Driving Organizational Action: Part 2 – Getting Comfortable with Segmentation

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The first thing I always tell a client looking for insight on their web traffic is to focus on your business goals.

This is especially hard to do when analytics applications spit tons of data out, in a variety of reports with names that sound very important. Let me be blunt about this: the truth is that data will not matter unless it can help you move the needle for your business. In digital analytics this means metrics AND traffic need to be aligned with business goals in order to drive organizational action. To get there, you need to start segmenting.

What is Segmentation

Avinash Kaushik, a renowned digital analytics expert, simply defines segmentation as a group of rows from one or more dimensions (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-segments-three-category-recommendations/, Kaushik).

To add more to this definition, segmentation is the method of creating a specific subsection of your traffic based on any number of data points that illustrate how well your business goals are being met. The last part is the most important "illustrate how well your business goals are being met". Again, the key is always to keep your business goals central to of any activity you do. What you are trying to do in segmentation is to figure out which groups of traffic are converting more, but why on earth should this matter to you?

Why Segmentation Matters and How I Can Start

Simply put, segmentation is critical in figuring out where your greatest return on investment may lie within your traffic. Again, carefully defining what your business goals for your website are will give you a clear place to start with segmentation. From Kaushik's blog post (which I also encourage you to read), the best way to convert your goals into segments is to focus on 3 categories:

1. Acquisition - The activity you undertake to attract people to your site

2. Behavior - The activity people are undertaking on your site

3. Outcomes - The activities that add value to you

Let's put this in the example of a retail store that sells tennis rackets.

1. Acquisition - paid search, banner ads on ESPN, SEO

2. Behavior - racket finder tool/app, product video reviews

3. Outcomes - purchase, account creations, email sign-ups

Our business goals are to drive revenue through racket sales, retain customers and to look for ways to maximize our marketing budget (a clever way to say "save money"). Segmentation can certainly help you. Here's a list of potential segments that align with each of the different categories mentioned above:

• Bing Paid search traffic by iPhone
• Referring sites traffic by blogs that lead to account creations
• People using racket finder app on an Android then shop on the site
• Tablet users watching videos
• Loyal users (users who has visited 11 or more times in a month) by specific entry page

These are just a few examples of segments you can create, as you can see I love the mobile segments, but let's get to the details of how to create them using IBM Digital Analytics.

How can I Create Segments in IBM Digital Analytics?

Story: Let's say we see that one of the biggest referring sites for traffic and sales is coming from evernote, how do I find out more?

Part 1: Go to Explore>Manage>Segments

Part 2: Name Segment and Category

• Create new categories of segments based on your business goal categories. You have the ability to keep the segments in these categories, or continue to make new ones

• Segment name is where you create the names of your segment

• Choose between

  • Same session - include all sessions that match the specified criteria during the reporting time range

  • Cross-session - include all sessions from visitors during the reporting time range that match the specified criteria between the selected dates

• Select your criteria based on basic IBM Digital Analytics criteria types. You can use logical operators to add more criteria to your segment

• You can also utilize previously created segments to add to your new segment

Here's what it looks like:

Part 3: Use Segment in Reporting

• Build a new report and select Segments

• Select category, then drag and drop the segment to the right

• Continue the rest of your report

Conclusions

Although the process may change in our new UI (don't worry, we'll show you how to create them), making segments is easy. Stating your business goals is also easy. The tough part sometimes is making sure your segments align with those goals and optimizing at a right clip. The IBM Digital Analytics Services team can help you better align your business goals with your digital analytics data. Please contact us if you need information about how we can help you move the needle for your business.

Happy Tracking,

Anand

-IBM Digital Analytics Team

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