Analytics Suite for Data Accuracy and Privacy: Off-the-Shelf or Build Your Own?

Maciej Zawadziński, Piwik PRO

07th of September 2016

An Analytics Suite for Data Accuracy and PrivacyOff-the-Shelf or Build Your Own?

Maciej Zawadziński Technical leader

• AdTech/MarTech entrepreneur since 2003. Co-founder & CEO of Piwik PRO, the enterprise analytics and tag management suite

• Co-founder & CEO of Clearcode, specializing in custom advertising and marketing platforms.

A few words about me

An Analytics Suite for Data Accuracy and Privacy. Off-the-Shelf or Build Your Own?

Agenda

1. Before we start 2. Core features for Data Accuracy 3. Core features for Privacy: Get ready for GDPR! 4. Off-the-shelf or invest in creating your own?


Before We Start

With a multitude of analytics platforms to choose from, you could feel somewhat confused about diverse reporting and

features nomenclature.

So it’s good to ask yourself:

What do I need from my analytics platform for my business to succeed?

For sure, you need data accuracy. Business decisions just cannot be made on the basis of incomplete reports.

But doing business in Europe, or with European clients, you also cannot afford to overlook data privacy.


Data Accuracy


Accurate Data is...

Unsampled

Sampling means that only a subset of your traffic data is selected and analyzed, and that sample is used to estimate the overall results.

But can you really be sure that your software will choose a representative sample of your traffic?

Accept no reports based on less than 100% of sessions.


Accurate Data is...

Not just Aggregated, but also Available at User-Level

You can use aggregated data to identify general trends, but it’s access to individual tracking that lets you dig deeper to better understand your visitors.

This is especially useful for conversion funnel optimization & tracking your users throughout different stages of customer journey.


Using Visitor-Level Reporting

You will be able to answer some important questions... You will get some detailed, individual data:

• Why did your visitors view your website?

• Why do returning visitors continue to view your website?

•

• Which products will attract particular users?

• Which users are most likely to become sales leads and when?

• IP address - if you decide not to mask it

• Referring page

• Visitor’s visits list with details about every visit

• Total amount of time spent on your website

• Number of visits and pageviews performed by a user

•

• Location

• Browser

• Screen resolution

• Converted goals

• Total amount of money the visitor spent on your website

• Page loading time for a particular visitor

• Each visit referrer


Accurate Data is...

Ad-blocking proof

There are around 200 million active adblock users around the world, and the install rate is growing.

As practical as it may seem, content blocking software can prevent pages from rendering properly, thus preventing your analytics platform from giving you accurate insights.

Self-hosted analytics can be better equipped for this type of challenge

Graph comes from The Cost of Adblocking Report by Page Fair & Adobe


The Cost of Adblocking Report

Accurate Data is...

Free from referral spam

Spammers use other websites for web indexing, promotion, and SEO. There is no one single universal solution.

Negative effects include: skewed data, longer website-loading time, higher bounce rate, and subsequent damage to your SEO.

To be avoided at all costs.

Some vendors maintain a public list of spammers, who get automatically excluded.


Accurate Data Can...

Be collected using Javascript, server logs or other tracking methods

If, for certain reasons, your website code cannot be modified, or if you cannot use JavaScript, you have the option of using web server logs or other tracking methods.

Look for solutions that provide you with data collection flexibility.



Be easily combined with insights from other sources.

Seeing your data in the right context is essential for making business decisions. Enrich your reports with additional data, for example, from sign-up forms or visitors’ actions performed on your website.

Easily integrated with other tools

Custom dimensions and variables



Be accessed and extracted in raw form

Data should be available not just in the form of calculated metrics via an API. It should come in any form analysts need it, in order to work in their tool of choice, such as Tableau, Looker or Excel; or using "R" language.

Ability to export calculated metrics via API

Access to entire data set (e.g. via SQL port)


Data Privacy


Data Privacy: The European Perspective

At the end of 2015, the European Commission agreed on a new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It comes into force in 2018.

The new regulations stem from a growing need to implement and develop a customer-centric approach.

The GDPR will have a significant impact on all businesses dealing with customers within the European Union.

Suffering a new data breach may lead to fines of up to 20 million EUR or 4% of annual turnover.


5 top changes that GDPR will bring about...

Data-driven consent: An individual user must be provided with accurate information on the kind of data to be collected or processed, and for what purpose. ”Explicit” consent is needed in the case of processing particularly sensitive data.

Comprehensible policy: a request for user’s consent for data processing must be performed in an easy, accessible form and written in clear and plain language.

“Right to be forgotten”: All subjects have the right to have their data removed from a database upon demand.

Compliance of all subjects: All vendors who deliver cloud service to businesses in the EU or process data in any other way must meet the requirements of the new ruling. GDPR comes into force in the spring of 2018, so businesses are to use this transitional period to apply its provisions.

Data protection officer: If a company manages a great amount of sensitive data, it is obliged to appoint a data protection officer.

1

2

3

4

5


What does Digital Analytics Need to Ensure Data Privacy?

1. Minimum viable privacy features in tools for compliance.

2. Flexibility of those features to adapt to audience and customer segments.


Data Privacy is...

About informing your users that they are being tracked and getting their consent.

Devising a privacy policy is key, as is obtaining your users’ consent to be tracked by your analytics cookies.

You can use a platform that is exempt from the cookie consent obligation.

Cookie consent manager from TRUSTe


Data Privacy is...

About respecting your users’ right not to be tracked.

Do Not Track is a technology and policy proposal that provides users with a simple and persistent choice to opt out of tracking by websites they visit, including analytics services, advertising networks, and social platforms.

Make sure your tool REALLY does respect the DNT preference of your users

http://donottrack.us/

Data Privacy is...

About providing an easy way for users to opt-out on your website.

Even if your visitors do not have the DNT option activated in their browsers, your website should provide them with an easy way to opt-out of being tracked.

Ready-to-use opt-out widget will be a useful addition to your privacy policy.


Data Privacy is...

About making sure your visitors’ IPs are anonymized

Your visitor IP is Personally Identifiable Information (PII), but there are tools that ensure it doesn’t get stored.

Make sure your analytics provides you with an option to mask the IPs of your visitors.

Make sure that besides masking it in your dashboard, your platform doesn’t really send this info anywhere else (data ownership).


Data Privacy is also...

About not giving your data and your users’ data away to 3rd parties.

If your data ownership is compromised, how can you ensure that your analytics data, including sensitive data on your users, is not sent to remote servers, or shared with 3rd parties?

You simply can't afford to compromise your data!

• Keep your tracked data to yourself!

• Never go for a solution that can’t guarantee you 100% data ownership.

ANALYTICSPLATFORM

ANALYTICSVENDOR

You

ANALYTICSPLATFORM


Off-the-Shelf or

Build Your Own?


Build or Rent?

• Should you look for an off-the-shelf tool that - apart from catering to your business goals - will incorporate data accuracy and privacy features?

• Or is it better to invest in creating your own custom analytics platform?

Answers may differ depending on the business and technology.


Why build if there’s a plethora of solutions already?

To ensure maximum data accuracy and privacy! Full data ownership and control of the platform

More flexibility - A better fit than generic off-the-shelf platform! Run any data analysis, combine business data with marketing data without existing market constraints


Why build if there’s a plethora of solutions already?

Easy access to unsampled data in a format that is needed - for implementing personalization, advanced analysis and modelling

More control over the entire data collection process including tag management

In some cases also cost saving*


When can building be too much of a challenge?

In big organizations custom solution may mean a cultural change with a strong need for educating staff and convincing management.

Simple data access may be harder and less user-friendly (static reports/drill downs)


When can building be too much of a challenge?

Reconciliation of numbers, when compared to existing tools may not be easy, or even exclude the possibility to get exactly the same results.

Custom solutions may require using a data warehouse prior to going in-house.


Speaking of Costs...Build Your Own tools may incur quite high upfront costs, measured not just in monetary value. Apart from money, such platforms also require time, technical expertise, as well as human resources and organizational change.

Continuous need for business engagement and commercial support during rollout and implementation to avoid detachment.

Remember ongoing maintenance and operational costs!

Cost of scaling up mainly consists of additional infrastructure expenditures, which could still be higher than off-the-shelf costs.


Looking for the Third Way?

Rolling out your own tool for cost purposes is not recommended. The savings may be smaller than you think, while the rush to cancel licences from legacy tools can lead to painful situations.

Build Your Own proves successful mainly in organisations with very advanced analytics needs, that actually outgrow their existing tools.



The roll out project will benefit from a specific focus of value, e.g. on deliverables not feasible with existing tools. This should be the foundation to build on.

A successful approach is to start the experiments with the intention of running a proof of concept alongside your legacy tool. Experiment, understand and observe how the new tool works without taking on the risk of a full scale migration at one go.



Additionally, when looking for a custom fit tool, you could investigate open source platforms as foundation for your solution:

• Free to download, use, modify and customize code

• Software and data ownership

• More stability and security

• Not tied to a single vendor, your tool can grow according to your business needs


Thank [email protected]


https://twitter.com/zawadzinski







https://www.linkedin.com/in/zawadzinski
















mailto:[email protected]

Analytics Suite for Data Accuracy and Privacy: Off-the-Shelf or Build Your Own?

Software

Transcript of Analytics Suite for Data Accuracy and Privacy: Off-the-Shelf or Build Your Own?