Category: Usability

Google Analytics Crash Course Notes

Thinking that you will adequately learn Google Analytics by clicking around the product, even over years, is a foolish concept. You will only understand a subset of its features and how they work together. You need to do your homework.

I cannot improve upon Google Analytics’ (GA) own crash course, titled Google Analytics IQ Lessons. It covers just about all the material in the paid Analytics courses (101, 201, and 301) at just the right level–not too high, and not too deep.

Here are my notes of the key gotcha’s and items to configure for your GA Web Properties. As well, I’ve linked to other helpful learning resources. As is my standard practice, this is mostly for my reference down-the-road, so it’s not comprehensive. However, I figure others can benefit from them as well.

Gotcha’s

  • Incognito mode and other browser privacy sessions count as new Visitors, Visits, and Page Views, as if the user had cleared his cookies. Not a huge surprise to most, I’m sure. (Although other trackers can still track you.)
  • Visits are separated by exits from the site or a 30-minute cookie timeout while on the site. Advertising Campaign attribution expires after a 6-month cookie timeout. Both are customizable.
  • Time on Exit Pages is not tracked because time is calculated between page loads on the same site. This also means that Bounce Page time is not tracked either. This has serious implications for some genres of sites, like blogs where a bit of traffic goes into and out of a single article. Know how to track Exit Page times and Bounce Pages, if you need to.
  • A Visitor can only trigger a Goal conversion once during a Visit, but can trigger an E-commerce Goal multiple times in a Visit.
  • Filters are applied between raw data capture and the Account’s Profile where the data is ultimately stored. Even if you change a Filter that sits in-between the raw feed and Profile, you cannot recover historical data. Try accomplishing the same filtering with Advanced Segments instead, which don’t run the risk of losing data. At the least, you should use Advanced Segments or other features to test concepts before creating a real Filter for them.
  • Domains and subdomains can break tracking in many glorious ways–especially E-commerce Goal tracking.

Basic Checklist

  • Always have a raw Profile that has no Filters, Advanced Segments, etc.
  • Have a Profile that excludes internal IP address so you’re not tracking yourself and your staff as they click around your site.
  • Have a Profile that exclusively tracks internal IP addresses for debugging Google Analytics code on your site.
  • Use the Google Analytics Debugger Chrome Extension for your own debugging and analysis of competitors’ tracking.
  • Enable Auto-Tagging between Google AdWords and Analytics if you are using both products.
  • If you create an AdWords Profile, set up two Filters to focus-in on AdWords traffic (Campaign Source: google, Campaign Medium: cpc).
  • Set up E-commerce tracking.
  • Set up Goal tracking.
  • Set up Internal Site Search tracking. (It’s much easier than you think.)
  • Utilize _addIgnoredOrganic to attribute Organic Search Visits for your web site’s address (i.e. someone searching for “example.com”) to a Direct Visit instead.
  • Set up appropriate Custom Variables to track additional information about Visitors, Visits, and Page Views.

Hopefully, all these will help us do a better job optimizing our customer average lifetime value (LTV).

The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman

Several years ago, my dad, Bo Lotinsky, showed me the infamous 60 Minutes special on IDEO–the mecca of innovation. After watching it, I couldn’t help but buy their book The Art of Innovation. I finally got around to reading it, and boy is it good. As always, a bulleted list of ideas and quotes don’t do the book justice. They’re more for me to remember what I read and for you to be intrigued enough to read it yourself. Enjoy!

Chapter 3: Innovation Begins with an Eye

  • Keep a list of what bugs you in products.
  • Ask “why/why not?” to understand and challenge what has already been done.
  • Observe the action–not what people say.
  • “Think of products in terms of verbs rather than nouns…as animated devices that people integrate into their lives–and you’ll become more attuned to how people use products, spaces, services–whatever you’re trying to improve.”

Chapter 4: The Perfect Brainstorm

  • Stick to one hour (one and a half max).
  • “Start with a well-honed statement of the problem…at just the right level of specificity…open-ended.”
  • Play: “go for quantity,” “encourage wild ideas,” and “be visual.”
  • Number each idea. Aim for 100 per hour.
  • Build on ideas with variations. Jump to other trains of thought when the current thread has died.
  • Use giant whiteboards, Post-It notes, or butcher paper. The brain is wired for spacial memory, so move around the room to write and to revisit topics.
  • Start with a mental warm-up exercise if people seem to be elsewhere. One great exercise is to survey products in the same category you’re trying to brainstorm in.
  • Sketch, mind-map, diagram; don’t just write words.
  • Spend much more time brainstorming than writing. You want to stay on the creative side of the brain.
  • Everybody is on the same level. No one is the boss, expert, or auditor.
  • No idea is to be critiqued. Just write it down and continue.
  • Don’t make up any other rules.

Chapter 5: A Cool Company Needs Hot Groups

  • Even the world’s best historical innovators worked in teams. Loners don’t succeed.
  • Build teams around problems to be solved, not a team role.
  • Bring in people from all roles and experiences.
  • Look outside the group for ideas, solutions, and feedback.
  • Team leaders pitch potential project members. No one “owns” people. (Note: movie studios, Google, and Netflix do the same thing.)
  • Don’t mandate attire or business hours.
  • Provide snacks.
  • Have a geek club where people can show off the latest technology or demo something they have built.
  • Play hooky as a team and go on a field trip.

Chapter 6: Prototyping Is the Shorthand of Innovation

  • “A playful, iterative approach to problems is one of the foundations of our culture of prototyping.”
  • “A prototype is almost like a spokesperson for a particular point of view.”
  • “A prototype is worth a thousand pictures.”

Chapter 8: Expect the Unexpected

  • “History teaches that innovation does not come about by central planning. If it did, Silicon Valley would be nearer to Moscow than San Francisco.”
  • It’s almost impossible to predict how the market is going to use a product.
  • Spend time absorbing what’s going on around the world. IDEO has subscriptions to at least 100 magazines.
  • Observe people in the wild accomplishing tasks.
  • Hold an open house to solicit feedback and ideas from people.

Chapter 9: Barrier Jumping

  • Organizational checklist: merit-based, employee autonomy, familiarity among staff, messy offices, lots of tinkering.

Chapter 10: Creating Experiences for Fun and Profit

  • “As you step through the innovative process, try thinking of verbs not nouns.”

Chapter 11: Coloring Outside the Lines

  • “The person who toils endlessly at his desk is not likely the person who is going to hatch a great innovation.”

The Unplugged by Ruven Meulenberg

While researching user experience design techniques, I stumbled upon some nifty whiteboard magnets for prototyping called GuiMags as well as a complementing book called The Unplugged.

GuiMags look like the nicest way to prototype something before going to HTML and CSS. Labor intensive forms of prototyping don’t seem to add much value, and paper and traditional whiteboard prototyping only works until you’ve changed your mind about something and have to throw your work in the trash or erase half the board.

Although I decided to postpone a magnet purchase until I am doing design again, I was able to get my hands on the book. Its premise: we limit ourselves by the technologies we use. Instead of thinking outside the box, we’re often thinking and functioning in it. A large part of this thinking inside the box is how we develop software.

Although, everyone interested in the topic should pick up the book, here are a few of my takeaways:

  • Every major form of art that involves technology (music, film, video games, graphic design) starts outside technology. Artists do not limit themselves by their technology but by the limits of their own minds. As a software engineer, you often limit yourself by the technology you use day-to-day.
  • Spend as much time as you can iterating on concept and design before going to implementation.
  • Design the software front-end not the back-end first.
  • Just like there are code freezes, freeze the product when it has passed the design phase.
  • It is often wise to outsource the implementation.
    • This serves as a peer review of the design before it goes to implementation. Software developers traditionally think about the back-end first.
    • Different cultures have different strengths: “England and Western Europe are great at design, Ukraine and Macedonia have amazing and prompt developers who can think for themselves, the Netherlands always emails back the same day, India is extremely polite, etc.”
    • Work can be done while you are sleeping. “This can cut the development time in half.”
    • Because you already know what you want and won’t be constantly changing the design, contractors will want to work with you even if you pay less.
    • Only be satisfied with five-star developers.
    • Pay more than you agree to pay.
    • Do one-week sprints. Longer sprints end up getting delayed, with excuses.

With the last (sub)point in mind, I think this methodology is well-suited for an agile development process.

There is a lot to gain from reading the book, so make sure to grab a copy for yourself.

Cutting Out the Middle (Wo)Men

SandwichBoard manOur first two customers are South Street Steaks and Aqui Brazilian Coffee respectively. As you can see, the sites will eventually need new designs; however, both establishments helped us develop a solid system, have been great beta-testers, and most importantly, they love SandwichBoard.

Today I walked Carminha Simmons of Aqui through SandwichBoard. She added a news article, event, and web page herself during the training. While she used the system, I took notes on anything she didn’t understand, things she got stuck on, and features that broke. When I got back to my home office in the afternoon, I went through my list and fixed the majority of the issues or UI flaws I saw before dinner.

I had direct contact with the customer and saw her every mouse click and facial expression. I was able to discuss with her how to fix things she didn’t understand. I didn’t have to go through a committee or get permission to fix what we thought was broken. All we have to do now is run a command to update our system live in a matter of minutes. Try doing that when working in an organization divided into job functions and heavy processes.