gspann guide ( sitecore vs. google analytics )

Sitecore Analytics: Steps to Marketing Success Sitecore Marketing Optimization Series Guide One

GSPANN Technologies, Inc.

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© Copyright GSPANN Technologies, Inc. 2015

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Sitecore Analytics: Steps to Marketing Success 2 of 30

Table of Contents Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................................ 2

Document Tables ................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Document Figures ................................................................................................................................................................................. 3

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 4

Summary ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

2. How does Sitecore Analytics Compare? ...................................................................................................................... 6

The ‘What and How’ of Analytics ........................................................................................................................................................... 6 A Quick Comparison .............................................................................................................................................................................. 6 Selecting the Best-fit Solutions ........................................................................................................................................................... 10

3. What if I am on an Older Version of Sitecore? ........................................................................................................... 11

Sitecore Versions ................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 Finding the Biggest Opportunities ....................................................................................................................................................... 14 Choosing a Time to Upgrade ............................................................................................................................................................... 14

4. What is Experience Analytics? .................................................................................................................................. 16

Why does Experience Analytics Matter to Marketers? ........................................................................................................................ 16 What Do We Measure with Experience Analytics?............................................................................................................................... 16 How does Sitecore Support Experience Analytics? ............................................................................................................................. 18

5. Where do I Start My Journey? ................................................................................................................................... 19

Using an Analytics Maturity Model ...................................................................................................................................................... 19 Finding Out Who We Are ...................................................................................................................................................................... 21 The Ambitious Organization ................................................................................................................................................................ 21 The Top-heavy Organization ................................................................................................................................................................ 21 The Thoughtful Organization ............................................................................................................................................................... 21 Finding out Where You Start ................................................................................................................................................................ 22

6. What Does an ‘Analytics Roadmap’ Look Like?.......................................................................................................... 23

A Basic Analytics Roadmap ................................................................................................................................................................. 23 Key Activities for Each Roadmap......................................................................................................................................................... 23

7. Where Can I Get Help to Build My Road Map? ........................................................................................................... 25

8. Appendix ................................................................................................................................................................. 26

Sitecore and Google Analytics Comparison Detail .............................................................................................................................. 26

Document Tables

Table 1 - Comparison of Sitecore and Google Analytics Functionality ............................................................................... 6

Table 2 - Comparison of Analytics Improvements across Multiple Sitecore Versions ....................................................... 11

Table 3 - Digital Analytics Maturity Model (DAMM) Parameters and their Effect on Organizations ................................... 20


Table 4 - Sitecore and Google Analytics Comparison Detail ............................................................................................ 26

Document Figures

Figure 1 - Three Primary Activities of Analytic Software .................................................................................................... 6

Figure 2 - The Three Relevant Sitecore Version Families ................................................................................................. 11

Figure 3 - Improving the Customer Experience Improves the Sales Performance of an Organization ................................ 16

Figure 4 - Tracking Visitors across Channels and Time with Sitecore 8 ........................................................................... 18

Figure 5 - The Sitecore Customer Experience Maturity Model .......................................................................................... 19

Figure 6 - An Example of Maturity of an Ambitious Organization ..................................................................................... 21

Figure 7 - An Example of Maturity of a Top-heavy Organization ....................................................................................... 21

Figure 8 - An Example of Maturity of a Thoughtful Organization Early in their Analytics Journey ...................................... 21

Figure 9 - An Example of a Thoughtful Organization at a Mature State in their Analytics Journey ..................................... 22

Figure 10 - An Analytics Roadmap that Would Lead an Organization to their Initial State of Maturity ................................ 23

Figure 11 - We Recommend Executing Several Short Roadmaps that Lead to Greater Maturity ........................................ 24

Figure 12 - Each Analytics Roadmap that an Organization Executes Should Move them to Closer to Maturity .................. 24


1. Introduction

This document is the first of five guides in GSPANN’s Sitecore Marketing Optimization Series. The series

is targeted at marketers that are considering or are using Sitecore for their marketing and customer

experience activities. The series reviews in-depth the Sitecore capabilities around these five areas:

1. Analytics

2. Personalization

3. Experience Optimization

4. Sales Enablement

5. Campaign Management

The series parallel Sitecore Business Optimization Services (SBOS) that we offer our clients to help them

maximize the value they get from their Sitecore investment. These offerings focus on strategy, analysis,

and planning activities required in delivering new, or optimizing existing, Sitecore-built websites to more

effectively deliver against customer acquisition and engagement goals defined by marketing and other

stakeholders within an organization.

The consulting approach is adapted from the SBOS approach defined by Sitecore, with the addition of

insights and opportunities taken from GSPANN’s own experiences in delivering sophisticated cross-

channel customer engagement solutions that include Sitecore with other platforms commonly found

within the digital marketing ecosystem (e.g. Marketing Automation, CRM and Social platforms).

Summary

This document is focused on the analytics capabilities of Sitecore. The document is intended as guide for

marketers who are considering Sitecore for their analytics as an alternative to an incumbent platform like

Google Analytics. Within this guide, we will cover the following topics:

How does Sitecore Analytics Compare?

Most organizations who have implemented Sitecore are or have used platforms like Google Analytics,

Omniture or others. If your organization is still using an incumbent analytics platform, then you may have

questions such as “How does Sitecore analytics compare with my current analytics platform?” The guide

outlines the differences in functionality and your approach when using Sitecore experience analytics

when compared with others.

What if I am on an Older Version of Sitecore?

Organizations often are one, two, or even three versions behind the current version of Sitecore. With each

major release of Sitecore, new analytics capabilities are added, while existing capabilities are enhanced.

The guide examines what capabilities are available to you in your current version, while understanding


the value capabilities in newer versions. We will review how businesses can justify upgrading to these

newer Sitecore versions.

What is ‘Experience Analytics’?

Vendors, along with the industry at large, are good at using ‘loaded’ terminology. As ‘web content

management’ has evolved into ‘experience management’, we now also have ‘experience analytics’—but

what does it mean for Sitecore? The guide examines how you can measure ‘the experience’ using a variety

of different tools that Sitecore offers.

Where do I Start My Journey?

As with most things you do for the first time, knowing where to start with Sitecore analytics can also be

challenging. The guide will review key considerations and questions that lead you to the correct start,

while setting the correct direction for the following steps. We provide you with a decision tree that guides

you to one of the several starting points for your analytics effort.

What does an ‘Analytics Roadmap’ Look Like?

Getting started correctly is important, but continuing in the correct path will finally help you achieve your

analytics goals. As with many tasks marketers undertake these days, having a ‘cookbook’ to guide your

efforts reduces your learning curve and increases your success rate. The guide provides you with a

framework to use each time you want to employ analytics—perhaps for a new campaign, recent product

launch, or just to gain a deeper insight into your existing customers. This framework guides you through

the key steps in defining and planning Sitecore experience analytics.

Where can I Get Help to Get My Roadmap Built?

Our Sitecore Business Optimization Services (SBOS) help both existing and new Sitecore customers take

advantage of their investment. These SBOS workshops are held onsite at your facilities, where we work

with you and your team to create an analytics roadmap. In addition to helping you create your first

roadmap, we will provide you with the necessary tools while educating you around how to create road

maps that guide future experience analytics initiatives.


2. How does Sitecore Analytics Compare?

Understand How Sitecore Compares To Google Analytics

If you are using Sitecore now and have been

maintaining websites for a while, then you

probably have experience using different

analytics applications other than Sitecore.

You could still be using those other analytics

applications, as a ‘carry over’ from a pre-Sitecore

website, while only using the most basic

analytics capabilities built into Sitecore. If this

describes your current situation, then the

following section should help you understand

what you are missing out on and when it may

make sense for you to adopt Sitecore analytics.

The ‘What and How’ of Analytics

To better understand how to compare them, we

need to understand what and how modern web

and experience analytics tools work. If we

breakdown the ‘what and how’, we find three

primary activities:

Figure 1 - Three Primary Activities of Analytic Software

A Quick Comparison

The following table compares Sitecore and

Google Analytics in the context of the three

activities these products perform. The

comparison considers the functional differences

of data capture, analysis and reporting between

these two analytics tools.

Table 1 - Comparison of Sitecore and Google Analytics Functionality

Sitecore Google Analytics Perspective

Data Capture

Proximity 4 1 With analytics tightly integrated with

Sitecore, all actions on the website are

captured in real-time.

Granularity 4 2 Sitecore captures highly granular,

visitor specific information ‘out of the

box’. This level of granularity with

Google Analytics can only occur if

you provide a unique visitor identifier

when Google captures data.

Data Capture

Analysis Reporting



Session Unification 4 3 Sitecore can track users across

sessions (as stated above)

automatically, while Google Analytics

requires you to provide a unique

visitor identifier to unify session

information for a visitor.

Channels 3 3 Sitecore and Google Analytics both

have the capability to capture

analytics across channels, each with

a varying degree of ‘out of the box’

functionality for specific channel

types.

Promotional Data 2 3 Google Analytics is tightly integrated

with its AdWords and AdSense

siblings, which are ubiquitous means

of promotion on the web. Sitecore

can capture this and other

promotional analytics data with the

effort integration with those systems.

Analysis

Visitors 4 3 Sitecore provides marketers with a

detailed view of visitor activities

through its visitor profile card. Google

Analytics only provides an

obfuscated view of visitor activities—

never revealing the visitor.

Conversion 3 3 Both Sitecore and Google Analytics

provide conversion analysis, with the

ability to instrument website goals

and campaigns.



Attribution 3 3 Sitecore supports attribution, but

requires the marketer to determine

how they want to attribute various

channels, campaigns and web events.

Google Analytics’ attribution is

skewed to AdWords and AdSense, but

can be configured to support outside

campaigns and activities also.

A/B Testing 4 3 A/B (and multivariate) Testing within

Sitecore is tightly integrated with the

overall system, and can enable

automated testing and selection of

‘winning’ elements on a web page.

Google Analytics provides testing

with a more manual effort and is

limited to testing whole web pages,

rather than individual elements.

Reporting

Basics 3 4 Both platforms provide standard, ‘out

of the box’ reporting, with Google

Analytics having a broad range of

immediately useful reports, along

with a repository of community-

defined dashboards that marketers

can choose from.

Customization 4 3 Sitecore provides deeper

customization capabilities through

the user interface, but also provides

marketers to customize capabilities

by integrating custom-developed

capabilities into the dashboards.



Drill Down 4 2 Both platforms provide ‘drill down’

capabilities with Sitecore enabling

marketers to ‘slice and dice’ with

more granularity and control over the

mix of data types you may want to

analyze.

Additional Considerations

Time to Value 3 4 Google Analytics provides ‘immediate

gratification’ with little effort. Sitecore

will require more initial planning and

configuration to derive value, but can

in the end, provide insights more

aligned with the marketer’s needs.

Implementation Effort

2 4 Google Analytics is a ‘plug and play’

solution with a short time to value.

Gaining the full value from Sitecore

will require more planning,

configuration and even

customization, than even available

with Google Analytics.

Resource Availability

2 4 Finding practitioners who are

‘experts’ at Google Analytics is

relatively easy, whereas Sitecore

resources are more difficult to find,

even within many established

Sitecore certified partners.

Marketing Solution 4 2 Though Sitecore analytics can be

treated as a standalone capability, its

power and ability to deliver value

comes when it is used in combination

with other digital marketing



capabilities (e.g. experience

optimization, personalization,

campaigns, etc.) built into Sitecore.

Selecting the Best-fit Solutions

In the table above, we reviewed both functional

and business aspects of Sitecore and Google

Analytics.

When making a choice to stay with Google

Analytics or to move to Sitecore, we need to take

into account several considerations:

How advanced are your immediate

analytics requirements? If personalization

or experience optimization is not within

your immediate plans, then Sitecore

analytics is not required. If on the other

hand, your plans do include more

sophisticated capabilities, you will need

Sitecore analytics to support them.

What resources are available to you? If you

do not have Sitecore resources available,

then it is challenging to configure advanced

Sitecore analytics capabilities.

Do you want to see and use visitor details?

If you want to capture and use the details of

individuals visiting your website, or

opening your emails, then you will need

Sitecore. Google Analytics does not provide

this capability out-of-the-box, and would

require a significant custom development

effort to provide what Sitecore does. This

capability is the basis for personalization

within Sitecore.

In the next section, we will discuss what

analytics capabilities are available in the various

Sitecore versions. This should also be a

consideration in deciding when to invest in

Sitecore analytics, as the most recent versions

are more competitive with Google Analytics.

Please read the ‘Sitecore and Google Analytics

Comparison Detail’ located in the appendix for a

detailed comparison of the functional aspects of

both applications.


3. What if I am on an Older Version of Sitecore?

Understand What to Expect When Upgrading

As most organizations do not run the most

current version of Sitecore, marketers may find

themselves asking the questions “What am I

missing by not upgrading?” and “Do the new

capabilities justify upgrading?”

In this section, we examine the improvements

made to Sitecore analytics across the advancing

versions to help inform your decision to upgrade

Sitecore based on the business value it can

create.

Sitecore Versions

Though there may be some organizations that

are still using Sitecore 5.x, most have migrated to

6.x and later.

Figure 2 - The Three Relevant Sitecore Version Families

For this review, we will focus on the Sitecore

versions 6.x through 8.

Table 2 - Comparison of Analytics Improvements across Multiple Sitecore Versions

Sitecore Version Version Improvements Value to the Marketer

Sitecore 6.x

CMS 6.5 / DMS 2.0.1 Improved Analytics Reporting:

New daily and periodic reports provide more granular visibility

into data.

More Reporting Control: Marketers are

able to see reports on a daily or self-defined period.

CMS and DMS 6.6 User Experience Upgrade: The Executive Insight Dashboard has an

improved design, layout and controls.

Easier to Perform Analysis: The new dashboard improves how marketers

analyze time series data and filter for individual campaigns, while working

within an improved experience.

Sitecore 7.x

Experience Platform 7.5 Sitecore Experience Database (xDB):

How visitor event data is captured

and stored changed significantly by

No Size Limits: The xDB is designed

as a ‘big data’ solution, meaning there

are no limits to the amount of

Sitecore 6.x

Sitecore 7.x

Sitecore 8



having the data stored in MongoDB instead of SQL Server.

information you are allowed to capture. This is particularly

important for marketers with high

traffic, multiple engagement channels and the desire to capture

detailed data.

Capture Anything: The xDB is now very flexible, with the ability to

capture data from any channel,

device or system that marketers want to associate with a person.

Sitecore Experience Profile (xFile) and the ‘Contact’: A new user

profile now tracks and aggregates

all channels into a single profile view associated with a ‘contact’.

Through the xFile, the ‘contact’

information is maintained across sessions, devices and channels.

Single View of the Customer: The xFile succeeds in creating one view of the

people who engage with your

organization across all its channels and available devices over time. This view

allows marketers to understand

behaviors and characteristics of specific segments and people in detail.

Connectors: The Experience

Database now has connectors available that enable data capture

from platforms like Salesforce.com,

Microsoft Dynamics and other platforms within the marketing

ecosystem.

More Comprehensive Visitor View:

With the ability to associate data collected within other system with a

‘contact’ in the xDB, marketers can now get closer to the 360-degree view

of visitors they need.

Connect to Custom Solutions: With the approach to developing

connectors now standardized,

developing connectors that integrate existing custom applications

becomes easier and maintainable.

Reporting: While MongoDB captures the ‘experience data’, SQL

Server is utilized for data

Improved Report Processing: For organizations with significant

experience data to aggregate and



aggregation and reporting purposes.

analyze, having the separate reporting facility will improve performance.

User Experience: The user

experience is improved by providing a more integrated

environment and updated styling.

Ease of Use: With the updated user

experience, marketers can get the information they need more quickly,

while having it displayed in an easier to

consume manner.

Sitecore 8

Experience Platform 8 Federated Experience Manager

(FXM): The FXM enables marketers to capture analytics data from

websites outside of Sitecore by just placing ‘analytics tags’ on the page

(e.g. much like you would with

Google Analytics).

Capture Analytics Data from Non-

Sitecore Websites: Now get the ‘complete’ view of customer engagement by getting

analytics data from legacy websites, like blogs, that are not running on Sitecore.

Predictive Analytics: Using

Microsoft’s Azure Machine

Learning (ML) platform, Sitecore now provides an ability to predict a

person’s behavior based on past

behavior.

Improved Personalization: With

predictive analytics, personalization is

informed by ‘predicting’ what people want from their digital experience, and

aligning what Sitecore delivers with what

people want. Ideally, this will take some of the guess work out of personalization,

relying more heavily on data actual data,

rather than marketer intuition.

Shared Session State Support:

With shared session-state, all data that can be shared across multiple

sessions, for example, the data

related to contacts and devices, is collected and saved to the session

state database.

Customer Views Across Devices: This

technical capability, when taken advantage of across different devices and

systems, will enable marketers to have a

view of customers as they switch devices in middle of their digital activities (e.g.

add items to a shopping cart at the

desktop, but completing the transaction while on a smartphone).



User Experience: Sitecore 8 includes a complete update of the

user experience across all

capabilities, including analytics.

Ease of Use: With the updated user experience, marketers can get to the

information they need more quickly,

while having it displayed in an easier to consume manner.

Finding the Biggest Opportunities

For marketers who are thinking about upgrading

from Sitecore 6.x to 7.x, there are many things to

consider beyond the analytics capabilities, but it

is clear that significant changes occurred with

the release of Sitecore 7.5.

The changes within Sitecore 7.5 are the

foundation for the Sitecore Experience Platform

and all its associated capabilities, including

analytics. Analytics, within this platform, does

not stand on its own, but is a tightly integrated

capability that not only provides marketers with

passive reporting, but also directly provides

information to drive personalization and

optimization activities within Sitecore.

Choosing a Time to Upgrade

For organizations that are still on Sitecore 5.x,

migrating to 6.x adds value in the serviceability

of the overall Sitecore platform, but leaves

marketers with a little more than an improved

‘window dressing’ for analytics.

To gain significant improvements in capabilities

and usability, we recommend that organizations

migrate to Sitecore 7.5 or a later version.

Considerations in upgrading are typically

justified by the business value provided. Here

are areas of business value you gain when

upgrading to Sitecore 7.5 (or later) analytics:

Large data sets: When collecting analytics

data across multiple related properties or a

high-volume website, like an e-commerce

property, Sitecore 7.5 is designed to scale

easily to very large data sets (‘big data’

magnitude).

Integrated customer intelligence: With the

Experience Profile in Sitecore 7.5, marketers

can now have a single view of customer

intelligence. The profile is easily extended

to include behavioral, transactional and

other information required for different

stakeholders within your organization.

Insights from the entire digital ecosystem:

The Experience Database (xDB) can be

integrated with systems outside of Sitecore.

This enables marketers to correlate and

analyze data from their CRM, marketing

automation and other systems, all within

Sitecore. There are many off-the-shelf

connectors available for common

platforms, or you can develop connectors

that integrate with proprietary applications.

Improved productivity and use: The

updated user experience in Sitecore 7.5 will

improve peoples’ productivity and


effectiveness with the tool. The dashboard

can be tailored for the needs of specific

stakeholders, making it more relevant to

audiences outside of marketing.

Choosing when to upgrade to a newer version of

Sitecore is dependent on many factors, including

your budget, marketing requirements, existing

projects and resource availability. Though

analytics is foundational within Sitecore, there

are many other functional and technological

considerations when making an upgrade

decision, most are outside the scope of this

document.


4. What is Experience Analytics?

Understanding How Customers Experience Your Brand

Sitecore, along with many other vendors, claims

to provide ‘experience analytics’. Why does

experience analytics matter to the modern

marketer? Marketers working with websites

understand what is measured with ‘web

analytics’—but what do we measure with

experience analytics? In this section, we will

find the answers by investigating both of these

questions.

Why does Experience Analytics Matter to Marketers?

Unlike web analytics, experience analytics

measures how well your organization engages

with people across its digital and physical

channels. The experience people have is the

sum of all their interactions with your

company's systems, products and people—and it

is becoming the primary differentiator for some

industries.

“Customer experience is the new marketing” Steve Cannon Mercedes Benz USA President and CEOi

Though the notion of measuring ‘experience’ can

be quite broad, within the scope of this

discussion, we look to the digital experiences

that people have with your company. How

people ‘feel’ about your brand, based on the

experiences they have, are strong indicators

about how they will engage with you in the

future. In a 2014 study by a customer experience

firm Medallia, customers who had the best past

experiences spend 140% more money compared

to those who had a poor past experienceii

Figure 3 - Improving the Customer Experience Improves the Sales Performance of an Organization

iii

A 2014 Gartner survey (Importance of Customer

Experience Is on the Rise) on the role of

marketing in customer experience found that, by

2016, 89% of companies expect to compete

mostly on the basis of customer experience,

versus 36% four years agoiv. With ‘customer

experience’ becoming the mantra for many

marketing organizations—what do we measure

to keep us focused on delivering the best

experience?

What Do We Measure with Experience Analytics?

Let us begin to answer this question by

understanding where we all started from with

‘web analytics’. It is highly likely that most

readers started with Google Analytics years ago,


which at the time, represented the state of a

nascent industry. With the capabilities found

now in platforms like Sitecore, we can now begin

i Mercedes Benz CEO: Customer Experience is the New Marketing, Loyalty360, Jim Tierney, October 2014 ii The Value of the Quantified Customer, Harvard Business Review, Peter Kris, August 2014

to ask ‘experience’ questions and get the

answers we need to understand how well we are

doing.

iii The Value of the Quantified Customer, Harvard Business Review, Peter Kris, August 2014 iv Gartner Surveys Confirm Customer Experience Is the New Battlefield, Jake Sorofman, October 2014

.

Web Analytics Experience Analytics

Business Goals Demonstrate website value

Increase digital presence

Increase digital touches

Increase revenue

Increase digital engagement

Increase customer lifetime value

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Page clicks

Page views

Videos watched

Emails sent

Loyalty

Recency

Rate of conversion to revenue

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Target Metrics 10 clicks / page

1000 pages viewed / day

100 videos watched / day

5000 emails sent / week

Number of re-purchases within the first

6 months of the initial purchase

Average numbers of days since the last

purchases

Average revenue generated per web visit

Average value of customer purchases

over the first 5 years

Experience analytics starts with the marketer

considering the correct set of goals, KPIs and

target metrics that collectively define the

analytics. To arrive at the correct analytics

parameters, marketers must take into account

the following principles to guide them:

Strategy-driven: Useful analytics must

support, and align with your business

strategy. For instance, if your organization

has agreed upon a strategy to ‘grow your

customer base’ versus ‘growing a

customer’s share of wallet’, then each of

these strategic paths will shape and inform

http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mercedes-benz-ceo-customer-experience-is-the-new-marketing

http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mercedes-benz-ceo-customer-experience-is-the-new-marketing

https://hbr.org/2014/08/the-value-of-customer-experience-quantified

https://hbr.org/2014/08/the-value-of-customer-experience-quantified

http://blogs.gartner.com/jake-sorofman/gartner-surveys-confirm-customer-experience-new-battlefield/

http://blogs.gartner.com/jake-sorofman/gartner-surveys-confirm-customer-experience-new-battlefield/


your specific business goals differently,

which in turn will require different KPIs.

Customer-focused: In addition to thinking

about your strategies and goals, you must

consider the customers’ goals in the context

of yours. If you are growing your customer

base, then what is it that you satisfy within

the customer to lure them away from

competitors? We need to look for insights

to customer actions that indicate your

success in luring them away—are there

specific actions we can measure, like web

offers to replace competitive products.

Cross-channel: Today’s customers rarely

rely on a single channel to engage with

organizations—they are found moving

between mobile devices, email, social

networks and your desktop website—

possibly within a single session. With that

in mind, marketers must capture metrics

across all channels to avoid ‘blind spots’

that occur when customers engage with

channels that we do not measure.

Actionable: All analytics must be tied to

action. There is little use in capturing

information that does not lead to improving

the customer experience and meeting our

business goals. As marketers define the

analytics they want to capture, they must

identify how they will act on this

information—what will this information

inform? How can you optimize your

engagement with customers?

How does Sitecore Support Experience Analytics?

With Sitecore 8, there is fundamentally nothing

that marketers cannot track about their

customers. In addition, the ability to bring all

this information together in a single database

(xDB), now provides a single view of the

customer.

Figure 4 - Tracking Visitors across Channels and Time with Sitecore 8

‘Experience analytics’ is about capturing and

seeing every touch the customer has with your

organization—digital and physical.

Sitecore 8 can capture and analyze information

from website visits (even non-Sitecore), email

interactions, CRM records, e-commerce

transactions, and other systems that capture

customer details.

Providing the ability to capture and analyze this

information in a report or dashboard can provide

valuable insights to marketers; but the real value

is in having Sitecore use this information create

experiences for customers in real-time through

experience personalization and optimization.


5. Where do I Start My Journey?

Understanding where you are Informs Where You Start

Not unlike other competencies that marketing

organizations develop, most marketing

organizations will find that their analytics

competencies lie along a maturity curve. Not

only are some organizations more mature than

others, but it is also common to find different

levels of maturity within the same organization.

To understand the best place to start your

Sitecore analytics journey, we will begin by

identifying where, along an analytics maturity

curve, you already are.

Figure 5 - The Sitecore Customer Experience Maturity Model

v

Though Sitecore has established their Customer

Experience Maturity Modelvi to work across all of

their platform’s capabilities, analytics requires a

more focused approach. This approach

v Sitecore Customer Experience Maturity Model vi Sitecore Customer Experience Maturity Model

guarantees that that we are laying the correct

foundation upon which to build the other digital

marketing capabilities that Sitecore provides.

Using an Analytics Maturity Model

To identify where on the digital analytics

maturity curve an organization lies, we use a

model developed by Stéphane Hamelvii, a digital

analytics thought leader, who developed his

Digital Analytics Maturity Model (DAMM) viii to

help organizations identify their level of

maturity across several key parameters.

DAMM helps organizations understand how

mature they are along six different parameters:

1. Governance

2. Objectives

3. Scope

4. Team & Expertise

5. Improvement Process Methodology

6. Tools, Technology, Data Integration

Each parameter represents one component that

is required to successfully deliver digital

‘experience’ analytics for your organization. The

following table provides details about each of

these parameters and how they affect your

direction.

vii Stéphane Hamel, Digital analytics thought leader viii Digital Analytics Maturity, Stéphane Hamel

https://www.sitecore.net/services-and-support/business-optimization-services/how-we-work.aspx

https://www.sitecore.net/services-and-support/business-optimization-services/how-we-work.aspx

http://www.immeria.net/

http://digitalanalyticsmaturity.org/


Table 3 - Digital Analytics Maturity Model (DAMM) Parameters and their Effect on Organizations

Key Question Effect

Governance What is the highest job title within your

organization that is accountable for digital performance measurement against

business objectives?

Without high-level visibility and

accountability for digital performance, marketers may not be empowered to take

action based on the analytics data.

Objectives What is the objective of your analytics program?

Without a clear objective that ties back to the current business strategy, marketers

will not have the mandate from leadership

to successfully execute their digital analytics initiative.

Scope How many components of your business, channels and customer segments does

your digital analytics initiative include?

The scope sets the boundaries for your initiative’s resource requirements,

implementation costs, schedule and depth

of involvement by business at large.

Team & Expertise How is your analytics team structured? The team structure determines the level of

attention that digital analytics is afforded, while determining the depth of

involvement by the business.

Improvement Process Methodology

How does your team identify problems and opportunities, develop hypothesis, analyze

data and provide insights?

The methodology and approach determines the quality, consistency and

insightfulness of the analytics initiative.

Tools, Technology & Data Integration

How sophisticated is your use of digital

marketing technologies?

The level of sophistication will inform the

required scope, expertise and methodology

for your initiative.

The sophistication can vary, from using

analytics to monitor basic KPIs to using the

data to drive content personalization and behavioral targeting.


Finding Out Who We Are

Each organization will have a different maturity

level that will be determined by answering the

questions associated with each of the

parameters of the maturity model outlined in the

table above.

To better understand and relate the model to

your own organization, we are providing you

with several common examples of maturity

levels within the following charts.

The Ambitious Organization

The ‘ambitious organization’ has invested

significantly in most modern technologies,

while having committed to significantly ‘moving

the needle’ through their digital initiatives.

Figure 6 - An Example of Maturity of an Ambitious Organization

Though the ‘ambitious organization’ has ranked

high in many parameters, their lack of ‘buy in’

from leadership, investment in solid

methodologies, and insufficient staffing will lead

to underwhelming and disappointing results.

The Top-heavy Organization

The ‘top-heavy organization’ has leadership’s

attention and involvement, with a clear set of

objectives and scope for their initiative.

Figure 7 - An Example of Maturity of a Top-heavy Organization

However, the ‘top-heavy organization’ has not

invested in the staffing and education of its

employees which is necessary to perform the

analysis, make recommendations, and act on

the data that is collected. Leadership will be

disappointed with the results of the initiative.

The Thoughtful Organization

The ‘thoughtful organization’ has taken the time

to understand the problem of digital analytics, to

gain the buy-in from leadership, but not to

overextend themselves with unreasonable

expectations.

Figure 8 - An Example of Maturity of a Thoughtful Organization Early in their Analytics Journey

This team is starting small, with a focus on their

process and methodology. With reasonable

expectations and commitments, the team can

gain expertise and confidence at a comfortable


pace, with the opportunity to grow each

parameter equally to reach a consistently high

level of maturity.

Figure 9 - An Example of a Thoughtful Organization at a Mature State in their Analytics Journey

Finding out Where You Start

Where you start your journey depends on where

you are now. Many organizations are starting

with a ‘greenfield’ where they can start small and

grow their analytics practice thoughtfully.

Others may have moved dozens of existing

websites to Sitecore and have been using Google

Analytics, Adobe SiteCatalyst, Unica or other

analytics software for years.

Regardless of where you currently are in your

journey, assessing your current state and

direction will assist in understanding how to

move forward. We recommend using the Digital

Analytics Maturity Model (DAMM) to highlight

opportunities for improvement and growth.


6. What Does an ‘Analytics Roadmap’ Look Like?

Develop a Plan that Enables Your Success

Getting started correctly is important, but

continuing on the correct path will help you

achieve your analytics goals. As with many

tasks marketers undertake these days, having a

‘cookbook’ to guide your efforts reduces your

learning curve and increases your success rate.

We have defined a roadmap that will allow you

to enter at various points along the journey,

depending on your current level of maturity.

Assessing your current maturity level using

MADD will help you determine where the ideal

entry point is for your organization on the

roadmap for your organization’s current

maturity.

A Basic Analytics Roadmap

Our roadmap has several work streams (i.e.

swim lanes of effort) that execute in parallel.

This roadmap is a general guide that can be

adapted to the needs of each organization

depending on the availability of internal skills,

resources and processes.

Figure 10 - An Analytics Roadmap that Would Lead an Organization to their Initial State of Maturity

Stra

tegy

and

P

lann

ing

Pra

ctic

e D

evel

opm

ent

Tech

nolo

gy

Plan Implement Execute & Optimize

Document Business Objectives

Instrument Website

Develop Reports

Develop Dashboards

Test

Socialize Leadership

Define ‘Core Analytics’ Charter

Define Goals, KPIs, Segments, Targets Revisit Goals, KPIs, Segments, Targets

Identify Team Methodology Training Technology Training

Governance Model

Process Definition Process Refinement

Refine

The basic roadmap may occur for several

iterations to move an organization up the

maturity curve. As the organization plans,

implements and executes their first roadmap,

they will soon be looking to increase the

sophistication of their goals, along with their

practice and technologies.

Key Activities for Each Roadmap

The roadmap contains key activities within each

work stream. These activities should be

revisited for roadmap iteration. For instance, as

an organization increases its analytics

sophistication, they will need to identify new


goals, KPIs and targets. As an outcome of this

process, they will likely instrument new parts of

the website, email templates or non-Sitecore

based systems which customers engage to

capture new data. Increasing sophistication will

demand a revisit of the skills, governance model,

process, reporting, and dashboards.

Figure 11 - We Recommend Executing Several Short Roadmaps that Lead to Greater Maturity

Through multiple iterations of the roadmap,

organizations should find themselves increasing

in sophistication and more importantly, an

exponential increase in value gained from their

analytics initiatives.

Figure 12 - Each Analytics Roadmap that an Organization Executes Should Move them to Closer to Maturity

Through these iterations, organizations should

see their maturity increase across the

parameters of the DAMM, moving them from the

inside to the outside of the graph.

Roadmap 1 Roadmap 2 Roadmap 3


7. Where Can I Get Help to Build My Road Map?

Getting Help along Your Journey

The Sitecore Analytics Workshop is part of the

GSPANN Sitecore Business Optimization

Services (SBOS) to help both existing and new

Sitecore customers take advantage of their

investment.

This workshop is held onsite at your facilities,

where we work with you and your team to create

an analytics road map. In addition to helping you

create your first road map, we will provide you

with tools you need and educate you on how to

create road maps that guide your future

experience analytics initiatives.

To learn more about GSPANN’s Sitecore

Analytics Workshop, please contact us at

[email protected] to discuss your needs and

questions. We tailor the workshop to your

specific needs, whether your require strategy to

implementation services, or some guidance to

an existing in-house initiative, we look forward

to discussing your needs.

mailto:[email protected]


8. Appendix

Sitecore and Google Analytics Comparison Detail

The following table compares analytics capabilities of Sitecore and Google across data capture, analysis

and reporting in detail. This supports the summary table provided in section one of this document.

Table 4 - Sitecore and Google Analytics Comparison Detail

Sitecore Google Analytics

Data Capture

Proximity Unlike cloud-based analytics applications, Sitecore analytics are an

integrated part of the Sitecore system.

Every time a page is requested or an event occurs on a page, Sitecore

captures it automatically.

Google Analytics, along with other cloud-based applications, are remote

‘spectators’.

These applications require that a predefined set of fields are populated at

browser be sent back to them upon each

page visit.

Granularity Sitecore captures two data types for

page visits—the analytics profile and

page events. Sitecore uses the visitor’s behavior on a page to build their profile.

In addition, the Sitecore captures

specific page events, including a visitor reaching a goal, failing to reach a goal, or

engaging with a campaign.

The page administrator defines what

events they want track and how to

affect the visitor’s profile on a per page basis.

Google Analytics captures page visits

and events, but obscures who the

specific visitor is, thereby maintaining their privacy.

Events are captured at the code level, by

populating a JavaScript tag. Any page event that can invoke JavaScript can

populate an event tag.

Session Unification Sitecore automatically manages a single

identifier for each website visitor. This identifier is used across all user session

and works across different channels

(e.g. web, email and social) tracked by Sitecore.

Google Analytics can track a site-

provided user identifier across sessions. This identifier must be generated and

managed by site, and provided to Google

when tracking page visits and events across sessions.



Channels Sitecore captures both web and email campaigns data, providing a unified

view of events across Sitecore-managed

channels.

Now, with the release the Federated

Experience Manager (FXM), Sitecore can

also capture analytics data within non-Sitecore managed websites and emails,

using a JavaScript tagging method, like

Google Analytics.

Google Analytics captures data wherever you can embed its analytics

tags, which does include web pages and

emails.

Promotional Data Sitecore does not provide OOTB (Out of

the box) analytics for promotional events, like Google AdWords.

Google Analytics provides deep

integration to support its AdWords and AdSense capabilities. These enable

marketers to correlate the performance

of advertisements with visitor events.

Analysis

Visitors Sitecore is focused on understanding

the individual visitor’s behavior, and building an evolving visitor profile over

time.

Sitecore enables marketers to ‘drill down’ to view a specific visitor’s

journeys. This visitor transparency, both

during the session and over time, drives the Sitecore personalization capabilities.

Google Analytics prevents you from

seeing individual visitors or their identities, unless you make a decision to

provide Google with a unique user

identifier, that you create and manage.

By providing Google with that identifier,

you can associate all the events with

that person, and then report against it.

Conversion Through the use of goals, Sitecore can

provide conversion analytics around goals, identifying which goals had the

highest conversions.

Google Analytics provides conversion

analytics around goals and AdWords. Google provides both a funnel and path

view of conversions across visitors.

Attribution Attribution modeling within Sitecore

Analytics is very flexible, allowing

marketers to apply a ‘score value’ to any

Google Analytics provides some ‘off the

shelf’ attribution models where



touch point leading to a conversion event.

In this approach you assign scoring

value to each event that later can be reviewed by event types (e.g. page view,

white paper download, form completion,

etc.).

marketers insert the touch points that lead to a conversion event.

These attribution models stem from

Google’s focus on AdWords and remarketing campaigns, but support the

inclusion of web page touch points as

part of the model to provide a holistic view.

A/B Testing Sitecore provides A/B testing that is tightly integrated with its analytics

capabilities.

Sitecore measures the performance of individual components on the page, and

can tell you which combination of

components will deliver the best performance.

Google Analytics provides A/B testing through its Google Analytics

Experiments, a way for you test 2 or

more pages, each with a unique URL.

As the experiment executes, Google will

send more traffic the ‘winning’ page,

thereby taking advantage of the results as they happen.

Reporting

Basics Sitecore provides analytics provides reporting through its integrated

dashboard. The dashboard can display

charts detailing metrics for both web traffic and campaigns.

Google Analytics provides reporting through its integrated dashboard that

may include either charts or tabular

reports.

Customization Sitecore dashboards enable extensive

customization through configuration, but additional customizations can be

made programmatically, by using

Sitecore’s API, to add or change the functionality available to marketers.

Google Analytics dashboards enable

customization by selecting from available charts and tabular reports to

combine them into reusable

dashboards.

Drill Down Sitecore enables marketers to ‘drill down’ to analytics details for individual

visitors. Sitecore 8 maintains a ‘profile

card’ for each person that engages with

Google Analytics enables ‘drill down’ into in all of its parameters (e.g.

Geography, Demographics, Technology,

Behavior, etc.), with varying levels of



websites, emails and other systems that are tracked by Sitecore analytics.

This profile card summarizes all the

details for a person, while enabling ‘drill down’ into specific channels, campaigns

and time periods that this person

engaged.

granularity depending on the parameter.

Along with the drilling into each

parameter to gain detail, a second parameter may be added to group the

information by that parameter.

No details about individuals are ever exposed within reports by Google,

unless you provide a unique identifier

for individuals at the browser when the data is collected.


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GSPANN Technologies, Inc.

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Produced in the United States of America February 2015 All Rights Reserved GSPANN, the GSPANN logo

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