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! 

New York City is always amazing, even if it’s full of Yankees fans (go Red Sox!). Pitching always beats hitting, btw. And I’m looking forward to my Green Monster seats versus the Tigers the Monday after Emetrics.

NYC Gotham is just so full of diversity, life, and energy, I just can’t help staying out really late and soaking it all in. Where else can you see a public installation of an Alexander Calder mobile and then walk down the street to check out a Hans Hoffman mural? Did your know the New York Public Library has the original manuscript for T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland? And they let your look at it (if you are persistent and just keep asking for years). The original title, before Ezra Poundcrafted it, was “We do the police in different voices.” Ahhh, that helps understanding, ay?

So I was in and out of the world’s Great Metropolis for a whirlwind evening and day, thanks to an invitation to speak with the smart folks at ClickZ and Incisive Media.

Rebecca Lieb, EIC at ClickZ, impaneled me with the master of monetization, Jason Burby, and the savvy applier of insights, Neil Mason, to present on “Non-Transactional Analytics.” Y’know the kind when you don’t really sell stuff, and instead produce content and/or sites that are informational and navigational.

Neil riffed on context and the strategic approach to non-transactional analytics. Jason riffed on what I’ll call “monetization modeling.” Both had some brilliant thoughts and imparted actionable knowledge to an audience hungry for knowledge about metrics. I’m certainly looking forward to Jason’s forthcoming book, and reading Neil’s next column.

Me? We’ll I was nicely sandwiched in the middle, and presented a tactical, seven-phase methodology for “non-transactional analytics.” The process has measurement endemic throughout and is iterative and recursive (self-referential). Here it is:

• Phase 1: Identify
• Phase 2: Discover
• Phase 3: Understand
• Phase 4: Segment
• Phase 5: Create/Optimize
• Phase 6: Test
• Phase 7: Validate

In Phase 1, the analyst identifies:

• Internet ecosystem
• Tools
• Processes impacted
• Goals:
  • As I like to say “a metric/KPI has meaning in position and relation to a goal (the signified).”
• Revenue and contribution
• Impact on value chain

In Phase 2: Discover, the analyst discovers:

• Metrics
• KPI’s
• Clickstream data
• Event pathing
• Data model
• Data structures
• What the street has to say about your site(s)!

In Phase 3: Understand, the analyst reconciles:

• Origin of the traffic
• Sequences of events that generate value
• On-site success events
• Visitor population and how it responds to:
  • Recency – how recent is the content for the site’s audience?
  • Frequency – how frequent are visitors visiting?
  • Monetary– what’s the monetization impact? Jason Burby will know.
  • Engagement – I refer to my esteemed friend, Eric Peterson.
  • Attention – Stephane Hamel has some excellent thoughts on Davenport’s Attention economy.
  • Currency – How current is the content to your audience?
  • Relevancy – How relevant is the content to your audience?

In Phase 4: Segment, the analyst segments by:

• Behavior
• Demographics
• Referrers
• Time-based metrics
• Event orientation
• Psychographics
• Topographics

In Phase 5: Create/Optimize, the analyst should work with his geeks and other gurus to create and optimize:

• New dimensions
• Groupings
• Filters
• Content types
• Audience development strategies
• Metadata
• Self-describing naming conventions

In Phase 6: Test, you guessed it, the analyst tests using:

• The usual suspects:
  • Multivariate testing
  • AB
  • Split
• The unusual suspects
  • Binomial Distributions
  • Regression Analysis/ANOVA
  • Predictive Analytics(Bayesian, Neural Networks, ARIMA)

In Phase 7: Validate, the analyst watches the numbers:

• Key metrics from your data collection methods
• Surveying (in context)
• Audience panel data (in context)
• Backtesting:
  • Comparative reporting
  • AB reporting
• Counting the money

Then, you just keep on rinsing, lathering, and repeating across your business processes:

• Identifying goals
• Discovering new data/ideas
• Understanding online behavior
• Segmenting the data
• Creating new content and/or optimizing the delivery of existing content
• Testing hypotheses
• Validating your strategies to your goals

So there it is a simple model for “doing web analytics” for non-transactional sites.

Thanks for visiting! Please come again!

One of the web analytics bloggers in my blogroll is Robbin Steif.  She runs LunaMetrics, leads the Marketing Committee for the Web Analytics Association, and was even recently elected to the Board of Directors for the Web Analytics Association.  Her history includes an impressive set of initialisms: IBM, HBS, MBA, CFO, CEO. 

A few weeks ago she invited me to guest blog on how to measure Rich Internet Applications and enable event tracking. The post evolved into a three-part series:

• Rich Internet Apps for Beginners, Part I of III: What is it?
• Rich Internet Apps for Beginners, Part II of III: Google Analytics
• Rich Internet Apps for Beginners, Part III of III: Unica

Check Robbin out at Emetrics in San Francisco.  She’s going to tell you how to put your best foot forward and understand the wild, wide world of web analytics.  And, if you’re lucky enough to attend Emetrics, also come see me and Ian Houston on Wednesday, May 9th.  We’re going speak about Web 2.0 analytics and present a conceptual framework for measuring all the new and cool stuff going on today.