SiteCatalyst Quiz Answers!

Thanks to all of you who took the time to complete my SiteCatalyst quiz. I hope it was a fun way to put your knowledge to the test.

So for the rest of this post, I will show how people answered the survey and point out what answers I was looking for. When looked at as an entire population, if I include anytime someone got the correct answer, the majority of people got 10 correct answers out of 15 (66.67%). However if I just look at just those responses where the exact right answer was given (no incorrect answers included where you could check off multiple boxes), the average score went down to about 6 out of 15. However, please bear in mind that I am not an educator so if you interpreted a question differently than I did and gave a different answer, it is probably my fault not yours so don’t lose any sleep over it! On the bright side, one (anonymous) individual in Europe got 14/15 correct (I am resisting the urge to find you by IP address and hire you!). Either way, I strongly encourage you to look at your answers and see which ones you missed and read the linked posts below so you can become a SiteCatalyst Ninja!!

Question #1 (Correct Answer=Traffic Variables (sProps))
This first question was intended to be an easy one. Think of it as a way to build engagement and not scare you off. Most of you got this answer correct, but I was surprised to see that 33% of you thought that you could enable Pathing on more than just Traffic Variables (sProps). Keep in mind that one of the main reasons to use sProps is to enable Pathing. If you need a refresher, please check out my past posts on Traffic Variables (sProps) or on Pathing.

Question #2 (Correct Answer=True)
For many of these True/False questions, it is hard for me to tell if you got the right answer based upon knowledge or luck, but I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt! In this case 75% of you were correct in saying that it is possible to share a segment with other users in your company. I show how to do this in my past post about the Admin Console. Keep in mind that you can only share a segment within one report suite so if you have multiple report suites you are out of luck. If you really need to share segments across multiple report suites, the only way I know to do this is to create them under a shared Omniture User ID and give that ID to multiple users so they can see the segments owned by that ID.

Question #3 (Correct Answer = ZERO)
This question is admittedly a difficult one. To get this one right, you would have had to really been in the trenches with SAINT Classifications. Those who have ever tried to classify a variable that has a value of “0” in the Key column have probably learned this the hard way. While you can classify a value of “1” or “43,” there is no way to classify a Key value of “0” in SiteCatalyst. Therefore, you need to pass in a text value for “0” so you can classify it later on. Therefore, the best answer to this question is the 3rd answer below “ZERO.”

Question #4 (Correct Answer=When a Success Event takes place or after a specified Time Period)
You guys knocked it out of the park on this one. The correct answer here is that an eVar can be expired when a Success Event takes place or based upon a time period. This happens to be one of my pet peeves since I really wish you could expire an eVar based upon a Success Event or a time period (whichever comes first). There are many cases where having this ability would have saved me a lot of time. Maybe in a future release (or all of you can help me by requesting this as a feature request!).

Question #5 (Correct Answer=True)
Most of you got this one right as well. One of the cool things about classifying Conversion Variables (eVars) is that if you have paid for full subrelations on the eVar it is based off of, you get full subrelations on all of the Classifications. This can save you time and money!

Question #6 (Correct Answer= All but Conversion Variables (eVars))
This question was a hard one and another one of my pet peeves. The correct answer is the second one “Conversion Variables (eVars).” The security features in the Groups area of the Admin Console are very good and a much better way to hide reports from select groups of users than the Menu Customizer. However, for some unknown reason, you can hide pretty much everything in SiteCatalyst except Conversion Variables (eVars), which are some of the most critical reports! I am not sure why this one thing was omitted and I have been asking for this for some time. Hopefully it is on the product roadmap.

Question #7 (Correct Answer=None of the Above)
This question probably caused some confusion due to the wording, but the correct answer here is “None of the Above” since I was looking for the best way to assign credit across multiple visits. Most of you fell for the trap I set here and chose “Linear Allocation.” Many people I talk to think that Linear Allocation of an eVar works across multiple visits, but it does not. Linear Allocation only works within a visit (for the most part, but the details are a bit confusing!). Therefore, the real best answer for this question was Cross-Visit Participation which I covered a while ago. Cross-Visit Participation is the only real way to assign credit to an eVar across multiple visits. If you are not familiar with Cross-Visit Participation, please review my previous post.

Question #8 (Correct Answer=None of the Above)
Importing offline or external data via Data Sources is a more advanced topic, but many of you look like you are familiar with it. The majority of you got this one correct since none of the options provided here will allow you to back out data sources metrics. For this reason you have to be extremely careful when importing Data Sources data since there is really no going back if you make a mistake!

Question #9 (Correct Answer=False)
This is one of those questions you used to get from your teacher and absolutely hate them afterwards when they told you the answer, so I will apologize in advance. The key phrase here is “the only difference” so the correct answer here is “False.” While the difference cited here is correct, there is one really big difference between Correlations and Subrelations that you need to know. That difference is that you can correlate two sProps, five sProps or twenty sProps with each other, but with Subrelations it is an all or nothing proposition. It would be great if you could Subrelate just two eVars together, but that is not currently possible like it is for sProp Correlations. This is a key thing that every SiteCatalyst Ninja must know!

Question #10 (Correct Answer=Unique Visitor Counts an Pathing)
Most of you got this one correct. The key disadvantages of Roll-ups are that they don’t de-dup uniques and you cannot do Pathing analysis. But hey, they don’t cost a lot! Personally, I tend to not use Roll-ups since I can duplicate a lot of the info they provide using the ExcelClient and I like Pathing and de-duped Unique Visitors so I tend to favor Multi-Suite tagged sites.

Question #11 (Correct Answer=Calculated Metrics)
Great job on this one as most of you got this one correct! In my post about Conversion Funnels I explained all of the ways they can be used and highlighted what, in my opinion, is an oversight of the functionality that you cannot add Calculated Metrics to them. I hope this ability will be available at some point in the future, but in the meantime, you should keep this in mind when determining whether you should pass in a metric organically or rely on a calculated metric.

Question #12 (Correct Answer=Page Views)
In this question, I allowed you to choose from the following metrics. While most of you got this correct that the Page Views metric is available in Traffic Variable Correlations those of you who also said that you could add Visits, DUV’s and MUV’s were not correct. Please keep in mind that only Page Views are available when using Correlations.

Question #13 (Correct Answer=Classifications cannot be used in DataWarehouse Segments)
I had a hard time figuring out how to word this question, but if you really understand SAINT Classifications , you should have been able to get this one right by the process of elimination. As you can see, most people had a hard time with this one, but the correct answer did emerge in the end as the only true statement below is that Classifications cannot be used in DataWarehouse Segments. We can deduce this by understanding that 1) Classifications can be used in correlations/subrelations, 2) Classifications can be used in Omniture Discover and 3) Classifications cannot have pathing enabled in SiteCatalyst (You can, however, apply Pathing to classifications in Omniture Discover).

Question #14 (Correct Answer=False)
While I have been using Advanced Segment Insight (ASI) segments for many years, I only recently figured out that you can change the ASI type from recurring to time slice and vice versa if you know what you are doing so the correct answer below is actually False (the whole double-negative thing!). If you have a static ASI that has run for say last month, you can use the “Add Data” link to bring up the ASI segment set-up screen, change the type to Daily Recurring and make the start date the day after your ASI last ran. Just be sure to uncheck the box that asks if you want to remove existing data or you will lose your past ASI data. If the ASI you already have is a Daily Recurring, simply wait until it has finished its daily processing and click the “Cancel” link. Once you have cancelled it, you can click the “Add Data” link, make the type “Time Slice,” select your dates and set it to run. Again you have to be sure to uncheck the remove existing data checkbox. I am not sure if this is “officially” supported, but I have done lots of testing on it and so far it has worked fine…

Question #15 (Correct Answer=>!)
This last question is one of those “inside secrets” that only true SiteCatalyst Ninjas know. Unfortunately, only 32% of you got this one right as the correct answer is “>!” which is a way to tell if a value exists or not in a specific variable when using the segment builder. I covered this in my Tips & Tricks are of the Segment Builder post so if you didn’t get this one correct, check out that post which has lots of goodies in it.

Well, there you have it. Hopefully this was a fun way for you to see some of the things that SiteCatalyst Ninjas know. If you keep reading my blog posts, I can (almost) guarantee you will learn everything that there is to know…