[Manoj]: Can you give us some background in regards to your career in analytics and online measurement

[Shubhra Shivrasta]: I started my career at Fedex as a business forecasting analyst and then worked at Acxiom dealing with consumer transaction data and developing statistical models for clients in the credit card, insurance and risk industries.

From there I moved to Intercontinental hotels in the field of database marketing and spent several years optimize spend on marketing promotions in the off-line world, segmentation and targeting were the tools we used primarily to determine who to contact and how for the highest ROI.

Now at Nokia for the last year and a half, we are building the infrastructure to take Nokia to the next level of analytics. We have transaction data, we have web data and now we have mobile data – how do people use Nokia phones, what services do they use, when do they churn, how are multi service users different from single service users – all this broken out by country, language, devices gives us such a wealth of information !!! (probably what my kids feel when we visit the Toys’R'Us flagship store in Times Square once a year) – should we do this analysis or that or that….

[Manoj]: At Nokia your team captures a lot of data relating to your users’ mobile experience, what’s the biggest difference you find when comparing mobile metrics/user experiences vs. website metrics/users experiences?

[Shubhra Shivrasta]: Some of the key difference are in the amount of data captured from web to mobile. Mobile technology is still developing and we still face many concerns from developers on how to make sure the pages are as lite as possible. Will performance be impacted in developing countries in page load times etc, so our ability to capture data is limited. The method of data collection is also limiting resulting in mobile metrics being fewer than what we can capture on the web.

Mobile pages and sites are also designed to be more action oriented (download an application, download a song, register etc) than informational – so we track a lot more of what actions people took on the mobile site, where as on web it is about time spent, what content was browsed etc.

Mobile data is much more pertinent to where users are – location based, time based – you use your phone for navigation, downloading music, applications, where as the web data is a lot more dependent on when you are on the computer (when we track visits in a day – the web data shows a very predictable curve every day, while mobile data is a lot more volatile).

[Manoj]: Tell us a little bit about your huddle at Xchange and what you hope the attendees will take away from it

[Shubhra Shivrasta]: This huddle will discuss how to tie all sources of data together, so you can see what your customer is doing and how they interact with your company instead of seeing what a visitor does on a website, or how much money customer x spends on this day buying a given product. Only when we see our customers as people like us, will we understand what the key drivers are for their behaviour. This gives us the knowledge to know which levers to turn(web re-design, price optimization or email segmentation) to make which action actually happen (higher conversion, higher roi or higher response rate) and is the start of a longer lasting relationship with our customer base that are loyal and engaged.

[Manoj]: As a veteran in this industry what are some of the biggest changes you’ve see in content measurement in your career

[Shubhra Shivrasta]: The key areas that have grown are the acceptance of becoming data driven. Moving from reporting to analysis (though a lot of companies are still reporting and think they are analyzing). The understanding that all touch-points need to be analyzed, but it all has to come together also to create synergy for the corporation. The acceptance of testing as a mainstream activity than a scientific experiment as it use to be a decade ago.

[Manoj]: Which other huddles are you going to attend during Xchange?

[Shubhra Shivrasta]: That is a very difficult choice and I have not made up my mind yet, most of them look pretty good to me.

[Manoj]: What are your responsibilities at HowStuffWorks.com?

[Francis Lavelle]: As the Director of Analytics I am responsible for maintaining accurate and actionable data and working with our analytics team to support Sales, Product and Marketing to optimize the business through analysis.

[Manoj]: Can you discuss the importance of taking SEO measurement to the next level, so rather than measuring visits/rankings – looking at paths, comparisons against other mediums, level of engagement and other insightful data.

[Francis Lavelle]: It amazes me that SEO measurement has traditionally lacked the same amount of analysis and rigor that companies put into SEM and other for pay marketing campaigns. As search (SEO) continues to grow as a percentage of website traffic, companies should know more than the basic KPIs (i.e. site visits, top entry pages and top keywords) from natural Search. When a company invests money in a new piece of content they have created an asset and if they collect the right data they can understand the performance and ROI of that asset. At HSW we have set up our analytics to make the measurement of each and every piece of content possible. We also look to understand what types of content perform best not only in SEO but also in driving additional engagement with our website.

[Manoj]: What are the best ways to measure meaningful traffic from Facebook and Twitter.

[Francis Lavelle]: There is a lot of traffic coming from Twitter and Facebook all of which we are delighted to receive. For campaign driven traffic we have specific tracking codes depending on whether people are referred to the site from one of our facebook widgets, the HSW fan page or a tweet from our marketing team. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of our programs on the two sites.

We have also had success tracking the share & recommend activity on our site which is posted back to facebook and twitter. When measuring this traffic it’s important not only to measure incoming traffic but also how users are posting content back to their feeds. To do this we trigger specific success events every time a visitor retweets or throws back content. This allows us to create conversion ratios looking at visits per throwback for all of our content and content types.

[Manoj]: What is your favorite topic in analytics right now?

[Francis Lavelle]: I still really enjoy the basics of the business. For me it has always been about finding ways to optimize the site and grow revenue. I think as an industry people (myself included) tend to spend too much time on the latest buzz and forget to focus on the data that allows us to run really successful businesses.

[Manoj]: How do you like the setup of Xchange – huddles vs. sessions, it’s a very unique process compared to other conferences.

[Francis Lavelle]: The huddle format is excellent. This is my third year at xchange and the ability to really discuss topics with colleagues who are pushing the envelope and are willing to share findings is invaluable. Every year I come away with new insights that are directly applicable to our business. I also really like that Gary and Eric have conscientiously made an effort to get huddle leaders who are the actual practitioners of analytics instead of vendors and agency consultants. It’s nice to hear directly from the front lines.