Crystal Xcelsius Rocks

Upon returning from a recent analytics event, I took one valuable piece of information with me which I wish to share. During one presentation, an individual was describing a way to win internal support for analytics and communicate the value to the company through a visual and dynamic means. In and through the presentation, though I know the person worked for another company, much ado was made about a software called Crystal Xcelsius.

Crystal Xcelsius is a data driven application building module making use of the same principles which allow charts inside of Microsoft Excel. It uses cell ranges and attributes visual cues to numerical data. In comparison to how the charts and cues look in Excel versus what is output in Xcelsius, it seems like alien technology got its start at Business Objects. This is good and helpful, and attractive in itself, and probably worth the $300 price tag on its own. However, it is only the beginning of what an analyst is capable of with the software.

Xcelsuis has taken me a couple days to figure out and there are certainly things which I haven't explored completely, but its astonishing to uncover the value of the tool. In a weeks time, I will have created a full scale, completely operable tool to report on all aspects of business at our offices. I've been able to integrate data from numerous sources, and measure performance on each of these provided in a single interface for the stakeholders driven by subordinate interfaces through which to have other managers and reporting parties input their data with relative ease.

I'm able to report on traffic and commerce KPIs, SEO and SEM, Internal Search Performance, Key Page performance, marketing, and other online metrics while simultaneously producing relevant reporting on things like our Customer Service and non-internet performance without skipping a beat or opening new software. Further, I can integrate and report on things like our analytics tool performance and compare to determine where collection may be over counted or no populating correctly. The best part about this, and I mean this as serious as sincere, is that the most annoying part of the reporting, the collection and input, is done a little bit a day by responsible parties and collected in the tool for analysis. I can see and analyze all my data in one place and push that along with these wild graphics.

I'll input screen shots and 'snags' when I get chance to. If you have any tips or experience on Crystal Xcelsius or questions on how to perform what I have described, please feel free to email me or leave a comment. When I'm not on the clock or have a moment to respond, I will with any information I can provide.

In Case Anyone At Omniture is Reading

One thing which I would really like to see in SiteCatalyst which would help me save time in generating reports, is the ability to use a 'Manual Update' feature like that which is available in Discover 1.5. Think about it.

The site is so full of people generating reports with exhaustive data day and night that, when I want to get directly to a report which I have not yet bookmarked or set into my dashboards, I have to actually go to that report, then adjust the date accordingly then search and drill down as necessary. Essentially, what that does is creates a series of reports each based on the first one. What I would like is to make a request with all my criterium, then hit update and produce a single report with exactly what I want.

So, by producing that one single button capability, you can reduce requests on the site for ad hoc reports by at least one third. My guess is, that would make the data process much faster and keep more clients working on analysis and reaping the benefits instead of fighting your software and being frustrated. Granted, this is not an easy thing to win support for but, my guess is it would be the single most useful function to the advanced analyst who has become familiar with the tools.

Omniture Forms Analysis - Long Road Worth the Journey

As of yesterday evening CableOrganizer.com is number 441 of the Internet Retailer Top 500 sites. Its pretty exciting for all of us considering we sell such obscurely niched items. Its taken the gang a lot of work and constant improvement to produce that result and its something we are all very proud of.

Now, that's out of my system, I'd like to rant a bit if I may about the most exciting recent development in my analytics toolbox. After months of trying to get a handle on the really advanced analysis tools, Sebastien Hoffman, one of our outstanding IT folks, implemented a Forms Analysis tool for reporting to our SiteCatalyst on form errors, success and abandonment. Actually, its in the opposite order: abandon, error, success in terms of its operation flow.

What does that mean? you ask....

It means that we can measure the success of our interface with the customer and gauge their experience. We can see where people are consistently having problems in our forms and make changes to reflect the necessity for ease of use. This is done simply first by looking at the ratio of success of an area to the number of errors. If for every 10 successes of a portion of the form you have 1 error. That probably isn't significant or having a sincere impact on your conversion. If, on the other hand, your ratio is 4:1 or better, you may want to run some usability test scripting through that area for the purpose of scrientifically replicating the problem Once you have realized what it may be, either technical or human experience related, you should probably plan on running some A/B or multivariate testing to find out if some other elements could help influence a better ratio of success. (Note: I do not recommend making this your first multivariate test especially if the form is your billing info form or something of that great importance to your everyday operations!!!!)

Anil Batra and ZA/AZ Interview Published

This evening, Anil Batra, a blogger and analytics writer from ZA/AZ published an interview on my job with CO. Its available for reading at http://webanalysis.blogspot.com.

It gives a pretty fair look at the job tasks associated with being a web analyst. It also gives a solid explanation of how I ended up upside down in jobs and here in the world of statistics. Feel free to contact me with questions or advice on items which I have discussed in the blog. I will do my best to help but cannot advise at the expense of my employer.