October 2025’s edition of BrightonSEO concluded on Friday (24th October), rounding out the world’s largest search marketing conference until the next event in April 2026.
Being the world’s largest search marketing conference, the “SEO” portion of BrightonSEO tends to steal the limelight, with talks, trade stands and a highly regarded keynote dedicated to all-things SEO.
However, tucked away in a single auditorium room on the 4th floor of the Brighton Centre is MeasureFest, a fringe event that runs alongside BrightonSEO. Though a much smaller affair, MeasureFest offers a packed schedule of talks dedicated to marketing measurement, including web analytics, business intelligence and performance reporting – essential fields that search marketing would struggle without.
MRS visited MeasureFest on Thursday, so let’s unpack a handful of our key takeaways and learn how to apply the insights they provide.
From analysis to action with Luke Nava (@lukenava)
Kicking off October’s event in the daunting position of first speaker, Luke Nava delivered a talk that all search marketers could relate to, trying to communicate to those who don’t quite communicate like you do.
Whether it be presenting a data-led digital analysis to senior stakeholders or summarising a months’ worth of performance from a dashboard to a client, Luke argued that communication always happens on the listener’s terms, citing an extract from the book Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson.
A senior stakeholder or client marketing manager will have their own motivations, biases and unique frames of reference, dictating how they internally process the information they receive, and those characteristics won’t necessarily match those of the sender.
With that in mind, steps should be taken to understand how the intended audience of an output communicates. The output should then be tailored to that, rather than having the sender attempt to impose their own style of communication on the listener.
But how can you determine how a stakeholder communicates?
Fortunately, Luke offered a 4-axis framework of communication styles that typically every individual (or even whole team) can fit into.
Dominant communicators will likely value clearly defined actions, summarised detail and be task-oriented, but may struggle to process deeper, more detailed discussions without context. Analytical communicators, on the other hand? Also task-oriented, they’ll value unpacking detail but might struggle with a lack of decisiveness.
Meanwhile people-oriented communicators, consisting of those Stable and Inspiring, will typically want to understand how discussions and actions contribute to team relationships and wellbeing. Stable communicators will be more open to discussions and actions that don’t disrupt routine, yet may push-back on significant process changes. Inspiring communicators are often creative with strong ideation abilities, but might struggle to decide upon and prioritise actions.
Often, the business position of the stakeholder will play a pivotal role in their communication style.
Fundamentally, attempting to gauge the motivations, biases and frames of reference of a listener, then considering those in the creation of an output, creates alignment between sender and listener, helping both parties communicate better and push forward.
The story behind the stats with Tanesha Austen (@automotive-marketing)
Closing the first of five sessions on the day, Tanesha Austen aimed to get digital analytics data, considered complex and maybe even a dark art by many, working for real people.
Fundamentally, more data doesn’t always equal more clarity. With the right expertise, it’s possible to collect and measure a massive amount of digital data, but if the measurement configuration doesn’t align with the overarching goals of stakeholders? You end up filling dashboards and analytics platforms with data that rarely gets relied upon in practice, and the configuration is likely overdone.
Tanesha provided a host of points in her talk, but our key takeaways included:
- Try not to measure and present everything and watch out for vanity metrics that don’t add value or are misaligned with what stakeholders need to know.
- Start with a decision and not the data, by identifying what a dashboard or report is attempting to accomplish.
- Own the solution as well as the problem by being action-oriented and clearly highlight the cost of not taking any action.
- A report or dashboard shouldn’t need to be decoded to be understood, and humanising metrics (like comparing user counts to a stadium full of people) to provide stakeholders with a clearer sense of scale can help.
How real-world UX improves landing pages with Pete Heslop (@pwheslop)
In search marketing, it’s easy to fall into the trap of only looking online, analysing competitors or relying on previous strong performers for UX inspiration. Pete Heslop raised the important point that, fundamentally, UX is all about the user, and users are people who live in a world full of external experiences, and don’t just reside in an online space.
Taking inspiration from experiences users have offline, like visiting a restaurant, can reshape approaches to UX and provide lucrative results in terms of conversions if executed well.
The experience of visiting a premium restaurant can typically be broken down into three pillars; how guests are greeted on arrival, the atmosphere curated within, and the appetite built within guests.
On arrival, how are users greeted?
Visitors will often make quick judgements based on aesthetic, colour palette and whether at first glance, the restaurant appears to suit their tastes or needs. Applying the same thinking to UX design can prevent visitors walking in, then turning on their heels and walking straight out again and bouncing.
Curate the internal atmosphere of a landing page
Thoughtful usage of available space, carefully selecting décor and considering the placements of elements to guide users through a landing page experience (like to their table in a restaurant), can set the tone for not just a single visit, but how a brand or offering is portrayed to a potential customer.
Take steps to build user appetite
Think about how an offering is communicated and presented to visitors, just like a restaurant menu, and how effective that communication is at building anticipation. The best restaurants never push customers to decide; they highlight the ingredients and strengths of each offering and allow visitors the space to make a well-informed decision that suits their individual tastes. Applying the same thought to UX, consider how an offering is presented on-page, how costs are communicated, and provide visitors the information they need to make an educated decision on whether to convert or not without being overwhelming.
Data you can trust by Gavin Attard (@gavinattard)
With Tanesha Austen arguing in an earlier talk that there isn’t a need to measure everything, Gavin Attard raised the critical point that after selecting what to measure, it’s crucial to ensure that the data collected can be trusted. It’s suggested that a staggering 67% of data and analytics professionals say they struggle to trust and therefore rely upon the data their businesses collect, despite businesses wanting to be data-driven.
This carries a hidden cost of wasted business time, significant operational risk and can frustrate talented professionals attempting to carry out their roles. The issue of poor data quality is often complex, but Gavin highlighted the common faults, including:
- Website development release cycles, stalling or altering analytics platform data collection.
- Unreliable tag management, causing platform tags to misfire.
- Human error during manual data entry.
- Operational misalignment between multiple development or analytics teams.
To navigate these challenges and improve trust in collected data, Gavin suggested:
- Begin measuring internal confidence in data collection systems, including the number of errors detected, the time it takes to detect them and even stakeholder net promoter scores to determine team confidence.
- Create a dedicated plan and processes for escalating instances of poor data quality to the relevant stakeholders.
- Introduce smart monitoring, automated methods for detecting faults with data collection. Dedicated platform integrations are available that fulfil this purpose, but most analytics and advertising platforms have data volume or value-based notification solutions included, such as performance-based email notifications.
Need our support?
Both MeasureFest and BrightonSEO were packed with search marketing insights from dozens of speakers, so whilst we couldn’t round up them all, the speakers above stood out by delivering thought-provoking talks that can alter the way search marketers and data professionals work for the better.
Do you need a Looker Studio dashboard to effectively communicate website performance to stakeholders with clarity, or a fresh Google Analytics 4 tracking setup free from unreliable tag management?
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