HARLEY DAVIDSON CASE STUDY 1 INTERNET RETAIL TOP 100 AUDIT See how the top online shopping sites manage their digital data quality
2 DATA QUALITY REPORT Internet Retailer Top 100 47,990 42% 225% 1,395 Pages audited Using TMS Tags Identified Methodology Background Avg Rate of Data Duplication ObservePoint was founded by Omniture co-founder John Pestana, and online marketing expert Rob Seolas. Pestana s focus on data quality started as a response to concerns customers had about data quality within their reports. When the data quality issues were invesigated, incorrectly implemented tags were regularly identified as the primary cause of discrepancies. ObservePoint released its first web analytics-auditing solution in 2010 with the goal of improving data quality for web analytics by providing powerful automated QA tools for web analysts. Why We Compiled this Data Data quality in web analytics is too often an afterthought. While many web analysts believe that data collection is flawed, the task of correcting it has traditionally been too burdensome. This report shines a light on the problems that top online retailers experience with their data quality. Tag auditing, when used as a proactive approach to data quality management, has the highest ROI of all online marketing activities. Ensuring the correct implementation of tags and protecting key metrics ensures that all online marketing activities are properly measured and reported. In our report of the top 100 retailers, we set out to get a granular view of what each retailer is doing on a page-bypage basis and how it might affect their data quality. ObservePoint sampled the top 100 Internet Retailer web sites using our tag auditing solution to assemble this exclusive data giving unprecedented insight into the world s top Internet retailers metrics: web site performance and tagging metrics. Findings VENDOR MARKET SHARE The majority of the top 100 retailers are currently using a premium, enterprise-class analytics tool. Adobe SiteCatalyst held the highest market share. Coremetrics ranked second, followed by Google Analytics* and Webtrends, respectively. This data suggests that most if not all of these retailers are making a significant investment in their online marketing technologies. The question is: Are they getting the most value possible out of their analytics data? TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION QUALITY In order to get the most value from a web analytics tool, web site owners must ensure that the web analytics tag (also called a code snippet or pixel) is installed and configured correctly on every page of the site. In our audit, despite having the highest overall market share, SiteCatalyst implementations had the highest rate of tags missing at 6%. Coremetrics and Webtrends implementations were the most complete with 2% of pages missing a tag, and Google Analytics split the group *When we detected a premium analytics tool as well as Google Analytics, we consider the premium tool as primary.
3 MOST INTERNET RETAILERS ARE USING A PREMIUM WEB ANALYTICS TOOL with with 3% pages missing tags. While 3-6% of pages missing tags might sound insignificant, this metric contributes directly to web analytics error rates. And when the total pages in the site are considered (often into the hundred-thousands of pages), even the smallest percentages of missed tags becomes thousands of untracked pages across the web site. The result: when customers browse many pages before making purchasing decisions, retailers are losing valuable data about their customers and products. On average, 1 out of every 20 pages fails to measure user interaction due to missing tags. Data Loss To add another perspective to this important data quality metric, we looked at the average data loss across the entire group. We found that only 6 online retailers had 100% tag coverage. Overall, the average presence of tags was 95%, meaning that 5% of pages are not measuring user interaction. Data Inflation Data inflation occurs when the web analytics tool counts one page view more than one time. Accurate reporting of page views is important since this metric is used to measure the success of various marketing initiatives and establish site traffic baselines. these top retailers only 6% of the sites were free of any inflation. Our research found that one-third of online retail web sites could have more than 50% data inflation. Even more shocking is that 12 sites have more than 100% inflation. Data Leakage Web analytics data is considered private, proprietary company information. However, the hidden nature of tags often opens the door to data leakage - web analytics data ending up in the hands of third parties. Data leakage causes enormous privacy risks. It is caused two ways: (1) when a tag is configured to send feeds of data to groups outside of the company and (2) when tags are installed without the site owner s knowledge. Data leakage is almost impossible to detect without an audit. Our study reveals that data is leaked more often than most companies know. About half of the top 100 retailers could be sending data about their visitors to unknown third parties. Tag Management MARKETSHARE With the strong emergence of tag management, we wanted to see how much and how well the technology is being used. We found that 42% of the Internet Retailer top 100 sites are using a tag management system. Employing a TMS is further indicative of a company s active investment in online marketing technology and web analytics. TMS IMPLEMENTATION QUALITY Of the 42% of companies that have deployed a tag management system, an average of 84% of pages on those sites contain a TMS tag. Like web analytics, 100% of pages must be tagged for optimal data quality. We found that data inflation is a major problem among
4 PURE-PLAY TMS HAS BETTER OVERAL PERFORMANCE THAN ADD-ON TMS primary analytics implementation: TMS Vs non-tms Websites with a tag management system had a slightly lower average implementation rate of the primary web analytics tags than those without a tag management system. Incomplete placement of TMS tags negatively impacts data quality in TMS-dependent technologies. We were surprised to see that non-tms environments had 5% missing tags, versus 6% missing when a TMS was installed. This data indicates that owning a TMS doesn t automatically improve the implementation of tags and the data quality associated with that implementation. Like any other tool, great results take work. We found that sites with pure-play TMS solutions have better overall performance than TMSes offered as an addon to an analytics tool. We believe that this may be due to the clean-up process that implementing a pure-play TMS tool requires. Recommendations Tag auditing is prescribed for all companies that make an investment in web analytics. Tag auditing will expose web tracking errors and provide sufficient information to correct the problems and measure improvements. Research indicates that some managers resist using digital data to make decisions. Proper data quality management processes, such as auditing, can diminish concerns about data quality and provide real ROI for digital marketing technology. We caution all who attempt to use tag-derived data in financial statements, investor reports, or in an interrogatory fashion to ensure that the data has been properly audited and deemed sound by a professional tag auditor. About ObservePoint Based in Orem, Utah, ObservePoint is the leader in web tag auditing a critical element of web analytics. Audited web reporting resolves significant flaws in ROI analysis and executive data. ObservePoint uses a unique method of simulating network traffic at an unparalleled speed and scale to identify web analytics tag errors. For more information about ObservePoint s patented tag auditing and web metrics protection solutions, visit http://www.observepoint.com or call (855) TRUTH-NOW Internet Retailer top 100 1800contacts Dell 1800flowers Deluxe Abercrombie and Fitch Disney Store Amazon Eddie Bauer American Eagle Edible Arrangements Amway Estee Lauder Ancestry Fingerhut Ann Taylor Follett Apple Footlocker Army & Air Force Exchange FTD Avon Gamestop Backcountry Gap Barnes And Noble Gilt Bass Pro Grainger Bestbuy Green Mountain Coffee Bluenile Hayneedle Bodybuilding Home Depot Build HP Shopping Buy / Rakuten HSN Cabelas Hudson s Bay Cdw J Crew Chico s JCpenney Costco Kohls Crate And Barrel LLBean CVS Lowes Macys Market America* Microsoft Store Musicians Friend Neiman Marcus Net-A-Porter Netflix* Newegg Nike Nordstrom Northern Tool Nutrisystem Office Depot OfficeMax Orchard / The Tog Shop Oriental Trading Overstock PC Connection PcCMall Peapod QVC. Ralph Lauren Redcats REI Ruelala* Saks Scholastic Sears Shoebuy ShopNBC Shutterfly Sierra Trading Post Sony Store Staples Symantec Store Systemax (Tiger Direct) Target Toys R Us Urban Outfitters Us Auto Parts Victoria s Secret Vistaprint Vitacost Wallgreens Walmart Wayfair Weight Watchers Williams Sonoma Yoox Zones *due to technical limitiations this site was not audited.
HARLEY DAVIDSON CASE STUDY 5