Bee Measure

Get Direction From Your Data

By

Facebook Election Drama, Google Analytics 4 & What To Do About TikTok

The Huge Mess That Facebook Created

I don’t work on political campaigns, but I’m still alarmed by this article in Politico. Here’s the background: starting Oct. 27, Facebook stopped allowing new political ads (their VERY broad definition of “political” includes issues like climate change and health care). Then, all those ads will pause when the polls close on Nov. 3. Google is doing something similar. Facebook’s policy got off to a rocky start this week when they incorrectly blocked some campaign ads while launching others early. As Facebook straightens that out, I’ve moved on to worrying about what’s next. When will “political issue” ads be back? I help clients raise money to fight climate change and address other “political” issues. Will my ads be back by Giving Tuesday? The platforms are now saying “who knows?”

What to Know About Google Analytics 4

While you may have already heard the news about the update to Google Analytics, you haven’t heard my take. I’m pretty excited! GA’s new version has many promising new features. I’ll definitely use the improved integration with Google Ads. It will now be easier to remove someone from your campaign (say, automatically stop running “Donate Now” ads to people who have already given). It’s also promising that Google Analytics 4 is taking into account the phase-out of cookies (something we covered back in March). This new version can — allegedly — use machine learning to fill in the gaps in data. I’m going to see how that pans out. Other improvements included in the update? Expanded AI-powered predictive insights, better cross-device measurement capabilities, codeless event tracking (no more writing Javascript to track website scrolling), and more granular data controls.

[Read more…]

By

My Favorite Advice & Data Viz of the Month

My Favorite Advice

GDPR-Compliant Opt-Ins to Gain Consumer Trust.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from clients (and when I teach Google Analytics) about analytics opt-in messages on websites. A few of the most common questions are: How much ability should I give users to opt-in or out of Google Analytics? What percentage of people click to “accept” cookies? What should my pop-up say and where should I put it? Lucky for you, I found an article to answer all the questions that have been piling up. DHL tested every various configuration and recorded their results in this article. The attention-grabbing elements resulted in more opt-ins, while banners in the footer were often ignored. While it’s important to do your own testing, this article is an excellent starting point for what to expect.

[Read more…]

By

My Favorite Advice & Data Viz of the Month

My Favorite Advice

How to Get Donors Coming Back for More.

My first meeting back after summer vacation was a planning call for a client’s year-end campaign. Even though 2020 has us all feeling stuck in a never-ending nightmare time warp, year-end fundraising season is indeed quickly approaching. That means now is the perfect time to think about overhauling your donation page. You want potential donors to feel confident when making a gift to your organization and ensure the process is simple. What does that mean about how you set up your donation page? It doesn’t mean include more text, more images or more donate buttons. It means include text that aligns with your organization’s mission, an image that speaks to your value proposition and an easy-to-complete donation form. If you’re looking for recurring donations, make a monthly recurring donation the default choice. It will help your organization stand out since “most nonprofits that offered monthly donations did so as an optional step.” And if your nonprofit has a lengthy donation checkout process (and you want to find out where users are dropping off and how to prevent it), check out this article on setting up a Funnel Visualization report on Google Analytics.

[Read more…]

By

New Facebook Ad Metrics, Cookie Consent & Google’s Latest Search Update

Use These Success Metrics for Facebook Ads

People can accuse Facebook of so many things (like election interference or housing discrimination), but you can’t say the platform doesn’t provide advertisers enough data. In fact, the metrics Facebook provides is so overwhelming that figuring out what to pay attention to is the hard part. AdEspresso has long been my go-to for all things related to Facebook Ads. According to their updated guide for 2020, there are a few key metrics to keep an eye on: cost-per-result (CPR), ad impressions, click-through-rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), conversion rates, and costs per conversion (CPC). A key takeaway here is to “track impressions to make sure that customers who see your ad do something about it. Otherwise, the ad isn’t effective.”

Choosing Your Cookies

Recently, I was teaching a class about Google Analytics and someone asked about those opt-in to cookies messages. Exactly what percentage of people accept/decline them? Well, here’s the research on that. It’s less about how many people accept/deny the consent notices and more about whether a majority of those “notices” are even GDPR-compliant. The data here suggests they’re not.

[Read more…]

By

Big Changes to Google Analytics, Spending for 2020 & the Male-Dominated World of Data Viz

App and Website, Together At Last

Have a website… and an app? Well, I have news for you. It’s still in beta, but Google Analytics now has a way to combine app and website data into a single property. This is a particularly exciting development because it deviates from the traditional session and pageview method Google Analytics has used for the past 15+ years (listen to me complain about that here). The new measurement model uses events and parameters instead. And, Google’s created a new feature to make tracking the most common events, such as scrolling and outbound link clicks, a lot easier. This is a huge shift for GA and I’m sure I’ll be covering it again very soon.

Gettin’ Cozy With Data Analytics

An understanding of data analytics is important for everyone in an organization, regardless of your role or position. This Harvard Business Review article breaks down 4 crucial concepts you may have forgotten from your freshman year course in statistics. My favorite tip: Always have a control. You probably know about controls from drug trials, but this doesn’t need to be costly nor time-consuming. Although we may be testing new subject lines or web copy (rather than life-saving drugs), this is a concept that communicators should master too.

[Read more…]