Using data to understand and grow your customer base

Luke Coleman @ltcoleman

Thursday, January 31, 13

Data

• Data is a character in the fictional universe of “Star Trek” played by actor Brent Spiner

• Data are values of qualitative or quantitative variables, belonging to a set of items

Thursday, January 31, 13

Small Data vs. Big Data

• All data is the same, cost is the only factor

• You could lease the IBM 350 for $3,200 per month

• First consumer 5mb hard drive in the 1980’s was well over $3000

Thursday, January 31, 13

Analytics to understand your customer

• Analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data

• These patterns allow you to understand your customers

• What is the most popular analytics platform?

Thursday, January 31, 13

Google Analytics

• Phil Mui - lead product manager

• Video

Thursday, January 31, 13

Google Analytics

• Google owns your data

• Premium costs ~150k / year

• Easily integrate with Google AdWords

• Google deals with hosting your analytics solution ( capacity issues )

Thursday, January 31, 13

Piwik

• Piwik is the major open source alternative to Google Analytics

• You host the solution

• You own the data

• Free

• More flexibility

Thursday, January 31, 13

Piwik

• Create custom dashboard widgets

• It can track file downloads, cart abandonment, and outbound links

• Officially supported mobile app

• Admin cookie so you don’t track you own page views

• Track page views per user

Thursday, January 31, 13

Piwik Homework

• Video

• What did you think of the dashboard?

• What data did you find valuable?

Thursday, January 31, 13

Test Flight App

• iOS SDK

• Beta testing

• Analyze usage through checkpoints & feedback

• Crash reports

Thursday, January 31, 13

TestFlight LIVE

• Crash reports

• Engagement

• Usage data

• Revenue

Thursday, January 31, 13

TestFlight LIVE

• Crash reports

• Engagement

• Usage data

• Revenue

Thursday, January 31, 13

Tracking emails

• Email is not free

• PGS

• Amazon SES

• MailChimp

• Guaranteed delivery?

Thursday, January 31, 13

Tracking emails

• Tons of email clients, virus scanners, ISPs

• CAN-SPAM act

• Must pay attention to bounce rate, complaints, unsubscribes

• How? use analytics in your emails

• Bonus: http://www.emailology.com

Thursday, January 31, 13

Analytics with A/B testing

• What is A / B testing?

• Without data, how useful would A / B testing be?

• Optimizely

Thursday, January 31, 13

A / B testing• What do you normally

want to test?

• The call to action’s wording, size, color, and placement

• Headline or product description

• Form’s length and types of fields

Thursday, January 31, 13

A / B testing

• Layout and style of website

• Product pricing and promotional offers

• Images

• Amount of text

Thursday, January 31, 13

A / B testing

• Smashing Mag : Ultimate Guide

• Obama campaign

• Obama digital team used ~500 a / b tests over 20 months

• Increased donation conversions by 49% and sign up conversions by 161%

Thursday, January 31, 13

Obama form test

Thursday, January 31, 13

Obama form test

Thursday, January 31, 13

Obama headline test

Thursday, January 31, 13

Obama headline test

Thursday, January 31, 13

Obama image test

Thursday, January 31, 13

Obama image test

Thursday, January 31, 13

A / B testing

• Obama digital team analyzed their data and gained valuable insights into UX/ UI best practices

• Many times people want to second guess the results

• As long as your data pool is large enough, the data does not lie

Thursday, January 31, 13

• What has ABC done to utilize data?

• Membership retention

• Membership signup

• Registration

• Feature value

Thursday, January 31, 13

Membership Retention

• What is membership retention?

• Data analyzed by third party integration partners

Thursday, January 31, 13

Signup Conversion Rates

• Online Signup for 10 fitness

• What do you see wrong? What improvements could be made?

• The rewrite....

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MICO Registration

• MICO sign-in page

• What is the problem with registration?

- We saw a 50-60% drop

• Why doesn’t ABC just use email?

Thursday, January 31, 13

Feature Value

• Using data to learn about a features’ value

• How do you handle client requests? How do you keep them happy?

• Where are we gathering this data? Where are the data points?

• Projects in software are expensive

- Use data to prioritize them

Thursday, January 31, 13

Stupid vs. Smart data

• Collecting data for the sake of collecting data

• ABC’s Piwik patch disaster

• Why big data wants “Data Scientists”

• Collect data on purpose

• Video

Thursday, January 31, 13

Q & A

Follow me! @ltcoleman

Thursday, January 31, 13