WebProNews » Web

Pinterest’s Discovery-Focused Desktop Redesign Rolls Out to Everyone

Josh Wolford — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:19:14 +0000

Back in January, Pinterest began to test a brand new design that featured bigger, more informative pins and better navigation. Today, they are rolling out the new design to all users. If you don’t see the new design when you log on to Pinterest, just wait – you’ll get an invitation soon.

The new look is all about discovery, as Pinterest wants users to spend more time browsing and pinning. To this end, Pinterest’s new look strongly affects individual pin pages. These “close-up views” now feature other information for people to use as a springboard for other, similar content.

Each individual pin page now features pins from the same board, pins from the same source, and a widget for “people who pinned this also pinned,” which Pinterest notes is exactly what it sounds like. Each of these new content boxes allow users to discover new content from similar users.

Pinterest says that they hope to bring these additions to their iOS and Android apps soon.

Pinterest has also made some updates to how you navigate around the site:

“We wanted to make things simpler and cleaner, without requiring you to learn anything new. What you’ll find are some subtle but useful changes, like bigger pins, so you see more of what you love. We also responded to some feedback from pinners who told us they hated losing their place while browsing. Now, when you scroll through pins and click on something that interests you, the back button lands you right back where you were no matter how far you’ve gone.”

Improving discovery is important for users, but it’s also important for the site, who is looking to show potential marketers that Pinterest is worth their time. Earlier this month, Pinterest debuted an analytics tool for site owners. Currently free, Pinterest Web Analytics shows site owners how many people have pinned from their site, the reach of those pins across Pinterest, and the traffic referred to their sites from Pinterest.

Internal Staff Spending For Web Analytics Is On The Rise

Andy Beal — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:26:48 +0000

My good friend, and web analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik once wrote:

Cancel the contract with your favorite expensive analytics vendor and take that $50k or $100k or $200k and: 1) Hire a smart analyst for between $50k to whatever maybe your areas great salary 2) Put the rest of the money in your pocket.

That piece of advice has always stuck with with me, and according to new data from Econsultancy and Lynchpin, it appears it’s resonating with many companies. In the Online Measurement and Strategy Report (aff) we learn that:

There has been a marked shift from spending on technology to spending on internal staff, with companies now spending more on human resources than on software and licences. The proportion of spending on internal staff has increased from 36% to 42% of total web analytics spend while spending on technology has decreased from 45% to 38%.

So, where are they getting the extra money for internal staff?

23% of companies now use Google Analytics exclusively–compared to only 14% a year ago–while 57% of respondents are using Google Analytics in conjunction with another tool.

It certainly appears as if companies are finally realizing that all those pretty charts are useless if there’s no one to interpret them!

PS. Another quick tidbit. The proportion of companies looking at reputation monitoring or social media metrics has doubled from 21% to 40% in the past year. Huzzah for reputation monitoring!

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Web Analytics Predictions for the New Year

Manoj Jasra — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:49:28 +0000

If you’re looking for Web Analytics predictions for 2008 then I recommend checking out Rich Page’s blog where he posts about his thoughts for what’s to come in 2008.

It’s a very quick read and jam packed with big-time predictions. Here are Rich’s thoughts for Web Analytics in 2008:

Jan 2008 – Core Metrics acquire Web Trends.

Mar 2008 – Amazon.com gets into web analytics!

May 2008 – Disaster for Microsoft Site Analytics.

June 2008 – WebTrends continues its spending spree!

August 2008 – Omniture offers free analytics solution.

December 2008 – Big acquisition shock – Google Buys Omniture.

Here are my thoughts:

I think WebTrends will get acquired but I am not sure if it will be Coremetrics that does it, I still think it will be Omniture who will purchase WebTrends while continuing to build its massive market share.

Microsoft Analytics could potentially be a disaster but most likely if they don’t do something drastic to catch up to Google Analytics.

Will Google Buy Omniture? This would be huge because then Google would control search, social networks, mobile and then the majority market share to measure all the various types of marketing…I am not convinced that this will happen.

Love the list Rich!: http://rich-page.com/web-analytics/nostradamus-and-web-analytics-2008-predictions/

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Web Marketing News Quickies

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:01:32 +0000

Google’s made some tweaks to AdSense recently, and to Google Analytics. Meanwhile, SEOers are developing better ways to track links.

You Can’t Advertise on This Site Anymore

Well, you can, you’ll just have to use placement targeting. Google’s AdSense feature that prompts advertisers to "Advertise on this site" is no more. Ben Ewing, of AdSense Publisher Support, says the feature didn’t do as well as expected:

"Our recent findings indicate that the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature, which allowed advertisers to sign up for AdWords campaigns on your site, hasn’t been performing as well as we had hoped. We’ve elected to gracefully retire this feature and focus our efforts on developing and supporting features that drive better monetization results for you. Call it time management, call it ROI, call it our unwavering commitment to our publishers. We want you to earn more revenue, and sometimes that means "sunsetting" certain features we created."

It also means Onsite Advertiser Sign-up pages will redirect to the main AdWords page.

Google Slides In New AdSense Feature

A few bloggers have noticed that Google is testing a new feature, dubbed by the bloggers as "sliding" ads. Alex Weidmann has screen shots of both horizontal and vertical ad listings where visitors can scroll through to see more ads:

"This is a another huge feature for Google AdSense because it will allow readers to find even more relevant information, which will ultimately make the publisher more money. I am yet to see the sliders on any ad type other than horizontal ads so far, but I can only assume Google will have an answer for the other ad types soon."

Google Quietly Updates Analytics

MarketingPilgrim’s Andy Beal snagged a shot of a new feature on Google Analytics that allows users to compare specific data points like visits, pageviews, pages per visit, average time on site, bounce rate, and percent of new visits.

It’s All About The Links

SEOers are buzzing about Dutch webmaster Joost de Valk’s new Firefox extension for SEO link analysis. The straightforwardly-named SEO Link Analysis extension pulls together link information from Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Microsoft Webmaster Central.

SES Round-up

Thomas McMahon — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:35:08 +0000

Jolina and Mike had a great time at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago. Not only is it the windy city, but a festive, cold and snowy one too by the sounds of it.

Here is a recap of the SES Chicago posts in case you missed any:

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Interview with Web Analyst Manoj Jasra

Anil Batra — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 20:32:58 +0000

Continuing my series of interviews with Web Analysts, here is an interview with Manoj Jasra.

What is your current position and the name of the company you work for?

Director of Technology, Enquiro Search Solutions

How long have you been working in web analytics field?

Since 2002

Tell me about your work and education prior to starting in Web Analytics?

I was actually a university student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia – I joined Enquiro pretty much right out of school

How did you choose a career in Web Analytics?

Enquiro had a need for a person dedicated to analytics so that we could offer our clients more value in our service offerings. Personally I don’t think I ever permanently switched to analytics, rather expanded my search marketing skill set with that knowledge.

How did you find your job at Enquiro? How long did it take?

I think it was a little bit of luck, fate, skills/education and timing. A friend of mine was actually applying to work at Enquiro and I was just coming along for the ride, however I ended up submitting my resume and beat him out for the position. At that time it was a fairly quick interview process with only 1 interview.

What are you responsibilities? Describe your typical work day.

I wear a couple of hats at Enquiro. As the Director of Technology it’s my job to establish relationships with other vendors to help find the best of breed tools to integrate into our services. I also handle many strategic tasks related to Web Analytics ranging from analysis to implementation. Originally my background was in Software development therefore I am always providing consultation on technical SEO tasks as well.

What, if any, education or work experience helped you in making this role?

I think the best way to understand this role is to get your hands dirty with data analysis and implementation manuals. I started by testing on Enquiro’s own site using Omniture’s SiteCatalyst.

What education is lacking, education or experience that would have helped?

There are many good courses and seminars offered by the Vendors and the Web Analytics Association and I am sure if took more of those they would have helped me progress quicker.

What web analytics/online-marketing books have you read and/or own?

I have Eric Peterson’s Big Book of KPIs and Web Analytics Demystified, Actionable Web Analytics (Jason Burby/Shane Atchison) and would love to read Avinash’s Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. I am currently reading Chris Anderson’s, The Long Tail.

Which book(s) helped in you in starting in your job?

Web Analytics Demystified was a good place to start.

What were the major challenges you faced or are facing in this industry?

I think one of the biggest challenges is organizing and prioritizing all the new information that is thrown at you each day – it’s difficult to keep on top of it all

How do you make sure you are learning and growing in this field?

From an SEM and not just Web Analytics perspective, I try to take 45 min to an hour a day to read blogs and news portals. I also try to attend webinars whenever I can to help me leverage new technology/tactics/strategies

Tell me about your blog.

I write Web Analytics World, http://manojjasra.blogspot.com/. 50% is dedicated to Web Analytics and 50% is dedicated to SEM/Technology/SEO/SMO. I provide insight on the latest news in the industry; I conduct interviews/podcasts and provide strategic recommendations for online marketing.

What are the skills that you think are important for a web analyst?

I think 2 of the biggest skills required to be a web analyst is to be able combine technical skills along with business/marketing skills in order to understand your customer’s goals and provide value to them. Secondly you have to be passionate about what you do, if you don’t like what you’re doing you will not give 100% effort

What is your advice to aspiring web analysts?

Theoretical skills are important but will only get you so far therefore it’s important to get “hands-on” experience right away. If you like this post, you might want to subscribe to my blog feed. Click here to subscribe to Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Online Advertising.

If you want to see what books other web analysts recommend, check out http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/04/
books-recommended-by-web-analysts.html

If you are in web analytics field and would like to interview for my blog please contact me at batraonline at gmail.com.

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Recap of Semphonic Web Analytics X Change

Manoj Jasra — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:47:22 +0000

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in Semphonic’s first annual Web Analytics X Change in Napa Valley, California.
This conference was structured a lot differently than a traditional Internet marketing conference, in that sessions (called huddles at X Change) consisted of 8-13 participants and promoted active conversation from all participants. The setup with the huddles allowed other experts in the room to offer their advice to the discussion as well as newcomers to understand strategies and processes. There was a wide range of experts from Agencies, Consultants and SEM Clients which brought many different perspectives to the table.

I actually lead a session called "Blog Promotion: Execution and Measurement" where as a group we tried to answer the following 6 questions:

What makes your blog different?

How do I promote my brand?

What can I do to grow my blog?

Should I try that next marketing trick?

How do I engage my visitors?

What metrics should I be tracking?

I really tried hard to take each point and offer a strategy which participants could take home and apply to their own blogs. Near the end of the session I thought it would be a good idea to throw one of the participants’ blogs on the screen in order to offer it some constructive criticism. In the end, the feedback I received was positive and I had a fun time doing it.

I commend Gary Angel and his team at Semphonic for designing a very unique and useful conference experience and hope that they can make it even a bigger success next year. One thing I also have to mention was the spectacular 3 course Taste of Copia Lunch the X Change conference concluded with which included an interactive cooking demo, garden talk and lunch with wine.

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Interview with Web Analyst Stephane Hamel

Anil Batra — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:19:03 +0000

Continuing my series of interviews with Web Analyst, here is an interview with Stephane Hamel.

What is your current position and the name of the company you work for?

I’m a senior ebusiness advisor for Desjardins General Insurance, which is part of the largest financial institution in the province of Quebec, Canada (desjardins.com). My role is to serve as a "liaison agent" between the business teams and IT (and vice versa). As such, I get involved in the strategy and early stages of ebusiness projects, provide ebusiness as well as IT guidelines and orientations, then supervise the development at a high level and maintain the global vision of the ebusiness ecosystem. Although unofficial, I feel I play a "change agent" and evangelist role, bringing new ideas and communicating them to all stakeholders. My passion for web analytics is a direct link with my responsibilities of analyzing, recommending, communicating & educating about the relationships between the business, the technology, and the web.

How long have you been working in web analytics field?

I really became passionate about web analytics 4 years ago and tried to convince my employer of the time, an interactive agency, that we should invest in web analytics. We became reseller of HBX and I worked with clients that had Coremetrics, Omniture, WebTrends and other solutions. Even before that, I had used WebTrends and LiveStats for several years, but more from an IT perspective.

Tell me about your work, education prior to making a switch to Web Analytics?

I started my career in IT over 20 years ago, a college degree in hand, as a programmer, Unix system administrator and Oracle DBA. In the early ’90, I was lucky enough to work on a research project where we had access to the Internet, and when the first version of Mosaic came out I delved right into it. I quickly switched to become a webmaster for a subsidiary of Microsoft in Montreal (softimage.com), and eventually became ebusiness architect and overlook a very successful B2B project and the major redesign of a dozen web sites ( brp.com).

How did you become interested in Web Analytics?

In my role as the "e" in "ebusiness", I had lots of discussions with business stakeholders. One day I met a particularly arrogant marketing manager who told me something like "You can’t understand marketing because you are an IT person". As you can imagine, that shocked me (and more!) because I knew that a good IT person HAS to understand the business of his customers/clients to serve them. I had already worked for the Montreal Stock Exchange where I learned about trading, I worked in a high-end 3D animation company where I learned about the modeling and special effects business, etc. From that day, I decided I would shift my career from a pure IT perspective to focus more on the business side. Without denying my IT background, I’m in a position where I can leverage it and be much more conscious about the ways IT can be leveraged to achieve business objectives. Since then I enrolled in an MBA program where I’ve been listed twice on the honor roll as one of the top 20 students and I have shifted my career toward a more strategic role.

How did you find your new job? How long did it take? Did you interview a lot?

About two years ago I became uncomfortable with the business culture where I worked and was planning on going freelance in web analytics. Then I got in contact with a consultant who was helping my current employer with their ebusiness strategy. Desjardins received numerous awards as a "best of class" employer (and it’s true!) and I was really impressed with their business culture, the fact they had a clear strategic vision of where they wanted to be and the money to do it! After a couple interviews they decided to create this new role of ebusiness advisor and I joined.

What are you responsibilities? Describe your typical work day.

Web analytics is a fraction of my responsibilities and we’re lucky to have a whole team dedicated to it. With regards to web analytics, my role is really one facilitator, educating and guiding; from helping define KPI to configuring the WA solution to mentoring the IT person who does tagging. My involvement in the web analytics community helps me increase my expertise and share it with others; it becomes an upward spiral that helps increase experience and build credibility.

What are the skills that you think are important for a web analyst?

We’ve seen a lot of discussion about this on various blogs. To me, the Web needs three ingredients: clear business objectives, a communication strategy and the technology to support them. The best web analyst would be savvy and top of the line in all three… which is probably impossible to find. But everyone can rate himself on a virtual scale and see where they stand and where they want to be.

What, if any, education or work experience helped you in making this transition.

I recently finished reading "Founders at work", which made me realize our career path is often a question of attitude and a bit of chance that has its roots in the choices we made in our very early jobs (and even our education choices). For me it was pure IT, Web, and expanding horizons into the business side of things.

What education is lacking, education or experience that would have helped?

I would have enlisted in the UBC "Award of achievement in Web Analytics" had it been available a couple of years ago (and I’m not saying that just because I will be tutoring the UBC’s "Introduction to web analytics"!). Education is now available, and there are numerous books and blogs to help increase or knowledge. The experience part is a bit trickier, but my view is summed up in a post entitled "Should you switch job?" where I give 3 simple questions to ask yourself: 1) Am I increasing my value in the market? 2) Am I bringing the right value to my employer? 3) Am I being rightly compensated for my value?

What web analytics/online-marketing books have you read and/or own?

Would be too long to list here! I’ve been using BookJetty to keep track of those.

What are the major challenges you are facing in this industry?

Scarce resources is an issue everywhere. At the same time, being involved in the local web analytics community makes me realize there is a whole lot of companies that have yet to embrace (web) analytics as a strategic tool to help make better business decisions.

How do you make sure you are learning and growing in this field?

Networking, being involved! Web analytics is a bit like the early days of the Web: everyone is willing to help each other, there are so many innovations and opportunities that it’s up to us to decide what we want to do next.

Tell me about your blog.

I started http://immeria.net/ in 2002 on a totally different subject, but really shifted to post more often about web analytics, web strategies and career about 2 years ago.

What is your advice to aspiring web analysts?

"Perseverance": trust yourself and decide what YOU want to do. The web analytics field is in its infancy and all types of people can have the right "stuff" to be involved. Sometimes in might be just doing one small thing everyday toward your goal, other times it might to have the guts to take hard decisions to put yourself in a better position to achieve your long term objective.

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Web Analytics – Know Your Numbers

Kevin Gold — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:06:50 +0000

Web analytics play a crucial role in building a high performance web business. Whether it’s basic site statistics like unique visitors, page views or sessions, analytical data like click paths or funnel abandonment or campaign performance metrics like cost per lead/sale, conversion or value per visitor, knowing your numbers help define your next steps for growth and improvement.

However, besides the greatest hurdle of web businesses actually taking the time to become aware of their numbers, there is also the concern with the numbers being accurate.

I read an excerpt from the July/August 2007 issue of Revenue Magazine in the Tools section that stated,

A recent comScore study suggests that most sites that count unique visitors based on first-party cookies may be over counting their visitors by as much as 150 percent.” The statement continues, “The reports says that 31 percent of U.S. Web users delete their first-party cookies during a given month that means sites are then recounting return visitors as new by a factor of 2.5.”

The “cookie-deletion” issue has been a topic of discussion for quite some time. But the importance I want to pull out from the quote is how an inaccurate unique visitors count can greatly throw off other metrics including conversion rates. And maybe for the better if you thought you generated 100 sales from 10,000 visitors when in reality it was only 7,500 visitors! On the other end, overstating visitor counts may cause you to re-think your SEO relationship if 150% less visitors are actually arriving on your website.

One thing seems to be certain – it’s better to focus on trends than absolutes. If you are using inaccurate numbers due to cookie issues but those same numbers increase over time, then the trend shows positive growth (in the case of unique visitors.) As web analytic providers research new ways around inaccuracies you focus should be on watching the trends in context of your goals. Downward trends for bounce rates, abandons and expenses; upwards trends for unique visitors, conversion rates, sales.

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Web Analytics Interview

Gary Angel — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:41:31 +0000

I’m actually in Hawaii right now, so I’m just not up to producing my regular Sunday Blog. It would take a truly dedicated blogger to produce anything under these far too idylic circumstances.
Maybe Marshall Sponder could do it, but I’m just going to post an interview I did with Jethro Wallenburg a few weeks back for his blog. I liked the way it came out and it sets the table – directionally – for my next blog. We have some major new additions to the Semphonic team and I’m going to be talking about who and why in my next post!

[Jethro]

Can you start by talking a little bit about your background?

[Gary] My degree is in Philosophy – and people certainly will see hints of that in my writing. But there aren’t many jobs in philosophy! So when I got out of college I started working in computers and became one of many self-taught computer programmers. I ended up building several commercial software systems that focused on financial analysis and I got very interested in data analysis in general. To this day, I find few things as satisfying as writing computer programs. I think it of as the great CRAFT job of the modern era.

[Jethro] How did you get into the web analytics industry?

[Gary] In the 90’s I started out working on large-scale database analysis systems for Visa and American Express. When the internet started to explode, a lot of people I knew spun out of those places and were asking me if I could help them understand what was happening on their web sites. It seemed like a natural transition – and one with loads of growth potential. So I co-founded Semphonic in ‘97 to focus on web analytics. One of the few good "market" calls I’ve ever made in my life!

[Jethro] Your company uses the term ‘Functionalism’. Can you explain in easy-to-understand words what that mean?

[Gary] When we first started doing web analytics, we focused on pathing. Then on correlation to conversion. But eventually we recognized that the type of analysis we were doing didn’t help much for many non eCommerce sites and also dealt only with a small subset of pages with any effectiveness. Most of our clients had big web sites with lots of goals that didn’t necessarily involve an online sale and lots of pages that weren’t about selling a specific product. Functionalism evolved out of that recognition. Essentially, Functionalism is a simple idea: pages on your web site are designed to accomplish different things (navigation, convincing, converting, informing, thanking, etc.). So to measure their effectiveness, you have to select KPIs that are appropriate to their function. Functionalism just is a set of page types and the best KPIs we’ve found for those types. It’s absurdly simple, put this way, but it actually helps prevent many extremely common mistakes in web measurement.

[Jethro] Is ‘Functionalism’ new wine or old wine in new bags?

[Gary] On the one hand, I’d like to say that what matters is that it works. Sometimes, the bag is pretty important to the product. I’ve found that one of the biggest challenges in web measurement is helping all the other stakeholders in a website understand what it’s for and how it works. Functionalism is beautiful for that – and that’s a lot about the bag. On the other hand, I think what is truly new about Functionalism is the care with which KPIs are matched to function. Lot’s of people have recognized that there are different types of pages on a web site, but they always ended up with subjective rules about what made those pages good or bad. Functionalism isn’t about that at all – it’s about how, exactly, to measure those pages. I don’t think that work had ever been done systematically.

What I see in the real-world is that most analysts trying to do web analytics don’t have a recipe at all – they use something I call KPI stew. KPI stew is when you throw every measurement you have against a wall and see if any stick. Believe me, having a recipe makes a tastier dish!

I’ll mention also that Functionalism is public domain – you can go get the White Paper from our web site (you don’t even have to register) and it will tell you exactly how to do it. It isn’t some weird secret incantation we chant only while hidden deep in our offices.

[Jethro] What differentiates the SEMphonic web analytics consulting engagement from those with other companies offering web analytics consulting services?

[Gary] I’m going to forgoe the usual stuff about how much we care, years of experience, yada, yada, yada… right? When you get down to it, there are a couple of things that really matter when you hire a consulting firm. I think the first – and probably the most important – is the quality of thought you’re getting. Pretty much every consulting situation is unique; so you need to feel comfortable that the people you’re hiring are actually going to add value to YOU. Obviously, it would be fruitless and silly for me to try and compare our "quality of thought" to other consulting firms. But that’s why things like the Functionalism White Papers and Blogs are important. They give people a chance to really assess what we know and how we express what we know – both vital parts of being a consultant. I also think our BS quotient is unusually low!

After quality of thought, some differentiating factors that matter are things like practice specialty, structure of the firm, and how much leverage a consulting firm actually brings to the table.

We do have some practice specialties. For example, we do lot’s of work on optimizing sites that don’t have classic conversions and focus less on traditional retail. So I think we’re better at Lead Gen, Ad-Based and Branding sites than many people. We’ve also built up a significant practice area around Search Marketing and Internal Search. We’re not a PPC or SEO firm – we do what we call SEM Analytics – which is really just web analytics about SEM. It’s a really interesting field and we’ve been pioneers in that space.

In terms of structure, we’re exclusively a web analytics consultancy (and a hands-on one at that). We don’t do design. We don’t do Bid Management. Just analytics. That makes it more likely that you’ll be engaged with someone with real experience and expertise – not easy to find these days. We’re also not about a single product. When you work with professional services teams from a vendor, you’re always working with consultants who are necessarily product focused. We (and I think most independent consulting companies) are business focused. It makes a huge difference in the type of work you’ll get.

Leverage (re-using your intellectual capital) is sometimes hard to find in web analytics. Tools like Functionalism do make it genuinely easier for us to deliver consistent value to clients. But like anyone else in consulting, I’m always wishing there was more leverage than there actually is!

[Jethro] Where are we going with Web Analytics (something you only know)? For example, what will 2010 bring us…?

[Gary] If only I know it, we probably won’t be there by 2010. Real-world practice always seems to move so much slower than we expect it to! I think it’s clear that there’s an increasing merger between traditional BI and Web Analytics. This is true both in terms of data integration and tools. That’s certainly going to accelerate and I see no reason why, in three years, the two disciplines will be separate in any meaningful sense. In addition, I think we’ll start to see much more "data-driven" analysis within web analytics. Tools like Touch Clarity do this kind of analysis in the background for machine optimization. But the analytic tools don’t provide any similar data-driven segmentation tools for analysts to use. That’s a shame, and I think it will be an area where one or more tools have a chance to really distance themselves in terms of functionality.

[Jethro] How does SEMphonic fit into that picture?

[Gary] When I first cut my teeth in large-scale database analysis and database marketing, the hot tools were cluster and neural network analysis. The most sophisticated companies were just starting to use these tools to do predictive modelling on campaigns. You know what the hot tools are twenty years later? Cluster and neural network analysis for predictive modelling. Analytic Measurement is one of those things that only companies who really commit to it will do well. And the techniques, while complicated, are unlikely to change dramatically. What’s more at stake is culture and process.

Online marketing IS driving more companies into a real "culture of measurement." How does Semphonic fit into that? We’re a very hand’s on firm. I don’t see us fulfilling a role like Eric Peterson – helping companies build culture. I think we are more likely to be the agent of choice for companies that want to build the best analytics into that culture. There just aren’t that many people or companies that are or will ever be genuinely good at sophisticated analytics. That’s the market we play in. It fits us as people and I think there will always be a significant place for great hands-on practitioners.

[Jethro] Can you give us 3 useful tips for a successful Web Analytics project?

[Gary] The nature of this answer depends a lot on the project. Here are some fairly general tips that apply to most types of web analysis. First, don’t "explore" data. Not only are web tools lousy at data exploration, data exploration in general is a waste of time (I’d say almost the same about data visualization, by the way. It’s profoundly misunderstood). It’s vastly more effective to start with a known problem and even a hypothesis about that problem. That’s just one of many reasons why you can’t do useful web analytics without understanding the underlying business. Second, never start with what your tool can do. Start by thinking about what analysis you need to answer your question. Then think about how the tool can be made to get the data. Way too many analysts start with what their tool can accomplish. This becomes a box that traps the analyst. Finally, never finish an analysis without coming up with a list of possible changes. If you’re just reporting numbers you’re wasting everyone’s time. The vast majority of decision-makers don’t want data – they want opinions informed by data.

[Jethro] What are the most made mistakes in WA projects and how can you avoid them?

[Gary] By far the most common mistake in web analytics is to misread correlation for cause. Web sites are navigational interest funnels. What do I mean by that? Think about Exit Pages. People used to talk about Top 10 Exit pages as a meaningful report. It isn’t. It’s garbage. And the reason is that a web site is an interest-funnel. The longer a visitor stays on it, the less likely a visitor is to leave. There is almost no web site we’ve every measured that doesn’t fit this paradigm. So what’s the highest exit page on most sites? The highest Entry page. These types of navigational effects are EVERYWHERE in web analytics – and dramatically influence just about every standard report, from Exit Rates to Correlation with Conversion. That’s one of the reasons a method like Functionalism is valuable. It’s carefully thought out to avoid most errors based on self-selection and navigation.

[Jethro] What is more important for a successful WA Project: the tool or the consultant?

[Gary] I’ve taken issue before with the 90/10 rule – which I guess makes me a traitor to my class. But the question as phrased isn’t really meaningful. In one sense, the answer is obvious. People are far more important than tools. I’ve written before about Robert McNamara – a world-changing Systems Analyst – and the most powerful computer he ever used had punch cards. But that’s kind of misleading. Take genius out of the equation. For most of us, we can solve a huge math problem much faster with a calculator than without. If you don’t give your analysts decent tools, you’re wasting their time and your money. So yes, a tool without an analyst is useless. An analyst without a tool may occasionally be valuable. But 99% of the time you need both. And the quality of tool makes a very significant difference in the value of the analyst.

[Jethro] How do you think a web analyst should spend their day?

[Gary] If it were up to me, eating and watching movies.

[Jethro] ……………

[Gary] Seriously, you’re never going to spend all your time looking at data. Two things I said earlier really apply here. One, an analyst needs to have a plan. When you’re doing analysis, you should be doing it with a specific problem and set of questions in mind. I NEVER start an analysis without a pretty good idea of what I’m going to look at. And if I don’t already have that, it’s the first thing I think about. When I’m working with our new analysts, I typically hand them a pretty comprehensive outline of what to look at when they begin a project. It makes them far more productive. Second, I said earlier that an analyst has to understand the business. Too often, web analysts (even when their not consultants) don’t really engage with the business. That makes for bad analysis. Analysts need to talk with and be part of the decisions their influencing. If they aren’t, then they’ll never really know what matters in the data.

[Jethro] Do you want to share your thoughts on the following subject with some words?

Google Analytics? I have mixed feelings. This is a great tool for free. But it lacks many essential ingredients for good web analytics. So if you are serious about web analytics, it’s the wrong way to go even as a start. Why? Because most of the real cost of a web analytics package is in the learning, culture and human effort that surrounds it. So if you are fairly confident you’ll need enterprise analytics, you’re better off investing in enterprise web analytics. That being said, this is a great tool for small and mid-size web sites especially if focused on SEM. In addition, you can use it in conjunction with other tools to take advantage of things like the Google Optimizer.

Web Analytics in Europe? I’ll quote Phil Kemelor, our VP of Strategic Consulting, "I think European vendors stress their local presence and support capability in stronger terms than North American firms. North American firms focus a great deal on functionality, features and scalability." This shows itself in all sorts of ways – including the absymal level of customer support that our North American clients routinely endure!

Visual Sciences? The integration of the VS Tool and HBX has great potential – maybe to be the best combination out there. But as a product and company they haven’t fully executed on that vision. With all of the acquisition rumours, there is a lot of uncertainty around the company. I’d really like to see that get resolved because this is very popular choice with out customers and the combined solutions have much to recommend them.

Omniture? This is clearly the leader in web analytics right now. Unless you have either cost issues or strong reasons not to go with a SaS solution, you’re probably going to be looking at Omniture. Discover 2.0 is impressive, though I wish it was priced like Discover 1.5! Lot’s of our clients haven’t made that jump for price reasons – which is frustrating for us. Also, with Omniture, you’re looking at a really rich analytic solution but you’ll definitely have to work harder on the implementation. This is a company with a clear vision, a very strong product offering and lots of market momentum. What’s not to like?

Webtrends? I think they’ve been making considerable strides toward once again being considered a real force in the industry. I like the warehouse direction – I think it fits the emerging focus on integration that I talked about earlier. They also seem to be moving toward more data-driven analysis – which is important. In addition, some companies are still leery of SaS for web analytics. Either for security reasons (which I think is foolish, but you can’t argue security) or because of heavy internal data integration needs (which isn’t foolish at all). Hybrid solutions like WebTrends and Unica definitely have an advantage in these markets. And maybe that niche will turn out to be a pretty good one.

[Jethro]Thank you very much Gary.

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