Back from another excellent eMetrics.  I’m a very big fan of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit…  Props go to Jim Sterne for growing this event from a little seed into an incredible, blogworthy blossom.  How involved is Jim in eMetrics?  I’d say he’s completely immersed in every little piece - he even came up to me at the SF WAW (way to go June D!) to find out about the renegade AV work I did in one of the sessions, and to get my take on how it could have been avoided.  He’s that intimately connected to what’s going on.  Macro and micro, micro and macro.  And when you have one of the best Internet Marketers in the world, keeping a tight rein on the Clydesdale of conferences, you know you’re in for one heck of fun ride. 

And so it was for about 500+ of the top web analytics in the beautiful Palace hotel.  Props to consummate conference organizers Matt Finlay and his crew at Rising Media for keeping the road smooth as we all trotted on it as well.  Fanny, you are one helpful polyglot of a marketing manager!  I never knew German keyboards were so wild… Thanks.

The eMetrics sessions were informative and actionable.  The lobby bar and after-hours parties fun and enlightening.  You really can’t ask for more out of a conference.  As I flew home thinking back on it all, there was a lot to blog about, including:

• It’s all about attitude, dude – as in attitudinal data.  Like my father says “it’s all about your attitude.”  And so it is on the Internet in 2008.  From ForeSeeResults, to iPerceptions, to OpinionLab, to CRMMetrix, the often missing link in customer analytics is attitudinal data.  I’m talking here about Voice of Customer (VOC) technology that allows you to ask a question set to site visitors and then apply some sort of algorithm or model to express the meaningfulness of the data in quantifiable terms.  From the American Customer Satisfaction Index to 4Q.  VOC technology enables you to participate in a continuous, automated dialog with your customers in order to identify problem points on your web site and enable you to measure purpose and success of your most valuable segments.  Expect to see some of the big players gobble up these smaller companies.  Omniture, Unica, WebTrends, and CoreMetrics should be thinking about acquisition in this space to round out their offerings.
• Testing, 123… as in multivariate, MVT.  The rage is site optimization technologies beyond the simple A/B, champion challenger, test.  In this category you find folks like SiteSpect (the only non-intrusive multivariate testing solution!).  I’m a big fan of these guys (and was in 2006 long before they ever sponsored a WAW, thanks to a nice demo from Larry at my old job).  Eric Hansen and his crew have specialized software that you install in your data center.  No futzing with damned tags.  Swap out your variations, create different recipes, determine what’s statistically significant in giving you a lift to your macro or micro conversion goal, and you’re off to the races.  The good folks at Google are doing it and doing it well with Google Site Optimizer (thanks for the t-shirts!).  Interwoven is baking in Optimost to the CMS, and Omniture has their Test and Target integrated with the Business Optimization Suite.  Accenture has Memetrics.  Kefta too. And what ever happened to Verster?

In a nutshell, these technologies enable you to test variations of content themes, colors, creative, calls to action, points of resolution, buttons, navigational elements, –whatever you want to call the stuff on the screen—to determine what combination performs best against your goals.  But of course, this is all just software, so don’t get too excited.  The tests are about as good as the people creating them…  And complex tests that take a long time to execute may not finish.  Imagine 1-800-Flowers starting a test in January and not finishing until March, missing Valentine’s Day.  Or Intuit running a test beyond April 15th for a tax product.  Go humbly and carefully into this space, my friends, or you may end up optimizing for everyone and appealing to none.

• Tying it all back to the dollar for profit-generating sites and to the mission of non-profit generating sites…  It seems like a “no, duh” moment but metrics for the sake of metrics can be a big waste of time.  If you can’t tie metrics or visitor actions back to value on a revenue-producing site or to the betterment of a non-profit site’s core mission, then what’s really the point of the measurement…  That’s why I’m a big fan of the stuff ZaaZ does.  They totally get the fact of how actionable metrics turn the wheel of Internet commerce and ad-based models, and they can model it all to prove it out the ROI.  Folks like newly elected WAA Director Alex Langshur’s company Public InSite do similar stuff for content driven sites.  That is they know how to use metrics to optimize the channel to goals, not to just puke confusing data, like most web analytics tools do.  Again, it’s all about the people you hire, not the tools you use… My good friend Avinash, right again!
• The emergence and rise of deeply psychological and neuro-behavioral methods for automating persuasion and conversion.   Anyone who knows my good friend Joseph Carrabis, over at NextStage Evolution, knows that besides being one heck of giant kite flying, music master, he’s also got the models and the patents to help target and respond to human behavior across programmable devices.  We’re already seeing some companies, like Seven Billion Joe’s, er People, taking what he’s been saying for years and going to market with it.  The idea here being that if you can identify the affective, behavior, and motivational drivers of site visitors, you can maximize cognition in elements on the site (like pictures, text, informational flow) to appeal to target segments and persuade/provoke desired behavior.  It’s like a higher rung on the optimization ladder.  It’s not test what they see, it’s figure out how they think, then make the site better because of it.  Cool stuff.  Blows my mind.
• Integrated, multichannel marketing.  Just ask my good friend Akin Arikan, author of the newly released Multichannel Marketing.  (Disclaimer: I was a technical editor on the book.  It’s easy to do when you edit brilliance).  Make sure to check it out!  Marketing in general will become more Internet-centric, but will continue to clutch the roots of broadcast and print.  You will have the database marketer and statistical modelers working with a union of web channel and offline data.  What’s preventing it now?  A unified marketing database.  You see companies like Salford Systems circulating in this space.  And take a look at Unica’s blend of Enterprise Marketing Management…  I’d stay tuned to see what Unica has up their sleeve for bringing together online and offline.  When you can segment and target across online and offline campaigns, if I were pure web channel player only, like Omniture or CoreMetrics, I’d be a bit concerned that people are waking up to open systems, not closed black boxes.  WebTrends is already moving in this direction…  But they all remain far behind Unica when it comes to multichannel marketing.

And that’s just a few of the things the phenomenal eMetrics got me thinking about…  I hope to see you in Washington DC in October! 

Next Sunday afternoon I am moderating a panel at eMetrics San Fran.  The panel is called ”Web Analytics -vs- Audience Measurement.”  Andrea Hadley at NetSetGo was the brainchild of this panel idea (and yes that is her picture on her site :).  In fact, I was a panelist on the same panel at eMetrics Toronto, filling in for my friend Marshall Sponder.  Since he’s going to be in San Fran, I yielded my seat 0n the panel and decided to stand up at the podium.   Other panelists include Jodi McDermott, Director of Product Management, at ClearSpring, and some other surprise guests (from comScore and IAB maybe)… You’ll have to show up and find out…

The panel description is as follows:

Are you confused about the number of customers visiting your website? Are the metrics reported by your web analytics tool different from the metrics reported by your online media, or by audience measurement organizations? The WAA invites eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit attendees and the local San Francisco business community of web marketers, publishers and agencies to attend this community meeting. A panel of experts will discuss the value of the metrics, methods and tools used by web analytics practitioners, online advertising media and audience measurement organizations. Find out how-to use these metrics and tools to better understand your customers, your website’s competitive standing and overall website value.

The goals for this panel include:

• Adding clarity around the tools and data associated with each set of technology and metrics - web analytics technologies and website data, ad servers and ad data, and audience measurement tools and data.
• Learning how each data source can be used to expand our understanding of customers, how effective our website is as a business channel, the website’s competitive standing and value, and so on.
• Providing insight into the role of the web analytics practitioner and how this role is growing in importance and influence over business, marketing, product, and strategic decisions.
• Discussing the role of the Web Analytics Association (WAA) and how the WAA serves the practitioner.  That the WAA is an unbiased organization that doesn’t serve advertisers, publishers, or technology vendors, rather that the WAA serves and exists for the benefit and betterment of the the practitioner and the web marketer/strategist.
• Articulating the announcement made at eMetrics Toronto on the important collaboration between the IAB and the WAA for standards review.

My goal as the moderator is not to critique, demean, or criticize audience measurement, Internet advertising technologies, or to embellish or hype up web analytics tools.  Rather I hope to clarify the differences between the technologies and speak about the value they hold together - like I did in my article for MediaPost called the Yin and Yang of Online Metrics.

So why am I telling you all of this on my blog???  Well it’s because I really want your help, whether you are going to eMetrics or not…  Since I’m the moderator, I get to ask the questions, and I don’t want to just ask “my” questions, I want to know what questions YOU would ask if you had the chance to ask.  Of course, those of you reading this and attending the panel will be given the microphone if you raise your hand.

Please help my crowdsource by telling me in comments or via email to judah (at) webanalyticsdemystified.com:

What questions would you ask to clarify the differences and value between web analytics and audience measurement tools?

Any questions you think worth asking from “why don’t the numbers match?” to complexly “what are the differences between audience measurement and web analytics systems in terms of data collection?” would be awesome and appreciated.  Thanks in advance for your help!  I’m eager to see if this social media experiment in blog-based crowdsourcing actually works!

eMetrics Toronto is about two weeks away, and Boston Web Analytics Wednesday is tomorrow night.   I’m pretty excited for both events.  

I think eMetrics is thee premier web analytics and marketing optimization conference.  I’ve been to a bunch of them, and I always walk away with new ideas with which I can hit the ground running when I get back to work.   The real world case studies, practitioner advice, vendor spiels, and the cadre of notable analytics and marketing professionals who attend and make themselves available to you, the attendee, is unmatched.  

Web analytics pals Jim Sterne (and Andrea Hadley in Toronto) in association with Rising Media ensure the content and tracks focus on the knowledge needed today to drive the real-world application and usage of analytics and marketing measurement technologies in way that enables your online competitive advantage tomorrow.  eMetrics is far beyond a beginners conference (though there’s always plenty of good stuff for beginners).  Gone are the days talking about simple definitions and whose tool can do what (though they’ll be plenty of that stuff covered in some sessions, at lunch, in the bar).   Today’s eMetrics is focused on the application of analytics in business context, especially in the context of marketing.  The conference, as I see it, is about what you should measure and how to take action from what you measure in order to improve business performance and increase top-line revenue and bottom line profits (while reducing middle-line expenses).

I’ll be there in two sessions.  The first session I’m in is on Monday afternoon and occurs in two parts.  The first part is where I’ll fill in for my buddy Marshall Sponder, Director of the WAA and Chair of the Social Media Committee, and give an update on Social Media Committee activities.  During the second part of session, I’ll participate on a panel moderated by Chris Williams, Managing Director, Media Contacts Canada, and panelists Brent Bernie, President, comScore Inc., Paula Gignac, President, IAB Canada, and Jodi McDermott, Director, Product Management Clearspring Technologies.  We’ll be talking about the importance of standards, collaboration between industry organizations, and the real-world application of all the measurement tools you can use to run an online business (and more).

In the second session, on Wednesday afternoon, I’ll be on another panel speaking about the analysis of audience behavior and engagement levels on media and content sites.  Sitting alongside me will be moderator Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image, Sibel Satiroglu, Interactive Marketing, Hewlett Packard, and Mike Sukmanowsky, Web Analytics Specialist, Rogers Media. 

Should be some good conversation.

For those people trying to gain insights from the data, to those actively working on taking action from the the data, and for those who are trying to manage it all, I highly recommend attending one of 2008’s eMetrics Summits.  If you’re in Canada or nearby or really anywhere on Earth, now’s the time to sign up for Toronto.   

And for those in the Boston area tomorrow night (3/19), please join me at the monthly Web Analytics Wednesday I host.  This month, Jonathan Mendez, Founder of RAMP Digital, will be presenting on the “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach to onsite targeting.   Omniture is sponsoring and providing free food and drinks for all attendees, so swing by and swing back a drink whilst enjoying some smart conversation.

See you at both events.

At some point in the career of a web analyst, you will be asked to investigate, assess, and possibly judge the current state of how a company “does” web analytics.  What are some of the areas you should ask about?  Here are some thoughts and a few questions to ask to help inform your analysis (and grease your mental gears):

• Business strategy.  Why does the organization do web analytics?  What’s the goal of having a web analytics team?  Who defines the strategy?  What is the strategy?
• Analytics organization and team structure.  Who is the chief owner of web analytics?  What does the analytics team look like?  How has the team structure been formalized in the organization?  Is the web analytics team effectively staffed and have enough control over resources to do the job?
• Process.  What analytics processes have been defined?  How does a site or site feature progress from not being measured to being effectively measured?
• Data collection. What methods for data collection are being used?  How much data is being collected, and for how long is it stored, and at what level (i.e. detail, aggregate)?
• Reporting.  What data is reported?  What do the reports look like?  Who creates them?  How are they distributed, and in what format?  To whom?  When?  How?
• Analysis.  What’s the difference in this company between reporting and analysis?  How is analysis communicated to stakeholders?  When?  How?
• KPI’s.  What Key Performance Indicators are you measuring?  How are they relevant to the business?  What actions have people taken from KPI analysis that improved business performance?
• Segmentation.  What audience and customer segments exist?  What audience and customer dimensions and attributes are segmented?  Why are they meaningful to the business?  What has the business learned and what action has been taken from the current segmentation analysis strategy?
• Technology.  What analytics technologies are being used?  What does the schema for web analytics look like?  What homegrown technologies are used?  What external technologies have you bought or deployed for analytics?
• Integration.  How is web analytics data integrated with other internal and external data?  Is it integrated with other systems, how? 
• Site Optimization.  Does the company test landing pages, and/or use AB or Multivariate testing software?  If so, whose software, and what business gains have been realized?
• Advertising/Advertisers. How is analytics used to inform or enable advertisers and advertising?
• Privacy.  What safeguards does the company take in protecting analytics data? 
• Qualitative Data.  Is qualitative data contextualized with web analytics data? Do you capture voice-of-customer data?  Use Net Promoter Scores?  Have a research department?  Does web analytics collaborate with research? 

Those are just a few questions to ask.  Many others can be asked.  What would you want to know, and what would you ask?  Please leave a comment.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Now for some random thoughts:

• News from Orem.  API / Fusion / Video Tracking… cool.  I’m pretty psyched that Omniture announced a web services API.  That’s fantastic, and confirms how truly important integration is now and will be in the future for analytics data (as I’ve been saying for years… Google will be next). 

Omniture has announced a new methodology, Fusion, and improved capabilities for tracking video.  All sounds very exciting.  But, like Eric, I’m wondering what revolutionary new methodology Fusion really is?  Or is just what Eric’s been saying for the last 4 yearsbranded by Omniture and delivered by the Great Belkin? 

Regarding the video capabilities, I haven’t seen a real demo yet, but I wasn’t immediately impressed with what I saw on my friend Marshall’s blog.  Instead of quartile tracking, it seems like you track the playhead (the part of the video playing) across audience aggregates in increments of one-twelfth, and you get some bubbly visualization (what would that look like with 10,000 videos on your site?), and better access to forums.

I’m hoping I haven’t seen the whole ball of wax, and I look forward to Omniture giving me the grand tour. 

But for a playhead visualization, I was much more impressed with what I saw from Visible Measures and their engagement curve.  And what the heck are those folks at Divinity Metrics up to for measuring video? 

• News from Novato.  One of my favorite gangs of web analytics folks reside in Northern California.  My colleagues at Semphonic have just released a rather impressive “Omniture Implementation Toolkit.” 

I was able to procure a copy, and I’m totally impressed.  It’s full of hard-learned and hard-earned real world practitioner knowledge.  If you are trying to implement Omniture, it is well worth the money. 

Now I’m not sure if this document competes with or acts as a companion to Fusion.  All I can say is that I know the folks at Semphonic are smart, savvy, and very experienced, and there are thousands of Omniture customers out there who could benefit from this document.

• X Change Conference.  I am totally excited for X Change brought to us this year by Semphonic and Web Analytics Demystified.  The last X Change in Napa at COPIA was one of the most intimate, educational, stimulating, and enjoyable conferences that I’ve been too (and did I mention the wine?).  It was pure “class” all the way (in both the sense of style and learning, and did I mention the wine? ;-). 

This year attendance is limited to 100 folks (99 if you count me ;).  Last year, I huddled on “Deploying Measurement Systems in Globally Distributed Enterprises.”  

If you aren’t familiar with X Change or Semphonic  check them out, and make sure to read a few of my favorite bloggers - the prolific deep thinker and expert Gary Angel, the always impressive (and fun) June D(ershewitz), and bright author and web analytics veteran, Phil Kemelor.

Web analytics tools can be outgrown, like houses, clothes, shoes, music, books, and ways of thinking about the world…  But how do you know when you’ve outgrown your web analytics tool?  In part 1, I began the list of five symptoms of an outgrown web analytics solution, which was spawned out a preso I recently gave.  The five symptoms include:

• Inadequate segmentation (covered in Part 1)
• Poor visualization (covered in Part 1)
• No custom reporting (covered in Part 1)
• Limited Integration 
• Cost 

So without further adieu, here’s the rest of the list and some thoughts regarding these symptoms (click here for Part 1):

• Limited Integration.  Soon after deploying a web analytics solution, you will become intimately familiar with clickstream data and simple counts of things (like page views) and measurements (like time).  You will hopefully have deployed Key Performance Indicators for understanding how effective your web site is at converting visits and meeting defined business goals.  Depending on the web analytics tool you use you may even have insight into the behavior and KPI’s of visitors from online channels like newsletters, search, and rss because you have applied “tracking codes.”

Soon will come a time when you may ask yourself how do I integrate data from other data sources?  You may want to bring data from an email service provider, CRM system, and registration databases, so that you can see delivery rates next to conversion rates from newsletters, or so that you may pass behavioral information about a visitor who registered on your web site.

You may want to move data out of your web analytics system.  Perhaps you want to feed your data warehouse?  Or you may want to feed web analytics data into a targeting system.   Simple XML-based feeds from a hosted solution may not suffice.  You will need access to your data in a open database. You may even want to stop non-human readable text and character strings from appearing in your reports. To do so you may need to lookup data using various methods in order to make reporting comprehensible.  All of these goals require some level of integration.

If your current web analytics tool can’t:

• Provide insight into all online channels
• Enable you to bring data from other systems into your web analytics platform
• Pass Web Analytics data to other systems.
• Manipulate data by looking up values, resolving urls, and decoding parameters

And do all of this at a reasonable cost in a maintainable way using in-house resources, then you may have outgrown your web analytics solution.

• Cost.  Web analytics done right isn’t cheap.  It costs money to maintain and extend whether you run an in-house solution or external solution.

When running an in-house web analytics costs are spread out across hardware and software and resources:

• Software license.
• Recurring maintenance costs.
• Servers (one or more).  Perhaps you virtualize (it cost money for the virtualization software).
• Database license(s).
• Storage.
• IT resources - people like project managers, application engineers, and dba’s.

As you expand your web analytics operation, all of these resources and technologies will need to scale.  Time will need to be devoted to maintaining it all, and time costs salary dollars. 

Your company will, hopefully, grow.  Then you will have more sites.  These will need to be tracked.  New reports will need to be created, tested, and rolled out into production.  New data and systems integration requirements will spring up.  All this has cost.

On the other hand, if you are using a hosted solution, you will need to extend the page tag and tool configuration when you want use more features or integrate systems and data.  That means spending money to use vendor professional services or consultants, unless you want to dedicate internal resources in IT who may already be overburdened.

At some point you say enough is enough. The COST is too much!  You then decide to invest in well-negotiated vendor solution that provides a lower TCO over some horizon.  When you start to run up against the barrier of cost, you may have outgrown your web analytics solution.

So that’s the list.  I can think of many more reasons why companies outgrow their web analytics tools…  What have I omitted?  What do you think?

Web analytics tools can be outgrown by companies, just like pants can be outgrown by people.  Over time, an analytics tool may no longer fit organizational needs or be well suited to deliver on complex organizational requirements for site optimization and multichannel integration (among other things). 

This topic led me Silicon Valley this week thanks to an invitation from Unica I headed over to Webex headquarters to record a preso in their new LiveStream studios.  A few other folks also participated in the production.  In attendance was Fireclick founder and all around cool guy, Steve O’Brien (also VP Internet Marketing at Unica), my pal and fellow blogger, Avinash Kaushik (of ZQ Insights and MarketMotive), the genial Elana Anderson (founder of NxtERA marketing and former VP Marketing Research at Forrester), the excellent bloke and all around nice guy from across the pond, Dr Alan Hall (Director of Analytics at SCL Analytics), forthcoming author and savvy multichannel marketer, Akin Arikan (Analytics Evangelist at Unica), and the jet-setting smarty Karen Hudgins (marketer at Unica).   We all had a blast getting down to business at Webex studios.  And eating at places like Burk’s and Parcel 104 - both excellent restaurants.

The title of my preso was “Symptoms you’ve Outgrown your Web Analytics Tool,” such as:

• Inadequate segmentation
• Poor visualization
• No custom reporting
• Limited Integration (covered in Part 2)
• Cost (covered in Part 2)

While I did manuscript the speech (hey I was being recorded!), it’s way too long to post, so I figured you all might enjoy me paraphrasing my own content.  So as I sit here on a Jetblue redeye, here it goes:

• Inadequate Segmentation.  Segmentation in web analytics describes the activity of categorizing and dividing your online audience and customers by their various attributes.  For example, you might choose to segment your audience based on their demographic location information to determine if a visitors from a certain geography have a higher conversion rate or behave differently on your site than visitors from another geography.  Or you may choose to use your web analytics tool to define a segment that you want to track such as visitors who clicked on a paid search term and did not convert, but came back to the site within one week.  Sounds easy, right? 

But not all web analytics tools can segment data.  The proprietary tool you run in-house may not be able to segment data.  Your expensive vendor solution may not be able to segment data easily.  Many tools only provide simple reports.  Yet basic reporting is insufficient for web analytics.  In order to understand new data relationships and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns to your massive online audience, you need to a web analytics tool that can segment data.

The idea being to do what I describe in this post on web analytics segmentation:

• Define a segment
• Identify expected segment behavior. 
• Measure current segment behavior. 
• Create “optimization hypotheses.” 
• Optimize content, offerings, user experience, and other site elements. 

How does your web analytics tool fit into the process of segementation that I described?  Does it?  Can your tool assist you in this process?  If not, you may have a nice IT tool that reports web metrics, not a marketing tool that enables you to optimize your site and landing pages to offer the best possible messages to known online segments.

• Poor Visualization.  Pictures are worth a thousand words.  Your stakeholders are already overwhelmed with data before ever presenting reports with a whole bunch of numbers.  Not everyone is quantitative.  Some stakeholders just want to be able to quickly digest data, and they prefer an aesthetically pleasing visualization instead of a spreadsheet. 

Data visualization helps stakeholders interpret important data at a glance.  Visualization helps reporting comprehension.  Good visualizations are important when you want to:

• Highlight key trends in the data
• Compare counts of things
• Identify multidimensional relationships using cube visualizations

If your tool can’t visualize your web analytics data, and you need that visualized data to assist comprehension, act as sales tool in a presentation, or as marketing collateral in a report, you have outgrown your web analytics tool.

• No Custom Reporting.  An acute inability to deliver customized reporting that meets the needs a diverse group of stakeholders is one of the signs you’ve outgrown your current web analytics tool.  The problem manifests itself in sheer frustration because people can’t get the data they need. Over time this will cause people to lose faith in web analytics because the data isn’t relevant to their jobs.  Some of the symptoms include:
  • Problems creating KPI’s.  To manage online performance, you need to be able to define Key Performance Indicators.  For example, you may want to define a view:visit ratio, that is the number of page views generated per visit.  You need to define this equation in your web analytics tool.  If you can’t define such simple KPI’s, you are limiting your success at web analytics.
  • You may not have reporting that identifies conversion rates and allows you to define custom metrics for channels like RSS, Newsletters, and Internal and External Search.  A powerful web analytics tool will be able to build custom reporting for conversion rates and other KPI’s by online channel.
  • You may have a limited ability to build reports with filtered data, such as viewing reporting of top pages on a particular day or combinations of days, or filtering data by referrer, geography, or time.
  • No ability to add core web analytics dimensions to your reports, such as creating and saving a report that shows all referrers, their keywords, conversion and bounce rates for each city in the United States.
  • Quite simply, you may only have one set of reports and you can’t build new ones at all.

In the real world practice of web analytics, you need a web analytics tool that has the ability to build as many custom reports as you want when doing analysis, to filter, add metrics, to use dimensions, do AB tests, and save all that stuff until your heart is content so you can meet business goals.  You can’t be restrained by the inability of your current tool to create custom reports. If you are you may have outgrown your web analytics tool.

I’ll post part 2 this weekend as I recover from the jet lag…     Part 2 is up, click here to view it! 

Forrester’s Megan Burns is seeking ALL web analytics consultants to complete this 10-minute survey:

http://globaltestmarket.com/survey/s.phtml?sn=86482&lang=E&secid=0fd357

Megan will be publishing a list of every web analytics consulting firm later this year.

In addition, if you would like to meet Megan in person, listen to her speak, ask her questions, and receive a FREE copy of Forrester’s Web Analytics Vendor Evaluation (the $995 Wave), you should attend the Boston Web Analytics Wednesday I host every month.  Sign up to attend the event in Cambridge MA on 10/24:

http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/wednesday/?event_id=2102

Last week I attended the 1st Annual SEMPhonic XChange and led a collaborative discussion on “deploying measurement systems in distributed companies.” In case you hadn’t heard about SEMPhonic, the company is a boutique consulting firm in Novato, CA (near one of my favorite towns on Earth: San Francisco).  They do some very unique work with web analytics (Functionalism) and other facets of new media technology.  A fine gentleman named Gary Angel leads the group. He’s recently hired smart folks, like long-time web analytics expert, June Dershewitz, and notable blogger and author of the Web Analytics Report, Phil Kemelor.

A few months ago the idea came up for me to lead a “huddle” at their Xchange conference.  I was intrigued with this huddle idea.  It was different. New.  I’d facilitate a discussion on a topic of my choice in a small, Socratic, group setting.  No PPT!

Fast forward to last week, and I found myself sitting in Napa, CA at COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts. COPIA was a brilliant place for an industry colloquy.  Being a guy who likes culture (and conferences), this venue offered the best of both worlds.  Instead of a hotel, I found myself surrounded by gardens, vineyards, art, food, wine, web analytics, and the brightest in the industry.  Cool!

Thinking back on the event, SEMPhonic Xchange, in my opinion, is a “must-attend conference.”  Not only is the “huddle” format unique and fun in which to participate, it’s also a format that promotes deep discussion that leads to truly actionable insights. It’s a conference based on dialog and collaborative discussions between participants.  The huddle format provides 10 hours of free collaborative consulting (5 huddles) with employed people you can’t hire (and some consultants you can)!  Compare a daily consulting rate to the conference cost, and it’s a no brainer.

My discussion on best practices for the successful deployment of measurement systems lasted a little over two hours.  My group collaborated nicely (so I thought).  It included very intelligent folks like Jared from Intuit, Scott and Christel from Xilinx, Sami and Fred from Adobe, Renata and Matthew from American Express, Aaron from Webtrends, Rupa from Cisco, Amy from JPMorganChase, Jeff from New England Journal of Medicine, and Kevin from Charles Schwab.  Thanks to anyone reading this blog who attended.  Your valuable insights and knowledge sharing contributed to the success of the huddle.

At the ends of the huddle I went over a tips for a successful deployment.  Here are a few:

• Identify business goals, match those goals to business strategy, and align metrics and KPI’s to support those goals.  I always say “metrics and kpi’s have significance in position and relation to a goal.”  You can’t measure against performance unless you’ve identified your business goals.  Goals are supported by strategy.  You create KPI’s for measuring against goals and for guiding work toward objectives.  Every business unit could have different goals.  Management must align and support the standardized goals that you bake into your KPI’s (and any specific derivatives you create to support the goals of differentiated business units).
• Verify the technology implementation and the metrics collected.  A web analytics or other measurement system must be verified to ensure conformance with “standard” best practices based on the company’s goals.  You need to make sure the numbers can be trusted.  That means, validating data and reconciling differences with historic reporting systems or whatever the business demands, understands (and possibly pays for in real dollars, time, or resources allocated), such as ABCe, WAA, IAB, MRC, XYZ, 123, FBCINSA whatever it takes…
• Provide education and training.  While some analysts want to keep all the data within their analytics group, I don’t think that practice scales across a large enterprise unless you are lucky enough to have a large analytics team.   I know I can’t individually and alone satisfy the metrics needs for thousands of stakeholders or hundreds of brands.  Successful companies deploying on a large scale adopt a “train the trainer” approach.  The trainers guide their business units, become local experts, and help foment a data-driven culture.   Let the data be free and the people educated, I say. 
• Consider the corporate culture.  A metrics tool changes organizational culture (for the better or worse).  Suddenly, everyone is being measured and perhaps evaluated on goals implicit in the measurements.  Some will greet the tool with open arms while others will see it as a threat.  Solid management needs to foster buy-in and support for the tool.  That way, organizational resistance is overcome and clarity of mission is realized.
• Help business units ”use the metrics” to improve performance.  My friend Eric Peterson likes to say “web analytics is hard.”  Yes it is!  That means the expert needs to work with global business teams to mentor and teach how to separate signal from noise.   As the tool is used, business units will identify “pain points” that will need to be addressed.  The analytics team should work with business units heal the pain and improve performance.
• Plan to ”get granular” and the “get integrated” with the measurement system.   Additional requirements will come out of the woodwork due to organizational learning after you golive (even if you think you’ve elicited all reqs prior to deploying your tool and building reports).  New requirements are an early sign of success (people are “getting it” after all).   As the business learns, it will become necessary to extend the system.  Consider brainstorming about the possible ways in which the system should be extended prior to rollout, and perhaps create a basic plan for extending the system. When the system is launched, modify that system enhancement plan and execute on it to support business goals.  Employ a project manager to plan and help execute!
• Manage and guide stakeholder expectations to minimize risk.  Be realistic when for guiding and setting expectations so that you can minimize risk (to your overall mission, your job, the company ;).  Risk comes from incorrect metrics, organizatonal issues with adoption, changes in business goals, shifting managerial priorities, technology problems, and issues resulting from resource allocation.  Make sure you manage around these issues or find ways to directly deal with them. 
• Generously explain why the measurement system is being deployed and more.  You must create a well-thought out communication plan for promoting adoption and use of a metrics tool.  The communication plan should focus on answering:
  • Why the tool is being deployed.
  • What people are supposed to do with the tool.
  • How people should use the tool.
  • What key metric/KPI’s people and business units should be looking at to manage their performance.
  • How to go from “insight to action” based on analysis of the metrics.
• Share best practices and lessons learned across the enterprise.  As new insights are realized and the company starts taking action from the metrics, you should provide a way for the enterprise to communicate the “highest and best use” of the tool.  By promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing, the company is more likely to succeed quickly with the measurement tool and realize a demonstrable ROI from it.
• Realize that “premature optimization is the root of all bugs.”  When deploying a measurement system, you need to establish a baseline system before extending the system to get more “granular.”  An implementation must be granular before integrating data from other systems.  While these concepts will overlap in deployment and may occur in close proximity or in a waterfall (i.e granularity may be enabled via integration) you need to ensure you don’t put the cart before the horse.  Make sure you correctly measuring and understanding the basics (like recency, frequency, clickstream, referrers, bounced visits, and depth) then moving forward with more advanced and necessary measurements and reporting (like bounce rate, conversions, view thrus, voice of the customer, and ”engagement.”)   Set clear expectations and guidelines with the consultants.  Don’t move too fast with development.  QA, then segment away, I say… ;-) 

A lot of more was discussed and shared over in Napa and throughout the SEMphonic XChange conference.  Please share your thoughts, if you feel like it!  Thanks for reading!

My friend and a person whom I admire greatly has achieved the highest echelon of Maslow:

• Self-actualization - The fulfillment of the self through our efforts in developing our potential, the essence we are born with, and the acceptance of our limitations. Our life purpose unfolded, integrated into the self and lived.

Eric made the announcement at EMetrics after presenting very compelling research proving that a process-centric approach to web analytics yields:

• Quicker and clearer return on investment
• More satisfaction
• Increased value generation
• Higher salaries

Everyone in the industry is proud of Eric, for his graciousness, gentle nature, brilliant thought, and visionary leadership in helping drive the industry forward. 

The cosmos is the limit!  Go, go, go Eric!

I am San Francisco bound for an excellent adventure. 

I’m going to California for four days of fun, sun, and trolleys to attend EMetrics.  I’m particularly excited for this gig because the lineup is just phenomenal.  And because I’m honored to speak with my friend Ian Houston.  I’m looking forward to seeing *you* on Wednesday at 11am for a discussion on Measuring Web 2.0: From Page Views to Events.

I’m also eagerly anticipating sponging up the vast knowledge I know will be presented in the following sessions (and every session):

• The Keynotes
• The Guru Sessions
• Session 1: Monetizing & Prioritizing Opportunities to Move to ACTION
• Session 4: Measuring Customer Experience Quality
• Session 5: So Now You’re a Web Analyst
• Session 7: Web Analytics Expectations and Best Practices
• Success Tactics 6: The Long Tail Effect in Full View
• Session 10: Peak Performance - Optimizing Systems, Traffic and Customer Satisfaction
• Success Tactics 7: The Holy Grail of Web Analytics: Using Customer Feedback to Increase Online Satisfaction Scores
• Session 13: Online Acquisition Optimization
• Session 15: Assembling Your Reporting Toolkit
• Success Tactics 10: How to Run a Strategic Optimization Program
• Session 16: Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing
  An Emetrics Summit Case Study
• Success Tactics 11: From Online to Cross-Channel: Marketing Challenges and Solutions
• Success Tactics 12: Strategies for the Enterprise: Maximize the Value Derived from Web Analytics
• Session 19: From Pages to Events - Measuring Web 2.0 = 8^)
• Session 22: Serious Statistics to Optimize Acquisition

If you’re going to EMetrics, you’re fortunate.  Not just because of the cerebral power you will have attained at the denouement, and all the good folks you’ll meet and connect with who dig what you dig: web metrics.  Mother Nature, you see, seems to dig her analytics too.  She’s bestowed upon us the gift of clear blue skies, sun, sea air, and little breeze all week.  For a Bostonian just dethawing from winter hibernation, it will sure be mighty fine to open my sails in the California blue, green, and gold outside San Francisco’s most historic hotel: The Palace.  It was the first hotel in the city to install “rising rooms.” We now call them elevators, with names like Otis and Schmacher.

So tomorrow I will be on the righteous Left Coast as a little flash in the history of that grand establishment, pushing the buttons in those rising rooms like thousands of souls in the distant past have before me.  Then I’ll wander (hello Dave) on my way to find and take in what apparently is ”one of the world’s most beautiful public spaces,” like the inexplicable splendor of white and gold in the Grand Platz.

See you there!