Report: US Search Ad Spend Rises 12 Percent YoY In Q4 2013; Smartphone CPCs Drop

IgnitionOne released its fourth quarter Digital Marketing Report today, showing that the paid search market in the US continues to grow. Search ad spend rose 12 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2013. In part as a result of the later kick…

Google’s Matt Cutts On Publishers With Duplicate Content: Use The Canonical Tag

In a video released by Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, Matt said publishers who publish similar or duplicative stories on different URLs may use the rel=canonical tag to help consolidate the PageRank of the stories and avoid any issues with Google. Matt Cutts did say that duplicate…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

The Best Advanced Local Search Conference EVER

Ok. So I am a little biased. But that being said, last year’s spring Local  U Advanced was one of the most educational and fun events that I have ever participated in and we are bringing it back east. There was more of everything that I love about our industry: more great local content, more […]

Yahoo’s News Digest App Is “Summly 2.0″

In addition to a range of other announcements at CES yesterday, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer introduced a new news app, Yahoo News Digest. It was built under the supervision of Summly founder  Nick D’Aloisio. Summly was acquired by Yahoo in March of 2013 for an estimated $30 million. Summly itself was…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Mining for Google Hummingbird Guano in So Cal

Google’s Hummingbird guano, like real guano, is fertile ground. Unfortunately, in the case of Google’s guano, it is fertile ground for spammers and spam and nothing as productive as farm crops. Southern California has always been a hot bed of Google local spam particularly in the legal industry. Yesterday I was exploring search results for […]

For SMBs, The Time Is Now To Embrace Search Advertising

As a recently as a few years ago, the owner of a small or local business could legitimately ask, “Why should I buy search ads?” After all, he or she first faced the hassle of setting up an ad campaign in a relatively foreign platform — then, assuming they got ads served, maybe…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

100+ amazing stats from Econsultancy’s 2013 reports

Businesses use mobile for brand engagement rather than profit 

  • Data included in the Econsultancy/Kontagent Mobile Strategy and Sophistication Report shows that businesses are not yet focused on the impact that mobile can have on profits. Instead the top goals for mobile strategies are brand engagement/loyalty and needing to stay competitive.
  • Furthermore, only 28% of businesses are tracking performance indicators specific to their mobile programs.
  • The report also found that companies expect the importance of apps to their business to grow over the next one to two years. 23% cite apps as their most important mobile platform, compared to 31% identifying their mobile sites (46% evaluate the two as equally important).

Which of your mobile initiatives is most important to your business [today vs. 12-24 months]?

Startups are hungry for data

  • Data included in the Econsultancy and Geckoboard Data Driven Culture Survey Report shows that the vast majority of startups identify themselves as data driven businesses; only 5% of respondents stated that data is not a priority within their organisation.
  • There is a marked lack of confidence around data and metrics. Almost half of the respondents (49%) do not feel confident about the metrics they are currently monitoring.
  • 44% of startups spend substantially more on data gathering than on data communication, with 34% of respondents spending equally on both. This highlights the importance of developing mechanisms to guarantee that data is collected with a purpose and that key insights can be derived from it.
  • The report is based on a survey of over 360 business professionals globally, carried out in February 2013. It is aimed at professionals working in the startup community.

55% of businesses plan to increase digital marketing budgets in 2013

  • More than a third of companies (39%) plan to increase their digital marketing budgets this year at the expense of other channels, according to the new Econsultancy and SoDA Digital Marketing Outlook Report 2013.
  • A further 16% of respondents said that they would be increasing digital budgets alongside overall marketing spend, while just 11% said they planned to decrease the amount allocated to digital marketing.

  • The SoDA Report 2013 includes a survey of 814 marketers, of which more than 84% were key decision makers and influencers, including CMOs, VPs, and directors.
  • Agency-side respondents were almost evenly split between digital agencies (44%) and traditional shops with digital capabilities (45%). While the two sets of respondents agreed in many areas, their answers did diverge in a few key topics.
  • For example, full-service agencies were decidedly less optimistic about the future of independent agencies than their digital-only counterparts.
  • When asked for their opinion on the negative statement, “Independent agencies do not have a bright future,” only 6% of digital agency respondents agreed compared to a quarter (26%) of full-service agencies.

74% of businesses believe user experience is key for improving sales

  • Almost three-quarters (74%) of businesses believe that the user experience is important for improving sales and conversions, according to data in the Econsultancy and WhatUsersDo User Experience Survey Report.
  • Increased customer satisfaction (72%) and customer loyalty (44%) were also popular responses, however few business appear convinced of the cost-saving benefits of improving the user experience.
  • The survey also asked what both client-side and agency-side respondents listed as the primary benefits of UX. For companies, the two most commonly listed benefits were to improve and evidence decision-making (68%) and to remove guesswork out of the design process (66%).

What do you believe are the primary benefits of user experience testing?

  • The User Experience Survey Report, conducted by Econsultancy in association with WhatUsersDo, is based on a survey of more than 1,400 digital and ecommerce professionals.

71% of businesses plan to increase digital marketing budgets this year

  • Almost three out of four businesses (71%) plan to increase their digital marketing budgets this year, according to stats included in the Econsultancy/Responsys Marketing Budgets 2013 Report.
  • In comparison only 20% of respondents said they plan to increase their traditional (offline) budgets, up slightly from 16% last year.
  • The average expected increase (for those increasing digital budgets) is 28%, slightly higher than the average expected increase of 26% for offline budgets.
  • More than two-thirds of client-side respondents (70%) said their companies would be increasing the amount spent on content marketing.
  • The report is based on a survey of more than 800 client-side marketers and agency respondents.

25% of Australian marketers say digital knowledge is poor

  • Findings from Econsultancy/Marketing Magazine State of Digital Marketing in Australia report has revealed that the digital skills and knowledge gap is still very present in Australia, with a quarter of respondents saying knowledge of digital within their organisations is “poor” to “very poor”.
  • Only 8% of client-side marketers rated themselves as having an “excellent” understanding of digital, which was a decrease of around a third from 2012.
  • 30% said their understanding was “good”, 36% said it was “okay” and 21% felt it was “poor”.
  • In contrast, only 3% of supply-side respondents felt that their clients’ digital skills were “excellent”, showing a somewhat more negative outlook on the current skill set of marketers.

Client-side: How would you describe the level of digital knowledge within your organisation?

  • When supply-side marketers were asked what the biggest barriers to clients investing more money in digital marketing were, a lack of understanding/education about digital marketing came out as the number one barrier at 54%, closely followed by company culture at 53%.

61% of businesses believe new products and services are key to growth

  • Data included in the Econsultancy/JEGI Media Growth Report 2013 shows that a majority of businesses (61%) believe that launching new products and service will be the top growth driver in the next two years.
  • This is followed by expansion of market share within existing markets and making an acquisition.

Top growth drivers in next 12 to 24 months

  • Looking at the barriers to growth, 42% of respondents cited new competitors, 35% are concerned about competition from free/low cost alternatives to their products, and 34% said the main barrier was innovation from traditional competitors.
  • The 2013 Media Growth Report is based on a two-phased approach, beginning with a survey of 231 top business executives in the third quarter of 2012, followed by a round of in-depth qualitative interviews.

Companies experiencing problems in managing customer engagement

  • Data included in the Econsultancy/Responsys State of Customer Engagement Report shows that marketers are still struggling with complete customer centricity.
  • Only 3% of senior marketers say that their cross-channel marketing activity is customer-centric to a point where it is individualised and set against right-time, right-place priorities.
  • However, the majority of respondents (87%) cite that their companies currently engage in co-ordinated, cross-channel activity and inside this, although campaign-heavy, the level of specific targeting (38%) is strong.

What level of sophistication do you feel your cross-channel communications are currently at?

  • The report also shows that data is becoming an increasing focus for marketers, with multiple sources of information being analysed to understand and optimise marketing communications.
  • 80% of senior marketers say that they currently utilise web analytics to source their data, but only 13% say that they use this effectively.
  • The difficulty of managing data is cited to be a major barrier in understanding customer engagement for nearly two-thirds of marketers (63%).

Content management systems are failing to deliver on brand expectations

  • Just 38% of businesses believe that their content management system (CMS) helps to deliver a brand-enhancing digital presence, according to the latest Econsultancy/Adobe Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing.
  • The report also shows that nearly all (87%) respondents stated that a CMS should help them to improve user and customer engagement, while 78% said it should help to build the brand though positive experiences.
  • The report, entitled ‘From Content Management to Customer Experience Management’, is based on a web content management survey of more than 1,000 business professionals spanning marketing, web development and other business departments, carried out in March 2013.

Which of the following business goals does (or should) content management help you/your clients to meet?

  • The report also shows that companies are struggling to adapt to a multiscreen world, with 70% of respondents agreeing that ‘delivering optimal experiences across all screens and devices is a major challenge’. Very few respondents (14%) disagree with this notion.

94% of businesses say personalisation is critical to their success

  • The Econsultancy/Monetate Realities of Online Personalisation Report highlights the growing importance of delivering a personalised experience online, as 94% of businesses stated that the tool ‘is critical to current and future success’.
  • Furthermore, the research found that for two-thirds (66%) of client-side respondents, both improved business performance and customer experience are the main drivers for personalising the website experience.
  • The report is based on a survey of more than 1,100 digital and ecommerce professionals working for brands and agencies, carried out in February 2013.

What is the main driver for personalising the website experience?

  • But although nearly all businesses are aware of the potential rewards from personalisation, the reality is that most respondents have yet to implement it on their own digital platforms.
  • More than half (56%) of companies stated that they are not personalising the web experience for visitors, while only 4% say that customer experiences are ‘very’ personalised.

Companies struggling with mobile optimisation

  • The Econsultancy/IBM Tealeaf Reducing Customer Struggle Report shows that although almost three quarters of companies are planning to ramp up their spending on mobile channels this year, the complexities of providing an excellent customer experience on mobile is a challenge.
  • Two out of five companies surveyed said that delivering customer experiences on mobile is harder than on the web.
  • Three-quarters of organisations surveyed say that mobile is ‘important’ (42%) or ‘critical’ (32%) to their business objectives. Just 6% of respondents don’t consider mobile important.
  • Compared to European respondents, a higher proportion of those based in North America consider mobile as ‘critical’ to their business objectives (39% compared to just over a quarter (27%) of European companies).
  • The proportion of companies describing their understanding of the mobile user experience as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ has almost doubled in the last 12 months, from just under a fifth (18%) in 2012 to 30% this year.
  • More than a quarter (27%) of responding organisations say their customers rate their brand’s mobile user experience as ‘good’ (23%) or ‘excellent’ (4%), up from a fifth in 2012.

66% of marketers say email delivers ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ ROI

  • Two-thirds of marketers (66%) state that email delivers an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ ROI, with 8% of businesses achieving more than half of their sales through this channel.
  • The findings come from the Econsultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2013, which s based on the findings of a survey of more than 1,300 digital marketers.

Which of the following have you experienced to be barriers to effective email marketing?

  • The report also shows that only 39% of in-house marketers rate the performance of their company’s campaigns as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’, while 15% admit their campaigns are ‘poor’.
  • More than a quarter (27%) state that they spend no time at all internally on optimising their email campaigns, a figure that has increased from 21% in 2008.
  • And even those that do optimise aren’t spending a significant amount of time on it. Just 19% of responding companies spend more than two hours a week on optimisation, compared to 62% who dedicate the same amount of time to design and content.

Google analytics reigns supreme

  • The new Econsultancy/Lynchpin Online Measurement and Strategy Report 2013 shows that more than half of businesses (56%) rely exclusively on Google Analytics (GA) for their web analytics while just 11% don’t use the tool at all.
  • This is a massive increase since 2009 when just 23% of respondents said they used GA exclusively.
  • The latest version of the report is based on a survey of almost 900 digital marketing professionals between April and May 2013, to examine their practices and strategies related to web analytics and data.
  • Among those companies that exclusively use GA, the platform is most commonly used to track traffic and conversion KPIs (86%), followed by campaign tracking (75%).
  • The multichannel funnels tool that Google launched back in 2011 to much fanfare has failed to catch on yet, with just 23% using this feature.
  • The report also shows that big data has had little impact on the role of web analysts, with 8% of marketers agreeing that “big data is a pointless marketing term.”

Agencies offer a full range of services

  • According to the UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report, published in association with NetBooster, agencies are moving towards a fuller service offering to cater for the increased demand for a holistic approach to marketing and data.
  • More than half (52%) of agencies said they offered ‘a full range of digital marketing services’, an increase from 45% in 2012 and 42% in 2011.
  • This compares to just 12% of agencies specialising only in SEO and 7% focused exclusively on paid search. A further 10% of agencies carry out both SEO and paid search.
  • Looking at the demand side (i.e. in-company responses), 91% of responding companies carry out SEO, 81% carry out analytics (81%), 78% practise paid search marketing and the same proportion (78%) do social media marketing.
  • The survey, carried out in the spring of 2013, is based on a survey of more than 750 companies and agencies, making this the most authoritative report on the UK SEM marketplace.

What area is your main focus as an agency?

Australians struggle with cross-channel marketing

  • The Australia Cross-Channel Marketing Survey Report, published by Econsultancy in partnership with Experian Marketing Services, found that only a quarter of businesses (26%) rated the online cross-channel customer experience delivered by their own or their clients’ organisations as ‘excellent’ (2%) or ‘good’ (24%).
  • Nearly half of responding businesses (48%) said they take a short-term, campaign-centric approach without a view to longer term strategy.
  • On average, only 51% of Australian marketing campaigns are run across channels with integrated messaging, creative and offer.
  • The report report is based on a survey of nearly 200 Australian businesses to an online survey carried out during May and June 2013.

Companies understand the importance of the user experience

  • User experience (UX) is not a new concept within digital marketing, but it is becoming a growing priority for business according to the Australia User Experience Report, published by Econsultancy in association with Macquarie Telecom.
  • The survey shows that three-quarters (74%) of respondents say their companies are committed to delivering the best possible online user experience, including 17% who say they are seriously committed.
  • More than half of survey respondents (52%) said that developing the user experience was ‘very important’ to their company, and only 1% said it was not important at all.
  • In addition, 96% of respondents agree that user experience must lead all marketing and ecommerce efforts, including 54% who strongly agree.

How committed is your organisation / are your clients to delivering the best possible online user experience?

Companies realise they need to focus more on building relationships

  • The second annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report, published by Econsultancy in association with Responsys, shows that companies recognise the importance of building value for and from their customers as part of an on-going relationship.
  • Almost three-quarters of responding companies (70%) agree with the statement that “it is cheaper to retain than acquire a customer”, and just under half (49%) agree that “pound for pound, we achieve better ROI by investing in relationship over acquisition marketing”.
  • However, just 30% of companies say they are “very committed” to relationship marketing, with 22% conducting no relationship marketing at all.
  • The research is based on a 2013 survey of nearly 900 companies and agencies.

Digital captures a significant share of Asian marketing dollars

  • Two in five (42%) companies surveyed in the State of Digital in Asia Report plan to increase their overall marketing investment over the next 12 months (down from 49% in 2012), while two-thirds (66%) report increases for their digital budgets this year.
  • For comparison, just under a fifth (19%) of responding companies plan to increase their traditional (offline) budgets.
  • Compared to last year, the proportion of client-side marketers saying their organisations will increase their digital budgets by more than 50% has tripled (from 4% in 2012 to 13% this year).
  • The report, published in association with Campaign Asia-Pacific, is based on a survey of almost 400 company and agency marketers carried out in June and July 2013.

Facebook remains king of social ads

  • There are a huge number of social networks vying for marketers’ attention, yet Facebook remains the most attractive according to the Econsultancy/Adobe Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing.
  • Facebook newsfeed ads proved to be the most popular channel among business respondents (66%), followed by Facebook marketplace ads (45%) and Promoted Tweets (40%).
  • The agency perspective is even more favourable, with the majority (84%) of respondents saying that newsfeed ads are most popular among their clients.
  • The report, entitled Optimising Paid Media, is based on a survey of more than 600 Econsultancy and Adobe subscribers.

Strong investment from advertisers in online display advertising

  • The third Online Advertisers Survey Report, published in association with Rubicon Project, found that spending across online advertising channels has increased in the last year, which builds on the growth highlighted by our last online advertising survey carried out in 2011.
  • In the case of display advertising, the proportion of advertisers citing an increase in spend has risen from 57% in 2009 to 64% in 2013.
  • The growing investment in display has led to an increase in pricing, with almost half (48%) of the advertisers surveyed having witnessed an increase in prices in the last year. A further 41% of buy-side survey respondents say that prices have remained the same.
  • Online display appears to be particularly buoyant in France, where 88% of advertisers cited an increase in spend over the last year. Advertisers in Germany are least likely to have increased their spend in the last year, with 33% having decreased investment in display.
  • The report is based on a survey of more than 650 advertisers and agencies. The findings are presented globally, with key charts broken down for the UK, US, France, Germany and Asia Pacific.

Just 20% of companies have a well developed customer experience strategy

  • The majority of companies (58%) are still in a position where they are just beginning to develop their strategies for improving the customer experience, according to the Econsultancy/CACI Integrated Customer Experience Report 2013.
  • The percentage is not dissimilar to 2011 when Econsultancy carried out a similar survey.
  • Nine in every 10 companies state that there is at least some level of organisational commitment to delivering an integrated customer experience, including 43% who say they are ‘very committed’.
  • However, only a fifth (20%) say they have a well-developed strategy in this respect and only 8% of companies surveyed said they provide a ‘very integrated’ customer experience.

How developed is your customer experience strategy?

 

  • Similarly, the research shows that many organisations are struggling in key areas needed for an integrated customer experience.
  • While data (63%) and systems & processes (54%) were widely identified as critical areas for success in the context of an integrated customer experience, only a minority of organisations went on to rate themselves as excellent or good in those areas (32% and 24% respectively).

Criticality versus competence 

  • This report is based on a survey of almost 900 digital marketing professionals during June and July 2013. It examines how their organisations or clients approach this topic, and what they regard as key factors for success.

Apps, email and search are among top mobile priorities for businesses

  • When asked which mobile channels they plan on using during the next 12 months just over half (55%) of marketers said apps, followed by mobile advertising (51%), optimised emails (50%) and tablet-specific sites (50%).
  • Mobile search and commerce were also cited by precisely half (50%) of client-side respondents.
  • The findings come from the Econsultancy/BuyDesire Mobile Marketing and Commerce Report, which is based on a survey of more than 500 companies and agencies, carried out in July and August 2013.

What mobile channels and technologies do you plan on using during the next 12 months?

  • The report also asked respondents for their opinion on statements that refer to their overall mobile strategy and intentions for the next 12 months.
  • The results show that there is appetite among client-side businesses to get more involved with mobile, as two-thirds (67%) say mobile will become a fundamental part of their marketing and commerce strategy during the next 12 months.
  • However, it is just as clear that organisations are still in the early stages of utilising mobile as just 39% have a mobile strategy in place.

Satisfaction with conversion rates has increased for the first time in four years

  • More than a quarter (28%) of companies are satisfied with their conversion rates (either ‘very’ or ‘quite’ satisfied), up by 6% since 2012 and the highest level since 2009. 
  • Additionally, around three-quarters (73%, up from 65% in 2012) indicate they have seen an improvement in conversion rates in the last 12 months.

How valuable do you find the following methods for improving conversion rates?

  • Additionally, over two-third (70%) of companies carrying out A/B tests saw an increase in conversion.
  • Despite the obvious benefits of regular testing, the proportion of organisations carrying out more than 10 tests per month has dropped from 11% in 2012 to 5% in 2013.
  • The fifth annual Conversion Rate Optimisation Report, produced in association with RedEye, also found that the proportion of organisations who say they experienced an increase in sales conversion rates has significantly gone up, from 60% in 2012 to 70% this year.
  • The research is based on a survey of almost 1,000 client-side and agency digital marketers.

Storytelling Through Data: A New Inbound Marketing & SEO Report Structure

Posted by ajfried

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

No matter what business you are in, it’s a pretty sure thing that someone is going to want to monitor how efficiently and productively you are working. Being able to show these results over time is crucial to maintaining the health of the long-term relationship.

To us, reporting has become much less about the data, and more about the story you can tell with it. Not to say that data isn’t important, but while a big spike in traffic is awesome, the drop that comes after it might not necessarily be a bad thing. It could be seasonal. Or maybe it’s just leveling back after the brand was mentioned in a news report. To be totally honest, the same thing could apply to the spike itself, so hold off on those celebrations!

For the sake of transparency, this is something that we always felt we could improve on more at Kahena. We have tried it all, from email write ups, to using straight ranking reports (blerg, I know – so 2007), to a template-based Excel model (which is what we currently use), and even as far as planning a future web-based reporting platform for all of our clients to log in to and utilize as needed.

This whole project really started in the wake of Google blocking all keyword data and turning it all into [not provided]. This really forced us to break old and bad habits and redefine what important metrics and insights we were sharing with clients.

We had two goals in mind during this project which were to:

  1. Automate the report as much as possible so that we have more time to analyze the data and provide deeper, more valuable insights, both for our clients and our own internal strategies.
  2. Keep the template intact so there was standardization across our reports.

Categorizing all the data

We held a brainstorm and decided to compartmentalize the data into 3 different categories:

  • KPIs: These are the key performance indicators that we felt show bottom line progress from the campaign.
  • Leading Indicators: These metrics add value to the story by exhibiting a correlation with the KPIs. These are all things that clients need to know to understand the KPI outcomes.
  • Nice to know: These metrics don’t necessarily make or break the campaign, but are notable and worth mentioning because they provide some insight into overall performance.

Here’s what the brainstorm looked like after our meeting:

What this ultimately turned into is the following (click on the report for a full-sized version):

Now, let me be clear, this could have gone in lots of different directions, and in many cases it does depending on the client. We chose the metrics above for our template because we felt they provided the best high-level insight. Let me explain.

The KPI’s we thought were most important were traffic and goals. That was a relatively simple one to decide since this is ultimately what clients hire us to improve.

Leading indicators were a bit more challenging to solidify. We decided that for the purposes of story-telling, landing page data would be able to explain to our clients the progress we were making around specific landing pages we were optimizing. It also would provide more data into which *groups* of keywords were doing well and which needed a bit more attention. We also put an emphasis on vertical rankings (we partner with Rank Ranger to get that data). We specifically did not want to focus on individual keywords, although there is still a section for specific changes which are chosen to highlight campaign progress.

The nice to know information is the one section that we didn’t trend, and in the future we still might decide to do that. For now, we highlight user engagement data like pages per visit, bounce rate and average time on site. The one area we do trend here is site indexation, because that can have a major effect on a site’s search engine health and provides an early warning to any index bloat issues

A bonus area we added to the report allows our account managers to think creatively regarding non-standard data highlights and observations. Interestingly, this is often the section that gets the most comments from clients.

The most time-consuming piece in this whole process was setting up the initial template. The report itself is actually quite simple after that. The client-facing portion is one tab, which allows us to PDF everything, and it pulls data from other data tabs.

Most of the tabs have a similar table which has the date and the metric you want to visualize. This is just copying and pasting numbers from Analytics – nothing fancy. But, if you’re curious, the tables where we put this data look like this:

Pulling the data

Once set up, the only data we are pulling from Analytics is the number of:

  • Total organic visits, broken down by the traffic source
  • Goal conversions (transactions and revenue for e-commerce)
  • Micro goal conversions (newsletter signups, or event tracking on important buttons)
  • Total page views
  • Bounce rate
  • Time spent on site

The report basically does the rest since the data sources for all the graphs and charts have already been selected.

We also download landing page data from Google Analytics which includes two segments: organic and total traffic compared by current and previous month. Similarly, when added into the appropriate columns, the template populates the data into this section:

All this data pulling and automation helps a lot with the time element. The problem we found was with a 10 person team (let alone a team of significantly more people), everyone wanted some level of customization, which was completely understandable. Each client is going to have specific requests, and each account manager is going to want to tweak it to their liking. The problem with everyone customizing the template is that it often resulted in some elements displaying weirdly when we made it into a PDF, or worse, broke some of the formulas that caused the template to work.

When we investigated this, we found that 80% of our clients could use one of 2 templates:

  • A conversion and micro conversion report which reported on a goal we had set up and included events and micro conversions we were targeting
  • An e-commerce report which reported on transactions and revenue generated from organic search

Keeping the rest of the report intact involved some creativity. For this, if you are not familiar with offsets, then I suggest paying close attention.

The offset function creates magic

This is a little-used Excel function from what I have found, but it’s super powerful. What it does is:

“Returns a reference to a range that is a specified number of rows and columns from a cell or range of cells. The reference that is returned can be a single cell or a range of cells. You can specify the number of rows and the number of columns to be returned.” Source: Microsoft Excel Help

In other words, one cell could control pivoting the entire report between months. Every single table that you have in the report can be linked to one cell and change as that cell changes. Even better, if you can create a button that is connected to this cell, with the simple click of the button, it can adjust data in various parts of the template such as the date, the header, footer, and even provide a way for clients to navigate themselves through the data (if set up correctly).

Here is how it works for us:

In many ways, this serves as a database that holds historical data so it’s saved for the future. Using this, we can show a trended analysis of the progress we have made over time without having to do a ton of data pulling, saving us a significant amount of time.

Given the amount of reports we, as an agency, run on a monthly basis, we need to find better ways of automation without the restrictions that come with third party tools. We have started developing an interactive web-based reporting tool built on the Microsoft Reporting framework. This will work by setting up scheduled jobs to collect data from various data sources (including Google Analytics) and automatically store them in our database so that we don’t even have to pull the data. This will allow our team (and in the future – our clients) to access this data via pre-templated online reports and more time to tell stories and analyze trends.

For now, we are still using Excel, which our clients still love.

The real point that I want to stress is that no matter what method you use for reports, the story is key. The data is crucial, but the insight around the data is what management wants to see. They want to visually see what is happening with their business, and understand through our analysis why it’s happening.

We have received an incredible amount of feedback from clients who have said things like “I really LOVE the format of having the charts or graphs, and then having your commentary/insights right next to it…TOTALLY works for me”

So they are happy. We are happy.

And that’s our process – I hope you found something you can take away for your reports as well.

One final tip to build the report

This is not something that could be done alone. It really took the entire team’s effort, ranging from junior associates up to the CEO, getting buy-in, agreeing on the metrics, and believing in the vision for what we were trying to accomplish with reporting. The ideas and feedback were invaluable and they should all be proud of what we accomplished together.

Download the template

To help you get started, we have made the template available for you to download. I am happy to answer any specific questions in the comments and help you as you set up your own report for you and your clients.

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