 Do not rely on Session Duration or Avg. Time on
Page in a vacuum.
 Due to technical issues

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Segmentation: GA’s most powerful feature?
 Analyze subsets of traffic.
 Search engine visits
 Social media visits
 Demographics
 Import expert-made segments from the
Solutions Gallery!
 Google Blog
 Kissmetrics Overview
 Examples (Cutroni)
 Examples (Kaushik)
Segments are accessed
by clicking “Add
Segment”. “Organic
Traffic” is shown.
All Users
Organic (Search
Engine) Traffic

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Deeper understanding with Conversion Goals
 A conversion is any measureable behavior with an
implicitly (or explicitly) higher value.
 Conversion rates are more informative than just counting.
 They enable you to judge and compare metrics
regardless of how much traffic a site gets.
 Typical conversion goals:
 Destination (ex: thanks.html)
 Duration (ex: 5 minutes or more)
 Pages/Screens per session (ex: 3 pages)
 Event (download PDF, play video)
 REQUIRES CODE
Studying conversion rates
levels the playing field,
versus merely counting!

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‘Event Tracking’ is super-important
 More sophisticated Goals typically involve creating “Events”:
 External links
 Sign-ups, form submissions
 Downloads
 Many types of conversion goals
 To use Events:
 Define and categorize events.
 Configure and add the javascript code, usually right in the link (not always).
 Many social-share widgets automatically add Events.
 Google Analytics Event Organizer (Smithsonian’s Michelle Herman)
 The Complete Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide Plus 10 Amazing Examples (old
code, good examples)
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Universal Analytics means all new code
 We are (still…) in phase three of a four-phased,
multi-year rollout.
 All GA accounts have been migrated to Universal,
but many website pages still carry the old code.
 Phase 4: legacy code will be deprecated (date TBD
– “in the near future”).
 “Data received from deprecated libraries will... be
processed for a minimum of two years…”
 You should upgrade your code SOON!
 You also need to upgrade custom code, e.g.,
events, virtual pageviews, etc.
 Universal Analytics Upgrade Center Vampyre Fangs

Out with the old, in with the new!
 What code are you using?
 It’s easy to tell!
 If your site is newer than mid-
2014, you have the new code.
 If your site is older, do View
Source.
 Search for:
 gaq  old code
 ga.js  old code
 analytics.js  new code
Scrap for Joy

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Here is the (website) bottom line!
 Your measurements validate your
tactics (or not).
 To work the process and improve your
site, you need meaningful data:
 Engagement Metrics
 Segments
 Goal Completion / Conversion rates
 A-B or MAB (multi-armed bandit) tests
 Qualitative data (surveys)
 If your goal is purely audience
acquisition, you can use “quantity-of-
stuff” metrics to tell your story.
NY Daily News

Google’s “Analytics Academy”
 Free video-based courses
 Digital Analytics Fundamentals
 Google Analytics Platform
Principles
 Ecommerce Analytics: From
Data to Decisions
 Mobile App Analytics
Fundamentals
 Google Tag Manager
Fundamentals
analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com

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Resources
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 Google Analytics Academy
 Google Analytics Blog
 Absolute Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics (Moz)
 Avinash Kaushik’s “Occam’s Razor”
 Analytics Talk (Justin Cutroni)
 Cardinal Path Training
 Kissmetrics
 Lunametrics blog
 Lunametrics Training
 Universal Analytics Upgrade Guide
 Discover the Google Analytics Platform (advanced tools)

#musedata
Social Media Metrics Reporting Framework
Sarah Banks
Online Engagement Coordinator

#musedata
Plan for Reporting – Set Your Goals!
Tie social media reporting
to museum goals
Gather meaningful,
actionable data
Create a manageable and
flexible process

#musedata
Creating the Framework: Step 1
Align Goals and Priorities, Then Select Metrics
Smithsonian Strategic Priority – Revitalizing education
Air and Space Museum Goal – Enhancing outreach efforts
Social Media Goal – Increase engagement with online communities
Metrics – Engagement rate, comments

#musedata
Decide on Frequency of
Data Collection:
How often can you collect AND
analyze data?
How do those reports relate to
each other?

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Set up Your Templates:
Think about who will read your
reports
Position elements in priority order

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Test and Refine:
Expect bumps in the road as you
collect and analyze data.
Adjust as needed!

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More Tips!
Start small and build – do what you can do consistently
Research tools to help you simplify data collection
Focus on a balanced blend of pictures, storytelling, and
data
Be vocal about sharing your reports

#musedata
Case Study: Reporting on #BoldlyGo50

#musedata
Opportunities and Challenges
Opportunities:
 Highlight the Museum’s
connection to Star Trek
 Celebrate the 50th anniversary of
the Original Series
Challenges:
 We were one of many places
celebrating
 Nearly all of our social media
following is not local

#musedata
Consider Your Audience
Must tell a complete story using a mix of data, photos,
anecdotes, and benchmarks
Audiences for your reports can be varied and have
different needs (senior leadership vs. data hounds)

#musedata
Identify Goals
Foster connections with enthusiastic
Star Trek fans – whether onsite or
online
Highlight the Museum’s connection
to Star Trek and remind people that
the model is back on display
Promote content we created in
honor of the 50th

#musedata
Writing strong goals
 No un-measurable or boring goals!
• Start an Instagram account = tactic not goal
• Make the Museum look cool = hard to measure
 Goals = a change you want to make with your audience around a
program, project, etc. If you can’t measure it or it’s not worth
doing, rewrite it!

#musedata
Goals:
Foster connections with enthusiastic
Star Trek fans – whether onsite or
online
Highlight the Museum’s connection
to Star Trek and remind people that
the model is back on display
Promote content we created in honor
of the 50th
Strategies:
Invite people to share how Star Trek
influenced their lives and/or careers
Share the story of our restoration of
the studio model
Give a behind-the-scenes look at the
making of our highlights tour in
Klingon
Selecting Strategies

#musedata
Selecting Tactics
Strategies:
Invite people to share how Star Trek
influenced their lives and/or careers
Share the story of our restoration of
the studio model
Give a behind-the-scenes look at the
making of our highlights tour in
Klingon
Tactics:
Create a “Share Your Story”
opportunity on our website & promote
via social media
Host an InstaMeet the morning of the
anniversary for local Instagrammers
with curator as a speaker
Write blog post and do a video with
the creator of the Klingon language
44

#musedata
Strategies vs. Tactics
Strategies are more broad and can
be supported by several tactics
Tactics are more specific and get
down to the platform level
45

#musedata
Which Metrics to Report?
EXAMPLE: Foster connections with enthusiastic Star Trek fans –
whether onsite or online
Strategy: Invite people to share how Star Trek influenced their lives and/or
careers
Tactic: Create a “Share Your Story” opportunity on our website & promote via
social media
Metrics: Number of stories collected via website, quality of stories
46

#musedata
Gathering Your Report Ingredients
Get tools in place
Hashtag tracking tools
Google campaign builder & bit.ly
Storify
Folder for screenshots
Set your benchmarks
What does “average” look like?
Get stats from peer institutions
Compare to past campaigns
47

#musedata
Metrics for Native Apps

#musedata
What’s Possible?
As with websites, Google Analytics is a powerful tool to
help you know if you’re meeting your goals.
Basic GA only give you so much. Event-based analytics
allow for more nuanced data about usage.
You have to ask your developer to add it in. Can’t be
added later unless you do an app update.

#musedata
The Process
Write down your goals for the app and think about the concerns/questions that
are arising during development.
Use the app to see where users take action – make a decision, click something,
etc.
Label each point of action, as well as things with duration. Those are your
event-based metrics.
Think ahead and name each event with “appname_label” in a way that will
make sense to someone who doesn’t know your system.
Put all labels in a spreadsheet and give to developer.

#musedata
Pilot Pals - Lots of Choices to Make!
Personalization
Select games
Select aircraft within games
Try again
Play again or return to main menu
Reset personalization
Mute or unmute sound
Access parents section and its tabs

#musedata
Pilot Pals – What’s Measurable with GA

#musedata
Thanks! Any Questions?
My Contact Info:
Sarah Banks
bankss@si.edu
@sbanks20

#musedata 54
Coffee Break – 30 Minutes

Activity #1
Help us fix our jumbled up report. Sort the
jumbled pieces of the report into categories
(goals, metrics, etc.) and arrange them
logically.
If you have time, critique the metrics. Do you
think they are meaningful? If not, write a new
one you think would be better.

AMBUSH!
You’re on the elevator at BLAM and the museum director jumps on.
She’s read your report and has a few questions. No escape! How
might you answer her?
a) Which of these metrics is most and least? meaningful?
b) I saw 3 negative comments on Facebook. And our number of
Twitter followers didn’t go up very much. Are you sure the
campaign was successful?
c) So did we “go viral” yet?

Effie Kapsalis
Head of Web, New Media, & Outreach
Smithsonian Institution Archives
#MWmetrics
@digitaleffie

Target Audiences
 Researchers (interns, fellows, academic researchers)
 Serious online researchers (Wikipedians, Collections mystery solvers
on Flickr Commons etc)
 General public enthusiasts (Lifelong Learners, DIYer looking for
information and help)
 Smithsonian record creators
@digitaleffie

Broad Organizational Mission
“The Archives’ mission is to document the goals and activities of the
whole Smithsonian in its pursuit of increasing and diffusing knowledge,
and exciting learning in everyone. The Archives is also responsible for
ensuring institutional accountability, and for enhancing access to the rich
and diverse resources in its care. ”
@digitaleffie

Step 1: Identify Goals
Credit: Avinash Kaushik, “Digital Marketing and Measurement Model,” http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-
measurement-model/
@digitaleffie

Step 2: Identify Strategies/Tactics
measurement-model/
@digitaleffie

Step 3: Identify Key Performance
Indicators (KPI)
measurement-model/
@digitaleffie

Strategy: Increase Representation of Archives’ Collections on
Popular Research Websites
@digitaleffie

Home site vs. Flickr Commons vs.
Wikipedia
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
Views on SIA Website Views on Flickr Commons Views on Wikipedia
@digitaleffie

Wikipedia Page Views: BaGLAMa
GLAM/Wikipedia Tools - https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Resources/Tools@digitaleffie

Wikipedia Page Views: BaGLAMa
@digitaleffie

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Outcomes
@digitaleffie

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Outcomes
http://stats.grok.se/@digitaleffie

Strategy: Increase Share & Quality of Conversation around SIA
Collections & Resources
@digitaleffie

Strategy: Increase Share & Quality of Conversation
around SIA Collections & Resources (Twitter)
@digitaleffie

Improve Collections Findability
@digitaleffie

Foresee Open Ended: Did not find looking for
• Collections (30)
• Of 30 responses, only 4 were searching for items we DO
have.
• “list of architectural styles of the Smithsonian buildings”
• “Mary Henry's complete diary”
• “Electronic version of the Smithsonian Annual Report 1895.”
• “http:// siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/historicpicturessmithsonian but got AFRICAN MUSEUM”
• Photos/Digitized Collections (3)
• In general, people were looking for more.
@digitaleffie

Foresee Open Ended: What ways can we improve
search?
 Want “Google” results
 Many of the titles are unclear about what they contain
 I wish audio were available
 Need greater clarity on what can be accessed electronically.
 Access to records, pictures
 Who to contact for help, live chat
@digitaleffie

A Web-Refresh We Go!
@digitaleffie

Mobile Explosion!
Device Percent Change, 2014-2016
Desktop 4.64%
Mobile 25.93%
Tablet 0.19%
@digitaleffie

Interests, Desktop vs. Mobile Traffic
@digitaleffie
Desktop Visitors Interests Mobile Visitors Interests
1. Collections 1. History
2. Blog 2. Blog
3. History 3. Services
4. Services 4. Collections
5. Search 5. Search

Mobile Acquisition
@digitaleffie

Mobile Interests
@digitaleffie
Page Source
History of Smithsonian Castle Google Organic Search
How do I preserve my newspaper? Google Organic Search
Some Archival Career Advice Google Organic Search
How do I deal with a photo stuck to glass? Google Organic Search
How do I deal with little white bugs in my
papers?
Google Organic Search
Blog: Earliest photo of the Castle Facebook
James Smithson Webpage Google Organic Search

Keep Learning
 Know your bone (Colleen Dilenschneider) - http://colleendilen.com/
 Beth Kanter – How Connected Non-Profits Leverage Networks & Data
for Social Change- http://www.bethkanter.org/
 Avinash Kaushik - http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
@digitaleffie

#musedata 86
Food for thought (to go)!
Okra: 1 new way you’ll
communicate metrics to
colleagues or partners
Shrimp: 1 way you’ll
improve & jazz up reports
Roux: 1 way in which
you will try to implement
this metrics model
Sausage: 1 tool
you’ll give a try
Adolfo's
 Discuss today’s workshop “takeaways”: What are your NOLA #musedata ingredients?

#musedata
Thanks!
87
 @SBanks20
 @digitaleffie
 @balpert

Measure, Rinse, Repeat! Choosing the Right Metrics to Better Understand & Reach Your Audience

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