Latest / Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt / CI to Eye | Web Analytics 101

Transcript

CI to Eye | Web Analytics 101 · Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt

• 0:00
  As a musician, you wouldn't practice one concerto alone in your bedroom forever.
• 0:05
  You'd develop your skills, explore new techniques,
• 0:07
  and join fellow musicians shoulder to shoulder in the orchestra,
• 0:11
  moving classical music forward with every stroke of the bow.
• 0:15
  It's the same with arts marketing and leadership.
• 0:18
  We don't grow by staying in a bubble. We grow by learning together.
• 0:22
  That's what Boot Camp 2024 is all about.
• 0:25
  This one of a kind conference brings arts professionals together to share fresh
• 0:30
  ideas, hone their skills, and fuel the future of our industry.
• 0:34
  A ticket to Boot Camp unlocks two full days of expert-led sessions and
• 0:39
  peer-driven insights,
• 0:40
  all 100% tailored to the arts and all 100% actionable when you
• 0:44
  return to your desk on Monday.
• 0:47
  It's happening at the Times Center in New York City, October 24th and 25th,
• 0:51
  and it won't be the same without you.
• 0:54
  Don't miss this chance to level up your organization and join the creative
• 0:57
  community shaping the future of the arts.
• 1:00
  Save your seat at capacity interactive boot camp dot com.
• 1:13
  Hi everyone, and welcome back to CI to Eye.
• 1:16
  Today we're tackling a common challenge for arts marketers:
• 1:19
  how to justify investing more time, money,
• 1:22
  and energy into website analytics. If you're a data nerd like me,
• 1:28
  you already know the power of a solid analytics strategy.
• 1:31
  It gives you the insight you need to better understand your audiences,
• 1:35
  optimize your campaigns, and ultimately drive more ticket sales or donations.
• 1:40
  But let's face it,
• 1:41
  sometimes it can feel like you're speaking a different language when you try to
• 1:45
  explain this to leadership. The technical terms, the dashboards, the KPIs...
• 1:50
  it can all feel overly complicated to someone who isn't in the digital trenches
• 1:54
  day in, day out.
• 1:55
  So how can you show your boss and board members that investing in analytics is
• 2:00
  not only worthwhile, but actually critical for long-term success?
• 2:05
  In today's episode, I'll sit down with Yosaif Cohain, CI's VP of Analytics,
• 2:09
  to help you bridge the gap between the technical side of analytics and the high
• 2:13
  level goals that matter to your organization's decision-makers.
• 2:16
  We are heading up into the clouds for a 10,000 foot view that will have your
• 2:20
  leadership team ready to double down on data. Ready, everyone? Up, up, and away!
• 2:34
  Yosaif, thanks for being here.
• 2:36
  Hey, Dan. Thanks for having me.
• 2:37
  So most of our listeners are probably familiar with you from the general CI
• 2:41
  world, but for those who aren't,
• 2:43
  can you give us a bit of a background about how you ended up at Capacity?
• 2:47
  Sure.
• 2:48
  I actually started my career outside the arts and was working at a design
• 2:52
  agency during a very transitional and transformational time in
• 2:57
  digital,
• 2:57
  right when companies were starting to realize that digital
• 3:02
  isn't just a requirement,
• 3:04
  but it can truly be a competitive advantage and a differentiator and a driver of
• 3:09
  growth.
• 3:10
  We were doing this work for really big brands and I would say having a lot of
• 3:13
  fun doing it.
• 3:15
  We were the top agency that focused on the user experience and
• 3:19
  focusing on the user experience was actually pretty unique at the time.
• 3:25
  Other agencies were focused on innovation and
• 3:29
  shiny and pretty and winning awards,
• 3:33
  and our focus was usability.
• 3:35
  Our ethos was that the user is the number one stakeholder
• 3:39
  for the website and that the user experience must reflect that and must
• 3:44
  be elevated. So I had great years working there.
• 3:48
  There was something amazing for me about working with brands like IKEA
• 3:53
  or being part of a very small team that redesigned the CNN
• 3:58
  website. The truth is that I kind of became a little bit
• 4:02
  addicted to it. I wouldn't say that I had a passion, let's say,
• 4:06
  for Pizza Hut as a product,
• 4:08
  but I got hooked to the puzzle and the challenge that
• 4:13
  we're going to beat our competitors as an agency and that Pizza Hut will
• 4:18
  beat their competitors by being smarter and more strategic.
• 4:22
  It was this rush and it was incredibly rewarding.
• 4:28
  Eventually,
• 4:29
  we started getting clients that I had personal issues with and
• 4:34
  I knew I couldn't stay there and feel proud of the work I was doing.
• 4:39
  And speak of timing,
• 4:41
  in the year that I was trying to figure out next steps and doing some freelance
• 4:46
  projects, I get an email from a former client, Erik Gensler,
• 4:50
  CI's founder-.
• 4:51
  Heard of him.
• 4:52
  Yeah. Yes, we've heard of him.
• 4:53
  He and I had worked together when he was project managing the redesign for
• 4:58
  Ailey, and we met for coffee.
• 5:02
  We instantly meshed and gelled and we both knew we wanted to work
• 5:06
  together. And yeah,
• 5:08
  that was over 10 years ago and it's been an amazing ride ever since.
• 5:13
  What's the best part of working with arts and cultural clients at CI?
• 5:17
  Obviously doing my small piece to help cultural institutions be more
• 5:21
  successful and by extension helping more people connect with
• 5:26
  art is something that is very special to me.
• 5:30
  More specifically,
• 5:31
  and to compare to my earlier days in the corporate side of things,
• 5:37
  I remember after being at CI for about six months and Erik telling
• 5:42
  me that I need to present at Boot Camp.
• 5:44
  And I go and I work on my presentation for about a week or so,
• 5:48
  and I show it to him. And I've done this dozens of times in my career,
• 5:53
  creating PowerPoints, but I blur out all the numbers and the client names.
• 5:58
  And I show this to Eric and he looks at me like I'm crazy,
• 6:02
  and he says to me-and this is when the light bulb moment,
• 6:07
  when the light switched for me-he says,
• 6:09
  "Do you think the Boston Ballet is competing with the Seattle
• 6:14
  Opera?
• 6:15
  The marketing director at the ballet went into this field because she loves art.
• 6:20
  Not only is she not competing with them,
• 6:23
  she wants to see them succeed and she wants to help." And it was this small
• 6:28
  thing,
• 6:28
  but it was so beautiful and so meaningful to me and it's something that I get to
• 6:32
  see over and over.
• 6:34
  So being part of this community of people that have a shared
• 6:39
  goal and want to uplift each other is very unique
• 6:44
  and it's something that I deeply cherish.
• 6:46
  Yeah, that's such a good point.
• 6:47
  Everyone is genuinely enthusiastic to help lift everyone else.
• 6:52
  I love that about this industry. So let's talk about GA4.
• 6:57
  What is available right now and fairly accessible to people out of the box,
• 7:01
  as it were, and what requires more custom work to understand or implement?
• 7:06
  Out of the box,
• 7:07
  you get a lot of data about traffic to the website
• 7:12
  and to specific pages.
• 7:13
  You'll also get data on traffic sources and some other
• 7:18
  reports with a little customization.
• 7:21
  You can collect e-commerce data and you should be doing that with more
• 7:26
  work and intentionality.
• 7:28
  You can and you should track more behavioral data about how
• 7:33
  people are interacting with key parts of the site. Now,
• 7:37
  the challenge with all of this is that it's still just reports
• 7:42
  and data. There's so much data to make sense of,
• 7:46
  and no one has time for this.
• 7:48
  When I worked with corporations in my previous life,
• 7:50
  my counterparts were teams or even departments of analytics
• 7:55
  people. I think in my 10 years at CI,
• 7:59
  I can still count on one hand the number of organizations that I've worked with
• 8:04
  that have even one full-time person dedicated to web analytics.
• 8:09
  So this is the challenge and the opportunity and what we try to do to
• 8:13
  help our clients with analytics, is:
• 8:17
  given your more limited internal resources,
• 8:21
  how can we push through that and how can we still be great and get the most out
• 8:25
  of analytics?
• 8:27
  One of the first points you showed us, I remember when I first joined CI,
• 8:31
  was that your website touches everything.
• 8:34
  So if you can increase a Facebook ad by 20%
• 8:39
  performance, that's great.
• 8:40
  If you can increase the amount of organic traffic going to your site by 5%,
• 8:44
  that's great. If you even increase the website by just 1%,
• 8:49
  that touches every single channel.
• 8:51
  Yes. If you improve your Facebook conversion rate by 10%,
• 8:56
  that's awesome,
• 8:57
  and we should certainly be looking to make channel optimizations,
• 9:01
  but at the end of the day, if you look at your marketing mix,
• 9:06
  Facebook is going to be, what? 20% of your traffic? 30%?
• 9:09
  It'll vary based on organization,
• 9:11
  but a 10% lift off of 20% of traffic is not going to be as
• 9:16
  big as making a 5% lift on the actual
• 9:20
  website that-like your landing page for example-that gets a lot of traffic,
• 9:24
  right?
• 9:25
  Like your newsletters are pulling there and organic search is pointing there and
• 9:29
  the Google grant and your Facebook stuff.
• 9:32
  So making optimizations around the user experience can actually have a
• 9:36
  trickle down effect.
• 9:37
  It'll have an increase in your conversion rate for when you're looking at data
• 9:40
  just in aggregate in your GA4,
• 9:43
  but then also when you look at your ROIs in your channels,
• 9:45
  that should have an impact there as well.
• 9:47
  What are the major mistakes, misunderstandings,
• 9:50
  or missed opportunities that you most often see when folks are coming to us with
• 9:54
  analytics questions for the first time?
• 9:56
  I think that some organizations are getting it right as far as data
• 10:01
  collection,
• 10:02
  but I think the big opportunity is moving beyond that to data
• 10:06
  integration. Now that we have this awesome data,
• 10:10
  how do we incorporate it into our processes?
• 10:13
  Sometimes I worry that people think of analytics as a one-time checkbox to cross
• 10:18
  off the list when what you really should be signing up for is a changed approach
• 10:23
  where data becomes part of your process and culture.
• 10:27
  Instead of maybe coming to us and saying, here's what we had in the past,
• 10:31
  can you fix it?
• 10:32
  Or is there an improved version of this thing we've been doing
• 10:37
  to instead really think bigger and ask how can analytics help us shift the
• 10:42
  way we do things? How can data transform our digital work?
• 10:47
  I can definitely understand that checkbox aspect to analytics.
• 10:51
  I work mostly with SEO as you know,
• 10:54
  and that can often be a sort of checkbox as well,
• 10:58
  whereas the real strength from these channels,
• 11:01
  which do require a little bit more [of an] in-the-weeds,
• 11:04
  technical look at our website, comes from over time, constantly updating,
• 11:09
  constantly making changes,
• 11:10
  having those incremental changes that I know especially for analytics are so
• 11:14
  important.
• 11:15
  Yes,
• 11:16
  it's not a one-time thing where you check a box and "we did SEO this
• 11:20
  quarter" or "we did analytics," but we built the foundation and now we
• 11:25
  are leveraging it on an ongoing basis,
• 11:28
  and that can be at different rates and different paces,
• 11:32
  but the important thing is that it's not a one-time thing.
• 11:36
  It's an ongoing thing that you're buying into.
• 11:39
  It's not that we did analytics, it's that we do analytics.
• 11:42
  Exactly.
• 11:43
  What do you find high level folks-talking like executive directors,
• 11:46
  board members-are most focused on when it comes to website analytics and
• 11:51
  what should they be focused on instead?
• 11:54
  I think there's still a focus on high level data and those numbers being big
• 11:58
  numbers. On seeing the trend that points up and to the right.
• 12:03
  On variance numbers being green instead of red.
• 12:07
  I've always been less focused on high level numbers,
• 12:10
  like total users or total page views. Instead,
• 12:14
  I've been focused on the user story and user engagement once people arrive at
• 12:19
  the website.
• 12:20
  The two types of questions that I would recommend focusing on instead: one,
• 12:26
  what are people doing when they come to the website? Are we meeting their needs?
• 12:31
  And then number two,
• 12:32
  how are we doing internally at integrating data into our team's work?
• 12:37
  And both of these are processes that will take some time to get good at,
• 12:41
  but these are the questions that I think are far more interesting and important
• 12:45
  than the high level 'how much traffic is the site getting'?
• 12:48
  I think a lot of the usability comes from being able to create a narrative from
• 12:52
  the data as well.
• 12:53
  To tell a story with the data so it's not just a sort of wall of numbers.
• 12:58
  Do you think that can make it easier when talking to high level folks about
• 13:02
  analytics, people like executive directors, board members?
• 13:05
  I think that's such an interesting point, Dan, and it's something that...
• 13:09
  I used to use this quote a lot,
• 13:11
  which is "The plural form of anecdote is data." If we
• 13:16
  want to talk to someone and ask them,
• 13:19
  what was your experience when you went to the theater last night?
• 13:21
  They're going to answer that to us in the form of a story.
• 13:25
  The challenge is how many of those people can we talk to?
• 13:28
  And once we get many of them, and that's what the website and your analytics is,
• 13:32
  it's thousands of sessions and thousands of people,
• 13:35
  then you are basically getting a lot of data points,
• 13:37
  which are a collection of various anecdotes,
• 13:41
  and that's the job of an analyst is not to just report on numbers
• 13:46
  and to say, here's how much traffic we got and here's what the top 10 pages are.
• 13:50
  But to start framing it more around the user and the user story.
• 13:55
  Can you give us a couple of examples of analytics projects that you considered
• 13:58
  to be really successful?
• 14:00
  Sure. The first is one of my favorite types of projects,
• 14:04
  and that's a website redesign. There's so much excitement about redesigns
• 14:09
  and I have a passion for great websites and that's what my background is in,
• 14:13
  but there's something that no one talks about with redesigns and that's that
• 14:17
  they contain a lot of unknowns and a lot of risk.
• 14:21
  What happens when you spend a year plus of your time and tens
• 14:26
  or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a project that not only doesn't
• 14:31
  move the needle up, it actually moves it down? The question is,
• 14:34
  how can we mitigate risk and how can we best set ourselves up for success?
• 14:39
  And the answer is by being as user-centric as possible in the
• 14:44
  process, and that's going to mean being data-driven.
• 14:47
  So our part in this equation has been partnering with
• 14:52
  dozens of organizations heading into redesigns where we're just looking to
• 14:57
  learn.
• 14:57
  We're part of the discovery phase and we're just trying to learn as much as we
• 15:00
  can about existing user behavior. So we're looking to answer
• 15:05
  questions like, how are people using the current site?
• 15:08
  And based on those results, trying to determine:
• 15:11
  how can we incorporate those behaviors and those learnings about user needs
• 15:16
  into the new website?
• 15:18
  It's not me telling a designer 'move this five pixels to the right' or 'make it
• 15:23
  a slightly different version of red,' but it's about 'here's what people are
• 15:27
  trying to do when they come to the website and here's what they're currently
• 15:31
  doing,
• 15:31
  and now you as a designer take this information and design a great solution
• 15:36
  based on that context.'.
• 15:38
  Things like if people are always navigating towards one page and it's
• 15:43
  five clicks away, like knowing that and knowing how important that page is,
• 15:47
  moving that to the front of the top nav for a website redesign.
• 15:51
  Is that the kind of things you're talking about?
• 15:53
  Exactly like that.
• 15:55
  So it's about learning about existing behavior and then building solutions
• 15:58
  around that. And it's funny you give that example.
• 16:01
  That's one of the first examples that I got introduced to with web analytics.
• 16:05
  We were doing a redesign for JetBlue and we looked at the
• 16:10
  data and everyone was on the homepage and clicking on one thing every single
• 16:14
  time, and that was,
• 16:15
  "I want to book a flight." And the simple solution was,
• 16:20
  let's move the little mini booker,
• 16:21
  let's create a mini booker and move that to the homepage.
• 16:24
  And it's such an obvious no-duh kind of thing,
• 16:27
  but literally JetBlue was the first airline to do that.
• 16:32
  It's become ubiquitous. Every single airline, every single car rental,
• 16:35
  every single hotel has a mini booker on the homepage because that's what users
• 16:39
  want. Someone had to be the first.
• 16:41
  And that happened to be us with JetBlue.
• 16:44
  And that was purely based on looking at behavioral data and trying to
• 16:49
  say, how can I save the user even just one click,
• 16:53
  and that was the solution.
• 16:56
  What goes into a particularly meaningful analytics partnership?
• 17:00
  [With] all of your experience of working with hundreds of clients over the last
• 17:03
  few years, when does that partnership really excel?
• 17:08
  I think like most things, the key is communication.
• 17:12
  One of the things that I've worked very hard on throughout my career is using
• 17:16
  data to invite people in.
• 17:19
  I try to convey excitement at what's possible,
• 17:22
  and I like to show how to make things happen.
• 17:25
  I want to get rid of this concept of analytics being this quote "black box" that
• 17:30
  only people who specialize in it can access. I think on the receiving end,
• 17:34
  for us as consultants,
• 17:37
  I think that we provide the most value and we do the best work when we're able
• 17:41
  to hear directly from our clients and our stakeholders about their goals and
• 17:45
  challenges, about their learning styles and preferences,
• 17:48
  about their workloads and priorities.
• 17:52
  That's when it helps us have a great partnership.
• 17:55
  I never want analytics to feel like an awful chore.
• 17:59
  I want it to represent information that you get to access.
• 18:03
  I want to help generate that thirst and show you the tools of how to get there.
• 18:08
  So the more context that we have around what's going on outside of analytics,
• 18:13
  I think the better we can be at finding ways to help you incorporate that data
• 18:17
  into your work.
• 18:18
  Yeah.
• 18:19
  What does an executive director or board member need to understand about the
• 18:22
  importance of investing in strong data collection and the use of website
• 18:27
  analytics?
• 18:28
  We don't need to be web analysts to recognize how important the website is to
• 18:33
  our success. It's obvious that if the website went away tomorrow,
• 18:37
  we'd be in trouble. We are reliant on the website as an organization.
• 18:42
  All of our marketing and advertising pushes people to the website.
• 18:46
  We sell most of our tickets online. We showcase our exhibitions and productions.
• 18:51
  We get people to make a purchase decision with the user experience that we
• 18:55
  control.
• 18:56
  So having a great website isn't just a want,
• 19:01
  it's an imperative.
• 19:02
  I think one of the most common and subconscious mistakes that we can make is
• 19:07
  that we assume people use the website the same way we do,
• 19:11
  so we don't need to use data. We know about behavior,
• 19:16
  but we are far from the typical user.
• 19:19
  We've been to the website hundreds of times already.
• 19:22
  We know our organization inside out.
• 19:25
  We already have a deep knowledge and love for our art form.
• 19:30
  That is not the user that is quickly arriving at the website from a Facebook ad.
• 19:34
  That's not someone who we're hoping will be a first time attendee or tourist
• 19:39
  planning a trip to town or even a renewing subscriber.
• 19:44
  So we need to let go of this bias-it's almost like a certain level of
• 19:48
  humility-and accept that the website is built for the people,
• 19:52
  and that's why I keep saying we have to be user-centric.
• 19:57
  I feel like digital marketing changes every month or every week sometimes.
• 20:02
  So viewing it over 10 plus years,
• 20:05
  20 years of seeing how websites have changed since then,
• 20:08
  it's always really interesting. Whenever I talk to you,
• 20:10
  I'm always really inspired by how much of the world you've seen on the digital
• 20:14
  marketing side.
• 20:16
  Thank you.
• 20:17
  It's interesting how in many ways things do change very quickly,
• 20:21
  and then in many ways the underlying root and the principles stay exactly
• 20:26
  the same.
• 20:27
  What we do today is very similar to what we've been doing for years.
• 20:33
  I think that behind the scenes a lot has changed.
• 20:36
  The platforms-of course everyone's heard about migration to the new
• 20:39
  GA4-but also I would say the way we go about collecting data,
• 20:44
  the richness of what we can collect,
• 20:46
  the accuracy of some of the data that we collect,
• 20:49
  increasingly the incorporation of machine learning into the data...
• 20:54
  But conceptually,
• 20:55
  web analytics today is the same as what it's been for the past 10 and
• 21:00
  15 years at its core.
• 21:02
  And really the simplest way to explain what it is is that it's a
• 21:06
  tool that gives voice to your users.
• 21:10
  People are telling us about how they like our websites and how we're meeting
• 21:14
  their needs, only they're telling us with their clicks.
• 21:18
  They're constantly voting just by the way they're using it. So really,
• 21:22
  web analytics is a choice.
• 21:25
  Do we pay attention and listen and optimize or not?
• 21:29
  And that's been a constant in the practice of web analytics and why I
• 21:33
  personally love doing this work because I want to understand what users
• 21:38
  want and I want to help solve for those user needs because I know,
• 21:42
  and I've seen, that this leads to better user experiences and to better results.
• 21:49
  If you could broadcast one message to executive directors, leadership teams,
• 21:53
  staff, and boards of thousands of arts organizations,
• 21:56
  what would that message be?
• 21:59
  Well, first off,
• 21:59
  I just want to say thank you to everyone for the work you do and for taking the
• 22:04
  time to listen to me talk about data.
• 22:08
  I will continually advocate for investing in your website,
• 22:12
  investing in the data revolving around the website,
• 22:16
  and investing in your people and processes that revolve around the data.
• 22:21
  By doing so,
• 22:22
  you're really investing both in your users and in your organization's success.
• 22:28
  I think that being great at data and UX can seem very
• 22:32
  daunting, and maybe the perception is that it's only for the Amazons and
• 22:37
  Netflixes and tech startups, and yes,
• 22:40
  there are going to be some advanced things that they do that we cannot,
• 22:44
  but there is so much opportunity in front of us,
• 22:47
  and with the proper focus and approach,
• 22:50
  it is certainly an achievable and I think very rewarding journey to take.
• 22:55
  Awesome. I'll pass that on to all of those people.
• 22:59
  Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, Yosaif.
• 23:02
  It's always an absolute pleasure to speak to you.
• 23:04
  Thank you so much, Dan.
• 23:15
  All right, analytics aficionados. Before we say goodbye,
• 23:18
  here's an extra dose of inspiration from arts organizations in the news.
• 23:22
  First up,
• 23:23
  the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra was featured in the New York Times article,
• 23:27
  "What if orchestras were more like Netflix?" Their CEO,
• 23:31
  Christina Littlejohn,
• 23:32
  shared the positive impacts of their unique membership program saying,
• 23:36
  "Our halls look fuller and our orchestra is happier.
• 23:39
  It's just been a game changer." Kudos ASO! Next,
• 23:43
  the Charlotte Observer reported that Charlotte Ballet was awarded $5 million
• 23:47
  from the Knight Foundation for its facility expansion,
• 23:50
  which will include housing for artists-in-residence, new dance studios,
• 23:53
  and an outdoor event space. Incredible news, Charlotte Ballet.
• 23:57
  We're so proud of these CI clients for expertly evolving along with their
• 24:01
  communities. Got a story that deserves a shout out? Well,
• 24:04
  tag us on social and let us know.
• 24:15
  Thank you for listening to CI to Eye.
• 24:17
  This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen
• 24:21
  McConarty and myself, Dan Titmuss.
• 24:23
  Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are CI to Eye's designers and video editors,
• 24:28
  and all work together to create CI's digital content.
• 24:31
  Our music is by whoisuzo. If you enjoyed today's episode,
• 24:35
  please take a moment to rate us or leave a review.
• 24:38
  A nice comment goes a long way in helping other people discover CI to Eye and
• 24:42
  hear from experts in the arts and beyond. If you didn't enjoy today's episode,
• 24:47
  pass it on to all of your enemies. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook,
• 24:50
  Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube,
• 24:52
  and TikTok for regular content to help you market smarter.
• 24:57
  You can also sign up for our newsletter at capacity interactive dot com so you
• 25:00
  never miss an update. And if you haven't already,
• 25:03
  please click the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts.
• 25:06
  Until next time, stay nerdy.