@ikongsgf's analytics pad

I recently had an opportunity to take a great class on agile software development. One of the lessons was to make sure your product or service has a good mix of

- mandatory (table stakes)
- linear (the more the better)
- exciter/delighter

features. For example a bed in a hotel room is mandatory. The Westin “Heavenly Bed” is an exciter/delighter. The categorizing method we were taught breaks down somewhat, however,  asking you to categorize features into the above mutually exclusive categories. In contrast to this arbitrary mutual exclusivity some companies like Westin and Apple have instead tried to turn mandatory features themselves (like beds and voicemail) into exciters/delighters.  Apple put a nice twist on the seemingly mundane with Visual Voicemail in the original iPhone. Mandatories turned into exciters/delighters contributed to making the product a hit in a brutally commoditized category. Most products and services are commoditized or rapidly commoditizing. 100% mandatory would equal a commodity almost by definition, but what if you tried to make some of the mandatories themselves exciters/delighters? What twist would you put on the mundane to make your product or service stand out? 

Incredibly awesome product marketing director needed http://idek.net/1kTI job 10001191

I’ve been wondering what you would call more advanced segmentation if web analytics products and even “analysts” refer to combinations of filters as “advanced segmentation”. I guess “algorithmic segmentation” might be a good term to convey that there is some, gasp, math involved. Plus, I like the idea of algorithmic trading from the investing world.

From what I can tell reading the recent tweets and blogs, many (but not all) mainstream web analysts are finally starting to learn about RFM (recency frequency monetary) despite decades of usage in catalogs and even a decade of posts from purely web analysts who’ve written about it already. RFM certainly seems like a fine start. It’s intuitive, easy to explain, you do not have to limit it to R, F, and M, and you can use business judgment to weight each factor. However, it’s not really a data-driven approach to segmentation as far as customer analytics go.

It’s like the old saying about OLAP-based vs. data mining based approaches to analyzing data:

- what data match this pattern?  vs. what pattern can be revealed from this data?

Rather than getting bogged down in a micro-level discussion/decision about what manual judgment factor constitutes something like “engagement” - such as a mouse scroll - that may or may not be a significant independent variable in predicting a more useful metric such as profit or repeat purchase or response rate, it seems much more interesting to learn about more data-driven “algorithmic” techniques such as cluster analysis or decision trees. Just a quick note. More later…

Here is my first guest blog post on the sascom voices blog: All about AnalyticsCamp - an interview with AnalyticsCamp’s main organizer, Nathan Gilliatt. Thanks to editor Alison Bolen for the guest post opportunity.

The Analysis Exchange looks like another great project from Web Analytics Demystified. I’ve just signed up to be a mentor. Here is what I wrote in my profile:

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About Ikong F

Avid interest in all marketing analytics. Work for analytics firm SAS in product management (line mgmt role) so I have a marketer’s/biz perspective plus broad/deep understanding of analytics/decision support. Co-organizer, @AnalyticsCamp and local WAW.

Ikong F’s Experience in Web Analytics

I have 5-6 years experience in web analytics+development, an MBA in customer+product mgmt(CRM), experience in data mining using SAS, and broad exposure to use of business analytics in all sectors. So no job is too big or too small! Happy to help YOU!!!

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I am excited to help some organizations and new analysts make better use of analytics so if you’re looking for some “pro bono” help in this area, please get in touch!

AnalyticsCamp is an unconference themed around “bridging analytics silos” happening on Feb 6, 2010 at UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

See the wiki for more information:

http://analyticscamp.wikidot.com/

Register here:

http://analyticscampnc.eventbrite.com/

Update: AnalyticsCamp is SOLD OUT!!! Wow!

Attendees, post more session proposals at: http://analyticscamp.wikidot.com/proposals (can be as simple as “I want to talk about x - anyone else?”)

Just attended Internet Summit 2009, a one-day conference held in Raleigh, NC this year and covering various aspects around the “Internet” theme, mostly in marketing areas: online advertising, email marketing, social media, video, etc.

A few quick notes from a couple of the panels - Analytics and E-commerce:

First off, mentions of “analytics” and the book Competing on Analytics came up in almost every panel. Mindshare of at least the term analytics has clearly taken off, as reflected in this Google Trends chart showing both search volume and news volume:

Analytics panel:

So naturally one of the panels I was excited to attend was the Analytics Panel. I knew one of the panelists - Director of Analytics at McClatchy - and several other SAS folks who were in attendance know the moderator Michael Rappa (director of the MS program in Analytics at NCSU) so made it more interesting to attend.

The room was packed - every seat was full and every space for standing was also taken. People are clearly interested in analytics. Some of the advice from McClatchy’s Director of Analytics and others:

- start with analytics in mind from the beginning of an initiative - what do you want to measure?

- how to get execs interested? be sure there are dollar signs in a spreadsheet - it’s that simple

- for newspapers they focus on loyalty among local consumers - traffic from out of town is seen as coming in only once for a particular story

- do not focus too much on one KPI and forget about the others

- according to Competing on Analytics, only 3% of firms are analytical competitors: I’d say the distribution looks approximately like the below left-skewed curve where firms like Netflix and Amazon (see notes from e-commerce panel) below are in the “long tail” on the right and almost every other organization is fairly immature:

- Brooks Bell (@brooksbell) declares the big trend of 2010 “test test test”

- there is a perceived shortage of good analysts. Professor Rappa pointed out he is turning out 40 MS in Analytics graduates a year, but when asked to compare that with business majors, he estimated NCSU graduates 1000’s of business majors. Joint MBA/MS anyone?

- data quality is seen as critical but as Norm Cloutier from McClatchy pointed out, the data for the web is very clean, compared to, say, a survey from a panel, a point past WAA-president Richard Foley (@richardfoley) has made several times before to various people such as Jim Novo.

Overall fairly basic but good advice. A few people mentioned they’d like to get more in depth and thought someone from SAS should speak. It just so happens that Nathan Gilliatt (@gilliatt) is starting an AnalyticsCamp unconference in the Triangle (follow @AnalyticsCamp) for those who’d like to get more into this area and learn from other analysts. There is also Web Analytics Wednesday happening in the Triangle (follow @wawtriangle for announcements) and all over the world.

E-commerce panel:

This panel got more in depth and very interesting. A few highlights:

- Goldman Sachs analyst: big category going forward is Clothing and Accessories. $20-$70 price range, free shipping, easy to try on and return/exchange if necessary. This forecast is based on looking at South Korea, which has had the most broadband (80%) to households, and this category is now the biggest there. Clothing and accessories are generally more profitable than electronics and books. Amazon acquisition of Zappos partially explained by this trend/forecast.

- Goldman analyst also had some interesting explanations on Amazon vs other electronics retailers. Amazon apparently had done a better job sourcing LCD TV’s and was able to grab share by having this supply when demand was taking off. He noted that there is a virtuous cycle (for Amazon) where bricks-and-mortar retailers such as Circuit City closing stores would give those neighborhoods’ consumers more reason to shop online (and likely go to Amazon).

- Following along the theme of the analytics panel, Ricci Wolman (@ricwol of The Body Shop USA says one of the biggest trends for e-commerce in the next year is … Web Analytics. Chatted with her afterwards and invited her team to join us for a future Web Analytics Wednesday. Hopefully we’ll get more e-commerce analysts there (follow @wawtriangle for announcements and please come join us).

There were other great insights but that’s about all I can cover for now. Thanks to the @internet_summit team, speakers and panelists for a great conference! Definitely hope to make another one.

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