Into the sea of data with the tag manager
"Tag management systems require a good amount of know-how"
Dominik Schaetz, Schaetz croA quantum leap was made a little over a year ago with the advent of tag management systems (TMS). Instead of laboriously planting code on each individual page, tracking can now be managed much more easily technically. "Tag management systems allow a great deal of independence from release cycles and IT departments," notes Dominik Schaetz, owner of Schaetz cro, "but they require a good amount of know-how, which in turn must be purchased or built up internally." In general, the possibilities to quantitatively measure the overall impact of marketing measures during the customer journey would rapidly increase. "In the past, simple last-click attribution was often used for measurement - that is, the advertising medium with which the last contact occurred before a purchase in the online store is attributed the sale." Now, he says, the role of each ad or channel during the customer journey can be properly measured, allowing budgets to be used more efficiently.TMS as a catalystLukas Oldenburg, Senior Consultant for Digital Analytics at Unic, also confirms that the development is moving in the direction of TMS: "This makes it possible for the customer or the analytics service provider to make adjustments to the tracking on the website quickly and easily without having to wait for the next release in a few months. This also saves implementation effort in the always overburdened developer team. A TMS is the catalyst for centrally controlled, standardized, dynamic online marketing." At Unic, there is no new analytics implementation without a TMS.
"A TMS is the catalyst for centrally controlled, standardized, dynamic online marketing"
Lukas Oldenburg, UnicThe analytics specialists identify another trend in the sea of big data. Sven Graehl, Managing Director of Econda, says: "Webshop and portal operators are confronted with processing huge amounts of data in a meaningful way. Here, the goal is to understand this data and make it usable." The company's in-house software Econda Suites supports customers in linking huge amounts of data and making it usable in other sources, he said. "This is the only way to ensure that added value is generated from the multitude of data," says Graehl. "The opportunities that Big Data opens up seem gigantic," Dominik Schaetz also says. However, he adds, only very few successful use cases are known in Switzerland. The field is only beginning to develop and define itself. "We are facing major challenges regarding the protection of privacy and the aggregation of sufficiently large amounts of data.The challenge of data protection"Websites and stores will have to do more to meet the need for inspiration and a personal shopping experience," says Marcel Semmler, Marketing Manager at Etracker, citing another trend. "It's no longer enough to just offer a good assortment with clear navigation and an intelligent search function. It's a matter of addressing every user and every visitor group according to their needs and interests." The key to this is individual user profiles, which must be generated and used in accordance with data protection regulations and in the interests of customers and visitors.
"Web store and portal operators are faced with making sense of huge data."
Sven Graehl, Econda"Web analytics is a hitherto little-connected discipline that is mostly still maintained and prepared in the office of the data analyst or else web analyst," notes Ralf Haberich. He is the Chief Commercial Officer at Webtrekk. However, he says the scenario will change: "Already, there are many companies that are bringing a CDO (Chief Digital Officer) onto the management board, as the importance of data and decision-making based on it takes on a higher profile. The creation of a data-driven corporate culture is a trend that is clearly visible. In addition, I see an increasing need for integrated solutions: a so-called single sign-on solution simplifies the handling of data for the marketing director or eCommerce manager and gives a more comprehensive picture. "When asked what a proper web analysis should look like, Haberich says: "It starts in detail with the creation of the so-called key performance indicators and does not stop at setting up an action-supporting dashboard for the management. In between, it's about assessing the business based on data and incorporating analytics insights into many future decisions." Webtrekk is a high-end digital intelligence provider. This includes web analytics but also other online marketing optimization such as customer journey or testing.Targeted contentSuccessful web analytics must think outside the box of analysis and make the collected data available for purposes other than pure evaluation. Realtime marketing, behavioral targeting and marketing automation are examples of developments that lead to data-driven marketing, says Marcel Semmler. Web analysis is therefore the ideal basis as a data provider. Etracker is now coming up with a Tageting Suite. With the new Targeting Suite, Etracker customers can now also use their web analytics data to address website visitors in a personalized way and offer targeted content and incentives.The goal of web analytics is always to gain knowledge about people's online behavior, says Dominik Schaetz: "Unfortunately, people often forget, perhaps due to the wide range of data available, that it's about people and their behavior and not about numbers. At the beginning of a successful analysis there is always a concrete question and often a hypothesis associated with it. If this question is asked correctly, web analytics can also provide answers that can be the basis for decisions and optimizations." Simply "digging into the numbers" and hoping that something helpful will become visible is unfortunately a common approach that is rarely crowned with success.Schaetz cro uses a variety of measurement solutions, including Google Analytics, Universal Analytics, Etracker, AT Internet, Adobe Analytics, Yandex Metrics, Crazy Egg, Click Tale, Google Tag Manager and Tealium. The tools can be broadly divided into three groups:Tag management systems for managing tracking (Google Tag Manager, Tealium); tools for analyzing behavior on a specific page or form (Crazy Egg, Click Tale); and tools for analyzing visitor behavior and marketing impact (all others).Digging into the numbersUnic also has a wide range of web analytics tools in use: Webtrends, Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics,Tealium, Adobe DTM and Google Tag Manager. Lukas Oldenburg says that a web analysis is successful when it provides the initiator with the information he needs to generate options for optimizing his web presence. Unfortunately, it still happens far too often that the customer doesn't know what to do with all the information he gets from his analytics tool: "Here it is essential to work with the customer to extract the information: Am I achieving my business goals or am I slipping past them? And what is the reason for this? Sven Graehl, on the other hand, says: "Real-time analyses are indispensable for successful work. They make it possible to react quickly and flexibly to changes and trends in the store or on the portal. In this way, emerging problems can be quickly identified and resolved." Econda users could also make use of the Change Monitor feature. "The Change Monitor actively informs in case of relevant changes in the store. This has the advantage that all relevant data is clearly presented and actively displayed, saving the user a massive amount of time in their daily work," says Graehl. "The biggest mistake is not using the existing data. Sometimes the store and portal operators lack the manpower or even the profound knowledge to read the figures correctly, interpret them and finally make them usable."Test hypothesesMarcel Semmler locates the errors here: "Web analytics is still often understood as a pure reporting tool. However, the full potential can only be exploited if the data is systematically used to optimize the website. Here, there is often a lack of established processes, know-how and resources to continuously gain insights from the data, create hypotheses and test them. In contrast, those who make decisions based on data and test results and optimize consistently achieve amazing results and real ROI."
"Few metrics help improve your website goals."
Rolf Haberich, WebtrekkMistakes? Rolf Haberich says: "Making mistakes is part of every new process or system. Every mistake is forgivable, as long as it results in lessons for the future and for optimization. For web analytics, this would certainly be the lack of decision-relevant metrics. Listing metrics is interesting, but very few of these metrics help in improving one's own website goals." Here, he says, it is necessary to redirect such metrics into website goals and into key performance indicators in advance, based on existing business goals. This is an exciting process that has to be conducted top-down. Here, he said, another potential "mistake" emerges: "If the data-driven culture is not driven or supported by management, these digital insights will develop little value in the company."Author: Gregor Waser
