Too Much Cool StuffIn my last post on X Change, I talked about some of the returning attendees who are going to be leading Huddles this year. Welcoming back people like James Robinson of the NY Times, Dennis Bradley and Kevin Chan from Charles Schwab, Francis Lavelle from HowStuffWorks, and Matt Jacobs from Adobe is, of course, a pleasure. And I didn’t quite exhaust the list either - Lynn Lanphier from Best Buy and Jim Hassert from AOL were out last year and both are coming back and leading Huddles. But we have great new attendees as well. People like Greg Dowling and Shubhra Shrivasta…
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SemAngel
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X Change Web Analytics Conference
28 Jun 2009 | 11:48 am -
Microsite Measurement : The Right Way to Think Small
24 Jun 2009 | 1:43 pmI recently helped Paul Legutko, who heads up Semphonic’s Boston office, put the finishing touches on his “Measuring Microsites” whitepaper. It’s a brilliant piece of work. If you are using or thinking about using Microsites (small, focused, marketing oriented sites dedicated to a single campaign or product/service), this is an indispensable whitepaper for understanding their appropriate measurement. It’s not indispensable because it lays out some pretty cool metrics for Microsite measurement that you will almost certainly not have thought about. That’s just a nice to have. What… -
X Change Huddles – A Whole Lot of Cool Web Analytics Stuff
21 Jun 2009 | 9:52 amWe’ve nailed down the Huddle Leaders and topics for X Change this year – probably the single most important part of putting together the conference. This year, we have senior measurement managers and leaders from an amazing group of companies: Adobe, AOL, Barclays, Best Buy, Charles Schwab, Discovery, HP, Intuit, Kohler, Microsoft, Nokia, Salesforce, The New York Times, and Turner Broadcasting and they are covering just about every aspect of enterprise web analytics - from team building to targeting and testing to mobile and video measurement. The breadth of this lineup – leading… -
Bing – Maybe there really is a Search Engine War
17 Jun 2009 | 12:23 pmLike the phony war that marked the early months of World War II, the search engine wars have been pretty much lacking in combat. If it takes two to tango, it also takes two to fight a war and Google has so completely owned the field in search that to describe the resulting marketspace as a war has been about as apt as applying the term to when my younger daughter indulges in her habit of playing both hands in a game of cards. War it has not been. Bing may change that.Bing’s success is contingent on two very different factors – only one of which I have any ability to judge. The first… -
X Change – Looking Back, Looking Forward and Digging Deeper
14 Jun 2009 | 11:49 amThe Conference for Web Analytics ProfessionalsWe announced the Keynote for this year’s X Change Conference this past week – The Four Founders. The Keynote brings together four original founders (Brett Crosby, Matt Cutler, Bob Page, and John Pestana) of important web analytics tools – and four men who have been at the center of the dramatic changes in our industry. In bringing them together, I’m hoping to create an experience that is more personal and reflective; one that can serve as a foundation for the subsequent X Change discussions reminding us all of how far we’ve come and how…
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Webanalyticsbook - Web Analytics
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Interview with Heiner Hemken
29 Jun 2009 | 2:33 pmThanks for stopping by and giving us an interview for the Webanalyticsbook readers. For people, who don’t know him, Gretus runs SEO-united.de, one of the top search engine optimization blogs in Germany. Heiner is currently also working on a secret SEO Tool, which he will roll out within a few months. Webanalyticsbook: Since we already spoke a few times, let’s start the interesting stuff right away. Why another SEO Tool? Gretus: In Germany there are only a few tools, which offer all the relevant information for webmasters. There are a bunch of great tools, but most are quite expensive. We… -
Engagement Reports
27 Jun 2009 | 7:06 amClicktale just announced a few new reports, which they now started offering: - Engagement Report- Low/High Click Report- Sites w. most Javascript errrors- Pages, which take the longest to load -
Search Analytics
6 Jun 2009 | 3:09 pmGreat Search Analytics presentation by Marko Hurst. Check it out: Site Search Analytics eMetrics Madrid 2009 View more OpenOffice presentations from Marko Hurst. -
Measuring and Reporting Key Events Of Websites
24 May 2009 | 9:24 pmHaving looked at many analytics tools and dashboards, I was always impressed what vendors came up with to show some value of their tools. The latest trend, that especially SEO Tools like Searchmetrics, Sistrix Toolbox and SEOlytics came up with, was a so-called “Visibility Index”, which aims to tell the visibility of a website in the search engines. Visibility is something extremely tough to measure and unless you run an entire proxy server farm in several continents, you’ll probably have an issue getting really valuable data. On top of that we are in the days where social… -
Userfly - Usability Analytics
1 May 2009 | 6:50 pmIf two smart Stanford graduates decide to leave their jobs and come up with a new analytics tool, it’s certainly worth a look. Chris and Ashvin decided to launch a usability tool called Userfly.Userfly allows to record mouse and clicks movements. Ideally to improve landing pages or to analyze overall site usability. Two thumbs up. Userfly is a tool, that everybody should install if they want to increase their website traffic without wasting time on crunching numbers. userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo.
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Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising
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Web Analytics Wednesday in Seattle
1 Jul 2009 | 5:04 pmAfter a long hiatus, Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) is back in Seattle with a POP.This is a great opportunity to network with other Web Analytics, Optimization and Online Marketing professionals from Seattle area in a very informal and fun setting.Do we have a speaker or any presentation? Nothing planned yet but if you are interested in speaking then please send me your proposal for a 30 min presentation.Do you have topic that you would like to discuss with fellow analysts? If yes, send me your thoughts as well.Need another reason to attend? How about Free Beer and snacks.Please RSVP at Web… -
Social Media Analytics Part I
29 Jun 2009 | 11:06 pmWhat is Social Media?There are so many ways people define social media and some even argue that it is not really media. According to Wikipedia, Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Simply put, social media refers to all the conversation and engagement that happen on networks and sites like facbook, myspace, twitter, blogspehere, youtube, flicke, messageboard, forums etc..Since these conversations can have a big impact on your brand it becomes critical for a marketer to understand what people are talking about their… -
Widemile Optimize: A/B and Multivariate Tool
23 Jun 2009 | 10:48 amIn my post titled “A/B and Multivariate Testing Landscape”, I reported on a variety of tools that marketers and analytics professionals were using for A/B and multivariate testing. As I’ve predicted the interest in testing and targeting/segmentation continues to grow. This was also validated by the Web Analytics Association’s “Outlook 2009: Survey Report”.I just got through a good discussion and demo of the newest release of Widemile Optimize with Bob Garcia, VP Business Development for Widemile. I’m impressed with the new release of Widemile Optimization product that he demoed;… -
Hits, Page Views, Visitors and Visits Demystified
18 Jun 2009 | 2:52 pmThis article is an introductory level and the intention of this article is to clarify few terms that you constantly hear in Web Analytics. Why am I writing this article? I hear some confusion about these terms from people new to field, so I thought I will write this blog post to clarify some of the common terms.I am going to explain, Hits, Page Views, Visitors and Visits in this blog post.HitsBack in the early Internet days, Hits was a term commonly used to measure websites traffic. This term was mainly used by IT folks, early users of web analytics tools, to get an idea of the load on the… -
Adding “bing” to Organic Search in Google Analytics
1 Jun 2009 | 10:26 amA while ago I wrote blog post on how to add Twitter searches to appear in organic searches. The same principal can be applied to include Microsoft’s new search engine “bing” which is not yet recognized by Google Analytics as a search engine. Till Google Analytics recognizes it as a search engine, you can capture the data in organic searches by a simple one line of code.GA provides the following function to allow you to add your own search engines to the list of search engines that are already tracked by GA._addOrganic(newOrganicEngine, newOrganicKeyword)You simply call this function…
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Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik
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Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian & Telling Stories With Data
29 Jun 2009 | 1:40 amIt is such a cliché: Don’t just present data, tell a story. Yet it is rarely followed. We almost always present data. Actually we don’t present data, we send out reports. With data. Lots of it. With 6 size font and some pies and stacked bar graphs thrown in. Then we are frustrated that no one seems to pat us on the back, sing songs in our glory, give us more money. We don’t truly tell stories because it seems like a lot of work. And it can be. But you’ll be surprised at how often it is simply a matter of framing things differently, letting your imagination roam free. -
PPC / SEM Analytics: 5 Actionable Tips To Improve ROI
15 Jun 2009 | 1:43 amA very wise friend, ok Craig, once said this to me: “Paid Search is like playing chess with a Supercomputer.” At that moment I think my reaction was something like “meh!”. Of course Craig was right. Search Engine Marketing (Organic + PPC) continues to be a huge part of any company’s acquisition strategy on the web. Like other online channels it is targeted, it is effective and it is accountable. Perhaps its most unique asset being the ability to hyper-target relevant customer intent. It would be fair to say that Paid Search it has also gotten very complex (Search… -
Slay The Analytics Data Quality Dragon & Win Your HiPPO’s Love!
1 Jun 2009 | 1:10 amTwo truths: 1] Turns out the readers of Occam’s Razor are exceptionally gifted, they understand the challenges of web data 2] They are deeply motivated to do something about it, just not totally sure what. This is a special unplanned post just for you, to help with issue #2. My last post, Web Data Quality: A Six Step Process To Evolve Your Mental Model , unleashed an unusually exceptional set of comments from you all (sweet!). Today I want to share a cogent set of “next steps” ideas. Practical strategies to deal with the problems you highlighted, nuances you can exploit,… -
Web Data Quality: A 6 Step Process To Evolve Your Mental Model
18 May 2009 | 1:33 amIt seems absolutely dumb to argue that while the quality of data used to make decisions is important, it is actually not that important to have the highest data quality. Generations of Analysts, Data “People”, Decision Makers have grown up with the principle of GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. It made a lot of sense for a very long time. Especially because we used to collect so little data, its lack of even a little quality crapified the decision a lot. GIGO also fueled our every expanding quest for data perfection and data quality. There are entire companies built around helping… -
Dear Avinash: Web Metrics & Analytics Questions, Facebook Edition
4 May 2009 | 1:07 amA few weeks back I had asked this question on Twitter: Inspire me: If there is one web analytics question you want answered what would it be? What’s your juiciest / mundane, daily, challenge? The result was this post: Top Web Analytics Questions, Twitter Edition. Those 16 questions (!) were just one part of the story. My twitter account is linked to my facebook account , so my tweets get posted as my status updates. That means I got a bunch of questions on the facebook account as well. . . . Here is a summary of the 9 questions / topics that are addressed in this blog post:…
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Making Adwords Make Sense
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SU.PR - URL Shortening Plus Tracking
30 Jun 2009 | 11:35 amSo the common problem with Twitter (or any microblog) is that most URLs are too long to fit into a 140 character message (and still have room for the message). There have been a few solutions for this, my favorite at this time is a Stumbleupon tool that serves double duty Shortens the URL Tracks how many people clicked it and at what time Shows who retweeted the shortened URL One click to submit to Stumbleupon Shows who ‘liked’ it in Stumbleupon in the lower right Here is a pretty good review of the tool by Tim Ferriss http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/06/09/stumble-upon-supr/ The… -
Yahoo Partners with Newspapers - Old and New Media Meet
1 Mar 2009 | 8:49 pmThere was an article in the New York Times today describing a very important test that went on at the end of 2008. This test was performed by Yahoo and several major newspapers to see how well the two could work together to aid each other in serving advertisements. Yahoo was able to serve ads on the newspapers websites and vice versa. These ads were targeted to the reading behavior of the users. “a new ad system from Yahoo, currently installed at about 100 newspapers, that allows them to sell graphical ads on their sites that are aimed at specific audiences, like car buyers or sports… -
How To Improve Bounce Rate
23 Feb 2009 | 9:26 pmOn the Google Blog Avinash Kaushik wrote a post on Bounce Rate that begins a series called The Power of Measurement. Lesson one is on Bounce Rate. Bounce Rate is a very easy metric to understand. For that reason it is always one of the first concepts I talk about to my clients that need help deciphering their web analytics. What does a bounce mean from a user experience perspective? Bounce Rate is a very important metric because it illustrates one of the biggest problems from a webmaster perspective. It has become normal human behavior to enter a website with the understanding that if you… -
Google Analytics Training
30 Dec 2008 | 9:35 amGoogle Analytics Training Series The Google team is gradually providing the public with more free information about how best to install, configure, and use Google Analytics to its fullest. Training is going to continue to be really important to get the kind of adoption rates they want for this service. The Google Analytics Blog has its own YouTube channel with brief instructional videos. People like Avinash Kaushik and Raku Coryne travel to distant cities to share the good news about web analytics. Raku was even kind enough to send me a free copy of Avinash’s book Web Analytics an Hour… -
Online Marketing Training and Coaching
23 Dec 2008 | 10:05 amAs many of you know I’ve recently finished my Web Analytics class at the University of British Columbia. I was incredibly fortunate to have the renowned analyst and lecturer Stephane Hamel as my teacher for this session. In very few occupations do you get the opportunity to be taught by the very top industry professionals. In this case I think that Web Analytics is still such a young industry that so many of the great minds are still clustered around WAA, Yahoo Web Analytics Groups, and the first Web Analytics Classes at UBC and I am taking full advantage! Accept Coaching (at the right…
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Web Analytics Demystified
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The Truth About Mobile Analytics
11 Jun 2009 | 9:16 amPerhaps the only thing hotter than social media right now is mobile. And with good reason — smartphones like the iPhone and Palm Pre are taking our ability to get information to entirely new levels and ushering in an era of “digital ubiquity” that is clearly without precedent. Unsurprisingly business is responding by actively exploring how they can participate in the mobile opportunity, either by optimizing their site for small screens or going so far as to build cool, new iPhone applications to support long-standing offline initiatives. Fortunately most business owners have… -
X Change Keynote Announced
10 Jun 2009 | 8:59 amI am incredibly excited to announce the keynote presentation for X Change 2009 to be held September 9, 10, and 11 in San Francisco at the St. Regis hotel. This year to kick things off we have arranged to have four guys that have done more than anyone to define the web analytics industry join us for a special “Four Founder’s Perspective” session, moderated by yours truly. Brett Crosby, Matt Cutler, John Pestana, and Bob Page are four names that every web analytics insider knows. Co-founders of Urchin, NetGenesis, Omniture, and Accrue respectively and now senior managers at… -
Davos, TED, X Change, …
25 May 2009 | 11:04 pmOkay, so maybe the headline for this post is a wee hyperbolic, but if you’ve been to the X Change in the past I know you’ll forgive me my excitement. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, time to get ramped up for the X Change! This year’s conference is being held at the extra fancy-schmancy St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, immediately adjacent to San Francisco MoMa and as central as you can possibly get while still suffering Starwood 5-star luxury accommodations. In a word, the venue is SWEET! But, as with past X Change events, the venue will immediately become… -
Demystifying Europe …
13 May 2009 | 9:56 pmWhen I quit my job at Visual Sciences back in May 2007 to form Web Analytics Demystified I did so because I had a vision of a new type of web analytics consulting group. I very much wanted to build a small practice made up of very senior people capable of solving the really hard problems most companies have after they’ve made the investment in web analytic technology. I wanted to establish a firm that would compliment the highly tactical firms that I respected so much — companies like Semphonic, Stratigent, and Europe’s OX2. After two years I am very proud of the work… -
Are You Coming to Emetrics?
29 Apr 2009 | 9:22 pmIt’s almost amazing to consider that it has been a full year since the last Emetrics “West” event in California — what with so many changes and little Luca Dechamps Otamendi turning one — but it is again time to gather together and bask in the glory of Mr. Sterne’s excellent event. I am again honored to be presenting to a combined track, this time on Wednesday, May 6th at 11:00 AM, and will be giving an update of my “Competing on Web Analytics” presentation that resonates so well with, well, pretty much everyone who has seen it. The update is…
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Analytics Notes
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Will You Be One of The Happy Few? X Change 2009
15 Jun 2009 | 1:45 pmIn the variety of conferences and events one must choose from, especially in these times, one definitely stands out if you are involved in Web Analytics, and data-driven interactive Marketing : X Change. The San Francisco conference is an amazing gathering of very smart people (yours truly excluded) getting together in small groups (10 – 15) to talk about advanced topics. Most sessions, or Huddles as they’re called, are over an hour and a half long, which means discussions get deep. One of the very interesting aspects of that conference is that I always come back with… -
Look Who’s Talking Maturity!
5 May 2009 | 7:01 pmWell, my good friends at webtrends we’ll forgive me my implying they’re a bunch of old farts, with their 15 years in the market now. No, they’re of course not; I’m writing this post to react to their Digital Marketing Maturity Model, which they made public today (in beta, which is surprising for a model, since it’s not an application after all). BTW, you can get the PDF here. Brace yourselves, dear readers (are there still any left? I sometimes get the feeling everybody is on Twitter now); you are going to hear a lot about this topic in the coming… -
Interview with Jonathan Levitt, VP Marketing of iPerceptions
24 Feb 2009 | 12:45 pmWell, you know me. I’m not the one to refrain from a shameless plug. I just wanted to let you know that you can read my latest interview on The Big Integration with Jonathan Levitt, VP Marketing of iPerceptions. As with ForeSee Results last week, it is about integrating attitudinal analysis with behavioral data. Quite interesting topic if you ask me. You can read it here. -
Birth of A Web Site - II
20 Feb 2009 | 8:13 amThis is the second instalment of this series about the analysis of www.cuisineduquebec.com since the day of its launched. If you missed the first one, well, look down on this page! or find it here. For this post, I will examine in more details what’s going on with the organic search engine traffic, keyphrases, etc, since search engines, namely Google, are responsible for 85% + of total traffic. In the period we examine, those visits came via 10,121 different keyphrases. Only 391 expressions have generated 5 visits and more, which is 3,9% of total. And what percentage of keyphrases… -
Interview With Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results
17 Feb 2009 | 1:56 pmI just wanted to bring your attention to my other blog, The Big Integration, where I published an interview with Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results, one of the leaders in attitudinal analysis. Larry offers very interesting answers about how behavioral and attitudinal analyses can be integrated together to offer even more added value than doing both seperately. You can read the interview here.
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Omniture: Industry Insights
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Blending Art & Science: Quality of Search Testing
2 Jul 2009 | 10:43 amOut in the field I’m seeing that a good number of merchants and marketers using our merchandising tool are stretched a little thin and barely have time to do any more than look at their “failed” or “null” searches. Well, if that’s you, you’re not alone. Our Merchandising Consultants have been preaching to you that you need to pay attention to not only failed searches, but also your Top 100 successful keyword searches. What does this exactly mean? What should I be looking for in my reports? How should I approach analyzing my data when it comes to “search”? What defines a… -
Build Your ‘Bremando’ Army: Real-Time Creative Services
30 Jun 2009 | 9:52 amHaving an in-house creative services team has been viewed as a luxury to mid-market companies, or a burden to the enterprise. “Our agency does that…” Right, and you pay for it in money and time. The traditional procedure is to hire an outside agency, or contractor (usually Web first, print second) to handle your creative projects for you. But this model presents a number of challenges. A Real Need for Real-Time An in-house team provides you with immediate access, flexibility and an ability to react and optimize in real-time. Even minor changes to a Web site like a banner, a page… -
SiteCatalyst de-duplication and American football
29 Jun 2009 | 7:45 amOne of the most difficult concepts to explain happens to be one of the most frequently asked questions that my colleagues and I receive from SiteCatalyst users. There are several iterations of this question, each with roughly the same answer: Why doesn’t the sum total of visits from each line item in the Pages report add up to the visit total at the bottom of the report? Why doesn’t the sum total of orders from each line item in the Products report add up to the order total at the bottom of the report? Why doesn’t the sum total of [any success metric] from each line item in… -
Omniture Launches Partner Enablement API and Developer Sandbox
25 Jun 2009 | 2:10 pmToday Omniture announced the release of a new Partner Enablement API and developer sandbox beta. The new technology allows partners to unlock value for joint customers through the development of applications that leverage or add to the approximately 1 trillion transactions measured by Omniture each quarter. Here are highlights from this beta release: Partner Enablement API The partner enablement API includes web services for integrating data and configuring integrations between partner applications and Omniture. Using the partner enablement API, a partner can map and test the data exchange… -
Measuring “logged in” visitors without cookies
22 Jun 2009 | 8:12 amRecently, I participated in a great little conversation on Twitter regarding how to handle a very specific reporting need. A user asked how he could tie individual user IDs on his site back to data from the user’s first visit. For example, this user needs to see the original entry page for various users. This seems fairly straightforward on the surface of it, but when you take into account the effects of clearing cookies, changing browsers, changing machines, etc., it can become much harder. Typically, we would treat these uncontrollable phenomena that affect unique visitor tracking a…
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WebTrends Outsider
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Cool admin utility - Display your custom report configs in Excel
11 Jun 2009 | 8:26 amPresenting a quick and dirty (actually, somewhat slow and dirty) cscript that parses through the custom report settings in your WebTrends program and produces a spreadsheet of their configurations. -
Add Bing to your keywords.ini file
3 Jun 2009 | 2:28 pmYou'll need to add the Bing search engine to your WebTrends configurations in order to get it to show up in reports. Here's how. -
Cool Custom Report: Google Organic Rank dimension
14 May 2009 | 7:18 amGoogle is starting to record the organic rank in its referrer string. It takes about 3 minutes to turn that rank info into a WebTrends custom dimension you can use in any search phrase report. -
Basing a dimension on a subpart of a URL
6 May 2009 | 10:16 amYou don't need to have WebTrends custom reports showing URL craziness like "/discount/Catamaran/coupon/ 8299937-fda.html". If you just want "Catamaran," you can extract it and display just that subpart. -
Suspending a Custom Report
6 May 2009 | 6:15 amDiscontinue - but continue to view results for - WebTrends custom reports that no longer need to be processed.
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Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising
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Web Analytics Wednesday in Seattle
1 Jul 2009 | 5:04 pmAfter a long hiatus, Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) is back in Seattle with a POP.This is a great opportunity to network with other Web Analytics, Optimization and Online Marketing professionals from Seattle area in a very informal and fun setting.Do we have a speaker or any presentation? Nothing planned yet but if you are interested in speaking then please send me your proposal for a 30 min presentation.Do you have topic that you would like to discuss with fellow analysts? If yes, send me your thoughts as well.Need another reason to attend? How about Free Beer and snacks.Please RSVP at Web… -
Social Media Analytics Part I
29 Jun 2009 | 11:06 pmWhat is Social Media?There are so many ways people define social media and some even argue that it is not really media. According to Wikipedia, Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Simply put, social media refers to all the conversation and engagement that happen on networks and sites like facbook, myspace, twitter, blogspehere, youtube, flicke, messageboard, forums etc..Since these conversations can have a big impact on your brand it becomes critical for a marketer to understand what people are talking about their… -
Widemile Optimize: A/B and Multivariate Tool
23 Jun 2009 | 10:48 amIn my post titled “A/B and Multivariate Testing Landscape”, I reported on a variety of tools that marketers and analytics professionals were using for A/B and multivariate testing. As I’ve predicted the interest in testing and targeting/segmentation continues to grow. This was also validated by the Web Analytics Association’s “Outlook 2009: Survey Report”.I just got through a good discussion and demo of the newest release of Widemile Optimize with Bob Garcia, VP Business Development for Widemile. I’m impressed with the new release of Widemile Optimization product that he demoed;… -
Hits, Page Views, Visitors and Visits Demystified
18 Jun 2009 | 2:52 pmThis article is an introductory level and the intention of this article is to clarify few terms that you constantly hear in Web Analytics. Why am I writing this article? I hear some confusion about these terms from people new to field, so I thought I will write this blog post to clarify some of the common terms.I am going to explain, Hits, Page Views, Visitors and Visits in this blog post.HitsBack in the early Internet days, Hits was a term commonly used to measure websites traffic. This term was mainly used by IT folks, early users of web analytics tools, to get an idea of the load on the… -
Adding “bing” to Organic Search in Google Analytics
1 Jun 2009 | 10:26 amA while ago I wrote blog post on how to add Twitter searches to appear in organic searches. The same principal can be applied to include Microsoft’s new search engine “bing” which is not yet recognized by Google Analytics as a search engine. Till Google Analytics recognizes it as a search engine, you can capture the data in organic searches by a simple one line of code.GA provides the following function to allow you to add your own search engines to the list of search engines that are already tracked by GA._addOrganic(newOrganicEngine, newOrganicKeyword)You simply call this function…
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Web Analytics Demystified
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The Truth About Mobile Analytics
11 Jun 2009 | 9:16 amPerhaps the only thing hotter than social media right now is mobile. And with good reason — smartphones like the iPhone and Palm Pre are taking our ability to get information to entirely new levels and ushering in an era of “digital ubiquity” that is clearly without precedent. Unsurprisingly business is responding by actively exploring how they can participate in the mobile opportunity, either by optimizing their site for small screens or going so far as to build cool, new iPhone applications to support long-standing offline initiatives. Fortunately most business owners have… -
X Change Keynote Announced
10 Jun 2009 | 8:59 amI am incredibly excited to announce the keynote presentation for X Change 2009 to be held September 9, 10, and 11 in San Francisco at the St. Regis hotel. This year to kick things off we have arranged to have four guys that have done more than anyone to define the web analytics industry join us for a special “Four Founder’s Perspective” session, moderated by yours truly. Brett Crosby, Matt Cutler, John Pestana, and Bob Page are four names that every web analytics insider knows. Co-founders of Urchin, NetGenesis, Omniture, and Accrue respectively and now senior managers at… -
Davos, TED, X Change, …
25 May 2009 | 11:04 pmOkay, so maybe the headline for this post is a wee hyperbolic, but if you’ve been to the X Change in the past I know you’ll forgive me my excitement. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, time to get ramped up for the X Change! This year’s conference is being held at the extra fancy-schmancy St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, immediately adjacent to San Francisco MoMa and as central as you can possibly get while still suffering Starwood 5-star luxury accommodations. In a word, the venue is SWEET! But, as with past X Change events, the venue will immediately become… -
Demystifying Europe …
13 May 2009 | 9:56 pmWhen I quit my job at Visual Sciences back in May 2007 to form Web Analytics Demystified I did so because I had a vision of a new type of web analytics consulting group. I very much wanted to build a small practice made up of very senior people capable of solving the really hard problems most companies have after they’ve made the investment in web analytic technology. I wanted to establish a firm that would compliment the highly tactical firms that I respected so much — companies like Semphonic, Stratigent, and Europe’s OX2. After two years I am very proud of the work… -
Are You Coming to Emetrics?
29 Apr 2009 | 9:22 pmIt’s almost amazing to consider that it has been a full year since the last Emetrics “West” event in California — what with so many changes and little Luca Dechamps Otamendi turning one — but it is again time to gather together and bask in the glory of Mr. Sterne’s excellent event. I am again honored to be presenting to a combined track, this time on Wednesday, May 6th at 11:00 AM, and will be giving an update of my “Competing on Web Analytics” presentation that resonates so well with, well, pretty much everyone who has seen it. The update is…
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immeria
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Free or Fee: Gladwell vs Anderson
29 Jun 2009 | 7:41 pmIn a previous post, I explained why WASP isn't free, and recently, I promoted my consulting services with the headline "Web Analytics brain available - for a fee" and I've done my share of inflamatory posts about the utopia of "Free". Malcolm Gladwell, author of three books I loved reading (The Tipping Point, Blink! and Outliers), replies to Wired editor Chris Anderson and adulated author of "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" (honestly, I read the article and had enough). I go with Daniel Tunkelang, blogger at SmartDataCollective, who wrote "Malcolm Gladwell to Chris Anderson: No… -
Google Analytics targeted by hackers
24 Jun 2009 | 9:14 amThe twitersphere is on fire over a Google Analytics support forum thread. I was chatting with Eran Ben Sabat, a London-based fellow web analytics consultant who said "have you seen the latest with the GA code? The regex thingy sending trafic to a another domain". I relayed the info on Twitter, which was picked up by Eric Peterson, then started to spread like crazy. This post is a summary of several threads and resources about this exploit. Is my GA being hacked?The thread shows several accounts of websites using GA were the default implementation script was replaced with a gibberish string of… -
A tale of Web Analytics near miss
19 Jun 2009 | 11:18 amWikipedia defines a "near miss" as being an "unplanned event that did not result in injury, illness, or damage - but had the potential to do so". I was reading Jim Novo's latest post about Analyze, Not Justify, relating a conversation with a client that didn't became one... I wanted to do such as post for a while and I figured out "what the heck, I'll share one of my experience". Of course, in doing so I will try to "protect the innocent". So here goes. The agency who wanted to beI was contacted by a traditional marketing agency (call it "ABC") that also does websites and online campaigns. -
Web Analytics Tuesday, July 7th, sponsored by AT Internet
17 Jun 2009 | 5:45 pmIn March we joined force with "Utilisabilité Québec" to discuss the relationship between usability and analytics. In July, the Web Analytics Wednesday will be on a Tuesday! Nicolas Babin, COO for AT Internet, will present a Case Study featuring European client Ryanair. This content was originally presented together with Dara Brady, Head of Advertising at Ryanair during Internet World London this past May. The case study will demonstrate how AT Internet delivered against Ryanair’s 2009 online priorities: site redesign and conversion.our event is sponsored by AT Internet. When: Tuesday,… -
Forrester web analytics forecast: WASP data
27 May 2009 | 7:23 amForrester just released the "US Web Analytics Forecast, 2008 to 2014". John Lovett, Forrester analyst, predicts the US web analytics market will reach $1B by 2014, with a steady and amazing growth of 17% per year! Collaborating with Forrester I had the chance to collaborate with John Lovett & Forrester by providing WASP market data: Data from the Web Analytics Solution Profiler (WASP), a service that detects analytics solutions installed on Web sites, projects that market penetration for Web analytics is roughly 58%. WASP also estimates that 78% of total market share is currently held by…
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June Dershewitz on Web Analytics
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5 Industry News Tidbits from the First Half of the Year
18 Jun 2009 | 10:58 amIn an effort to get myself all caught up on what happened in the web analytics industry while I was on leave, I've been sifting through posts and press releases from the first half of 2009. Here are 5 noteworthy items:1) Microsoft adCenter Analytics beta closesThe already-slim web analytics vendor market loses another player. Here's the development team's announcement from March.2) GA launches certification for individualsThe new Google Analytics Individual Qualification test costs just $50 USD - and all of the course materials are public domain. Will it become a must-have… -
Hello Again!
1 Jun 2009 | 5:29 pmI have spent the past few months offline - welcoming my new baby - and now I am making a gradual return to the professional world. I plan to work part-time at Semphonic through the summer and then go full-time in September 2009 when my daughter enters daycare.Ever the analyst, I have recently occupied my time with child-rearing data geek tools like the Itzbeen (it goes everywhere I go) and Trixie Tracker (oooh, pretty charts). Now, though, I am ready to pick up where I left off with the web analytics industry. I look forward to exploring all sorts of data and writing about the experience here… -
Taking a Break
27 Jan 2009 | 7:52 pmAs of February 1st, 2009, I am officially on maternity leave from Semphonic. My blog will remain dormant while I'm away; I intend to pick it back up again when I return to work later this year.In the meantime I hope you get some value out of what I've written. This blog has been a great learning experience, as much for me as for the readers who've found their way here.If you're looking for a place to start in the archives, the 5 most popular posts are: Real-World Challenges of Tracking Mobile with Page Tags (plus a whitepaper I wrote on mobile analytics and CEM) Web… -
Mobile Analytics Whitepaper: Written by Me, Available Free
15 Jan 2009 | 3:20 pmI'm pleased to announce that - as a joint effort between Semphonic and our partner, Tealeaf - I have published a whitepaper on mobile analytics and customer experience management (CEM). You can get the whitepaper at Tealeaf's site or write to me directly (june@semphonic.com) if you want to know more.Working with Tealeaf has given me a new appreciation for the value of CEM, and I believe they've got a very unique offering when it comes to mobile web usage analysis. So have a read through the whitepaper. I welcome your feedback either privately or as comments on this blog. -
Looking Forward to 2009
19 Dec 2008 | 8:26 amI haven't blogged much lately (shame!), I will miss a few Web Analytics Wednesdays this spring (unheard of!), and I'm skipping Omniture Summit 2009 (how could I!). But I have a really good excuse: I'm due to have my first child on February 22nd.Yesterday someone asked me if I would Twitter from the maternity ward. Uh, no. But I am bound to post a few baby pictures on Facebook, so you can friend me there if you'd like.I plan to maintain my Semphonic duties and my obligations to the Web Analytics Association Board of Directors through early February, then I will take a…
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web analytics - Google News
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How Much Did Michael Jackson Rock the Web? - New York Times
2 Jul 2009 | 10:43 amHow Much Did Michael Jackson Rock the Web?New York TimesCompete, a Web analytics firm based in Boston, crunched some numbers and came up with a few data points to help illustrate the surge. and more » -
Firefox 3.5 downloaded 5 million times in first 24 hours - Ars Technica
2 Jul 2009 | 6:05 amTrustedReviewsFirefox 3.5 downloaded 5 million times in first 24 hoursArs Technica rapidly climbed over the past few years, bringing it up to between 20-30 percent of the global browser market, according to various Web analytics firms. Who's Using What on Technologizer?TechnologizerFirefox 3.5 releasediTWireFirefox 3.5 Is HereInformation Week WeblogInformationWeekall 445 news articles » -
The Omniture Drag - and your quest for aligning web content and ... - CMSWatch
1 Jul 2009 | 8:59 amThe Omniture Drag - and your quest for aligning web content and CMSWatchWeb analytics managers note that Omniture does not offer standard dashboard reports "out-of-the-box," leaving customers to build dashboards from scratch. and more » -
Joost Unplugs Web TV Service, Concentrates on Selling Tech - PC World
1 Jul 2009 | 7:16 amMultichannel NewsJoost Unplugs Web TV Service, Concentrates on Selling TechPC WorldIn May Joost had 643365 unique visitors, a nearly 23 percent gain over April, according to Compete, a Web analytics firm that offers a free comparison tool Joost Victim Of Falling Online Ad PricesInformationWeekall 191 news articles » -
Kampyle Integrates With Google Analytics to Answer Why Your ... - PR Newswire (press release)
30 Jun 2009 | 8:07 amKampyle Integrates With Google Analytics to Answer Why Your PR Newswire (press release)According to John Lovett , Senior Analyst covering web analytics at Forrester Research, "The problem [with web analytics] was that the complexity and Kampyle Links Service with Google AnalyticsDaily Research News OnlineKampyle offers reasons consumers abandon shopping cartsBizReportQ&A: Ariel Finkelstein on Kampyle and the future of analyticsEconsultancyall 13 news articles »
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Google Analytics Blog
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Google Analytics Blog in German
30 Jun 2009 | 3:24 pmToday we're delighted to announce a new blog for our German speaking Google Analytics users. The German Conversion Room blog launched recently and is run by our colleagues in Europe. In addition to covering Google Analytics tips and advice, the new blog will also include posts about Website Optimizer and Google AdWords conversion tools such as Conversion Optimizer. Check out the new blog today by visiting conversionroom-de.blogspot.com. You can sign up for the site feed to have weekly posts delivered directly to your inbox. And don't forget we have other conversion focused blogs for our non… -
Back to Basics: Free Google Analytics Tools
29 Jun 2009 | 5:02 pmWe've picked two free tools that anyone can use while setting up Google Analytics for your site. The tools below are pretty basic but are applicable to anyone tracking a campaign with an Analytics account. URL BuilderThe first tool we want to introduce our beginners to is the URL Builder. In order for Google Analytics to track your marketing campaigns effectively, you'll need to tag your online ads with the right information (e.g. campaign, medium and source) so that Google Analytics can track your marketing campaign and show you which activities are paying off. To help the the tagging… -
Google Analytics on your Mobile Phone
26 Jun 2009 | 3:07 pmWith recent launch of the Google Analytics Data Export API, Google Analytics data is starting to show up in some new places. One of the most exciting places is on your mobile phone.In the past it was challenging to keep up with your performance data while on the go. Using the new API, a number of developers have created mobile solutions to tackle this challenge. Note, it still takes our system some time to process your data, so if you're checking today's data, proceed with caution.For the Android OS:Check out Mobile GA from Actual Metrics.Mobile GA's date range comparisonsThis app is great… -
"Data Driven Discussions" series premiere!
25 Jun 2009 | 2:11 pmWe're lucky to have Avinash Kaushik, web analytics practitioner extraordinaire, on our team here at Google. We're also lucky to have Nick Mihailovski, our developer programs manager who was a member of the Urchin team before the acquisition by Google. And they're lucky to have each other - they are two peas in a pod. If you know one of them, you know what I'm talking about.It's said that you can sum up a friend in three words. Me = tall, nice, good dancer :-) Sounds a little boring I know. I think Avinash and Nick could be summed up by the following: energy, intelligence and bluntness. I also… -
Seminars For Success July - Edmonton, Canada
24 Jun 2009 | 4:10 pmHello, Edmonton Canada! Home of the worlds largest shopping and entertainment center (West Edmonton Mall) and gateway to some of the North's most spectacular National Parks and our first Seminars for Success in province of Alberta! Our Google Analytics Seminar Leader, Benjamin Mangold from Mangold Sengers is making a special trip from his home country of Australia to teach the Google Analytics Intro and Advanced session. These are great in person trainings and will jump start you in Google Analytics. Return from these trainings with a practical understanding of how to use these…
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Web Analytics World: Internet Marketing & Analytics
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Buzzom Brings People Search in Twitter
1 Jul 2009 | 10:56 pmIt’s strange, it’s weird and it’s inevitable – the technology to connect people. In the process of innovation, people have found that the need to connect to people is the most successful business model. Traditionally, social gathering like party, picnic, pub etc were the places where people got an opportunity to connect with new people and increase their network. In the 21st century, its face book, My space, You-tube and yes off course the new buzz, twitter.Suddenly, no one is telling you “Don’t talk to strangers.” People are excited, more than ever, to connect with people… -
Why the Adwords Top Spot Should be Your Bottom Priority
1 Jul 2009 | 12:38 amIn pricing PPC keywords, competing for the top spot could be your biggest mistake. Capturing the #1 position is not always realistic, and it is a likely waste of your money. The waves of information we see for search marketing has clued us in to smart concepts that pay off when put into practice. We’ll show you exactly how to stretch your ad dollars without sacrificing exposure to your domain.Often, search marketers spend hours carefully pouring over data in a concentrated effort to hit that trophy—the top ad position. There is value to that position, but that value usually means more to… -
Kampyle Introduces Stronger Integration with Google Analytics
29 Jun 2009 | 11:27 pmHow effective is knowing that a user from California referred from Bing abandoned their shopping cart with $283 of merchandise after visiting 12 web pages over 6 minutes if you have no clue why?According to John Lovett, Senior Analyst covering web analytics at Forrester Research, “the problem [with web analytics] was that the complexity and inability to take action on the data largely inhibited success.”The Kampyle – Google Web Analytics integration, solves the challenges associated with web analytics while providing the only website feedback solution fully integrated with Google… -
Google Analytics iPhone Apps
28 Jun 2009 | 11:12 pmAnalytics App by Michael D JensenQuick Overview Reports for at-a-glance data More Detailed Reports for deeper analysis Supports Multiple Accounts, Multiple Sites, change login anytime Change date range, chart granularity by Day/Week/Month Custom Reports and Goals The Google Analytics for iPhone App by Sergej MuellerStatistics from Google Analytics on your iPhone. Multiple AccountsSwitchable Statistics as Diagram Work in progress Ego App by Garrett Murray Ego gives you one central—and lovely—location to check web statistics that matter to you. With support for Feedburner, Google Analytics,… -
Veeple Partners with BitGravity
25 Jun 2009 | 11:13 pmVeeple, Inc. (http://www.veeple.com/), today announced an agreement with BitGravity (http://www.bitgravity.com/), a global leader in online video, as well as several new service enhancements to its platform.Under the agreement, BitGravity will offer Veeple's simple and innovative video solution to content owners and businesses to easily upload, manage, deploy and measure interactive videos across the Web. Veeple, in turn, will standardize its offering on BitGravity, providing best-in-class video delivery capability to its customers."BitGravity's focus on fast, high-quality video delivery is…
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Piwik
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7 Reasons Why Your Commercial Site NEEDS Piwik…
16 Jun 2009 | 5:28 pmGuest Blogger Marc Lindsay Is An Internet Marketer & Runs An SEO Company - LT SEO This is the first post of a new series all about "Using Piwik Effectively" and in a live environment. Designed to help both businessman & hobbyist make the most out of Piwik. Analytics Set Free - No More Constraints There is no doubt that we are now in a world where digital data, bits & bytes, 1's & 0's all have a value, and a very significant value at that. Just look at Google as a classical example of how valuable the digital world has now become. Without data Google… -
New Piwik Javascript Tracking API - How we designed it
1 Jun 2009 | 6:27 pmThere are a lot of changes in Piwik 0.4. Today, I'm going to write about the release of an exciting new version of piwik.js, Piwik's JavaScript tracker. While the improvements are all under the hood, Piwik's client-side code is now a heavyweight contender to the trackers from the "Big 3" (i.e., GA, Y!A, and MS). Inspired by Remy Damour's code contribution, planning and redevelopment of piwik.js began over 9 months ago. Over this period, we continued to maintain the legacy piwik.js while developing this new and improved version. We looked at the APIs of the… -
100,000 Downloads Milestone!
24 May 2009 | 6:09 pmThis is a wonderful day for the Piwik community: Piwik just reached the 100,000 downloads milestone!! Click on the image to view the real time Piwik Download Counter This shows just how well received an open source web analytics alternative to Google, Yahoo and others is to the community. Thank you all for your support, messages, patches, bug reports, feedback, blog posts, this has been a very exciting journey! Evolution of downloads Check out the graph below that shows the evolution of Piwik downloads over months, since the first public release in March 2008: Would you like to see this graph… -
If you need to serve ads on your website, check out OpenX Ad Server 2.8!
7 Apr 2009 | 2:48 pmAs a Piwik user, you are analyzing your website traffic. You are using the data to make your website better and increase its performance. Do you need to make money from your website? Do you need to serve ads? Would you like to serve ads from several ad networks, with advanced targeting options, extensive reporting on your ads performance… and serve these ads on multiple websites? Serving ads on your website(s) If you need to make money with ads on your website(s), check out OpenX ad server 2.8. The new version released earlier this week brings lots of new features and improvements! You… -
Piwik 0.2.33 released! No bugs left, and lots of good stuff coming.
7 Apr 2009 | 1:51 amHello all! It has been a while since our last piwik.org update, but behind the svn curtain, things are going strong. We are proud to release Piwik 0.2.33 today! After a month of bug fixing, please enjoy using the latest release of the most popular Open Source Web Analytics software! We believe we've fixed all outstanding bugs in Piwik (36 to be exact) and we've pushed a few improvements as well. Our objective for this release is to open the way for Piwik 0.4 that will include a few important new features (multi sites dashboard, new modular Javascript API, and more) and provide a…
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web analytics - Google Blog Search
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Web Analytics Rock Stars | IQ Workforce » Quick Tips for ...
2 Jul 2009 | 2:09 pmWhile this may be tough without some advanced analytics tools, it is definitely do-able with a little hardwork. In my opinion, it's key to watch who is the most communicative (positive and negative), who passes on your message (retweets ... -
Where do Yahoo! Web Analytics get its Demographic data? | Optimize ...
2 Jul 2009 | 1:07 pmWell first of all Yahoo! has some 550.000.000 unique visitors every month and those visitors are giving their data away by signing and out of various services. -
The most important thing about a website is… | Pure Web Analytics
2 Jul 2009 | 9:52 amPure Web Analytics - Web Applications, Usability, Analytics and Technologies. -
Web Analytics Wednesday Review: Sinotech Group: Web Analytics ...
1 Jul 2009 | 9:36 pmA chronicle of the long march to ROI centric advertising in China. by Florian Pihs. -
7 Steps To Get Hired « Web Analytics & Marketing Management
1 Jul 2009 | 6:59 pmVisiStat is pleased to announce a corporate wide agreement with Dominion Enterprises @DomEnterprises , web analytics for the masses. 4 hours ago; Nice article for Web Analytics beginners: Web Metrics 101 - What DO all these Terms Mean? ...
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Webmetricsguru - Webmetrics
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I can’t believe it’s free - Chris Anderson
2 Jul 2009 | 8:32 amI was just thinking - I was at Chris Anderson’s talk last December Chris Anderson at The Wired Store, NYC. What is new about Free? and I questioned him on the use of “Free”, then (and got a copy of The Long Tail with an additional chapter about “Free” that was included to preview the upcoming book. Now the publication date of his book is approaching - I bet he’s tickled pink with all the authorities that have weighted in and disagreed with him, partly or fully, about “Free”. I’m almost tempted to think Chris Anderson wants all of this… -
PDF2009 - The Blogging of the Bureaucracy: How to Use Social Media From Inside Government
30 Jun 2009 | 12:52 pmThe Blogging of the Bureaucracy: How to Use Social Media From Inside Government: Jeanne Holm, Gwynne Kostin, Ann Aikin, Jed Sundwall, Matthew Burton (moderator) NASA has 300 million visits a year and has a large presence in Second Life. Also NASA has the most visited Government website, and NASA allows crowdsourcing science research. NASA is working on internal social networking, open scourced content. NASA has a new application called SPACEBOOK allowing trust and empowerment, colloberation. NASA approach is to trust people and empower them, 95% they will do the right thing and the 5% when… -
PDF2009 Mapping the Internet Jungle
30 Jun 2009 | 11:58 amMapping the Networked Public Sphere: How Blogs, Mainstream Media and Official Sources Interact: Ken Deutsch, Stan Magniant, Vincent Ducrey, Michael Cornfield (moderator) Semantic Analysis can’t be entirely automated. Additive process, you don’t stop what you are doing, but add and focus. It’s like Media Markets and Broadcast, they are influenced, but not limited to state lines. Is location indicated on a blog? If you look at main newspaper in a state, then look at blogs liking into it, you can, sometimes, assign a blog to a state, or locality. Community Extraction and what… -
THINKSOCIAL lunchen at PDF2009
30 Jun 2009 | 10:27 amI found myself, after having eaten my bag lunch (unfortunately) invited to another, the launch of THINKSOCIAL (advancing the Public Interest of Social Media) at the Landmark Resturant here at Lincoln Center Jazz and PDF2009. THINKSOCIAL is also a blogging platform and will grow, from it’s inception, to include many new features. It’s true THINKSOCIAL could also be a place where ROI and STANDARDS can be posted. Kristie Carpenter of the Paley Center spoke about the 150 forums they hold here in NYC, and 50 leadership councils bringing executives together. Social Media can have a more… -
PDF2009 - The Obama Broadband Initiative and the Future of the Internet: Opening Remarks by Blair Levin, FCC;
29 Jun 2009 | 2:30 pm5:15- 6:15pm The Obama Broadband Initiative and the Future of the Internet: Opening Remarks by Blair Levin, FCC; Discussion with Josh Silver, James Assey, Hank Hultquist, Andrew Rasiej (moderator) In the last session today, Blair Levin, an FCC Commisioner, talks about Broadband; a new FCC commisioner was just appointed today. Study the law July 2 nd FCC Meeting Web Site - broadband.gov Staff Workshops Second Trance in Fall Best Ideas Next, a panel comes out and sits on stage Internet deployment in US is defined as 200,000 Kilobits, kinda slow compared to other countries.
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Increasing your Website's Conversion Rate
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Do all those website “pre-surveys” really help?
26 Jun 2009 | 2:56 pmMuch hoopla has been made in the not-too-distant past about having a free little questionnaire on your site. It hits you when you enter with a question like this one: “After your visit, would you be willing to answer a few questions?” 4Q from iPerceptions does one, as does Kampyle. When I spend $150 at usertesting.com to find out how much visitors hated my company’s incredibly old site, I also found out that they hate getting a popup box before they get into the site. (For the record, we use Kampyle.) We had programmed the site so that only 30% of visitors were served the… -
GA Navigation Summary: What do those numbers mean?
23 Jun 2009 | 6:45 pmJesse, who just attended our GA training in NYC sent me an email, asking me this question about the navigation summary (caution: the answer is easy, but the question is hard to understand). “When you look at the ‘next page,’ are the % Clicks based on all next pages or all next “moves?” In other words, do the percentages take exits into account? Usually, I have to test that kind of thing, but I had a ready made test — a profile for a new, tiny site that I had set up not hours ago. Here is what I saw when I looked at the navigation summary: Notice that… -
Dimensions vs Metrics: What’s the difference?
22 Jun 2009 | 1:41 pmGoogle Analytics has two kinds of data: Dimensions and Metrics. So what’s the difference, and when do we see them? Dimensions are the kinds of things you would see in the rows of a Google Analytics report. For example, language is a dimension — you can even see a whole report with rows and rows of language preferences. Browser preference is a dimension. Campaign is a dimension. “Page” (aka request URI) is a dimension. You can find all those things as the titles of rows in Google Analytics reports. Metrics, on the other hand, are the numbers that usually populate… -
Back to Basics: Optimizing Your Title Tag
17 Jun 2009 | 6:07 amThis post is a look back at the basics for those who may just be joining us (sorry analytics ninjas - you’ll have to wait for the next advanced, brain-swelling post on GA from John or Jonathan). I am always surprised when I see a website that has the same title tag for every single page. Unfortunately, it’s more common than you may think. It seems to affect small businesses more frequently, but no website is immune. What do I mean by the title tag, you ask? Simply put, it’s a title for the page that describes that page’s content. The title tag goes in the head section… -
Have you been putting off that new site or site tweaks?
11 Jun 2009 | 11:33 amDo you know that you need a new site (or changes to your site) but have been putting it off? I sure have. Every Monday, at our weekly meeting, I have a good excuse for why I haven’t written or thought too much about our new site. And they really are good excuses…. Then I tried UserTesting.com, and will have a hard time procrastinating any more (in a few minutes, I’ll explain what one has to do with the other). You might have tried the service or heard about it already. They only charge $29 per user test, you get to specify who the tester needs to be, and what questions you…
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webanalytics at Yahoo! Groups
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Re: Direct traffic is NOT what you think it is!
1 Jul 2009 | 11:43 amI don't consider Direct Traffic in my analyses anymore. Too skewed. I have tons of data proving it's a garbage dimension; too many instances where the referrer -
Re: GA sampling data - can I get full long tail?
1 Jul 2009 | 11:43 amGoogle Analytics only allows 50,000 rows to be exported per report. Theoretically you could use the API to pull each individual day separetely and aggregate -
Re: Web Analysts Slipping in IT Salary Survey
1 Jul 2009 | 11:41 amI'm not really surprised to see a "Decreased Demand High Lay-Off". That's an effect of GA... Many clients don't want to pay anymore for analysis as GA offers -
Re: Social Media Analytic tool recommendations?
1 Jul 2009 | 11:41 amHow do people who use these tools report insights, is this still in the realm of Web analytics? Seems like offsite analytics, how do you integrate onsite with -
Re: Measuring brand 'buzz', conversations, blogs, Web 2.0
1 Jul 2009 | 11:40 amYeah, Google alerts is a great way to simply get an email whenever your brand or url is mentioned. Radian 6 if the more expensive route, which is a great
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Blackbeaks Blog....All things Analytics
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Cult of Analytics Book launch in Helsinki
23 Jun 2009 | 1:13 amJust in case you’re in town you might be interested in checking out my Book launch in Helsinki. All the details are here. There will be drinks afterwards at Teatteri for those interested in beverages in the afternoon sunshine. -
Cult of analytics Master class
15 Jun 2009 | 3:09 amThis week I am holding the first Cult of Analytics MasterClass in Copenhagen. See below for details. If you’re in Copenhagen on the 17th we’d love to see you there. Copenhagen 17th June Cult of Analytics enables professionals to build an web analytics driven culture into their business or organization. Marketers will learn how to turn tried and tested tactics into an actionable plan to change their culture to one that uses web analytics on a day to day basis. With examples from dozens of companies ranging from small businesses, to consumer sites like Amazon, to some of the… -
Marketing with banners is still in the 90s
2 Jun 2009 | 1:07 amI personally believe we are still marketing like we were 10-15 years ago with banners and other forms of attention driving media. There is no difference now apart from better measurement and maybe better creative to what we did with banners in the latter part of the 1990’s. The premise is the same. Find targeted media sites, add your banners and hope that you get click through to good landing pages. Simplistically speaking that’s all we do. Marketers push and try to intrude into your day in the hope they will click through and you get interested. I think banners, TV, Videos, image… -
What I learned at eMetrics London (May 09)
29 May 2009 | 6:01 amI recently sat on a panel at the London eMetrics summit. Two panels actually, one on the first day and one on the second.The first panel was a good session where we discussed various topics around web analytics. Issues that people were having discussed openly between myself, Oliver Schiffers and Aurelie Pols. Jim Sterne had asked us to sit on a panel at the end of the last day to tell everyone what we learned. In preparation for this I made some notes, hence this blog post. Peers I learned quite a bit. First from my peers, other consultants in the field that we’re presenting educational… -
What I did before Cult of Analytics? Learned how to fail right
13 May 2009 | 1:23 amA friend of mine has asked me to be her mentor. I wondered why at first but I figure if one person wants to know how I got to know enough to fill about 3 hundred pages of a book then others also might. The mentoring I’m doing is basically giving advice on how I learned what I know now. The first thing I told her to do was read Brain Audit by Sean D’Souza so she got a copy and after reading it described it as “Frigging good”. I had the same reaction back in 2003 when I read it. What follows is the email I wrote her today about how I got started back then. Oki, getting…
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FutureNow's GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog
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They Did It, Did You?
2 Jul 2009 | 8:03 amToo many marketers think that great marketing comes from that “fabulous” idea or from the next shiny new object that captures people’s attention. The truth is, occasionally it does happen. However, just as Thomas Edison tried 10,000 times to make his “fabulous” idea work before it finally did, great marketing takes persistent, continuous execution and experimentation. On June 18th, I posted a conversion rate exercise on this blog. Two simple exercises to help others understand why they should do business with you. Several people emailed me examples of what they… -
Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: May 2009
2 Jul 2009 | 7:44 amHere are the top 10 converting websites for May 2009*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by user to final conversion. Conversion-rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates: i.e., No. of unique customers/No. of unique visitors. 1. ProFlowers 38.6 2. Office Depot 28.0 3. Online Retail Total 25.6 4. Vitacost.com 25.0 5. Quixtar 23.4 6. ;Blair 23.4 7. Roamans22.6 8. 1800Flowers 20.5 9. Woman Within19.6 10. Spiegel 18.20 *Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts Benchmarks according to the FireClick Index… -
Shopping Cart Abandonment Woes
1 Jul 2009 | 6:32 amLast week, Brendan tackled how to answer the 5 unanswered questions customers face in the shopping cart (other than shipping costs). According to a recent study by PayPal and comScore, 45% of US online shoppers had abandoned shopping carts multiple times in just three weeks. Why were shoppers abandoning their carts? 46% of online shoppers said high shipping charges were a “very important reason” for emptying carts. Is free shipping a must in this economy? Have you tested personalized shipping offers based on location? Other reasons for abandonment included: Wanted to comparison shop: 37%… -
Billy Mays: If All You Remember is the Voice, You’re Missing Out.
30 Jun 2009 | 5:20 amHE HAD A VOICE NO LIBRARIAN COULD LOVE – CAUSE HE ALWAYS TALKED LIKE THIS. But look past the booming voice and easily parodied stage persona of the late Billy Mays and you’ll find an extraordinarily gifted pitch-man, worthy of his own TV show. A pitch-man whose fame and success made him the target of more pitches than he ever gave. Pitches made by desperate inventors looking for him to save them after they’d already mortgaged the house, spent the kids’ college fund, and invested all their life savings trying to bring some gadget to market. People who showed up… -
For Every Optimization, There’s a Pyramid, So Get Started
29 Jun 2009 | 6:18 amWe at FutureNow sometimes wonder why more companies aren’t busy optimizing their websites and online marketing, or why those who are “on board” with the concept don’t always commit the right amount of resources towards the effort. I’m not a mind-reader, but I think it’s due in part to an all-or-nothing mentality where nothing short of a full optimization ‘project’ is worth putting effort into. Most companies are more interested in redesigning their websites all at once instead of incrementally, even though incremental optimization is far less…
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Webtrends
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Now available: Webtrends Marketing Warehouse On Premise
30 Jun 2009 | 5:00 amThere are so many reasons to celebrate Webtrends Marketing Warehouse availability On Premise. We’ve had a lot of success with our On Demand version over the last couple of years and wanted to better serve some unmet market needs with an On Premise version. Here are just a few of the market needs that this product addresses. You choose: data mart or data warehouse – Our Marketing Warehouse product can be used in several ways to meet your organization’s needs. You can use Marketing Warehouse as a data mart of online data to feed your enterprise data warehouse to… -
Are Your Analytics Out of Shape?
25 Jun 2009 | 9:00 amBrian Agranoff, founder and principal analyst for ACR Analytics joins us this week as a guest blogger. ACR is one of Webtrends solutions partners and prides itself in doing the analytics “heavy lifting,” so marketers who don’t possess web analytics experience can focus on strategy, messaging and customer experience and other areas. I recently embarked on a personal journey to shed some of the extra pounds that I’ve picked up over the past 20 years. After successfully losing 35 pounds in 90 days, I’ve chosen to share my experience because so many people have asked for… -
Our Thoughts on Web 2.0 Cookie Transparency and Control
24 Jun 2009 | 4:08 pmWebtrends applauds President Barack Obama’s Administration and its use of Web 2.0 technology to promote the democratic ideals of this nation. More can be done, however, to help citizens better understand the technology that drives Web 2.0 and the privacy controls that can and should be used to protect or limit use of personal information by that technology. In particular, there is much misunderstood about Web analytics tools such as cookies. Because cookies work behind the scenes, many of the benefits enabled by cookies including enhancing and improving Internet experiences are… -
Radian6 integrates Webtrends and Salesforce data
24 Jun 2009 | 2:54 pmAs I type this, I am getting ready to attend Radian6’s Rock Stars of Social CRM event. I’m excited for this event because they are announcing an integration with Webtrends and Salesforce. This is a big moment because it is the first vendor driven integration of social media monitoring, analytics, and a CRM, which are the core apps that drive the value chain of modern Enterprises. Yes I know this first paragraph is loaded with buzz words, so let’s take a closer look at what has me giddy like a school boy. First let’s talk about Salesforce because it’s pretty… -
2009 WAA Standards Part Two: Ask Your Vendor Responses
23 Jun 2009 | 9:00 amYesterday’s post talked about the updated WAA Term and Definitions (3 more than 2007 – total of 29) for 2009. New this year is an “Ask Your Vendor” area which is highlighted below. A PDF verison of the complete compliance and questions is available for download. Ask Your Vendor responses: Are Flash and other Rich Internet Application advances considered to be page views by default? Flash and other Rich Internet Application advances are NOT considered page views by default, however, users can customize these events to all count page views, if they so choose. Flash and…
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Ambient and Transparent
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Web 2.0 Button Design
9 Jun 2009 | 11:26 amWeb 2.0, THE popular style and standard for contemporary web design, utilizes the use of clean, bright colors, and gradients. A key visual indicator of Web 2.0 design is the use of large, 3D buttons that grab the user’s attention. Buttons can be used to promote a sale, contact, and/or have a slogan such as “Lose Weight!”, while at the same time, tempt the user into clicking and going where you want them to go. You know you couldn’t resist pressing the red button when your mom told you not to! The impact of having a button is far greater than just having a link on your… -
Urchin 6.6 Released
8 Jun 2009 | 3:21 pmUrchin 6.6 has just been rolled out and you will want to get your hands on it right away! Although this is a point release (from 6.5 to 6.6), the Urchin 6.6 feature list is quite impressive. The folks at Google must have been burning the midnight oil to get these many features packed up in this one release. Here are the highlights: Deep, deep, deep integration with Google AdWords Data Export API External Authentication (LDAP) Auto CPC cost data import from Yahoo A number of Admin, Log Processing, Security and Utilities bug fixes and enhancements If the above has piqued your interest, then… -
More Deep Dive Analysis in Google Analytics – Secondary Dimensions and Pivoting
11 May 2009 | 5:30 pmGoogle just announced four new features in Google Analytics. These features are in beta and are being rolled out to all GA accounts so hopefully you’ll have access to them very soon. Two of these features are intended for deep-dive analysis and offer an incredible amount of insight right at your fingertips! If you are interested in saving time and doing better analysis, keep reading. The two new features are: Secondary dimensions Pivoting To find out more, keep reading or watch our video: Secondary Dimensions Personally I’ve found this new feature to be extremely helpful. It has… -
Design Usability Tips – Taking Into Account the Users Logical Flow
5 May 2009 | 11:38 amA very basic but extremely vital part to web design is understanding your users’ logical thought process and flow. You want to take this into account as early as possible in your design phase so that you create a very familiar flow to the user. Putting a link or information in the next logically place makes the process intuitive and easier for them to convert. The more familiar it is, the less they have to figure out or search where to go, which betters their chances of them getting from their starting point to your ending point, whether that’s submitting your form or buying… -
Problems with the Bounce Rate in the Top Content Report
14 Apr 2009 | 11:06 amA lot of time, the issue is not reporting nor analysis but it is making sure: Data is accurate (or as accurate as it can get ) What we think we are analyzing is truly what we are analyzing If you think one of your most important pages has a 100% bounce rate, you might panic (and rightfully so) and gather all your resident experts to figure out what is going on. Imagine, after hours or days of analysis and review you find out that all of your bounces come from a statistically insignificant number (in our example, 3) of pageviews! Most of us would not bother to investigate further and try not…
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Web Analytics Guy's Blog
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Video Tracking
9 Jun 2009 | 6:18 amVideo is starting to quickly become one of the most popular ways that sites are communicating and/or sharing information with its users. Sites like Hulu, Sling, and YouTube are growing in popularity. Portal sites, like AOL have a section that is completely dedicated to video. Media sites are putting more video on the sites than ever before, from video clips to full episodes. With this increased interest in video, it is important for accurate video tracking and to track the data that will help you understand how users are viewing the video. In this post, I am going to cover different tracking… -
Determining Success for a Media Site
11 May 2009 | 6:17 pmIn the years that I have spent in web analytics, one of the main questions that I have been asked is how do I determine success for the sites that I have worked on. That is a very good question and obviously determining success will very from site to site. The first few years that I spent in web analytics was spent on e-commerce sites. Determining success for an e-commerce site is fairly straight forward. For an e-commerce site you are going to look at revenue to determine success. Though you can also look at number of items purchased, Average Order Value (AOV), or Average Order per Visit,… -
Omniture Summit 2009
16 Mar 2009 | 7:04 pmNow that it has been a couple of weeks since the summit has ended, I wanted to give me thoughts and opinions about the summit this year. On the last day of the summit, during the ski party someone asked me how many summits that I had been to. When I told him that this is my third summit, he asked why I keep coming back to the summit. What do I get out of the summit any more? Those are very good questions. My reasons for going to the summit this year have obviously changed from the first summit that I went to three years ago. Here are some of the reasons why I went to the summit this year: o… -
Implementing Omniture Part II
11 Feb 2009 | 10:00 pmWhen I wrote my first post on Implementing Omniture, I wanted to give a general overview of some of the techniques that I use to implement Omniture to help inform business decisions. I have had a better than expected response to the post. I want to follow up with more techniques, but I am going to cover a few more items. I am going to go over the differences between an eVar, a prop, and an event and how I choose which one I use. I am also going to cover the Omniture plug-ins that I use and why I use them. I was looking at some of my RSS reader and I saw a post by Adam Greco of Omniture that… -
Social Media
6 Feb 2009 | 6:04 amThere has been a lot of talk about social media, companies talking about using Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. I am going to talk about how my current company uses social media, though I am going to take some liberties with what most people might think of as social media, but I am also going to give some examples of tradition social media. Another way of looking at Social Media according to Wikipedia is User Generated Content (UGC). One of the biggest examples of user generated content for us is our Rate My Space section on our site. Within this section of the site, users can upload…
