Analytics in Real Time - What IS A.R.T.?

Web Analytics in Real Time delivering functionality and value.

It is widely known that the percentage of websites using Google's or Yahoo's free Web Analytics is growing massively. With this explosive growth, the methodology of the typical analytics ninja has to change at an equally frenetic rate.

Eric Peterson blogged recently (The Coming Bifurcation in Web Analytics Tools) - Google Analytics alone is simply not enough for truly sophisticated web analytics.

Indeed, any analytics ninja worth their money employs a number of tools to deliver actionable insight and therefore value to businesses.

This blog post is going to describe a new offering from Moneyspyder that is being used in conjunction with Google Analytics (equally suitable for use with a whole suite of analytical tools) to deliver high value actionable insight but in real time!

Gasps of shock and horror! Is real time worth it? Is real time action possible from real time insight? Back in 2006, Avinash Kaushik blogged (Is Real-Time Really Relevant?):

The greatest gift the web gives you is the ability to fail faster.

So how fast is fast? Now? How does now sound? You can Tweet now...send 10,000 emails now....up your bid on a range of keywords now. Don't you need to measure and understand the performance of these measures now? Consider Avinash's take on real time insight actionability from 2006:

...is getting real-time data really relevant? Do you really need it?

Fair question but as mentioned above, given that we're marketing to our customers and our customers are responding to emails and searching in real time, real time actionability is now strongly relevant and necessary. The act of using websites isn't after all an asynchronous activity!

The FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) issues can be summarised:
- Do we need more data?
- Is actionable insight delivered in real time or are we just setting up another
useless reporting stream?
- Our current choice of analytics solution doesn't do real-time so what is the business case for changing to a potentially inferior real-time capable solution?
- Surely more powerful resource is required to provide the real-time capability?
- Don't we need more business processes to handle real-time action?
- A culture of reporting rather than analysis is going to be created!

Thus the gnashing of teeth seeks to extinguish the real time flame. In response:

Current free analytics solutions are not geared up to deliver actionable insights at the same velocity as our marketing efforts. That is not to say throw your current solution in the trash – far from it. Using the right tool for the right job is why we are using a suite of tools already:

- Analysis of click stream data
- Competitive Intelligence
- Voice of customer

None of which are geared to enable you to respond as quickly as you should be able to so another weapon is required in our armoury. One that is easy to use. One that is benign, safe, secure, scalable, value for money, fits with our current processes but above all, delivers actionable insights not just reports!
So, enter A.R.T...Analytics in Real Time.

A.R.T. makes no apologies for it's operation being based on existing great engineering ideas. These simple building blocks deliver a hugely functional product that is an utter no-brainer to use. The out-of-the-box setup requires a javascript include line in the page header and nothing else. It is benign in operation. It won't mess with your pages or affect your site speed.

Outcome-centric
A.R.T. is outcome-centric. The insights stem from the focus on measuring your website's ability to do what you wanted it to

- measure sign ups
- basket/cart actions
- searches
- posting comments
- form completion
- scrolling or any other dom event
- all things selling!
- Sales AND revenue

A.R.T. is not just any old reporting tool spouting vanity metrics. Real value stems from seeing a return on your investment. A.R.T. is the frontline tool that enables you tune finely tune your business to respond to realtime demands. A.R.T. doesn't try to replace your current analytics solution, although it is a great companion. We are quite strict on the amount of data that is held and for how long. The insights that A.R.T. yields can be extracted from your current analytics tools so A.R.T. will only ever hold a rolling 24 hour window of your clickstream and outcome data. Need more? Go to Yahoo/Omniture/Google/other weapon of choice.

Flexible & Customisable
Flexibility and customisability stem from the small number of moving parts in the system. A.R.T can be as sophisticated or vanilla as you need or want. Your challenge is to engage A.R.T. system in valuable insight revealing metric gathering endeavours.

Scalable infrastructure
A.R.T. is built using Ruby on Rails and is hosted on highly scalable cloud based infrastructure.

Processes to support change and build a test driven culture
Marketing in realtime clearly requires processes to support realtime action based on realtime results. Clearly, given we have processes in place in our organisations that enable marketing in realtime, we have the ability to act in realtime already! The necessary change that allows action and capitalisation on realtime insight is a cultural shift towards test driven optimisation. Contemporary software development methodology promotes rapid action and optimisation based on measured results – think Agile. A.R.T. Provides a feedback loop that enables rapid optimisation in a similar fashion. Consider firing out 3 variations of an email – 3 small batches at the time of known peak traffic levels. A small, low cost, low risk (due to small numbers) test like this would generate real-time actionable insight into which version of the email works best in terms of the desired outcome. Obviously, statistical significance is required before committing to a more risky or expensive course of action but this caveat exists for the current marketing/analytics process. So, having engaged in a cycle of 'release and refactor' we have what looks like a process that could deliver optimised value from future campaigns.

Rinse and repeat. Thanks A.R.T. ;-)

A summary of A.R.T.:

What does it do?
• Visit, visitor and pageview metrics - Who, What, Where, When and How?
• Outcome metrics with hourly breakdown - What is really important and really happening?
• Definable - YOU decide what your site is supposed to do and measure it!
• Revenue metrics with hourly breakdown
• 24 hour rolling window of data - need more? Go to your current analytics provider
• Traffic source data - Measure marketing in Real Time!
◦ campaign awareness through utm tagging
◦ Search engine metrics & keywords
◦ Referring sites - who loves you baby?!
• Individual customer identification, technical, loyalty & recency data - Love your top customers - personally
• Clickstream capture, analysis and replay
• Flexible page event definition – pageview, scroll, add to basket
• Filterable data – exclude/hide internal clickstream data
• Mobile interface – iPhone and Android - Real-Time and on-the-go!

Who is it for?
• Marketeers
• C level execs
• Technicians
• Content managers
• Business Owners

What does it cost?
The basic unit of currency for A.R.T. is the page view, hence, the fairest, most scalable pricing model is based on the number of pageviews per month and the length of the contract.

There is no limit on the number of pageviews with A.R.T. The infrastructure and costs scale according to your usage.

There is no advertising in the pricing model. The focus is on delivering insight, not just data or reports but real actionable insight to help you improve your business.