The importance of the privacy description

Wakoopa’s software is quite different from the traditional panel research. That’s why introducing the tracker sometimes seems hard. We get a lot of questions from people wondering what the best way is to do so. At Wakoopa we were wondering the same; what would be the best approach for the highest conversion? That’s why we have conducted a research last year to find out the best practice for our tracker. In this blog post we want to show you the outline of it.

The research
In preparation for the research we read almost every relevant study conducted on invitations and incentives in traditional panel research, plus quite some studies about online privacy. After examining the current invitations and conversions of the tracker, it appeared that there was a relationship between the height of the incentive and the extensiveness of the privacy description. We decided to find out more about this relation in an a/b test.

Before we continue we must explain that there are certain factors we can never influence, like the history of the panel. When the tracker is introduced the panel is already conditioned by previous rewards and questionnaires. This means that for some panels the conversion will be structurally lower (or higher) than for others. Next to this there is also the positive effect of reputation. People are more likely to disclose privacy sensitive information when they trust the concerning company. This is partly the reason why some of the conversions deviate substantially from the average.

Privacy and incentive
The a-b testing revealed that the privacy description is actually the most important part of the invitation. This has such a degree of importance, that when the privacy description is not good enough, heightening the incentive will have no significant effect. A good privacy description can be based on taking away the four cost concerns people have, based on the social exchange theory. These are: collection, unauthorised secondary use, improper access and errors. These concerns should be clearly addressed in the privacy statement, for example by telling the panellists where there information goes to and what exactly is collected. An example invite has been added to our knowledge base.

Picture by Matt Niemi on Flickr.com

We didn’t test the different forms of incentives, but our research did show that increasing the incentive has a significant effect on the conversion. We heightened the incentive with a factor ten from €0,50 to €5,00, which increased the overall conversion with 50%, to 11.9%. Concerning the form of the incentive, scientific studies in traditional panel research show that monetary incentives are more effective than non-monetary. Next to this, from the conversions of our tracker it appears that a periodic incentive has a positive effect on the dropout rate. A good incentive would for example be an incentive after installation, combined with a monthly reward.

Concluding
So to conclude all this, our research showed that it is important to pay close attention to the privacy description you send out with the tracker. A higher incentive will work, however only when the privacy description is extensive enough. For the dropout rate it is advisable to use a periodic incentive. If you want to read the best practice or see the example invite, you can find them in our knowledge base. We hope this will help you with the introduction of our tracker and of course if you have any more questions after reading this, don’t hesitate to contact us!

- Marilou de Haan, Product Manager

Introducing the Wakoopa Knowledge Base

Last year the redesign of the Wakoopa dashboard was released. Since then we’ve been working on a way to better help our customers in working with the dashboard. Today we’re proud to announce the Wakoopa Knowledge Base.

The Knowledge Base is a collection of articles we’ve written to help you get the most from your Wakoopa dashboard. The articles are aimed both at those who are just getting started with their dashboard, and those who are looking for an in-depth explanation of all our features.
Our most important features are explained in short videos, walking you through various bits of the Wakoopa dashboard.

Visit the Wakoopa Knowledge Base

The General section contains articles on getting started, setting a password and logging in. There’s also a “changelog” where we’ll inform you of updates we deploy to the Wakoopa dashboard.

In the Panel, Analysis and Reports sections you’ll find articles on the three corresponding main sections of the Wakoopa dashboard. Each page in the Wakoopa dashboard has its own article in the Knowledge Base, making it easy to quickly find what you’re looking for.

Under Examples you’ll find helpful examples on how to interpret the data in your dashboard. We’re planning to expand this section in the near future.

The Advanced information section is made up of technical background information about the way Wakoopa looks at data. This section is really helpful if you’re interested in understanding the logic behind the data in your Wakoopa dashboard.

Lastly, the Sales section helps your sales department sell your products based on the Wakoopa dashboard.

We hope the Wakoopa Knowledge Base will help you in getting more out of the dashboard. We’re aiming to keep expanding the Knowledge Base with useful articles. If you think we’ve missed something, or if you have other questions regarding the Knowledge Base or your dashboard, don’t hesitate to contact us.

- Marcel de Graaf, Developer

Plugging Wakoopa Into Web Browsers

At Wakoopa, we develop technology to follow the digital lives of our panelists and present that data to our customers in a powerful and beautiful way. Currently, the central functionality of our products is tracking browsing behavior by looking at the websites a panelist visits (of course, with explicit consent). Although we derive complex information such as visitor paths, the central nugget of data that we collect continuously is a website address and the amount of time a panelist spends on the associated site.

We feel it is extremely important to collect this data as transparently as possible, which means that the panelist should almost never need to interact with our software. The technology we have developed in order to achieve this extracts addresses from the location bars of most major browsers in use today: Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. As long as a browser is running on the panelist’s computer, our software monitors the addresses and combines them with data such as the current time and whether the panelist is actively using the computer or passively viewing, e.g., a YouTube video.

Last year, however, we implemented advanced features that challenge the unobtrusive nature of our software. From the (market research) industry, the interest in measuring online advertising impact rose considerably. Tools to assist (or even initially enable) this research in a novel way would be a natural extension of our existing solutions. This was an opportunity that we had to act upon. Unfortunately, data about display ads can not be extracted from the browser location bar, so it was necessary to develop an entirely new set of software modules.

After painstaking research, browser extensions proved to be the way to push forward. Chrome, Firefox and Safari can all be extended by writing JavaScript code. The notable exception is Internet Explorer, which is still the most prevalent browser among our panelists (although its usage is steadily declining). Unlike the other browsers, its extension mechanism is rooted in archaic technology from the 1990s, which posed a whole set of challenges on its own. Nothing that could not be overcome by a good investment of time and stroopwafels, however.

With all browsers, there are two major issues when trying to use extensions: (1) how will we keep the extensions (specifically, the code that finds advertisements) up-to-date and (2) how do we minimize the interaction that is required of the panelist when installing the extensions. The former is a technical challenge that we have solved by building a framework for dynamically distributing new extension code to our panelists on the fly. The turnover time for this distribution is very low and is transparent, enabling us to continuously adapt to the changing landscape of online advertising.

Minimizing user interaction during the installation process requires more insight into panelist behavior. Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, for example, require users to explicitly accept each new extension. Our tracker tries to maximize the conversion rate for this interaction by guiding the panelists using pop-up windows that explain why the extension is required and urging them to accept the installation. Chrome requires no such user interaction. Careful monitoring of conversion rates proves that these screens are effective in increasing the number of successful extension installations.

Today, our software can monitor website usage as well as detect online display ads. Our software is actively maintained and we dynamically adapt it to changes in browsers and the web. We believe that, with the development of browser extensions that strike a nice balance between functionality and user interaction, we have laid the foundations for many more advanced features and research tools to come in 2012 and beyond. Of course, the basic software requiring no interaction always remains an option for our customers that are interested mainly in gaining insight into website visitation paths.

- Marten Klencke, Desktop Engineer

State of the Web 2011

Today, Wakoopa is releasing its first edition of an annual report named The State of the Web! The report focuses on trends in people’s digital lives in a mature online market, discussing topics such as search, news, shopping, and social media.

We’ll be uncovering some pretty amazing details in those industries along the way. We’ve gathered this data using our unique tracking technology and a panel which consists out of approximately 10.000 Dutch Consumers.

- Download the report here -

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Have fun reading through our data, and let us know how it has helped you in defining your next online goals.

- Simon van Duivenvoorde

Wishing you all a brilliant 2012

From the heart of Amsterdam, we at the Wakoopa HQ wish you all a very happy new year. Our friends, our fans, our clients and relations: thanks for your support, energy and business in 2011. We’re proud that we have – again - almost quadrupled this year. We are following the digital lives of more than 40 thousand individuals, in 20 countries. Our technology is alive and kicking, with much more to come. Stay with us again in 2012. We’ll make it worth your while!

- Piet Hein van Dam

Update from a fan

“I see Wakoopa is doing great!” Every time somebody tells me this, it gives me goosebumps. While I do believe that we’ve only just begun, I can’t help but be proud of where we are going. All lines go up and to the right. Great!

With that in mind, I’ve decided to step down from Wakoopa as of January 2012. I’m young and full of new ideas I want to focus on. With our current exponential growth and excellent leadership I feel I can do so. As an entrepreneur I’m incredibly excited. As a member of the Wakoopa team, I’m very sad to be leaving a group of such fantastic people. My co-founder and CTO Wouter and our CEO Piet Hein will continue to lead the vision of making people’s digital lives transparent. I will continue to advise and help out on a regular basis. I will also remain to be Wakoopa’s biggest fan.

Thanks go out to all my awesome colleagues, clients and partners. You are amazing!

If you have any questions, get in touch.

- Robert Gaal

Entry & exit analysis

Over the last few months we’ve been working on a new feature for our dashboard: entry & exit analysis.

The entry & exit analysis breaks down where the traffic comes from before, and goes to after, visiting a site. We can deliver this information not only about your site, but about all sites, so you will be able to compare your stats against competitors and other industries.

What is being measured?
The metric is based on the total amount of pageviews. Three other categories of traffic sources, other than sites, are presented in the breakdown:

- Internal is traffic within a domain
- Direct, which shows under entry, are pageviews generated in a new tab or browser (without a previous visit)
- Unknown, which shows under exit, is the percentage of browsers or tabs being closed after the site has been visited.

Here’s an example:

The entry & exit analysis is included in every profiles analyses and shows the top 10 traffic sources. If you create an export of this list, then the top 50 domains are included.

This list can be quite interesting and unique. It not only includes direct referrals but also manually entered URL’s and switches between different browser screens or tabs. By showing you actual behavior around certain domains, the whole pathway of its visitors becomes visible. In short: it’s a great way to find out how visitors move around the web.

- Simon van Duivenvoorde

Comparing properties, exporting ads, and a new knowledge base

Just two months after releasing our all new and improved analytics dashboard, we are proud to announce some cool new features which give you more insight into customer behavior and make the dashboard easier to use.

Comparing properties
To give you more insight into your panel and what kind of people are a member, you can now cross-reference several of their properties. For instance, it might be handy to know what the spread is of gender across different age groups, as shown here:

You can find this new feature under Panel -> Properties. Hit the compare button in the upper right corner, select the property you want to compare it against, select an optional date, and hit ‘Go’.

Exporting ads
There’s a ton of data in your dashboard, which you might also want to use in your own offline data-mining tool. Luckily, you have access to all dashboard data and can export it whenever you like as a CSV-file. You can export web pages and search terms, and now also ads. And if you want, you can even filter your export based on channels, participants or date.

Knowledge base
Need to know more about our dashboard? Take a look at our new knowledge base. You can for instance find out about how metrics are calculated, or the new features and fixes we’ve launched. And if the answer to your question isn’t there, please let us know and we’ll add it right away.

The knowledge base is always expanding and we will be continuously adding new information, insights and inspiration. We’ll add some videos too, that will help you understand our functionality and the possibilities of our dashboard.

- Simon van Duivenvoorde

QD, redesigned: our best dashboard yet

A few months ago we took all we had learned in digital measurement and set out to make the best dashboard ever. We looked at all the feedback we got from all our customers (such as TNS, Google, Synovate, and many others) and tried to redefine how they would do digital research using our tools. Today, we’ve finally launched our redesigned dashboard, nicknamed Holly.

It does one thing well: it lets you analyze a panel’s online behavior, and create reports out of that data. So it might not be a big surprise that our main 3 sections in the dashboard are Panel, Analysis, and Report.

But the first things you’ll probably notice is our new homepage. This has an activity feed displaying not only your own activities, but also those of your colleagues. We even send you these activities in real-time (thanks to Pusher) via a small alert window. Pretty handy when working on a project together, right?

Secondly, segmenting your audience is now easier then ever on the new Panel page. Here you can make certain groups of participants that share common properties, or have a similar type of online behavior.

The real power of the dashboard is in its analysis tools though. We’ve kept a few familiar ones, such as the profile page, but updated their look and feel and made them easier in use.

For instance: comparing certain channels of websites, like Social Media vs. Newspapers or Nike vs. Adidas, and filtering the results to match your objective. No more clicking around with projects and settings. Just instant results. (How are we doing this so fast? With a little analytics server we’ve made, called Kamek. It’s a real technical wonder, so if you’d like more information, just ask!)

Finally, we’ve also made saving your work a lot easier. Every page you create in the Analysis section can now be stored to a report by hitting Save. It will then be added as a new page to your report. This also means that you can save your work, come back to your report later, and just click “Edit” to start analyzing a specific date range or segment immediately.

If there’s anything in this new dashboard that needs some explaining, be sure to let us know! We’re always working on improvements, and with this new dashboard as a foundation, we can’t wait to show you what comes next.

Enjoy!

Getting more out of your dashboard: Reach & Context

Wakoopa has improved the market and audience charts by adding columns that conveniently show reach of web sites, search terms or ad banners.

Reach within Channel, Market and Project

The new market map shows for each web address its relevance within the defined channel, market and total project. 

In the screen shot below, you can see that nu.nl has a reach of 51.1% within the Sanoma Digital channel, i.e. of all people that have visited at least one Sanoma Digital site, 51.1% have visited nu.nl. The reach in the NL Publishers market is 45.4%, i.e. 45.4% of people that have visited at least one NL Publisher site, have also visited nu.nl. And finally the reach within the project is 36.7% where the project can easily be configured to mirror the overall population representatively over a given period.

Reach within specific audiences and time ranges

The reach calculations automatically take filters into account.

In the screen shot below, we are filtering on gender and time range, reporting only on women that were online during the week of May 1st to May 7th. In the filter bar you can see that this reduces the sample size to 211, or 19%, out of the initial 1102.

All reach figures will be adjusted accordingly and we can see that the reach of nu.nl has dropped to 44.7% in the Sanoma Digital channel, 38.7% in the NL Publishing market, and 26.1% in the project, i.e. of all women that were online in the first week of May.

Differences in audience

The new feature also provides context on audiences.

For example, when analyzing demographics of a channel like Hachette web sites, you can now compare the spread of any field such as age or gender with the overall spread of all participants that were active within the project in the given time range.

In the screen shot below you can immediately see that Hachette attracts younger male visitors than the general public.