YouSendIt: Better Data Quality & Higher Confidence

Challenge: Complexity, Duplicative Tags, Poor Visibility

YouSendIt – the most widely used online service for sending, receiving and tracking large files – needed to upgrade its analysis and reporting capabilities during an extended period of rapid growth. Specifically, the company sought to improve the quality of the data associated with various product offerings so it could gain valuable insight into user behaviors and overall performance. The existing data, however, was not validated, updated or segmented sufficiently, which meant identical items and products were represented with multiple values. Repetitive and overlapping page tags made traffic data even harder to understand. Only skilled, “power users” were capable of filtering the data and pulling reports.

The bottom line was that management lacked confidence in underlying data, overall reporting and, as a result, insight into performance. The company had an urgent need to implement an analytics strategy and page tagging plan that allowed to generate more value from its high-powered but complex e-commerce site.

Solution: Clear KPIs, Scalable Page Tagging, Efficient Processes

YouSendIt engaged the strategy, implementation and data experts at Infinitive Analytics. The team identified the full range of business and technical stakeholders and conducted interviews to capture their requirements and unique reporting needs. Even more importantly, the most important KPIs were clarified, as well as the underlying metrics and data necessary to track them. A complete business requirements document, technical reference guide and site plan documentation laid a solid foundation for the final solution.

With this strong plan and a clear overview of the current site, the next steps were to define an effective page tagging strategy and then classify, clean and validate product data. Product names and SKUs were clearly and comprehensively matched and linked, with standard and individual codes for each product segment or type. A streamlined, repeatable process was created for ongoing and regular updates. And to ensure accountability moving forward, a process owner has been assigned with oversight responsibility to maintain the data’s timeliness, accuracy and quality, which will greatly benefit YouSendIt in the future.

Results: More Accurate Tracking, Higher Executive Confidence, Enhanced ROI

Today, after implementation, YouSendIt has an effective and scalable page tagging strategy in place that will allow it to capture high-quality analytics data and build insightful reports for executives, even as its ecommerce site continues to grow. Reports are more intuitive, easier-to-read and more useful, allowing the management team to readily understand how products are performing . There is more granularity, too; data can be associated across products, correlated by pages and aggregated by business units.

Real-time access and advanced search capabilities are being implemented and will provide even more visibility. For instance, “click heat map” allows for at-a-glance understanding of which features and pages are most attractive to site users. Further, through automation, the company has eliminated 25% – including several hours worth of manual work – out of report production processes and is no longer reliant on internal experts and power users to pull necessary reports. Overall, the costs to tag pages and maintain the site have dropped significantly. At the same time, the company is generating substantially higher ROI from its enterprise analytics platform. The bottom line: with more accurate and timely data, senior management has more confidence in performance data, standard reports and its own decision making.