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Originally posted at theGOOD

Analytics Anyone?

Analytics. The word doesn’t show up in any spell checker, and dictionary.com barely even knows what it means. Then why does every client want it? Better question : why does every client buy them only to not use them? Website Analytics is akin to life insurance and here’s why…

Life Insurance - Something you buy but never use

Every client wants the basic information that analytics provides. They want to know who’s coming, from where, and how long they stayed. All great information for sure, but merely the tip of the data heap. What needs to be examined here is a deeper understanding of interactive metrics. As I said, typically sites are measured in broad wide swath terms such as traffic, or time spent on site. These two numbers are often deemed enough information to base a site success or failure determination. This is a mistake. The determining figures are those metrics that directly relate to a sites goal, such as quality of traffic and the interactions that take place once engaged in the experience. Let’s consider the following scenario: Two sites successes are determined solely in terms of time spent on the site. One is an e-card site and the other is a social media network. The e-card site clocks in averaging :45 seconds per visit, and the social media network averages 3:00 per visit. It is determined that the social media network is clearly a more effective site. This argument would be incorrect because it is incomplete. What needs to be factored into examination are the goals of the two sites. The e-card goal is to have someone watch a short 20 second video, customize it and send it to a friend. Therefore, the appropriate metric to keep an eye on would be those statistics related to it’s goal. ie : How many people sent out an e-card? How many people who received an e-card came back to watch it? More plenary: Of the traffic coming to the e-card site: which referring site or campaign drove the most e-cards sent. The amount of time spent on the site is of course going to be low due to the goal of the site. By contrast, the social media network has a high length per visit because users are there filling out blogs, forums, and other time intensive applications. The metric goals should be tailored to these interactions. Therefore, using length of visit is arbitrary and wholly dependent on site content and goal. Furthermore, the raw amount of traffic is not an indicator of a successful site, instead it should be used to measure the success of a media buy, banner buy, virility of the site or advertising campaign promoting the site. This metric should then be broken down into quality of said traffic by measuring in detail said traffics interactions within the site. ie: What did users actually do after they landed there.

“it’s not in the budget”

Great, so we’ve determined that clients should be looking at much more data than they are. However, this is only half the battle, the remaining is actually doing something with that data. The fact is : no clients use analytics data for campaign improvement (wide sweeping generalization used despite the fact I called it a fact. But, its close). What is the reason for this? Why do clients purchase analytics packages, that we as interactive studios sell, only to never put the statistical data to use? The answer is simple : “it’s not in the budget”.

Clients budget money for an interactive campaign from concept to launch. The End. There is no budget set aside for improvements once the campaign is live. The interactive shop works feverishly to concept a grandiose idea, they pitch it, they sell it, they build it and bam! both client and agency claim the site as a major success. Portfolios are padded, corporate managers satiated and all is good. This is extremely bizarre to me. Like, idiotically bizarre. Nobody bothers to check if the campaign actually worked. Furthermore, if they are an advanced client they may check. But, if bad news is found it is a moot point for there is no budget for improvement.

An Opportunity

So, how do we as interactive agency/shop/think tanks solve this? The answer is akin to a sea change in interactive on the whole. It requires placing just as much importance on the post launch part of a campaign as it does the pre. It involves staying invested mentally and financially in a campaign after you’ve built it. It involves both client and agency to set aside ego and admit when a campaign went wrong. To embrace the wrongness as a tool for improvement. It involves educating clients on this topic. It may even be impossible.

There is an opportunity here for our industry. I do believe an entire company could be sustained in such an endeavor. Perhaps there are entire companies being sustained by this very idea. I wouldn’t know as I write these posts blindly without any research whatsoever. However, if you are out there, why haven’t we seen you in our analytics data?

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Last night I presented “Using Interfaces Without Interfaces” at Show and Tell Pdx. I showed off some Flash motion detection, Flash color detection and even demo’d a little voice speech recognition in Flash. Some of you asked for more info on how last one was accomplished. I’ll be posting more on this later.

Thank you to Substance for hosting, and thanks for all that attended and enjoyed the show. I had a lot of you come up to me and say that my work has insipred you to experiment more. Just wanted to say, that kicks ass.

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So, you’ve got a client that wants to manage their website content. They want to be able to update every field on their Flash website, er I mean “experience”. But there’s a catch… they FEAR technology and complex interfaces. They feel that Wordpress is too complex, never mind a proprietary custom build CMS.

What’s a developer to do?

THIS:

1. Create a Google Docs Spreadsheet - For this example I’m using row 1 to hold the field vars.

2. Set it to publish as a webpage - Be sure to select CSV format. Be sure to set it to re-publish when any editing occurs.

3. Set up Yahoo Pipes to fetch the CSV data - Set appropriate data mapping, renaming and use Regex to ensure data is proper.

4. Publish Pipe as your favorite data feed - For this example I chose JSON.

5. Load JSON into your Flash app. BOOM!

Bladow, your client can now go on doing what they’ve always done — edit an excel doc ( Google Doc ). They make changes there, it changes on their fancy experiential website.

Genius.

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Today is my last day at North. I’ve decided to leave my current position as Interactive Director to start my own business. The new business, an Interactive think tank with a focus on the experimental, is being developed and formed by myself and two other partners. In one short month we’ve gone from barely knowing each other to formally signing papers, creating our brand identity, designing our website, organizing business processes, locating and acquiring office space as well as the acquisition of new business. In short, it appears that we know how to get shit done. Instead of a long winded paragraph about our plans I’ve decided to break it down into some handy faqs. I’ll certainly be posting more as more developments occur, and as I can get some free time away from the madness that is the initial steps of creating a business. I’d like to thank the talented folks at North for the opportunities they afforded me, and moving me to the amazing city that Portland is. I wish them the best of luck and hope to work together in the future on a project basis.

Why would you start a new business with people I barley know, are you insane?
I’ve started a business before with close friends. I feel that a business can succeed or fail in either scenario. Each has it’s advantages and it’s disadvantages. Previous personal baggage vs. not knowing how to properly convey opinion to complete strangers. Therefore, the decision to dive into a business with strangers seems as logical to me as the alternative. That said, I indeed just may be insane. However, I seem to have found partners who fit the same diagnosis.

Where is your new space?
We are going to be located on the first floor of this building in the Pearl. Coming from Boston, where I lived and worked downtown, I’m excited to get back to a bit of my roots and the industrial feel of the location.

What is the name of your new venture?
We shall be called “The Good”.

What do you mean by experimental?
Interactive concepts that may not currently be widespread that we see as ubiquitous in the future. Some of my experiments here lean in that direction. We will also be focused on more ‘traditional’ interactive production such as mini sites, content management systems, development, design, online branding, social media and applications. Finally, time given, we’ll be creating our own software and applications which we hope to release to the public.

What new business have you closed?
These shall be revealed using traditional communications means. Meaning, we’ll be showing off the work on our site and across the many social media outlets we pepper.

What’s your url, let’s see the new site!
We have not completely settled on a domain and are in negotiations for one possibility that has been previously taken by a third party. The website has been partially designed but not developed. The Good is coming soon.

Who are these other two partners?
Jon MacDonald and partnerX*. Like myself, both have extensive experience and knowledge in the interactive domain. Both are also seemingly clean upstanding earthlings.

Why are you calling yourself a think tank?
We’ve gone with think tank in a response to industry changes. We feel it’s not ‘alright’ to call ourselves just a development shop, or just an agency, anymore. The industry has grown up a bit and people should take notice. People are taking notice. Interactive projects require more than just production. They require strategy, brand insight, technology chops blended with creative thinking. To use a political reference, they require someone to guide policy. We feel we are best suited to be the drivers of interactive policy.

More FAQ’s will be added here as I see fit. Thanks for reading!

*parnterX identity protected until he is free from his current position.

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A recent post by famed Flasher Paul Ortchanian, reflektions miniml, announced that he’s leaving Flash for Javascript. After his rant at Flash Forward last year on AS3, I’m not surprised. Though many in the industry will agree that Javascript is making some leap and bound advances lately, one also must agree Paul has made a huge blanket statement regarding Flash. His choice to totally abandon Flash for Javascript and Ajax just doesn’t make sense. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and the proper technology should be chosen based on project needs.

I commented on his post, but he moderates comments before allowing them to be published. In lieu of this I thought I’d post my comment here as a blog post.

your palm pre link is broken (404). as is, in my opinion, your synopsis. good developers choose the right technology for the job, based on project goals. saying Javascript and AJAX is the appropriate choice for all digital-ad campaigns is a weird choice and a blanket statement. Javascript and AJAX may be the appropriate choice some of the time, as Flash may be some of the time. and sometimes a combination may be appropriate.

your post makes it seem like the two technologies must be mutually exclusive. an odd view, in my opinion.