Web Analytics Management

"Hands Off" Web Analytics

The fall season has seen its share of new releases from both new and old analytics vendors. A common thread among all is the emphasis on providing a call to action that is based on the data, but doesn’t require “hands on” analysis of the data.  This is a trend that is changing the nature of web analytics product development, the use of analytics within organizations and how the role of web analytics professionals will be defined.

Two of the newer services I learned about recently exemplify this real time, “hands off” call to action approach…DemandBase and SeeWhy.

DemandBase takes IP addresses and then resolves them against a group of publicly-available databases that enrich the data with company name, industry type, specific address location, # of employees at each location and names and titles of executives and managers. DemandBase uses sources such as Hoovers, EDGAR, B2B publication subscriber data and D&B data to add to the standard method of IP address resolution. I think it’s an interesting approach …just some fairly straightforward enhancement of IP data with business information that sales and marketing folks use every day to make business decisions. Customers who I’ve spoken to are seeing the value initially as a sales lead tool…qualifying companies who’ve visited the site more than once and looking at particular content pages with frequency. Then they make inbound sales calls. One customer I spoke to is starting to play with the DemandBase data and match it up with their Omniture analytics. It’s a bit of a sandbox project right now, but they’re trying to tie the Omniture cookie and IP addresses with the DemandBase data. They’ll then create segments in Omniture based on company size and industry to help them guide content development and re-marketing potential.

Re-marketing is the focus of another relatively new analytics service called SeeWhy. Concentrating on sending a follow up offer to those who abandon shopping carts, SeeWhy provides a service which isn’t new…providing a list of email addresses of those who have abandoned so you can send an offer that brings them back for a sale. I was a bit skeptical when I first looked at SeeWhy because you can already get lists of email addresses of those who have abandoned shopping carts and send follow up emails. The value add in See Why is that you get this information “out of the box.” There’s no need to set up any filters, custom reports or go to a “data warehouse” module to pull the data. The company sends you a list of the abandoning visitors at the end of each business day.

DemandBase and SeeWhy are exploiting key weaknesses in traditional online analytics tools…easy access to actionable data, easy methods of implementation and lower cost point solutions that are meant to answer specific questions. I don’t think either solution eliminates the need for an online analytics tool, but I do think these solutions when used in tandem with free tools like Google Analytics and Yahoo Analytics will further call in to question the relevancy of fee based solutions for complete and comprehensive web channel data analysis.

WebTrends: A Busy Summer for Analytics

Summertime may be the time for blockbuster movie releases, but I don’t usually associate summer with blockbuster releases among web analytics vendors. WebTrends, with its Analytics 9 release in early August, sought to change all of that. WebTrends is having quite a busy summer, also acquiring a small multivariate testing firm called Widemile at the end of July.

The Analytics 9 release is quite an intriguing package and upon first look at all of its features there is definitely a “wow” factor…both because the interface and analysis functions are cool in of themselves, but a vast improvement on the “traditional” WebTrends interface.  The general thrust of the release is geared to making it easy for your report users to access reports more easily and analyze the data more quickly. Does WebTrends succeed?

The new Insight report profile report summary and drill down is clearly presented to the user with both standard and custom reports available. Rather than split up reports into a vendor-centric hierarchy (a frustrating norm from all vendors since the beginning of web analytics), the reports are presented in alphabetical order.  A search function is also available to quickly find a specific report.  However, you must enter the specific name of the report, as it is not a fuzzy search. On the plus side, the search form does fill in with possible reports based on your entry.

A “story” feature is available for all standard (not custom) reports. This is a great little feature that spits out a descriptive analysis of the report that’s been run. For example, instead of you needing to write about the top level numbers and trends, the story feature populates the analysis template with the numbers in all of the right places. I laughed when I first saw this because I could completely relate to having to spend time on writing these rather obvious analyses that are both labor intensive and tedious…but often necessary when sending reports along to stakeholders.  There is a bit of a downside, in that you cannot customize the canned analyses.

If you are using RSS for news, press releases, blogs and so forth, you can insert the RSS URL into a report, and see on what dates stories were going out on the RSS. All you need to do is a cut and paste of the URL into the RSS Overlay field and you’re good to go.

The other aspect of this release that is quite exciting is the use of the REST API to create automated Excel reports. Readers of the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report, and more sophisticated users of WebTrends know that automated Excel reporting (a la Omniture’s Excel client) has always been a weak point. The new REST APIs make this pain a thing of the past…for the most part. As long as you’re using Excel 2007, all you need to do is copy the http link generated by the report in WebTrends and paste it into the “From Web” field under the Data tab to get the report.  The good news is that you can generate the same report as often as you’d like…daily, weekly, monthly and so on, and the http link will be the same, so you can point to the same link. In addition, there is no limit to the number of rows available in the data export. The automation aspect...that is hands free update of the data into the Excel sheet… is not currently available. This means that you’ll need to do the data refresh manually. This is a bit of an inconvenience, but would not likely be too much to bear unless you’re doing quite a lot of automated Excel reporting.

Analytics 9 is a great step forward, but rather than being a standalone summer blockbuster it has to be viewed either as the first part of a multi-part serial or a preview of things to come. There are a few significant unfinished parts to this story:

What is to become of WebTrends’ custom report interface? This is not covered by the new release. If you need to develop advanced reports, such as those using filters or importing campaign and product IDs into reports, you need to use the “traditional” UI from release 8.5. Same goes for doing drill down reporting.

Other “cliffhanging” aspects in Analytics 9:

• The list of reports in Insight is pre-defined; the company indicates that you’ll be able to custom configure the list in the next release.
• There are two different log ins…one for Insight and one for the “traditional” UI, but there is on administrative control over setting permissions from one or the other.
• Insight does not work with Marketing Warehouse.

There is definitely a “work in progress” element to the WebTrends product right now…which feels both exciting and risky. Management stresses that it is now in a mode of rapid release, and that the product will be fully re-engineered over the next 6-9 months, with the next release coming out in October. According to the company, there have been 44 customers in beta since mid-June, and they are planning to use the feedback from this group to help shape the evolution of the new product.

I think it’s all a good thing, and I’m impressed by the progress the WebTrends team has made since Alex Yoder took over as the CEO a year ago. But for all of the advancements in Analytics 9, I have a question about what exactly and when exactly the core product will be completely re-engineered. It is not exactly clear what features will be addressed and when they’ll be addressed going forward. I think it would be helpful to have more definition around the product development roadmap.  Without this guidance from the company, I’m not exactly sure when the “new” product will be finished or available in entirety. If I were evaluating WebTrends, I’d ask my rep to be as clear about this as possible. Otherwise, I’d feel a bit like I’m guessing on how the product story is going to turn out. Might be fine for the movies, but in the case of a web analytics investment, I’d like to know how the story ends before I pay my money.

Definitely interested to hear your take on this...either here or at X Change Sept 9-11.

I'd love to see you in my Think Tank Sessions the day before XChange begins:

From Business Requirements to Tag Design to Tag

Managing Web Analytics on a Shoestring

 

Semphonic’s X Change and Web Analytics Conference ROI

Getting the budget to attend conferences is not what it was a year ago…or even 6 months ago. So, if you want to come to this year's X Change Conference in San Francisco on September 8-11, you likely need to make a business case to attend. I've already spoken to folks who said they'd like to come, and couldn't get the budget…but perhaps they really weren't making the right pitch…or perhaps they were willing to just take "no" for an answer.

Just like anything else related to analytics, I think there needs to be a return on investment (ROI) story to tell. If you can't tell that story, then I think you'll ultimately fail in your mission.

So, let's do an ROI analysis for your attendance at X Change this year:

• Cost for X Change if you sign up by July 31 with Early bird discount: $1,800
• Cost for Think Tank Sessions: $599
• Hotel if you sign up by August 10: $299/night
• Airfare: Deals to be had - check out Southwest - be creative
• Food: Breakfast, lunch and one dinner…all high quality. It's the freakin' St. Regis after all!!

Ok…so your costs: Probably somewhere between $3,000 to $3,500

Now, let's take a look at what you'll come away with on the knowledge side, and how this will end up in either revenue generation or cost savings for your web analytics initiative.

First, there are the "huddles"…

The conference is built around small group discussions called "huddles" that are facilitated by practicing web analysts from top organizations. There are some immediate ROI benefits from this:

We don't sit in a room and listen to "talking heads," or consultants, and we don't feature any vendors or products: Calculate your hourly rate by the amount of time you space out in most other conferences, or spend time emailing or texting.

Hear firsthand what your peers, even your competitors, are experiencing in using analytics to run their web channel: Calculate based on hourly fees charged by consultants.

Test and discuss your own ideas on how to improve the use of analytics within your organization: Calculate based on trying to pull a group of seasoned web analysts like yourself into a room for a serious discussion with no interruptions.

Compare the cost and takeaways to other training: Calculate the training classes you've attended over the past year, and associated measurable benefit. If you're at a management or experienced web analyst level, we would suggest that most of what you've attended you either already knew, or it was not exactly what you were seeking.

Or, take another approach...start by taking a look at the huddles:

http://www.semphonic.com/xchangehuddles.aspx

Read through the synopses with an eye towards how you'll apply the learnings of the session to your web analytics goals and objectives. For example, if you attend the Measuring Mobile Internet huddle facilitated by Nokia's Greg Dowling, you will likely come away with a wealth of knowledge on how to choose the right measurement solution, how to develop valid metrics and how to monetize them. Or, you can attend the session on how to build a web measurement capability from Gil Roeder at Barclay's IShares, to really understand how to successfully integrate analytics into the mainstream of your organization…so that both senior and line managers use data to run the business.

I think you could you make the case that the takeaways from these huddles could translate into tens of thousands of dollars in more productivity, or savings on a solution. If you find it a stretch, then get in touch with me and let's talk about it. I'll be happy to help you make the case…pkemelor@semphonic.com

These are just some of the reasons we hear that X Change is one of the best values from a cost/learning perspective. To get your own sense for X Change, you can read about the 2008 conference from a few attendees:

http://www.semphonic.com/xchangerecap08.aspx

And then there is the Think Tank…the real ROI opportunity

While the emphasis on X Change is on peer learning and dialogue, we are trying something new…running a series of advanced training seminars, called the Think Tank. It's a day of classes, each are 1 ½ hours and will cover advanced topics in data analysis, behavioral segmentation, Excel reporting and implementation, how to advance the influence of analytics on a shoestring, and a lot more.

Coming back to my previous point about web analytics training, I think you'll agree that there just really isn't a lot of educational opportunity for people like yourselves who are at a management or advanced analyst level. The Think Tank sessions will address these…3 master level classes for only $599. I don't want to sound like a car salesman, but this is a screamin' deal!

I think the ROI story for the classes alone is quite strong. The class I'm teaching…is all about how to build out a web analytics presence with limited resources and budget; how to build cross-team alliances, how to create an effective business case…all while expanding the impact of web analytics on your organization. I'll be focusing on a range of strategy and tactics that I've used as a web analytics program manager and with our clients.

The rest of the classes will be taught by the Semphonic team including Gary Angel, Paul Legutko, Jesse Gross, June Dershewitz, as well as by Eric Petersen. Find out more about the Think Tank sessions at: http://www.semphonic.com/xchangethinktank.aspx

By now, you should have your conference ROI calculations all mapped out and ready to go. Just make the case.

We want to see you in San Francisco in September for both X Change and the Think Tanks. Just register at http://www.semphonic.com/xchangeregister.aspx.

Only 63 days left til X Change.

Web Analytics Association Report on Government and Non-Profit Web Analytics

If you manage a government or non-profit web site, you’ll want to take a look at the research Semphonic recently completed for the Web Analytics Association (WAA) Public Sector Special Interest Group.

 To view the webcast and download the presentation, go to:

http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/waawebcastseries/2009archives/

To download the 50 page report, Tapping the Potential of Web Analytics for Public Sector and Non-Profit Sites, go to: http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/art/669/

 If you read my last post, you’ll see that there are changes afoot with regard to web analytics “inside the Beltway” in the form of a review of the persistent cookie policy.

However, there are two findings that stand out for me as being more important than whether the persistent policy cookie changes:

1. Less than 20% consider return on investment (ROI) analysis to evaluate the importance of success events.

ROI doesn’t need to mean direct revenue.  However, in the accomplishment of organizational mission, which is viewed as the overall goal, there are significant ROI opportunities, for example:

• Reducing costs
• Increasing productivity
• Fulfilling legal and regulatory obligations

Let’s look at an example:

According to the research, 80 percent of the Federal government sites surveyed consider content downloads to be a “success event.” This is an action that you want visitors to take. If this content was assigned a dollar value based on level of development effort, or a point value based on relative importance to mission fulfillment, there could be an opportunity to evaluate the relative importance of one download vs. another. This could provide guidance on the type of content that should continue to be developed, and content that might be retired or less emphasized.

2. Over 60% spend only a few hours per week on web analytics.

How can an organization expect to get results from Web analytics if it is spending only “a few hours per week” on the task?  The study indicated that Web analytics is performed primarily by the Web site manager, Web content manager, or communications manager.  Web analytics managers and web analysts comprised only 28% of the responses. So, if organizations are serious about getting value out of analytics, there needs to be a management commitment to funding the task.

After all, if there’s no one to do the analysis, what will be the real impact of a more flexible cookie policy?

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Only 93 days to Semphonic’s X Change – September 9-11, 2009, San Francisco, CA

US Federal Government Cookie Policy Under Review

Over the last few months, there has been a great deal of activity at the most senior levels of the US Government discussing the use of persistent cookies on federal agency web sites. If you are a Federal Web Manager or Web Analyst, you are painfully aware of the constraints on using cookies and the limitations it causes to a more accurate definition of unique visitor, and some of the more advanced segmentation features available in web analytics solutions.

As part of a greater effort to open up policy discussions, the White House, Office of Science and Technology Policy is taking public comment on the Federal Policy on Cookies as well as other issues impacting use of the Web.

If you've been doing web analytics within the Federal government, I'd suggest you weigh in on this. To comment, go to: http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/06/16/enhancing-online-citizen-participation-through-policy/ (you'll need to register before commenting)

My comments are on the site and printed in entirety below. My recommendations for a new policy are fairly straightforward.

• Allow the use of first party, persistent cookies for Web site measurement.
• Prominently disclose how Web site measurement is used and how the data is collected and analyzed.
• Provide instructions for how users may delete persistent cookies from their browser settings.
• Combination of PII and unique visitor ID (persistent cookie ID) will not be used for analysis.

What is your take? This is a highly critical time regarding the use of cookies. If you read my post below, you'll see that there are those who are actually suggesting that information that has been used historically, such as IP addresses, be disallowed or severely constrained.

Privacy advocates have a very strong voice in this debate, and while I'm all for privacy protections (see my series of posts on privacy, I'm very concerned that the focus on privacy could hamper the effectiveness of Federal web site analysis, even while allowing for the use of persistent cookies. You can read a few of the positions being advocated at these sites:

• Future of Privacy Forum: <http://www.futureofprivacy.org/2009/05/11/future-of-privacy-forum-letter-to-the-white-office-of-science-and-technology-policy/>
• Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://www.cdt.org/privacy/20090512_analytics.pdf

Make your own determination, and use this opportunity to voice your opinion:http://blog.ostp.gov/category/requests-for-comment/

_______________________________________

Comments on updating the persistent cookie policy

The issue of whether and how to permit the use of persistent cookies on Federal agency Web sites is one that tends to be charged with emotion primarily around the concern over personal privacy as it relates to Web site data collection.

However, I believe this concern is based on misperceptions about persistent cookies, the nature of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and how this data may be used.

A persistent cookie is a unique string of text that is placed on the visitor’s computer during his or her first visit and recorded by the site measurement tool in subsequent visits. Because the cookie is unique, any visit from that same computer is considered unique, and is defined as being a “unique visitor.” If the visitor registers on the site and provides personal information, that information can be associated to the specific computer. The visitor will be recognized as unique on all subsequent visits. However, unless the user voluntarily provides personal information, the persistent cookie simply records activity from the computer. For example, if a person has a computer at work and at home, and goes to a particular Web site, there will be a cookie issued for both computers. There is nothing to link that individual with activity on those Web sites.

Cookies, in and of themselves, do not breach a user’s privacy, nor do they pose any security risks. Persistent cookies are not a software program, nor an executable file. They are not spyware and cannot take control of your computer in any way, shape or form. For example:

• They don’t steal a user’s e-mail address.
• They don’t gather data from a visitor’s computer.
• They simply enable the tracking of a visitor’s behavior on the site from which the cookie is issued.

Visitors are anonymous until they register on the site. However, even should someone register on the site, there would need to be a deliberate effort to link the unique ID provided by the cookie with the personal information.

Persistent cookies when used in the practice of Web analytics can provide insights that result in Web sites that are relevant, cost effective and provide a better user experience. For example, knowing that a group of visitors that comes to the site often through a search engine and leaves the site after viewing only one page could indicate that the search engine optimization works, but that the content pages being viewed do not convey the information that is relevant to this group of frequent search engine users. Knowing this could direct staff efforts on changing and testing how the page was written. This would provide management with direction on how to deploy staff resources effectively. Once the pages were changed, the behavior of the segment of frequent search engine users could be reviewed over the course of several months to see if they read more than one page and started to interact with the site more frequently.

The persistent cookie provides the added value of tracking activity from a single computer over the course of time, and being able to compare that activity over time. There is nothing to suggest in the preceding example that a visitor’s privacy is compromised.

This level of analysis has been used in the private sector and non-profit sectors for years, but has not been available to federal agencies. As a result, federal agencies have been unable to accrue insights into visitor behavior that could lead to the development of Web sites that serve their constituents more effectively. In addition, federal Web managers have not had analysis that would help them more effectively deploy staff on Web projects, thereby resulting in less than optimal use of resources.

There have been proposals made suggesting user opt in/opt out of data collection, limits to the capture of IP data and limitations on the availability of data to federal Web managers.

Opt in/opt out: In the private sector, it is common practice to instruct site visitors how to delete persistent cookies through their browser settings. This is not something that is done on every page through a pop up. While many people do delete their cookies, many more people do not.

Federal agency Web sites should have a clearly written privacy policy that informs users that a persistent cookie is being used with a Web analytics tool to track their behavior for site analysis purposes and provide instructions on how to disable the persistent cookie within the browser.

Note that this covers the use of persistent cookies and does not give a choice on whether to have visit or session based data collected. Session based data collection is the current status quo among federal agencies, and there is no reason to disallow this method, as this would increase the inaccuracy of Web analysis. A pop up method of opt in/opt out would be considered distracting and annoying and would likely diminish of usage federal agency web sites.

Limited data retention: Suggested 90 day limits on data retention severely constrain any opportunity to do in-depth analysis that may provide insight into content and application usage over time. One of the benefits in using unique visitor data is in the creation of behavioral segments that may be used over different time periods. For example, I’d like to be able to compare the number of articles downloaded by a group of visitors from a particular state last month to the same month a year ago in order to determine whether I should retire that content, or add more content. If I must delete the unique visitor data after 90 day, I cannot do this analysis.

Federal agencies should have no data retention limits on Web analytics data.

There are no current limitations on data retention and there is nothing to suggest that this has caused an issue. It should be noted that Federal agencies retain PII for many years without constraint. It is unclear why Web site data that contains no PII should have a limitation on retention.

Limit cross-session measurement: As discussed earlier, the purpose of cross-session measurement and associated segmentation provides an effective method for understanding specific use of content and provides insight into creating more effective user experience. Limiting measurement to single session is the status quo, and one of the reasons that the federal agencies lag the private sector, non-profits and non-US government Web sites in the use of analytics to guide Web site strategy and tactics.

(See Tapping the Potential of Web Analytics for Public Sector and Non-Profit Sites May 2009 http://www.Webanalyticsassociation.org/waaWebcastseries/membersonly/WC20090604_WAA-Public-Sector-Survey-Analysis.pdf)

Obscuring or deleting IP addresses: It should be noted that using persistent cookies does not provide 100 percent accuracy in obtaining unique visitor information. There are more and more ways available for users to reject or delete cookies. It is debatable how many people use these methods. The following list summarizes these methods:

• Visitors set their browsers not to accept cookies.
• Visitors can use anti-spyware software.
• Visitors can delete cookies.
• Anti-spyware programs and features embedded in browsers give users more ability to reject or not accept cookies.

Because of this, collection of IP addresses is an important facet of Web analysis. Currently, federal Web agencies collect this data. There is nothing to suggest that this data has been used inappropriately. Instituting this constraint as a requirement would be considered burdensome by Web analytics vendors, and may result in additional expense to the federal agencies. For those agencies that host Web analytics solutions “on site” this requirement would add additional workload to staff.

It should also be noted that IP addresses enable the association of geo-location which is considered an important analytics requirement for federal agencies to understand the success of promotion campaigns. In addition, as most IP addresses are dynamically assigned by Internet Service Providers or organizations with many users, there is no way to associate an IP address with an individual.

I’d suggest that the focus on data collection constraints may result in Web sites that are considered cumbersome by users and make it even more difficult for federal Web site managers to understand site usage. Federal Web managers are ever more aware that they are “competing” with sites in the private sector, as well as those in the academic and non-profit world. The question before us is not so much how to regulate the use of persistent cookies, as it is: How do we enable Federal agencies to create relevant and cost effective Web sites that are focused on optimizing a user’s experience?

To give federal Web managers the information they need to fulfill this goal, the Web site measurement policy should be simple and straightforward:

• Allow the use of first party, persistent cookies for Web site measurement.
• Prominently disclose how Web site measurement is used and how the data is collected and analyzed.
• Provide instructions for how users may delete persistent cookies from their browser settings.
• Combination of PII and unique visitor ID (persistent cookie ID) will not be used for analysis.

It should be noted that non-US governments have addressed the issue of persistent cookies, privacy and web analytics. In the Web Analytics Association survey referenced above, over 50 percent of the non-US government respondents indicated that they used persistent cookies. Please reference the Privacy Policy at the Australian government’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry for an example of how this issue is addressed:http://www.daff.gov.au/about/privacy

Phil Kemelor
Vice President, Strategic Analytics - Semphonic
Lead Analyst - CMS Watch Web Analytics Report
Author - The Executive's Guide to Web Site Measurement and Testing
Blogs:
Web Analytics Trends:http://www.cmswatch.com/Analytics/Trends/
Web Analytics Management: http://wam.typepad.com
pkemelor@semphonic.com

Omniture's Biggest Competitor

I thought Omniture’s Q1 2009 earnings call a few weeks ago provided more insight into the company than past calls; perhaps the result of less than all positive news.

 The company’s posture in the past has been that it is building a moat around itself to fend off competition through the online marketing optimization suite it has been developing. The company continues to state that it doesn’t face real competition. Says Omniture CEO Josh James:

“Yes, from a competitive standpoint the biggest competitor we have announced is the macroeconomic environment. The other competitors that we have are more of a nuisance right now than anything; it's not something that really affects the relationship that we have with our customer. And most of the conversations around with our customers right now are just about the internal conflict that they have in their organizations, because they are having to cut people.”

Other quotes from Omniture that I found intriguing:

 ·         “…so it's not that we are seeing competitive pressure and people are migrating. It's more that they are losing resources in order to take advantage of that technology, and they are arbitrarily cutting cost across their organization.”

·         “…we are seeing some customer attrition at the lower end as smaller customers lose resources to manage the data…”

OK, so Omniture is losing some customers at the low end. But do you believe it’s because of staff cuts and that these customers can no longer get value from SiteCatalyst because there’s no one around to manage the tool?

I don’t think so.

The elephant in the room is Google Analytics. It is common practice for many organizations to run GA and cost-based tools in tandem and as there are cost pressures, there are smaller organizations moving to free solutions.  And, staff cuts or not, many organizations – large and small - are not getting full value from their web analytics solutions because they are not demonstrating the value of analytics to the business.  So, while smaller customers may be on the most likely list to migrate to a free solution, the challenge to make web analytics relevant in any organization poses a threat to Omniture’s strategy for up sell within its product suite.

However, Omniture is also facing competition on the high end as former HBX customers choose other solutions. There is a growing class of enterprises who are placing data integration high on their priority list and who want to control data locally. As a result Unica’s Affinium NetInsight and WebTrends are the solutions considered as on-premise alternatives.

The call featured some introspection that you should welcome if you’re an Omniture customer

·         “…we are going to focus on our customer base and product suite in place and defer some strategic investments and favor a predictable profitability metric until the environment improves and becomes more stable.”

·         “…we are getting some commentary from the customers right now that there are too many sales people on an account…”

Focusing on the customer base and having too many sales people…interesting concepts. How do you think this will play out?

Related Post:

Has Omniture Stalled?

Web Analytics Insights from JBoye 09

While the rest of the web analytics folks attended eMetrics in San Jose last week, I had the pleasure of participating in JBoye’s Philadelphia 09 conference. This was the first US conference for JBoye; Janus started these conferences in Aarhus, Denmark in 2005 as annual user group meetings for his firm’s Communities of Practice…a really great concept in which practitioners with similar interests but in different verticals exchange experiences and learnings on a monthly basis.  I’ve had the good fortune of presenting and teaching at the Danish conferences, and had a great time doing a joint session at last week’s event with Susan Fariss, Web Analytics Manager from the American Chemical Society on taking a strategic approach to web analytics implementations.

One of the reasons I like the JBoye conferences is because most of the folks are content managers, information architects and user experience professionals and there is a spirit of conversation, questioning and inquisitiveness that gets me thinking outside of the web analytics box. It also gives me a good perspective on how non-web analysts deal (or not) with web analytics.

Some of the takeaways this time:

1.      We (fill in the blank) get no respect

Recurrent themes of a lack of appreciation, respect or influence articulated by content managers, user experience folks and information architects within their organizations would resonate with web analytics people.

A thought: Build more cross-discipline support and help each other out in developing business cases that get joint initiatives funded and recognized by senior management. For more ideas, check out: http://wam.typepad.com/wam/2007/09/california-drea.html and http://wam.typepad.com/wam/2008/05/its-been-awhile.html

2.       Soup or Art?

Have you seen Lily Tomlin’s “Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”? Great show…one of the memorable bits was her holding up a can of tomato soup and asking the crowd if it was just soup or art (a la Warhol).

I saw something similar in Erik Hartman’s and Bob Boiko’s presentation about an Information Management Framework  and trying to get content managers to think of themselves not only as managers of Content Management Systems, but Information Managers who are responsible for providing quality information to their stakeholders.

In the same vein, I thought of how many of us in the web analytics space spend a lot of time talking about tools and techniques, rather than the information and analysis we provide. Something to think about...  

 3.     What am I missing?

I got into the concept of web analytics and qualitative techniques at roughly the same time I started managing web sites…1996. I used WebTrends, surveys, interviews and usability testing to change web site content, navigation and interface design…this just seemed like the thing to do. So I guess I’ve never understood why analytics seems like a foreign concept to those on the content side of the house.

 I was heartened that this seems to be changing...most notably in Erik and Bob’s presentation as they discussed the importance of content monetization through modeling in non-commerce scenarios and in Lou Rosenfeld’s keynote on the need for User Experience and Web Analytics to be used together. If you’d like to get some ideas on how to combine qualitative and quantitative measurement methods, and how to develop monetization models for content, you might want to take a look at my book The Executive’s Guide to Web Site Measurement and Testing. I think you’ll find some useful stuff there. There was even some talk of the need for one role to bring all site measurement disciplines together…a concept that I think makes a lot of sense as organizations seek to get out of site evaluation and testing silos.

Check out my post http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1592-Web-Analytics-Vs-Design about the discussion over Douglas Bowman's leaving Google over a tiff about web analytics.

The next JBoye conference is scheduled in Aarhus at the beginning of November. I suggest if you’re looking for a conference with a bit of personality, you should check it out….speaking of conferences with personality, remember to put X Change on your calendar for September.

 

 

 

 

 

Compare web analytics vendor compliance with the Web Analytics Association Analytics Definitions

As part of the research that went into the 2009 CMS Watch Web Analytics Report, I asked the vendors about their compliance with the WAA Web Analytics Definitions. If you'd like to see how the vendors stacked up you can download this for free, as well as read my post on the findings at:  http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1575-WAA-Standards-Compliance

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone to see how they've used the Definitions in their work...whether it be for vendor evaluation, stakeholder or partner education, or for other purposes.

WebTrends' New Approach to Web Analytics

Since Alex Yoder took over the reins as CEO at WebTrends in August, the company has been on an active campaign to make itself over…on both the image and product development fronts. Preaching a message of “openness” this has been manifest in hiring a new PR firm focused on consistent messaging and a senior management team that shows an interest in accessibility…both noticeable changes from the pre-Yoder days.

Things moved a bit more slowly on the product development front. While the openness vision has been articulated at industry conferences, such as eMetrics, it wasn’t exactly clear what this meant…other than that the Marketing Warehouse was the key to data access.  So, it was with great anticipation to see what the company was going to announce at Engage, its customer conference last week.  

Now that the smoke has cleared, let’s see what happened:

A Big Pre-Announcement

A New WebTrends Open Exchange – Yes, Open Exchange has been around since September 2007, but primarily as a partnership program. The revamped Open Exchange will provide API access that builds on its Tag Builder functionality. At first impression this is all a good thing: a fully published API should help extend data export to third party solutions; provide an alternative to the ODBC drive for exporting data into Excel and enable better access to both Analytics and Marketing Warehouse data. These last two points are significant because for years WebTrends has insisted that there are no issues with the ODBC driver even though many in the marketplace have expressed unhappiness with the product. On the second point, there seems to have been an overemphasis on developing additional reporting and querying capabilities for Marketing Warehouse at the expense of the core Analytics product.  

 Is there a catch? Well, the critical component of the web services is the Data Collection API, and this is available in beta only right now…general release for Analytics slated for June and for Marketing Warehouse in Q4 2009. Any beta users out there? I’d definitely like to hear about your experiences after you’ve used the APIs to see what you think.

Quick take: Big build up and pay off to be determined.

An Interesting Partnership

A Co-Branded Radian 6 Offering – Radian 6 is one of the new breed of analytics tools that monitors social media impact. WebTrends announced WebTrends Social Measurement Powered by Radian 6. The promise is that through Open Exchange, you’ll be able to integrate Radian 6 data with WebTrends Analytics. However, you’ll need to wait on this…probably at least another quarter for any integration. In the meantime, you can purchase the Social Measurement solution through WebTrends and for now; see basically the same reports as you would if you purchase Radian 6 directly.

Quick take: Big build up and pay off to be determined.

A Packaged Approach

A Solution-Oriented Vertical Offering – Throughout its history, WebTrends has lacked cohesiveness to its product and service offerings. Yes, it could do a lot, but it’s been difficult to figure out what part of the solution would fit your needs. The company is addressing this with eight vertical focused solutions. Nothing like the Coremetrics reporting or the Omniture playbook approaches, these service/solution offerings are presented as complete offerings that encompass strategic, technical and tactical components. Of course it will be curious how these complex engagements are estimated, planned, delivered and managed.

Quick take: Big build up and pay off to be determined.

So, You Tell Me…

As I mentioned, WebTrends is doing a lot these days to convey a new image. Management is easy to talk to and very forthcoming with information. They are doing a great job at reaching out to analysts, and you can sense a real energy…so different than years past. But I wonder what you’ve seen…in your demos with WebTrends, your experiences with tech support? Do you think the company has changed for the better? Is this management enthusiasm and sense of purpose evident in your day-to-day dealings with the company? Or is it pretty much the same old, same old?

The next few quarters should be telling as to whether Engage will be seen as the public turning point for the company, or nothing more than a pep rally for the company faithful.

 

An Enlightened Federal CIO Meets Web Analytics

Last week I had a great conversation about web analytics with the CIO of a federal agency.

Why was it a great conversation?

 

He understood the importance of web analytics to his organization, and made the commitment to support web analytics with his resources and authority.

 

He stated that web analytics is a discipline that all content managers need to use to plan new content and remove old content. He views web analytics as a “value add” service that his office can offer to internal stakeholders. He committed to having his development team learn how to tag web sites, and wants to encourage site owners to initiate web analytics on their sites. He understood the business benefits of his IT staff moving out of the log file processing business and into a SAAS solution that enabled better access to analytics data by potential analytics consumers throughout the enterprise.

 

Yes, I found this conversation to be somewhat of a revelation because the Federal government is by and large at a very early stage in using web analytics. This is an environment where older log file solutions are commonplace and entrenched, where IT departments still “own” analytics, where reams of page views and visit reports define web metrics. I speak with Federal web analysts who have literally spent years trying to institutionalize web analytics at their agencies and have met extreme resistance and/or apathy.  The common denominator…no senior management support.  True, lack of senior management commitment hampers many web analytics programs in the private sector, but the impact within the Federal sector seems to be more extreme. Historically, there has been no revenue-based goals driving an interest in web analytics, so a lack of senior management focus tends to leave web site managers in a place where they need to determine priorities for themselves. Fortunately, this seems to be changing due to tighter budgets, and zero based budgets (ZBB). According to Forbes Investopedia:

 

ZBB allows top-level strategic goals to be implemented into the budgeting process by tying them to specific functional areas of the organization, where costs can be first grouped, then measured against previous results and current expectations.  

 

If Federal CIOs needed a business case for institutionalizing web analytics as a program office, the ability to tie all web initiatives to a ZBB model and initiate accountability through meaningful web metrics seems to make a lot of sense.

 

Will Federal CIOs take a leadership role in developing web analytics programs at their agencies? I hope so. While there has been a lot of attention about cookies and privacy, I think that in the scheme of things, this is a somewhat overstated issue when it comes to making web analytics useful within the Federal government. The issue of importance as I see it is in establishing viable and relevant web analytics programs within Federal agencies. After all, if you resolve the cookie or no cookie issue, and there’s no senior management commitment to support a web analytics organization, no one to implement the web analytics solution, develop meaningful metrics, create reports and provide analysis, then what’s the point whether persistent cookies are used or not?