In this post I’ll walk you through setting up Google Tag Manger and installing Google Analytics on your WordPress blog in 5 easy steps. Step 1: Go to http://www.google.com/tagmanager/ to create a GTM account. You’ll get a GTM account ID, in the format GTM-XXXXXX. Copy this ID, you’ll need it in the next step. Step 2: Install a GTM wordpress plugin. I chose Thomas Geiger’s Duracelltomi Google Tag Manager plugin for WordPress because it has great reviews on WordPress and a dedicated site full of ‘how to’ resources. Once installed, enter your GTM account ID. Step 3: Configure your tags, rules, & macros in GTM. The first thing I installed was a Universal Analytics tag to fire GA on all pages of my site. For basic tracking, it’s pretty easy. Just choose the tag
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After working as a practitioner of analytics and optimization for the past six years (at Adobe, the Apollo Group, and most recently Google), I’m excited to announce that I’m ‘officially’ making the move to the vendor side of the house! I’m joining the Google Analytics team as a ‘Best Practice Advocate’ for analytics and optimization. Five years ago, I would have said this role was my dream job. Two years ago, when I joined Google, I still would have said that this role was my dream job. And today, now 5 days in, I’m happy to say I’ve actually landed my dream job! 🙂 I say ‘officially’ with quotes for two main reasons: 1. I’ve already been at Google for two years, many might think that I’ve been on the
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Just starting out in web optimization? I recently spoke on a panel at Optimizely’s Opticon and one of the questions that came up was ‘who would be your first hire’ for a new optimization program. There were a few different opinions on the panel, ranging from someone who gets stuff done, to an analytics rockstar, to that rare unicorn who can do it all. While all of these are good places to start, I tend to take the viewpoint of optimization through a solid analytics background as the best place to start. (Of course there are many optimization all-stars who didn’t come from an analytics background.) Why? Here are a few of the reasons why I’d look at hiring an analytics rockstar as your optimization lead: 1. They know data
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I recently gave a talk about one of my passions, the quantification of self, to my team. Given the great feedback, I’m turning that preso into a blog post to share with everyone! I’d like to note that this preso and subsequent blog post was inspired by an awesome presentation that Michele Kiss gave at the Digital Analytics Association SF Chapter Symposium last fall in San Francisco. You can see her preso on her blog. The market today is full of tools, apps & wearables and the idea of self-quantification is steadily moving towards the mainstream. A lot of my friends have some type of an activity or fitness tracker (though my groups of friends are divided between the Fuelband, Fitbit, and my favorite, the Jawbone UP – each group
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In part 5 of this 5-part blog series about ‘Building a Culture of Optimization’ I’m going to talk about the importance of sharing your wins and bringing your organization along with you. You can see part 1, part 2, part 3 & part 4 here. Part 5: So you’ve found a big win. Now what? Ensure you’ve double triple checked your results! Are they statistically confident? Did you control for external variables? Why is this important? A personal example… I ran a test where we found significant uplift over our control from a couple of test variations, but one version stood out as the clear winner. After closing the test, reviewing and analyzing the data, I communicated the results and recommendation to launch the winner to the rest of my organization. Most people
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In part 4 of this 5-part blog series about ‘Building a Culture of Optimization’ I’m going to talk about evangelizing your process within your organization. You can see part 1, part 2, & part 3 here. Part 4: Evangelize the process Process is important. Process leads to consistency, repeatability, and authority in a testing program. Sharing that process and getting others in your organization bought in and supportive is even more important. One source of truth One of the best ways to make your optimization program better known within your organization is to evangelize it via a widely accessible & visible roadmap. Here’s an example roadmap that I use within my organization: I host this roadmap in a Google doc that is accessible to everyone in my organization, from analysts
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In part 3 of this 5-part blog series about ‘Building a Culture of Optimization’ I’m going to talk about the importance of bringing your organization up to speed on the math behind the tests. You can look back and see part 1 on the basics and part 2 on good test design. Part 3: Know the Math! Give your peers a short stats lesson (but keep it light)! What does someone running an A/B or MVT test need to know about math? How detailed should they be? Here is what I tell all of my coworkers: Statistical Confidence = confidence in a repeated result The confidence level, or statistical significance indicate how likely it is that a test experience’s success was not due to chance. A higher confidence indicates that: – the
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In part 2 of this 5-part blog series about ‘Building a Culture of Optimization’ I’m going to talk about the importance of teaching good test designs. You can see part 1 about educating the basics here. Part 2: Good Test Designs You can’t have a good test without a good test design. One of the first things I do when a new test idea surfaces is sit down with the key stakeholders & test proposers to understand the details of what they’d like to test. We’ll talk through the variables that are going to be tested, how best to setup & design the test, and ensure we are on the same page in terms of potential test outcomes and how to ensure we are testing in a clean and consistent manner.
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I’ve presented at several conferences, webinars, and meetings recently on the topic of ‘Building a Culture of Optimization.’ It’s a great topic and something our industry as a whole is still in the process of nailing down – most organizations I see haven’t yet reached maturity here. Given the importance of building such a culture in order to drive testing and optimization across our businesses I’m writing a mini-series of posts on some of the most important things I see, do, and recommend. This will be a 5-part blog series on ‘Building a Culture of Optimization’ with parts 1-3 focusing on education, part 4 on process, and part 5 on spreading the word and shifting the culture. Part 1: The Basics – Educate educate educate! Educating your teammates is the
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